She sat for a while and finished her ale and did not return to the letter. She did not have the words for it. She leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment.
She was not sure how much time had passed, only that the weather outside had grown considerably worse, when a shadow fell across her table, and she looked up.
“Clara Hampshire,” the man said.
“Yes.” She had not been called by that name in some time.
“Miss Arabella sent me. I am to take you to her at once.”
She blinked. Arabella. How would Arabella know she was here at this inn at this hour? It made no sense, and yet nothing that had happened in weeks had made sense, beginning with a baby handed to her at a ball.
“Arabella,” she said again, as though saying the name twice would make the impossible coincidence settle properly into place.
“Yes, Ma’am,” the man said. “But we must make haste. Mr. Devereau will find her if we do not move quickly.”
She rose, leaving her ale and her unfinished letter behind, and followed him out into the dark. Her heart pounded. She was finally going to find Arabella. She climbed into the waiting carriage, and the man closed the door behind her.
Then she heard the click of a lock.
“Excuse me.” She reached for the handle and found it would not give. “Excuse me!” She rapped against the window. The coachman did not turn. She moved swiftly to the other side and tried that door as well. Locked too.
Panic rose in her, and she pounded on the glass. “Let me out! Let me out; please, help me!” A couple walking past glanced up, confused, and the coachman called something down at them. They nodded and continued on their way without slowing.
Then the carriage lurched into motion, carrying her away from the inn, away from the home that had been hers these last weeks, away from the man who had broken her heart yet again, and towards a future that could not possibly have been more uncertain.
CHAPTER 34
“Where is she? When exactly did you see her?” Julian called out, just as thunder rumbled again. Lightning struck close behind it, followed almost immediately by more thunder, so close together it was hard to tell which had come first.
“I am certain she is at the inn, Your Grace,” Nell said. “I asked her to come back with me, but she did not wish to. She told me if the rain caught her, she would shelter at the inn and wait it out there.”
“But why would she leave at all?” Julian turned to Nathaniel, who had remained nearby, listening. Nathaniel shook his head. “I do not know. It is peculiar.”
“She told me she simply needed air,” Nell said, “because her own thoughts were running away with her.”
“There,” Nathaniel said. “That makes it considerably less peculiar. She wanted to outrun her own thoughts for a while which, if we are honest, every one of us has done at some point. The rain simply caught her by surprise.”
“It did not catch her by surprise,” Nell said quickly. “I told her it would rain soon, Your Grace, and she went out regardless.”
“That may be true.” Julian turned to the maid. “You may go.” Nell curtsied and left.
“What do you mean to do about it?” Nathaniel asked.
“I am going after her.”
“In this rain? Have you quite lost your mind?”
“I have not lost my mind, I assure you. But I must see to her. She is my wife. I love her.”
“And what of your speech earlier? That she had distracted you, that she had made you careless?”
Julian took a breath. “I did not mean it. I meant it, and I did not mean it. These past few days have been horrendous, worse even than the ones before, and I did not think anything could be worse than those. I do not know what to do. I do not know what to say. I do not know what to think. But I know that, right now, the one thing I can still control is making certain my wife is notsitting alone in an inn in the middle of a storm. Will you come with me to fetch her?”
Nathaniel rose. “Very well. But if I catch a chill and drop dead of consumption, you shall be left to look after my affairs, including Evelyn.”
“That is quite a threat.” Julian managed something close to a smile despite everything. “Although I do not believe one catches consumption from a chill. Those are entirely different ailments.”
“I did not know you had trained at the College of Physicians.”
