She nodded. “There is nothing left for me there.”
He kissed her hard and fast. “Then we ride,” He said. “Now.”
They hurried through the streets, avoiding the main roads, keeping to the shadows. He led her to a mew tucked behind a shuttered row of shops, where his horse and a hired coach waited. When the coachman saw them, his eyes widened, but he climbed down without question. Johnathan gave swift instructions, voice low but urgent. Within minutes, they were rolling through the city, heading north.
Inside the coach, the silence was heavy but not uncomfortable. Frances stared out the window, the city passing by in a blur of grey stone and glistening cobblestones. Beside her, Johnathan sat rigid, his jaw clenched, his hand resting near hers but not touching.
“Do you think they will come after us?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said simply. “But not quickly. They will spend hours trying to get their bearings, or scattered across London seeking our trail.”
Frances exhaled. “I am unsure where we are going.”
“I am not,” he said.
That was enough for now.
As the city faded behind them, and the countryside opened wide and green, Frances felt the tension begin to unravel from her shoulders. Not gone. But looser. She was not safe yet. But she was free.
And beside her sat the only man who she had ever truly believed in.
The journey north was long, the kind of slow passage through shifting landscapes that blurred one hour into the next. As London disappeared behind them, Frances began to breathe again. Not deeply—not yet—but fuller than she had in days. The coach wheels rumbled over the road, and rain began to fall in soft misty sheets, streaking the windows.
Frances rested her head against the windowpane, her fingers tightening around the edge of the velvet seat. Her heart still raced, not from fear now, but from the sheer audacity of what they had done.
Finally, Johnathan spoke. “You should rest. We will not be able to travel log by carriage. Not if we wish to travel fast.”
Frances turned her gaze toward him. “Do you think they will find us? Force me back?”
He did not answer immediately. “If they do, they will wish they had not.”
She blinked. Not in fear, but in surprise. “You are quite certain.”
“Deadly,” he said. Then a pause. “I will not let them take you back. You have my word.”
There was no bravado in his tone. Only promise. And that promise threaded itself into the air between them, a lifeline she had not realized she needed.
When they stopped that evening at a modest inn west of Cambridge, the air was thick with mist and mud, and their clothes clung to them as they descended from the coach. Frances’s gown was no longer pristine, her gloves damp and spotted, but she did not care. She felt more like herself in that moment than she had in weeks. Not Lady Frances Rowley, betrothed pawn of the ton, but the girl who had once stolen her brother’s boots to ride bareback through the fields, who had climbed trees and laughed too loudly, who had dreamed of adventures that did not end at the altar. That girl was not gone. She was resurfacing, mud-streaked and weary, but alive.
The innkeeper took one look at them and raised a bushy brow. Johnathan placed a few shillings on the counter without hesitation. “We will need the room at the back. And privacy.”
Frances blushed despite herself.
The room was small but clean, with a bed of modest size and a single window overlooking the rain-dappled field beyond. A fire crackled in the grate. Frances stood near it, her hands outstretched, trying to chase away the chill.
Johnathan poured water from the pitcher into the basin and dipped a cloth. “Sit.”
She obeyed without argument, her legs aching from the journey. He knelt before her, gently taking one of her mud-slicked shoes from her foot. The warmth of his fingers brushing her ankle sent a flutter down her spine.
“You did not have to come for me,” she said softly.
He glanced up, water glistening on his lashes. “Did I not?”
Frances swallowed. “You said no. I thought you meant it.”
His hands stilled. “I meant to protect you. I thought leaving you to marry Cranford was the right thing. That your name mattered more than your freedom. But when I thought of you at the altar... Frances, I knew.”
“Knew what?”
