“Where did he go?”asked Lise’s mother.
“Back to the Continent,” Lady Castleton said.“Against my wishes.I thought he had written to you first.”
Lise’s head snapped up.Dear God, the danger!“Why would he go back?”
“As I said, ‘a fool’s errand,’ because he went to find you, Miss von Ostenfeld,” the countess continued.“He is traveling to Holstein, to your family’s estate.Yet here you are.”
The room seemed to spin around Lise.“To find me?”she repeated stupidly.
“He hasn’t been the same since his return,” Lady Castleton continued.“Even after I fattened him up.”She shook her head.“He declined every social invitation that I know of and hasn’t bothered to replace his lost surveying equipment.”She drained her cup and set it down.
“Finally, yesterday, he told us he couldn’t bear it any longer.He was going back to convince you to marry him, vowing he wouldn’t return to England without you.I hope your being here means you feel the same way about my son, because I would say he is smitten.”
Lise couldn’t even enjoy hearing about Jonathan’s affections toward her, so great was her fear.
“But the French are most certainly still searching for him,” she said.“Or will notice his return, at the very least.”
“His father mentioned that,” her ladyship said dryly.“Several times.My son was unmoved by the argument.”
“They never stopped tormenting us,” her mother pointed out.
Lise couldn’t breathe.Couldn’t think.Jonathan had gone back.Despite the French soldiers hunting for him.Despite the terrible risk.She felt ill.Suddenly, she had a wild notion.
“From which port is he leaving?”she managed to ask.
“From Harwich,” Lady Castleton said.
Lise and her mother groaned in unison.“We arrived there four days ago.”
“It would have been five,” her mother added, “but we were delayed leaving Amsterdam by a terrible tempest.And then it rained the night we stayed at an inn halfway between here and Harwich, while our things were brought to London.I hope this isn’t the only weather you have in Britain.”
Lise jumped to her feet.“Surely, the rain will delay the viscount’s passage.It must.Come, Mama.”
She scarcely listened as her mother gave their thanks and bid the countess goodbye.Lise was already climbing into the hackney, planning her journey.
“The answer is no,” her mother said as soon as they were underway.
Of course, Lise ignored her.“Anna and I will take a coach back to the coast.You see how things are here.Two females traveling together is perfectly respectable.No one will raise a brow.I need only one-and-a-half guineas.”
Her mother stared at her for a long moment.Lise bit her lip and waited for acquiescence, but she would go regardless.At last, her mother rolled her eyes.
“You’ll need three guineas for the two of you and three more to get back.”
“Thank you, Mama.”Throwing her arms around her mother, she nearly toppled them both off the hard leather seat.
The war had separated her and Jonathan over and over.She wouldn’t let it happen again.
She’d never prayed for driving rain to slam a country before, but she did now.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jonathan hunched over his third —or was it his fourth?— pint of ale, watching fat raindrops thrash against the wavy glass panes of the King’s Arms’ windows.As it had done unceasingly during the previous night and all day, rain fell in sheets, at times blown almost horizontally across the stone quay and timber jetties of the Harwich dock, thwarting the passage of packet boats, fishing smacks, merchant brigs, and naval cutters alike.
The inn’s taproom reeked of wet wool, tar, and the collective frustration of two dozen travelers whose passage across the Channel had been delayed yet another day.
Jonathan should have been relieved.Every hour the squall continued was another hour he could reconsider this mad enterprise.Another hour to acknowledge what everyone from his father to Finch to his valet had already told him — that returning to the Continent was suicide for a man who had killed a French officer.
Yet he was itching to leave, his fingers drumming restlessly against the scarred oak table.
