Amos reacted not with defiance, but with calculation. It flashed across his expression in an instant. His grip on Arabella faltered, but did not fully release.
Arabella felt it.
“Maxwell—” she begins, though the word came out uneven, the strain of the last moments catching up to her all at once.
Maxwell’s attention shifted, just enough.
It is all Amos required.
He released her abruptly, the motion sharp and ungraceful, and in the same breath, he was gone. He moved past Maxwell with a speed born not of courage but of necessity, disappearing from the carriage before the moment could fully settle into confrontation.
Maxwell turned instinctively, the impulse immediate.
Then—
“Maxwell, wait?—”
Arabella’s voice cuts through it.
He looks back.
She was not composed. The calm she carried so easily had fractured entirely, leaving something far more urgent in its place. Her breath was unsteady, her hands gripped the edge of the seat as though the world might shift again if she let go.
“He’s the one,” she says, the words coming too quickly now. “He told me. He saidhewas the one who hurt you. You must?—”
The sentence faltered as she tried to push it forward. “You must go after him.”
Maxwell did not move.
For a moment, it seemed as though he might. The tension was there, unmistakable in the set of his shoulders, in the way his gaze shifted toward the direction Amos fled. It was not hesitation, but instinct.
Footsteps approach from behind, rapid and unmeasured.
James reached them at a run, his expression already altered by what he saw before he could fully assess it all. His gaze moved from Maxwell to Arabella, then to the open carriage, the absence of the man who should still be there.
“What happened?” he demanded.
“Covington,” Arabella said at once, her voice steadier now that someone else had entered the moment. “He took me. He—” Shedrew a breath, forcing the rest of it into place. “He is the one. The one who hurt Maxwell before. And Eleanor?—”
James’s attention snapped to Maxwell.
“I’ll find him,” James said, already turning.
Maxwell did not stop him.
James was gone almost as quickly as Amos had been, his pace no less urgent, the direction clear.
The carriage felt suddenly smaller for it.
Arabella shifted, the movement uncertain now that the immediate danger had passed, though her body had not yet caught up to that understanding. “You should go,” she said, her voice lower, more controlled. “You heard him. You know what this means.”
Maxwell stepped fully into the carriage.
The motion was not hurried. It was deliberate.
“Maxwell,” she tried again, though the insistence had softened.
He did not answer her. Instead, his attention moved over her with a focus that is almost clinical, though the tension beneath it was anything but. His gaze lingered where Amos’s grip had been,where her sleeve was slightly disordered, where her posture still carried the remnants of resistance.
