“Please tell my grandmother I was taken with a bout of dizziness, and felt too ill to return to our box.”
“I don’t like to leave you alone in your carriage while I fetch your grandmother.” It was a paltry excuse, but everything inside him rebelled at the thought of coolly delivering her to her carriage, and thenabandoning her.
It felt wrong. Dismissive.
“It’s all right, my lord. Our coachman is very good, and will take care of me until my grandmother arrives.”
Samuel wanted to beg her to return to the supper box with him, but she looked so small and fragile sitting there in the shadows that he couldn’t bring himself toargue with her.
So he did the only thing he could do. He held out his arm to her, and led her out of the Dark Walk, avoiding the bright, crowded parts of the garden. The silent walk to the Coach Gate seemed to take far longer than it ever had before, but at last they made it through the archway and onto Kennington Lane.
Lady Crosby’s coachman saw them coming. He leapt down from the box and stalked toward them, a hulking figure in the darkness, but it wasn’t until the light fell on his face that the hair on Samuel’s neck rose in warning.
He’d seen the man before, but never asclose as this.
Christ, he looked like a murderer escaped from Newgate.
Samuel caught Emma’s hand, stopping her. “Lady Emma,I don’t think—”
“It’s all right, Lord Lymington. He’s harmless to me, despite his, er…menacing appearance.” Emma tried to tug her hand free of his, but Samuel held her fast as he sized up the threatening coachman withnarrowed eyes.
“Let the lass go, Lymington,” the man growled, his enormous arms bulging as he crossed them over his chest. “Now.”
Samuel didn’t let her go, but stared the man down. “I don’t take orders from you.”
The man took a threatening step toward him, and things might have gotten ugly, indeed, if Emma hadn’t intervened. “Please, Lord Lymington. You promised me you’d fetch my grandmother for me.”
Samuel gazed down into those big, dark blue eyes, at those red, trembling lips, and reluctantly released her hand.
“Wise choice, my lord.” The coachman held out a hand to Emma. “Comeon then, lass.”
Samuel watched them go, somewhat mollified by the gentle way the brute took Emma’s arm to lead her to the carriage, but his heart gave a curiously miserable thump as she vanished inside, and the coachman closed the door behind her.
Chapter Sixteen
Emma pulled her hood low to hide her face, sweat trickling down the back of her neck even in the cool evening air. If any aristocrats happened to see her wandering around Covent Garden alone at night, searching for a courtesan turned street prostitute, her brief time as Lady Crosby’s virtuous granddaughter would come to an abruptand final end.
She was amazed ithadn’t already.
A lady could only tempt the wrath of fate so many times before the consequences caught up to her. This wasn’t the first foolish risk Emma had taken in the last few weeks, but it could well be the last.
Yet she kept pushing forward along the edges of Tavistock Row, until she was steps away from the glare of lights emanating from the gaming hells arrayed on King and Henrietta Streets like a row of rotten teeth. She could hear the shouts and drunken laughter from here, the shuffle of feet, the low buzz of fortunes being won, then lost again.
Emma kept her head down as she headed west toward Brydges Street. She was dimly aware she was muttering nervously to herself, prayers and curses both—prayers that Helena was still in the alley behind Drury Lane Theater where Clarissa said she’d last been seen, and curses on Helena’s name for putting herself in danger again and ending uphereon the London streets, the very place Emma had beggedher not to go.
Only this time, it was worse. So much worse, because while Helena was accustomed to managing drunken rakes, a kidnapper and murderer was another sort of beast altogether. Whoever had taken Caroline Francis might be searching for Helena even now, and the reckless girl had just made it easier to find her.
Not just find her, buthurther.
Fear flooded Emma’s throat, choking her. Dear God, how could Helena not have seen how much danger she’d put herself in? Once a woman found herself down here in the seamiest part of London, it was very difficult to rise to the surface again. Emma could grab Helena by the hair and wrench her from the muck only so many times before Helena sank to the bottom forever.
Then again, Amy and Kitty had met their disastrous fates in the countryside, at Lord Lymington’s grand estate, a place where they should have been safe.
For a certain sort of lady, no place was ever safe, even under the best of circumstances, but for Helena to venture onto these streets alone, in the dark, with a conscienceless villain after her?
They werenotthe best ofcircumstances.
But Emma wouldn’t think of that now, nor would she think of the promises she’d made, not only to Lady Crosby and Lady Clifford, but to herself, and to Amy and Kitty, who hadn’t done anything to deserve the awful fate that hadbefallen them.
