“Aye, Your Grace!” He hollered. “Hiyah!”
Ambrose was thrown back into the velvet cushions as the wheels screamed against the stones. The ocean was still calling for her, a low, hungry thrum in the back of his mind, but as he clutched the letter in his chest pocket, he felt a surge of grim triumph. The Atlantic was vast, but he held the power to silence its roar. He just had to reach her before she left the Inn, before it was too late.
The carriage became a wooden cage, bucking and swaying so violently that Ambrose was tossed between the leather benches like a rag doll. Outside, the blurred lantern-light streaked past the rain-slicked glass. He hammered his fist against the ceiling panels, the wood groaning under his desperation.
“Faster now!” Ambrose screamed, his voice cracking over the frantic rhythm of the wheels. “I’ll give you gold, but by God, give me speed!”
“The horses are spent in all this wet!” the driver yelled back, his voice muffled by the howling wind. “They’ll collapse if I push them any harder!”
“Then let them die under us! Drive on!”
The carriage took the final corner on two wheels, the chassis shrieking in protest before it skidded to a bone-jarring halt outside the Blue Bell Inn. The horses stood heaving in the gloom, steam rising from their flanks in thick, ghostly clouds. Ambrose didn’t wait for the footman. In fact, he didn’t even wait for the motion to stop.
He threw the door wide, the hinges screaming as they hit the frame. He leaped from the high step, his boots hitting the flooded gutter with a heavy splash that sent black mud spiraling up his trousers. He didn’t pause to steady himself. Pushing past a startled porter, he sprinted into the warmth of the shabby inn, his breath coming in ragged, searing gasps that burned his lungs.
“Where is she?” He cried out to the busy lobby.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Ibeg your pardon, Your Grace?” The innkeeper said as he hobbled over toward Ambrose from behind the counter, grabbing a monocle from his pocket and holding it to his eye for a better look. “Are you quite all right, Your Grace?”
“Where is she?” he roared once more at the innkeeper. “Miss Lewis!”
The man startled, dropping his monocle. “I thousand apologies, but she is gone, Your Grace!”
“Gone?”
“She took a hackney not twenty minutes ago. Said she had a ship to catch.”
“Gone?” Ambrose turned and stormed out of the inn without another word as he bolted back to the carriage.
“Where is she, Your Grace?” The footman asked, clearly enthralled by their mission.
“To the docks! I’ll give you a hundred pounds if you make it before the tide turns! She cannot board that ship to Liverpool!”
The drive from the polished facade of Mayfair to the grimy depths of the East End was a frantic blur of soot-stained stone and rattling iron against the cold. The coachman drove like a man possessed, his whip cracking a sharp rhythm against the leaden sky as he swerved to avoid the slow-moving carts and the pedestrians who scattered like pigeons before their path.
Ambrose sat on the edge of the leather bench, his fingers dug deep into the velvet upholstery, watching the city transform. The grand buildings and shoppes vanished, replaced by the leaning tenements and jagged shadows of the docklands.
When the carriage finally lurched to a violent stop, the wheels shrieking against the wet cobbles, Ambrose was hit by the thick, briny tang of fresh tar, and the metallic breath of the Thames.
He didn’t wait for the dust to settle. He threw himself into the swarm of humanity that crowded the dock, scanning the horizon where the world ended in a tangled forest of masts and rigging. His eyes darted across the hulls until they locked onto a familiar silhouette.
There it was, theAtlantic Star. Even amidst the harbor’s frenzy, the ship looked like an animal ready to slip its leash in Ambrose’s eyes. Its gangplank was a hive of desperate motion,choked with a stream of huddled passengers and shouting sailors who hauled the final crates onto the deck with a frantic sort of efficiency. The heavy thrum of the tide against the wood sounded like a countdown, only eclipsed by Ambrose’s beating heart.
I am close, close enough to smell the bloody coal smoke from the ship’s funnel as it chokes my throat. Yet, the distance between the pier and the deck feels like a mile of impossible ground. How will I ever find her amongst all these people?
He tightened his eyes to focus, seeking out the dark brown hair and emerald eyes that had stolen his heart. After a few moments of searching, there she was.
Imogen stood near the base of the ramp, her tiny trunk at her feet. She looked frail against the backdrop of the massive ship, her shoulders hunched as she clutched her cloak.
“Imogen! Imogen!” He cried out with a roar.
His voice carried over the hum of the crowd, the creaking of timber, and the cries of gulls that flew over them. He watched Imogen freeze as she searched the crowd for him.
She turned slowly, her eyes widening in disbelief.
Imogen looked up. She felt the color drain from her face as if she had seen a ghost or perhaps the Duke of Welton. For a fractured second, the name trembled on her lips, but the reality before her refused to align with the memory of all that she was trying to put behind her.
