“I shall.”
It was not a boast. It was certainty.
He went to the door, then paused and turned back once more, his hand on the latch. “You are not locked in. Remember that. I have not treated you harshly.”
No, thought Francesca, only treacherously. Aloud, she said nothing.
When he had gone and the sound of the carriage wheels at last began to recede, she stood very still in the middle of the little room, listening until even the echo had faded from the road.
Nelly was the first to speak. “Well, this is a fine kettle of fish.”
The homeliness of the phrase nearly undid Francesca more completely than terror had managed. She sat down abruptly on the settle because her knees, which had behaved very well for the past hour, had apparently chosen that moment to become unreliable.
“Nelly,” she said, and was appalled to hear her own voice shake.
Nelly came at once, kneeling beside her with tenderness Francesca would remember forever. “Miss, do not be frightened. Major Manners will have had the note.”
Yes… unless he had stepped out… unless the servant was delayed in his departure… unless they took it for nonsense.”
“They will not.”
Francesca pressed a hand to her brow. “You do not know that.”
“No,” Nelly said honestly, “but I know those gentlemen have been watching everything as if the kingdom depended upon it, and perhaps it does. They will notice.”
Francesca looked around the cottage again, seeing now not the poor decency of its arrangements but the facts of its geography. Yes, indeed, there was no lock; equally, yes, there was no transport. Added to that, the cottage stood in open country, with uncertain roads. She was accompanied by a maidunused to long walking, and the winter light would fail long before they might hope to reach anything substantial if they set out blindly. Kendall had told the truth in the most infuriating way possible: they were not confined, only effectively stranded.
“He said I was safer here,” she whispered.
Nelly huffed. “Men say many things when they wish women to do as suits their male inclinations.”
Francesca gave a weak laugh despite herself. “That is true.”
She leaned back against the settle and shut her eyes for a moment. The joy of the previous day seemed now a memory from another life, yet even in that desolation one thought persisted, absurd and stubborn as before. Arch would come.
However it may be—whether through manners, through his own suspicions, through Renforth’s plans, through pure chance or cultivated intelligence—somehow, he would understand. He would not let her vanish for a day without pursuit. The certainty of that, though perhaps no more rational than her earlier hope, reassured her in a way reason alone could not.
When she opened her eyes again, the little cottage was unchanged: the fire, the hamper, the table, the narrow window giving onto muddy ground and a patch of pale sky. Nevertheless, she felt altered within it. The earth had turned over once already yesterday morning in the garden. Now it had turned again, only more violently. Whatever happened before tomorrow, nothing in her life would return quite to its previous place.
Tomorrow morning, Thomas had promised, everything would have changed… only not, she suspected, in the manner he imagined.
What was she to do now? She hoped that Nelly was right and they had been watched. Would it be better to stay in the cottage and let the soldiers find her in good time, so as not to distract them from whatever Thomas had planned, or should she and Nelly attempt to rescue themselves?
CHAPTER 21
Arch was breakfasting with Renforth when the note arrived.
The hour was early enough that the house had not yet settled into its usual rhythm of purposeful movement, and for a brief interval, the illusion of calm held. Renforth had already been attending to his papers before Arch entered, which was not unusual; that he had brought them to the breakfast table suggested that the day would not allow for idle separation between thought and action.
Arch had just taken his seat when O’ Malley entered.
“A note, sir. For Major Manners, sir.”
Arch held out his hand. The servant placed the folded paper upon his outstretched palm, then Arch broke the seal at once.
Meeting with Kendallat iron-works at 10. No time to refuse.
—FV
