Helena reached across and took her hand. “I have missed you too.” She held it for a moment. “And Clara, whatever this is, and whatever it becomes or does not become, I am here. That has not changed.”
Clara squeezed her hand and said nothing because there was nothing adequate to say.
Outside, the afternoon light was already beginning to thin. Julian would be waiting. There was a carriage to pack and a journey to begin. Southampton did not yet know what was about to be asked of him.
Clara set down her cup, straightened her back, and stood.
CHAPTER 10
They left at nine o’clock. Julian had timed it deliberately—late enough that the streets were still busy, early enough that the worst of the theater crowd had not yet spilled out onto the roads.
One more carriage pulling away would attract no particular attention. This was, he reflected, probably the only logistical detail of the past forty-eight hours that had gone according to any kind of plan.
Richmond had seen to the packing without asking any questions which Julian appreciated more than he could say. The man had been with the family since Julian was a babe and had developed, over those years, a preternatural ability to pack a trunk, maintain an expression of complete neutrality, and make hot tea that appeared at precisely the right moment. He was worth his weight in gold.
Mrs. Holt followed in the second carriage with everything required for the baby, as well as her own baby and itsbelongings. Julian had given instructions that she was to be made comfortable at whatever inn they stopped at and that her needs were to be seen to before anyone else’s. She had looked at him over David’s head and said, “Very good, Your Grace” in a confident tone. Competent people rarely needed to be told what to do. They simply did it.
Clara had insisted on keeping David in the first carriage. Julian had not argued. He had learned that there were things one argued with Clara about and things one did not, and the whereabouts of the baby fell firmly in the second category.
So, there he was. Sitting across from a woman he was about to marry in a carriage headed for Southampton, with a baby between them that belonged to neither of them at an hour when any sensible person would be in bed. This was his life now.
He looked at the ceiling and thought about that for a moment while trying to find a way to adjust his legs, so they would be stretched out to maximum capacity. Though he did not have much luck in that venture owing to the tight quarters.
David slept with contentment. Julian looked at him and felt the familiar ache in his chest, that same feeling he’d had when Arabella had presented the little one, albeit briefly.
Arabella.
He had tried, on and off throughout the day, not to think about her. He had failed comprehensively every time. Where was she? Was she warm? Was she frightened? He knew she wasfrightened, but there was a difference between knowing a thing and sitting with it in a dark carriage at night with nowhere useful to put it.
He had failed her. That was the plain truth of it, and he might as well look at it directly. She had come to his door a month ago. He’d promised his aid, and he would have delivered it, but Arabella being who she was had done as she pleased.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“How long to Southampton?” Clara asked.
He looked at her. She was watching him from the opposite seat with an expression that told him she had been watching him for some time and had decided to say something before he disappeared entirely into his own head.
“If the roads hold, we should make reasonable time. We will stop at an inn to sleep and continue in the morning.”
“I am not tired,” she said.
“Of course not,” he said. “But we must think of David, Mrs. Holt, and her daughter. Besides, highway robbers are a real concern at night. We shall stop in an hour or so to rest.”
She nodded in agreement and turned back to the window.
He watched her for a moment without meaning to. She had changed from the silver-blue gown into something more suitable for traveling, dark and practical, and her hair had been put up in the kind of arrangement that was designed to survive a long carriage journey rather than impress anyone. She looked, he thought, considerably more like herself than she had at the ball. Less armored.
An hour passed. The roads grew rougher as they moved further from London, and the carriage began to pitch and roll. Julian braced himself against the side with the ease of long practice and watched Clara do the same, one hand on the strap and one hand on David’s blanket.
Then the road dropped, and the carriage lurched hard to the left, and David woke up.
He did not wake gradually. He went from sleeping to screaming in the time it took Julian to register the lurch with a volume that was frankly impressive for someone who weighed approximately as much as a large loaf of bread. Clara gathered him up immediately. She tried rocking. She tried the low voice. She tried adjusting the blanket which David treated as a personal insult and screamed louder.
He ought to help her, see if he could soothe him. After all, he had about as much experience. Julian had a brief internal debate, lost it, and held out his arms.
“Allow me to hold him a moment,” Julian said.
She handed the baby over with all the enthusiasm of convict heading to her execution.
