“What!” she said. “No. What do you take me for?”
“Not you.Them.”
“I thought they were yourfriends?”
“They are. That’s why I’m concerned. I know them too well.”
“I’m your friend, too. Or have you forgotten?”
“You’re different, obviously.”
“Anyway,” she continued, “they hardly seemed like libertines.”
“Shows what you know. They bloody well are.”
“I am not looking to take on any extra aristocrats at the moment. I’m already traveling with one under scandalous circumstances. I don’t think my reputation could take it if I added two others to my retinue.”
“Amusing,” he said, his voice devoid of humor.
“They’re worried about you,” she said, trying to convey to him what she had seen. “They seem to think I am a bit dangerous. It almost made me wish I was. Rather more interesting than the truth.”
“I don’t find the truth quite as tame as you do.”
“Is it a problem that they discovered us here?” She brushed by his intimation. She didn’t know how to address it. If she focused on what he meant, she knew she would lose her composure.
John shook his head. “They won’t tell a soul.”
“They really are your friends.”
“Of course,” he said, sounding offended.
He looked like he wanted to say something else. But before he could speak, the innkeeper rushed into the room with a small square of paper.
“My apologies, Mr. Aster,” the man said. “I know the marquess said you wanted the dining room to yourselves, but I just received this for you. The messenger said it was urgent.”
John took the letter and gave the man the appropriate coin. He ripped the letter open and Catherine watched him read its contents.
As he read, Catherine couldn’t help admire his face, how his dark brown curls fell over his forehead and how his green eyes went a shade darker when he concentrated.
He crumpled the letter in his hand. “We need to saddle the horses immediately.”
His lips had gone white.
“What happened?” Catherine asked, alarm pulsing through her.
“My sister. She has fallen ill. They are afraid—” he broke off and their eyes met “—that she’ll die.”
“We’ll go immediately. Of course.”
Catherine could feel her own fright throbbing behind her eyes. Furthermore, she had no idea what to say to him in the face of such a calamity.
She did spare one thought for herself, however, as she headed for the carriage.Dear God,she thought,I’m really going home.
Chapter Sixteen
Until dusk, Catherineand John rode in silence. John was lost to his worry. He seemed to think that Henrietta had contracted the same fever that had killed his father. And Catherine had not yet figured out anything helpful or soothing to say.
She was concerned about Lady Henrietta Breminster, too, even though she had never met the young lady. All she knew of her was that she was seventeen and about to come out in society. And she knew the rumor that had long circulated and which John had dismissed as false—that she wasn’t really the Duke of Edington’s daughter.
