“Words cannot hurt me anymore,” she said hurriedly, waving her hands in the air. “What has happened?”
Francis felt the growing admiration for her again before he turned his head to Josiah.
“Diana went shopping today in Broad Street. Her carriage journey back was aninterestingone,” Josiah said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“You do not mean interesting, do you?” Francis said, feeling his hands clench into fists at the side of his body.
“She had an accident.”
“An accident?” Francis repeated in horror, stepping forward as Josiah outstretched his hands and took Francis’ shoulders.
“She is fine, she is uninjured,” Josiah said, his voice firm. “Yet it does not take an expert to see that her carriage was vandalized.”
“You mean that someone did it on purpose, don’t you?” Lady Ridlington asked from where she stood close by, her green eyes darting between them. “You mean that her carriage was sabotaged.”
“It certainly looks that way,” Josiah said tightly, releasing Francis’ shoulders. “The wheels were loosened.”
Lady Ridlington’s hands flew up to her face and she covered her mouth, stumbling back in shock. Francis walked toward her, unable to stay away. He reached for her arm and drew her to sit down in an armchair nearby.
He couldn’t tell her not to be frightened, as much as he wished he could. Diana’s health had been in jeopardy.
“He tried to hurt her?” Lady Ridlington asked. “He followed through on his threat.”
“We can’t know it was the Viscount for sure,” Josiah said, though he stood perfectly still, his face betraying that he suspected it was. “Though I am pretty confident.”
“She is unharmed?” Francis asked as he sat in a stool in front of Lady Ridlington. He had to be doubly certain that his sister was safe.
“She is fine. For now, she is not leaving the house, not until I can guarantee this mess is over.” He sighed before reaching into his jacket. “Then, there is this.”
He proffered an opened letter to Francis to read. He took it, seeing that on the back it was addressed to Lady Ridlington and had been left at Josiah’s house.
The handwriting was untidily scrawled, done in an angry rush.
Phoebe,
How dare you leave in the dead of night like some animal? You are my wife. You are bound to me by law and you will come back to me. Rest assured that the longer you are away, the more painfully you will pay for this when you return.
You have risked my reputation, as well as your father’s. You have brought a stain on all our names by disappearing so. You will come back to me, or you will find your friends will meet more and more accidents.
Your husband,
Graham, Viscount of Ridlington.
Francis nearly crumpled the letter in his hand out of the fury that was pumping through his veins when he looked up. To his horror, he found that Lady Ridlington had read the letter too, peering at it in his grasp.
“My Lady, please, do not be afraid –” He didn’t get out anymore words. She had jumped to her feet so fast that he nearly fell off the stool. She ran to the drawing room door and burst out of it, her footsteps on the staircase followed a few seconds later.
Francis hurried to set himself on the stool, staring after her as a feeling cut through him, strongly.
It wasn’t just that he couldn’t bear the idea of anything happening to her. He couldn’t bear to see her this sad or frightened either. He cared for her. Deeply. Somehow, despite all his assurances to himself that caring for a young lady never ended well, his own heart had betrayed him.
That heart had become entangled with Lady Ridlington despite his say so.
“You can follow her in a minute,” Josiah said, clapping Francis on the shoulder to earn his attention. “Diana truly is fine, and if Lady Ridlington is tempted to back out now, then Diana will never accept it. She and I both know what the Viscount is doing with this. He intends to use scare tactics to frighten Lady Ridlington out of her hiding place.”
“I worry it might just work, looking at the way she ran out of here,” Francis said as he threw the letter down on the floor. He was tempted to ask the butler to start a fire, despite the heat of the day, just so that he could burn the letter, and burn the Viscount’s words, obliterating them to ash.
“You realize what this is though, don’t you?” Josiah said, picking up the letter from the floor. “This is an admittance that the Viscount knows Lady Ridlington left of her own accord. That this tale of a kidnapping he has told the constables and the magistrate is a complete lie. We need to hold onto it.”
