Then she had to laugh at him and step closer and grasp his lapels.
“Zoe, you’rewrinklingme,” he said reproachfully.
She tugged.
He bent and kissed her, there, in front of the servants. When he straightened, he noticed with amusement that Jarvis was pointedly looking the other way and the footmen and hall porter were carefully looking at nothing.
Marchmont walked with her to the door and out of it, and down the steps to the waiting carriage. He helped her in and closed the door behind her.
He watched the carriage proceed westward, round the fence enclosing the circular pond in the center of the square. When he saw the vehicle turn into King Street, he started back into the house. He’d scarcely crossed the threshold and the door hadn’t yet closed behind him when he heard horses shrieking, people shouting and screaming, and a thunderous crash.
He leapt down the short flight of steps and ran through the square and into King Street.
Everyone about him was screaming and shouting, but it was all background noise. He was aware of people running out of buildings, but they were shadows. He saw bodies on the pavement and in the street. Blood everywhere. People crowded about the overturned carriage. He pushed them out of his way. He saw the crest. His crest.
Zoe was in there.
He saw her in his mind’s eye, galloping ahead of him on a narrow bridle path, the sky grey, the tree leaves shining, the ground slick with wet. It was the last time she’d run away. The last time he’d chased her, exasperated, as always, and afraid, as always. It had rained for two days and she was supposed to be safe at home, studying her Greek and Latin. She’d promised to study very hard, because she was going abroad, to visit Greece and Egypt and the Holy Land with her parents.
It was the last time she’d run away, the last time he’d chased her. Not a year later, she was gone. Forever.
Gone forever.
Someone was shouting at him, but the sounds made no sense.
He was climbing up onto the wreckage. He had to fight to wrench open the door.
The first thing he saw was the ostrich plumes. They didn’t move.
Nothing moved.
His heart stopped moving, too.
“Zoe.”
Then, louder. “Zoe.”
A small movement. A feather quivering.
But the wind was whistling through the street on this dreary day—the same wind that had blasted through the square only a moment ago, ruffling the water in the basin.
He reached down, his hand shaking.
The feathers fluttered.
One slim, gloved hand moved, rose, and reached for his.
His heart gave such a lurch that he nearly fell off the vehicle. Then he was clasping her hand tightly, so tightly. “Zoe.”
“Lucien.”
She shook her head and looked up. The bonnet tilted over one blue eye. “What are you doing up there?”
He remembered little of what happened immediately afterward. He’d fallen into some kind of frenzy, and all the world seemed to have gone mad, too. People had crowded into King Street from everywhere.
He vaguely recalled the footmen helping him get Zoe and her maid out of the carriage. The footmen accounted for two of the bodies he’d seen. They’d been thrown or had jumped from their perch behind the carriage. They were bruised and their livery was torn and filthy, but that was the worst of their sufferings.
Marchmont carried Zoe back to the house in his arms. One of the footmen tried to carry Jarvis, but she wouldn’t have any part of it, instead limping after her master and mistress, umbrella tightly clutched in her hand.
