“They could have had my room, but I can see her ladyship’s mind is made up. I’ll get everything ready.”
Outside in the shadowed forecourt, the coachman walked the horses. The poor man looked wretched.
Jack nodded at him. “Jack Ryder. Nasty business.”
“John Mullins, sir. Will Lord Butterstone recover?”
“I’m afraid he’s gone.”
Mullins lowered his head. “They were both good men. Didn’t deserve to be cut down like that.”
“Tell me how it happened.”
Mullins wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Blast and bugger your eyes, that rogue galloped straight up to us from out of the trees. Shot the groom, Bert, who sat beside me on the box without ahow do you do. Bert was armed, but he might as well not have been. He was holding a lantern and had no time to raise the gun. Then his lordship stepped out of the coach, apparently to reason with the rogue, and was gunned down in cold blood. The murderous devil turned his horse and rode off. Made no attempt to rob her ladyship, who was screaming fit to burst. And those diamonds of hers must be worth a king’s ransom.”
Not a robbery, then. “What did this gunman look like?”
The coachman shrugged. “Wore a handkerchief over his lower face and his hat pulled low. Tall in the saddle on a decent roan.”
“I’m to ride with you to Ivywood Hall.”
The coachman nodded, looking pleased. “Lady Butterstone will be relieved to have a big, strong fellow like you guarding her, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”
Jack retrieved his portmanteau from the bedchamber, loaded his gun, and shoved it into his coat pocket. After he paid Peck for the bed he hadn’t gotten to sleep in, he went to the stable to saddle Arion. It had stopped raining. The clouds overhead had shifted away, leaving the landscape cast in a chiaroscuro of silvery moonlight and deep purple shadows. Even with the carriage lamps lit, visibility would be poor, and the roads potholed and muddy. Jack checked the sky to the north. An ominous wall of midnight-dark clouds lurked on the horizon. It begged the question as to why Lord Butterstone had chosen to travel so late at night, and in this inclement weather.
It could be an unpleasant and possibly dangerous ride to Ivywood Hall.
*
Erina and Harry’sconversation lapsed whilst they concentrated on scrambling down the steep path. Although he had still managed to whistle a lively tune.
“You don’t act like a man with a broken heart, sir,” she commented, once they’d reached level ground.
“I suppose not.” Harry paused to stretch. “Sometimes what one thinks one wants isn’t always what one needs.”
She cast him a sidelong glance. That didn’t mean Miss Beckworth hadn’t hurt him. He might well have been hiding his disappointment from her and putting on a brave face. “Fortunate to have discovered it before any firm commitment is made,” she said. “It does leave us in a pickle, though, doesn’t it?”
His eyes were solemn. “Short of browbeating our fathers into submission, I’ve run out of ideas, I’m afraid.”
“Is there no other lady who might have taken your fancy?”
He raised his eyebrows. “What? Here today? Why don’t you find a nice gentleman to suit your father, instead? There is one enjoying your father’s hospitality as we speak.”
“Who, pray, might that be?”
“The Honorable Lyndon Wainright.”
Mr. Wainright was younger than she was by a year. And when he was older, he would still be dull company.
“We wouldn’t suit,” she said quickly.
A gleam warmed Harry’s eyes. “His father is a viscount. Wouldn’t Wainright be a better choice than me?”
She wasn’t about to tell him she’d refused Mr. Wainright’s offer of marriage. It was a sore point with her father. She paused and gazed at Harry askance. “Well, no. As a matter of fact, if I must, I would prefer to marry you. At least you have a sense of humor.”
Harry chuckled. “Well, that’s extremely gracious of you.”
Beyond the fence, fields of wheat swayed in the breeze. Erina picked up her muslin skirts and took his extended hand to climb a stile. She had taken him the long way around because she dreaded going home. “Let’s stick to the matter at hand. We must work together.”
