“That is what I hope to ascertain. If we have no luck there, we’ll have to try the Gloucester Coffee Shop in Picadilly.”
“Why those two, in particular?” Bess asked, desperate for details to keep the howling of her fear at bay.
What might befall a young woman, unaccompanied and beautiful, dressed in clothes of very fine quality? She shuddered to think, and yet she must think it, because it was Bess’s own complacency—her own neglect and selfishness!—that had exposed Lucy to this danger.
If she had only paid more attention to her charge than to her own hedonistic wants and desires…
“Both send coaches west.”
“Along the Bath Road,” Bess breathed, comprehending. “You think she’s running home to Little Kissington.”
“It seems the most logical place to begin searching. Unless you know of some other goal she might have in mind.” His lips twisted. “You know my sister far better than I do.”
A chill swept down Bess’s spine. “God in heaven. You mean, could she be off up the Great North Road, on her way to Gretna Green with some unsuitable beau? I would like to say of course not, but I feel I can’t claim to be any sort of expert on Lucy these days!”
“I’m sure that’s not the case.” He looked a little alarmed; it was possible the threat of imminent tears had thickened Bess’s voice. “Her lady’s maid would know about it, surely, if Lucy had developed a tendre for some rogue, and I believe in these circumstances Jenkins would tell us all even if it meant breaking her mistress’s confidence. No, it’s far more likely that she has tired of London and impulsively decided to take herself home, as she has often expressed a wish to do.”
The painful knot in Bess’s throat broke on a choking sob. She covered her face with her hands. “I should have been there! I should have stopped it, I should have helped her. I knew she was unhappy, I should have offered to suspend the trip and take her home early!”
“You would have left?” he said sharply, and Bess began to cry in earnest, swamped with despair and remorse.
“I was always going to leave,” she wailed. “We both knew that.”
“I meant, leave sooner. Bess. Please, stop.” He switched seats so that he sat beside her instead of across. Then, as if deciding that wasn’t close enough, he pulled her into his lap.
Taking her face between his big palms, he used his calloused thumbs to wipe away her tears while pressing kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, her nose—any part of her he could reach. “Bess. Elizabeth. My queen. Don’t cry. I know I said you could be a mess, but I can’t bear your tears.”
Guiltily, Bess sank into his warmth and soaked up the comfort of his touch like lemon syrup drizzled over a pound cake. “Why should I not cry? This is all my fault, and I ought to feel terrible about it. Stop making me feel better!”
“I would, but we’re nearly to the Swan. May I offer you my handkerchief? No, no, keep it. There’s my Bess.”
Against her will, the words lifted her heart. My Bess. She shook her head, swamped with regret and self-recrimination.
“I’ll take care of this, don’t fear,” he said firmly. “Here we are. Ready to ask some questions?”
But the first dozen people they approached at the bustling pub either hadn’t seen anything useful or wouldn’t speak to them at all until Nathaniel produced a few coins to tempt them.
Undeterred, Nathaniel said to Bess beneath his breath, “The mail coaches all left about their business hours ago, around seven o’clock last night. When they lined up here in the courtyard, nine or ten coaches ready to go, there would’ve been a great crowd; it’s a sight to behold. We are looking for someone who was there and saw it—probably the most inebriated individual propping up a table and making a nuisance of himself to the barmaids.”
But Bess’s fears had begun to take over once more, preying on her mind. “What if we can’t find anyone who knows anything? What if Lucy did not, in fact, make her way here to catch a mail coach, but was set upon by footpads in the streets, or, oh God, you don’t think that Lord Phillip could have found her, or done anything to her in retaliation for his humiliation this evening?”
Nathaniel shook his head at once, “She had already run off, hours before that scene with Lord Phillip?—”
But Bess clutched at his arm, irrational with terror and guilt. “No, you must listen! You didn’t hear him before, he knew all about us! I think he has been following me for days, perhaps weeks, ever since I called him a pup that day in front of the Duke of Thornecliff. Nathaniel, he hates me, truly—I’m not at all sure what he might feel driven to do, but he would certainly know that hurting Lucy would drive both of us wild with fear and what if he stumbled across her, somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be, with no one there to protect her?—”
Before Nathaniel could respond, a ragged urchin crept up and tugged at Nathaniel’s sleeve.
“You lookin’ for a lady, guv? Only I heard you was passing out coin for word of what happened to a Long Meg of a girl, and I seen her! Got the last spot aboard the coach heading west, she did, strapped into the rumble-seat atop.”
Nathaniel squeezed Bess’s arms and she felt a desperate sort of hope bubble up inside her.
“Lucy is on her way home,” she breathed, hardly daring to believe it. “To Five Mile House.”
Things began to happen very quickly. Bess wrung her hands while Nathaniel arranged to leave his town coach in the capable hands of his coachman and hire a light, fast curricle and two horses from the landlord of the Swan. He would drive it himself, planning to change horses every ten miles down the road so they could make the best possible time.
“Bess,” Nathaniel said quietly as they clattered out of the innyard. Just her name, only that, but the low, solemn sound of it in his deep voice cut through her hysteria like thunder drowning out a whimper. His eyes burned into hers, the light blue-gray-green of frost-tipped grass. “We will find her. I swear it to you.”
“She wouldn’t be lost at all if I had never gone to The Nemesis,” Bess said through numbed lips.
