Lucasta was waiting until after the benefit to inform the Baron that she would not be coerced into marriage. She needed this concert to establish her musical reputation. The sooner she could get her music conservatory off the ground and stocked with paying students, the sooner she could provide Cici a safe haven so her cousin would not be forced to marry for a roof over her head.
And if Lucasta had means of her own, she need not be forced into marriage herself.
“I do hate to draw you away from your clever group,” Clara continued—she had just managed not to call them Gorgons—“but your friend asked me to tell you he’s waiting for you in one of the carriages outside.”
“Friend?” Lucasta cast a quick glance about the room. Trevor, who had been watching them while he chatted with Lady Cranbury, made his bow to the dowager and started in their direction. Lucasta shook her head. Did he think she had summoned him? But if Trevor were not waiting for her outside, then?—
Jem.He and Clara Bellwether were cronies. She’d seen Clara commandeer his attention a hundred times at the parties she’d attended in the past weeks. Jem would entrust her with a message to contact Lucasta. But why would he not come inside to deliver it? Because he did not wish to be accosted by others?
If he wanted to see Lucasta here, now, instead of making an appropriate morning call or sending a message, it must be something important. Lucasta made a hasty farewell to her friends and hurried to gather her wrap before Trevor bore down upon them. She did not wish to explain to him where she was going. She would make up an excuse later, when she rejoined the party.
Jem was waiting for her. She went as if he were the siren and she the doomed ship. There was no earthly way she could resist his call.
The row of carriages outside the Bellwether town home was long, and a clammy cold had descended with the dusk. It was a spring that didn’t feel like a spring, dry and full of chill breezes. Lucasta pulled her elegant mink pelisse up to her chin—another gift from Jem via Mlle. Beaudoin—and looked for Jem’s calash.
A thump came from a closed chaise some way down the line, a plain conveyance with no identifying arms on the door, and the driver called gruffly to her. “’Ere, miss.”
She didn’t recognize him as one of Jem’s servants, but then, Jem had always driven himself. The pavement was cold against her silk slippers as Lucasta moved in that direction, making her way by the light of the carriage lamps on the various vehicles. The chaise didn’t hold Jem’s horses, either; she’d recognize the mighty pair he called Atlas and Hercules.
“M-milord?” she called, uncertain how he wanted to be addressed now. He was the new Earl Payne, by right of succession, but she wanted to call him Jem. He had kissed her, twice, throwing her world off its axis each time. Surely that allowed her some intimacy?
The door of the chaise opened, and a masculine arm clothed in dark wool reached for her. Lucasta took the hand and climbed in, but she knew before the door closed behind her that the arm did not belong to Jem.
“You!”
The Viscount Frotheringale sat in the dark confines, grinning. He rapped on the roof and the chaise jolted into motion. Lucasta tumbled into the seat, throwing herself to one side to avoid landing in her cousin’s lap.
“At last, Lucasta! It is very hard to find you alone.”
“What are you doing here? I did not give you leave to use my name.”
The least of her worries, but the first indignation to rise to her lips. She’d decided she was not at home each time he called, and the footman who answered the door, loyal to Lucasta after all the time she spent in the servant’s quarters signing to them, stood behind this message. Furthermore, whatever his wife might feel about her nephew, the Baron was not obliged to give Frotheringale access to Lucasta.
“Oh, but we are cousins! And soon, I hope, more than that. Indeed I plan for us to become very close.” His grin broadened, and the threat in that smile made Lucasta shrink into her seat.
“Very well, then, Roland,” she said crisply, “what do you want of me?”
“Gale,” he said. “All my friends call me Gale.”
He reached for her hand, but Lucasta drew away. The chaise tilted as the coachman swung around a corner. He was driving too fast for a city street, so often clogged with traffic. Lucasta braced her hands against the seat and wall, glad she was wearing gloves. The carriage had the musty smell of a hired vehicle. This couldn’t be her cousin’s own conveyance—and if it was, he was a desperate man.
Desperate enough to kidnap her?
She considered the possibility for escape. Overpowering him was a remote chance; he was much larger and heavier. The coachman was not likely to obey her commands to stop. She could open the door and throw herself from a moving carriage, and risk getting herself killed by the fall or trampled by traffic. Even if she landed somewhere soft, she would be in the cold, wet night alone and without company—a sure invitation for disaster.
“Where are we going?”
“Did your aunt not write that she was sending me?”
“She said she was sending…” Lucasta tried to recall the letter. It was brief and vague, much unlike her garrulous aunt, who wrote pages of letters crossed so many times that one needed a quizzing glass to read them. And this letter had been sent by penny post, when her aunt would have searched high and low to find someone to frank her letters, even when she knew the recipient could afford the postage.
“She said she would send someone for me,” Lucasta allowed.
“And I am taking you to her.”
“To Bath?” Lucasta said in alarm. “I am not equipped for travel.”
The London-Bath route took three days, and Aunt Cornelia had taught her never to stop at a coaching inn without her ownlinens. “My benefit concert for the Foundling Hospital is next week.” They could never post to Bath and be back in time.
