But she wouldn’t try and explain this to Lord Gray. He’d never learned that lesson, because he’d never had to. For him, one made a wrong right again by taking the matter to a magistrate.
There was nothing Sampson Willis could do for Jeremy. Sophia looked down at the hand still cradled in hers and thought about the scars on Lord Gray’s knuckles. She’d been surprised to find he hid old wounds under his fine kid gloves. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been. Perhaps she should have realized no one, not even an earl, escapedwithout scars.
Lord Gray was a better man than she’d accused him of being, but he wasn’t the man to save Jeremy. No, she’d have to do that herself.
“I’ll take you home.” Lord Gray withdrew his hand from hers and rapped on the roof of the carriage. “No. 26 Maddox Street, Platt,” he murmured when his coachman appeared.
Platt bowed, and a moment later the carriage started with a lurch and they were off, the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral looming over them, and Newgate Prisonat their backs.
* * * *
“Sophia, are you listening?” Cecilia paused in the middle of her dramatic reading and laid the book across her lap. “The Marquis de Montalt is scheming to make Adeline his wife.”
“Not his wife, hismistress. He’s already married, if you recall. He hasn’t any business marrying Adeline, but even so, he isn’t the sort to take rejection well. Next thing you know he’ll be vowing to murder her, and she’ll be forced to flee the abbey.” Emma, who was lounging on Sophia’s bed, shifted to rest her head in Sophia’s lap. “Are you not diverted, Sophia?”
Sophia sighed. “Adeline won’t become the Marquis’s mistress.” Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroines never became mistresses, nor were they ever murdered, for all that they spent most of their time running through dark forests, fleeing from dagger-wielding dukes and sleeping in haunted abbeys. “She’s in lovewith Theodore.”
“He’s in love with her, too. Listen to this.‘She is yet, I fear, in the power of the Marquis,’ said Theodore, sighing deeply. ‘O God!—these chains!’—and he threw an agonizing glance upon them.’Theodore’s falling into paroxysms of grief and despair. Those bits are always good. Don’t you think so, Sophia?” Cecilia peered hopefully over the top of the book.
“Clara’s about to weep on Adeline’s bosom, and a few passages later, Adeline is going to start weeping as well, so you see, everyone is shrieking and weeping. Love and honor will prevail, of course, but there will be some delicious torture and suffering before then.” Georgiana shot Sophia an anxious glance. “Doesn’t that sound delightful?”
Love and honor always triumphed in Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels, and villains always confessed their wrongdoings. It was one of the things Sophia loved best about her books. There was something reassuring in everything wrapping up so tidily.
But with Jeremy facing the noose and the true villain content to see him swing, Sophia couldn’t lose herself in the story. “Of course, it does. I suppose I’m just a bitweary tonight.”
Cecilia flipped ahead a few pages, skimmed to the end of the chapter, then set the book aside with a sigh. “Adeline’s going to retire to her bedchamber and fall so ill she won’t be able to quit it again. Nothing unusual in that, really. Why don’t we stop for tonight, and pick the book back up again tomorrow?”
Nods and murmurs of assent followed. Quiet fell over the room as they each became lost in their own thoughts, until Cecilia roused herself and crossed the room to join Emma and Sophia on Sophia’s bed. Georgiana piled on next, and they all lay there together on the crumpled coverlet.
“What does Lady Clifford say?” Georgianaasked at last.
Her friends hadn’t asked Sophia about Jeremy. She could see they wanted very much to know how he did, but they knew her well enough to see her emotions were too raw to speak of it with any composure yet, and they’d resisted quizzing her.
Sophia had been feigning interest in Cecilia’s reading, but now she let herself collapse against her pillow. “Nothing at all yet. She said we’d talk later, and sent me upstairs.”
When she’d returned from Newgate, Sophia had found Lady Clifford waiting for her in the parlor. She’d braced herself for a painful discussion of Jeremy’s pitiful condition, but instead, Lady Clifford had studied her for a moment, then murmured, “Go on up and see your friends, dearest. We’ll talk later.” She patted Sophia’s cheek and sent her up to her bedchamber, where Cecilia, Emma, and Georgiana had welcomed her with soft exclamations and a tangle ofenfolding arms.
“She has a plan, that much you can be sure of.” Georgiana plucked up a lock of Sophia’s hair and began plaiting it. “She always does.”
A small spark of hope flared in Sophia’s breast. Surely, Georgiana was right. Lady Clifford would never stand by and allow Jeremy to hang. Surely, she had a plan tosave him, only…
The feeble hope sputtered and died. Nothing less than a prison escape would do Jeremy any good, and no one escaped Newgate.
“Jack Sheppard escaped Newgate,” Emma said, as if she’d readSophia’s mind.
He had, yes, but he’d been sparse and lithe, with enough strength to climb up a chimney and through a ceiling into the chamber above. Jeremy couldn’t even rise to his feet on his own, much less scale a chimney—
A soft knock on the door interrupted these musings, and Lady Clifford poked her head into the room. “Good evening, my loves. Ah, I see you’ve all taken good care of Sophia, just as I knew you would. Sophia, dearest, are you fit to come downstairs with me? Daniel and I would like to have aword with you.”
Sophia rose from the bed. “Yes, my lady. Quite fit.”
Emma, Cecilia, and Georgiana also rose as if to follow them, but Lady Clifford held up her hand. “Just Sophia this time, dears. I know you want to help, but this is a rather delicate matter, and it’s best if we keep as few of us involved in it as possible.”
The four girls traded hopeful glances. This was it, then. Lady Clifforddidhave a plan to rescue Jeremy, and from the sounds of it, it was a promising one. If her ladyship didn’t think it stood a chance of succeeding, she wouldn’t feel the need to keep it private.
“Come along, then.” She held out a hand to Sophia, but paused at the door to throw an amused glance over her shoulder. “Remember, my dears, there’s to be no reading any Radcliffe until Sophia returns. Those are the Society’s rules, after all, and Clifford students always respect the rules, don’t we?”
Emma muffled a snort. “Ofcourse,we do, my lady.”
