Henrik stared at him.“She didn’t believe ...”
“If she told you she wished for Friedrich on the Great Oak, she’s lying.”Jonathan’s eyes blazed with sudden fierce hope.“Which means she’s lying about loving him.Perhaps about all of it.”
“But why would she lie?”
“He must be holding some menace over her head.”Jonathan’s mind raced to piece together a puzzle Henrik couldn’t yet see.“Friedrich is threatening her somehow.Or more likely, you and your family.He has done it before, to keep her bound to him.”
Without discussing it, they both turned their horses and were cantering south once more.
“Henrik.”Jonathan hesitated, then forged ahead since there was no point in concealment any longer.“I must tell you something.I believe I am in love with your sister.”
The confession hung between them.Jonathan waited for surprise, for objection, but after a long moment, Henrik merely nodded.
“It’s not unexpected.”
Jonathan nearly laughed at his choice of words.“Isn’t it?”
“Lise is different than any of the young ladies I met in London,” Henrik said.“I assume you noticed the same.It’s not that she’s prettier.I saw plenty of beautiful women.But she’s also clever and forthright and brave.Sometimes too courageous for her own good.”
His voice broke, and he added, “How could you spend time with her and feel nothing?That was why I warned you away from her.”
“I know.But your warning did me no good,” Jonathan insisted.Having declared his love, he felt both fierce and ...wary.“I must tell you something else.I believe — I have to believe — that she loves me in return.”
“That, I cannot know.It’s up to Lise.But we go back,” Henrik said simply.“We’ll get her out of that house.”
Their horses ate up the road back to Lübeck.For Jonathan, the exhaustion of the day was forgotten in the sudden rush of purpose.Still, they had to go at a canter and sometimes merely a trot or risk their horses giving out.
When they slowed to give their mounts a rest, Henrik said, “He won’t let her leave easily.Not after he’s worked this hard to trap her.”
“Then we don’t ask his permission,” Jonathan said coldly.
Henrik looked over at him.“And will you still love her if he has compromised her?”
Again, the sickening notion of them together brought bile to Jonathan’s throat, but not because of Lise.Only for Friedrich’s heinous actions.He wouldn’t hold it against her.
“How could I not love her no matter what has befallen?”he asked.“After all, she went to Lübeck to help me.Now, I hope to return the favor with a better outcome.”
Urging the poor old mare with his heels, he managed to get her into a full gallop for the final half mile into the city, now shrouded in darkness.They slowed down as Henrik led them onto Friedrich’s street.
“We could start by retrieving Lise and Anna’s horses,” Henrik suggested.
Jonathan thought it a good idea, although if he had to ride home with Lise sharing his saddle, he would be a happy man.
“There.”Henrik pointed to the house on a cobbled street.Three stories of brick with the ground-floor shutters closed.Lamplight leaked out here and there but not enough to help them.If not for the moonlight, their task might be impossible.
There was no fence.A low stone wall ran along a small drive beside the house, leading back into inky blackness.Jonathan assumed there was a courtyard with a stable.
Deciding to leave their horses a street away, they tethered them to a post outside a closed shop.On foot, approaching cautiously, they kept to the shadows, stealthily heading to the rear of the property.Jonathan couldn’t help looking up at the windows on the side of the house, some with candlelight flickering within, wondering if Lise was behind one of them.
Perhaps it was too early for her to be sleeping, but he hoped she wasn’t downstairs with Friedrich.He’d hate to have to shoot the man while he ate his supper or relaxed in his own drawing room.Better for everyone if Lise could be spirited away with Albrecht none the wiser.
Seeming to take an interminable amount of time, they led the two familiar horses out of the stable.Luckily, no stable boy lived there, needing to be silenced, only a sleeping old man reclined in the yard beside an overturned jug of something undoubtedly spirited.If he was the guard, then he’d failed.
Even Lise’s mare’s untimely whinnying didn’t rouse him, although it made the hair stand up on Jonathan’s neck.
In half a minute, they’d gone quietly along the drive.And two minutes later, the von Ostenfelds’ horses were tied up next to the old mare and Henrik’s gelding.
“Now for the hard part,” Jonathan quipped.
