“My lord?” Osgood was a steadfast presence at his side, predicting action would be required.
“Have a horse brought round at once, Osgood.” He hadn’t time for the encumbrance of a carriage. But he would find her. By God, he’d ride all over London, tear the city apart with his bare hands if he must. Whatever he needed to do, he’d do it. And gladly, if only it meant that he could make her safe. If only it meant she hadn’t been shot or worse. He stared at his butler, feeling as if the entire world had gone horribly off-kilter. “Lady Ravenscroft has…gone missing.”
Saying it aloud hit him as surely as a blow to the chest. The air rushed from his lungs. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Saying the words aloud made them real, and brought with them all their crushing depths of primeval fear.
“Yes, my lord. May God be with her.” Osgood hastened away from him.
“Amen,” Julian whispered to his butler’s departing back. By Christ, she’d even won old Osgood’s wizened heart.
Stealing away from her father’s house now that it was under rigid guard was simultaneously easier and riskier than Clara had supposed. Easier than she’d supposed for she’d managed to succeed when she’d feared she had not a hope of escaping unnoticed. Riskier because taking a hostage had been, as it turned out, necessary.
It hadn’t taken long for her to realize what she needed to do after her arrival back at her father’s home. Lady Josephine and Lady Alexandra had run off to settle in to their temporary lodgings with a grim acceptance as she faced an unwanted interview with her family. She’d endured her father’s smothering comfort and Lady Bella’s equally smothering attempts to console her—all out of a place of love, she knew, but nevertheless difficult for her to accept.
Clara’s eyes had been swollen from crying, her head ached, her throat throbbed, and her heart hurt. There was nothing in the world she wanted to do less at that moment than speak with anyone. Her husband had just rejected her. Sent her away from him. Told her he was incapable of love.
“Lord Ravenscroft was right to bring you and his sisters here,” her father had said on a frown as he patted her arm. “You’re safe with us, my darling girl. Lord only knows what manner of fiend he’s brought down upon himself after so many years of debauchery. You cannot think to put yourself in harm’s way because of his past sins.”
Her father’s words had done nothing to stem the flow of misery careening through her like a flooded river. “He is my husband,” she’d argued. “It’s my duty to stand at his side.”
“Just as it’s his duty to protect you, dear heart,” Bella had intervened then, unable to refrain from gazing upon Clara as she might a motherless kitten she’d found on the street. Perhaps it was her delicate condition that caused her every emotion to be written across her beautiful face. Whatever the case, Clara found herself feeling most unappreciative of her stepmother’s sweet kindness. She didn’t want to be told that Julian was right to send her away. She wanted to rail against his decision, his self-loathing, his fears. She wanted someone to tell her to run straight back to his arms and put up a damn fight like a true Virginian.
But no one had, and all at once, understanding had dawned on her.
She loved her father. She loved Lady Bella. But everything in her told her that this was not where she belonged. She belonged with Julian. And if he was in danger, then she would face the danger with him. She would not, by all that was holy, cut stick and run, abandoning him to his fate.
No she would not. Virginia girls were made of sterner stuff.
The sternest stuff.
Naturally, her father had other ideas. He’d proved his usual obdurate self and had refused to allow her to leave, citing the recent attack on her as ample proof that being beneath Julian’s roof was dangerous. He’d even booked her passage to Virginia. But the victory she’d once fought for—the return to her homeland—was hollow now.
She knew where she was meant to be. She had one home, and it wasn’t a place.
As the hired hack she’d caught swayed through Belgravia, she kept her pistol trained on the brawny young footman she’d taken hostage. She rather pitied him, but her back had been pressed to the proverbial corner.
“You shot at me, my lady,” he said dumbly for what had to have been at least the third time since she’d made good her escape.
“I shot into the ground,” she corrected him gently. “And I’m sorry for it, but it was necessary. You weren’t listening to reason.”
She’d managed to convince the footman guarding her chamber door to allow her a visit to the library for a book. Once inside the library, she’d turned off the electric lights and made a run for it, knowing the layout of the house quite well. But upon reaching the side door she’d chosen for her exit, the footman guarding it had attempted to waylay her. When he’d begun shouting as she hailed a hack, she’d feared he would bring the entire household down upon them.
Clara had no wish to be discovered and forced back inside where she could spend the next several sleepless hours ruminating over why her husband had sent her away. And why she’d let him. No, sir. She had every intention of accomplishing what she’d set out to do. And so she’d raised the pistol hidden in the pocket of her skirts and shot.
Unfortunately, her action had not produced the desired effect, for the alarms had been raised in her father’s house. She’d decided at the last moment that perhaps bringing the lad along for her protection wouldn’t be a bad idea. And so, just as the front door had been thrown open, she’d disappeared into the hack with the footman, guiding him with the best incentive mankind had ever produced: the barrel of a firearm.
“Begging your pardon, but I think you’re mad, my lady.”
She frowned at him. “You aren’t precisely in a position to be tossing about insults, young man.”
But the footman was either too shocked or too simple to know when he ought to hold his tongue. “I’m sorry, my lady, I am. But why would you want to leave a house where you’re being kept safe to run out into the night? Only a madwoman would do such a foolish thing. Why, you’re merely asking for mischief, as my ma would say.”
Clara sighed. “Silence, if you please.”
The lad was likely not far from the truth. Fleeing her father’s home was, in hindsight, not the cleverest notion she’d ever entertained. But never let it be said that Clara Ravenscroft was afraid of taking a chance. And never let it be said that she wouldn’t do anything for the man she loved.
Even if it meant humbling herself before him. Even if it meant abducting a poor footman at gunpoint and galloping through town back to her husband. Even if it meant taking a stand against whoever or whatever evil threatened them.
For in the hours since she’d allowed herself to be evicted from her home and Julian’s life both, she’d discovered that she was stronger than she’d ever imagined. She was strong enough to face anything, to beat anything, to take a risk and feel the wind in her face. She was strong enough, which meant she would fight. She’d fight for Julian, fight for herself, fight for the life they were meant to live together.
