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Goldsworthy frowned. “Can’t have any delay, lad. If you leave now, you can pick up the scent. We know the carriage she took, and we know she started on the Dover road.”

“Has Ravenhurst gone after her?”

“No. The man’s collapsed. He’s taken to his bed. But he summoned Chartwell. Ravenhurst thinks the Russians are using his wife as a courier.”

“What makes him suspect her?”

“Apparently, she’s off to meet Walhouse.”

Lynley, of all men, knew that running away with a lover was the desperate act of an unhappy woman. Passion did not make a woman a spy, but it did make her careless of all that she might abandon in her flight—husband, children, and even country.

He rose to his feet. There was less urgency than Goldsworthy supposed. In his pocket Lynley still had the letter he and Emily had found in Walhouse’s love nest. Lynley knew precisely where Lady Ravenhurst was going, how long it would take him to get there on Sultan, and what it would cost him to go after her.

It was well that he had met such a woman on the first night of his betrothal to Emily Radstock. Lady Ravenhurst had from the moment of his first observing her reminded him that happiness in marriage was an illusion.

His absence from their engagement party would give Emily Radstock just the excuse she would need to end their false betrothal.

“I’ll find her,” he said grimly.

Chapter Twenty

The husband hunter who seeks to know only that a gentleman is single mistakes her business. She must cultivate first a more general interest in men, and as husbands come in a variety of types, she must be willing to observe their habits as closely as she observes the habits of the handsomest young lieutenant or most dashing owner of a phaeton and pair. Does she prefer the husband who is a genial host, generally sociable to all he meets, ready to enter into conversation? Does she prefer a man of greater reserve, who may reveal his character only among his most intimate acquaintances? Does she prefer steadiness to passionate volatility? Or dry wit to infectious mirth? The wise husband hunter seeks to understand her preferences before she allows her heart to be engaged.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

By eight nearly twenty close friends and relations had gathered in Roz’s drawing room to celebrate Emily and Lynley’s engagement. Of the invited guests only Lady Silsden and Lynley had not arrived. His absence was as glaring as the absence of the green damask sofa, which had been pushed into the farthest corner of the room and partially concealed by a linen-draped table topped with a tall blue and white vase. More than once in the past half hour, Em had fixed a smile on her lips as her father looked at his watch and remarked pointedly on her fiancé’s tardiness. Her other relatives and friends were content for the moment to mingle and anticipate one of Roz’s good suppers.

Emily chatted with friends, reminding herself that a fortnight earlier she hadn’t wanted a husband, and she’d felt trapped in an engagement sprung upon her by an unconventional gentleman who lurked behind sofa backs.

She had wanted a husband once, but she acknowledged now, with the wisdom of her nearly twenty-nine years, that what she’d wanted in those first Seasons was not so much a husband as a giddy whirl of experiences and a license to shop for bridal fripperies in all the finest warehouses in London.

The husband’s role in this fiction was as her chief admirer. He was an opener of doors, a procurer of ices on hot days, a partner in the waltz, an appreciator of her wit. He had no thoughts or interests that fascinated her or called for her attention. He had no flaws or sorrows that required her sympathy or understanding. His outward attributes were such as would be universally admired by her friends. He needed only to be tall, handsome, and well positioned in the world.

Now, however, because she’d had a chance to glimpse a real man and not the figure of one in her imagination, she recognized the hollowness of her early dream. Lynley’s need to move in fashionable society as a spy had turned the tables on her. Tonight she had become the unreal figure, the bride-to-be who was not a woman with real feelings, but a ship’s figurehead or a statue come to life.

She straightened her spine and kept her smile in place. It was always good to acquire wisdom even at so late a moment in life as the eve of her twenty-ninth birthday, just a week away. Nothing was better to jettison along life’s journey than one’s illusions.

She was feeling Lynley’s absence because she would miss the spying when they dissolved their engagement, when she announced to the world that they would not suit. But they had one more spy adventure before them. She had been pondering how she and Lynley could contrive an excursion from London into the country to find the empty parsonage. She meant to put the problem before Lynley when they had a moment to themselves.

Her father reached for his watch again, and Emily glanced at Roz. They could wait a few minutes longer, but a dinner party once underway could not easily be put back. Belowstairs everything would be in motion. Timing was the essence of a good dinner. Soups and fish had their moment.

Roz looked calm and attentive to whatever Uncle Walter was saying, but her posture was unnaturally stiff, and she held a hand pressed to the small of her back.

It was a relief a moment later when Gittings announced Lady Silsden. The other guests parted, clearing a little space, into which Lady Silsden staggered, a figure in deep maroon velvet and pale gauze. Someone gasped. Phil stepped forward to offer his hand, but she waved him back. She pressed a palm to her heaving bosom, and drew a shuddering breath, looking around with unseeing eyes.

“What is it, ma’am?” Emily asked.

Lady Silsden’s gaze met Emily’s. “You’ve lost him, my dear,” she said. “He’s run off with Lady Ravenhurst.”

It was a blow. Emily would have liked a message, anything rather than being left behind. Hurt said he had played more of a double game than she realized. Maybe all along Lynley’s supposed spying had really been about Lady Ravenhurst, with her fragile beauty of the kind that made men rush in to protect and save.

Emily made herself take Lady Silsden’s cold hands and help her to a chair. Phil signaled a footman to bring a glass of wine. Roz sank back against the sofa cushions. Phil instantly turned to her, taking her hand and speaking in her ear.

Emily’s mind raced. Lynley would not pursue Lady Ravenhurst unless her movement pertained to the case. His betrayal should not wound her feelings so deeply. If he had left London, he betrayed Emily as a partner, not as a lover. He had heard something through the mysterious spymaster he worked for, perhaps.

“Don’t you see,” Lady Silsden pleaded. “He’s repeating his father’s folly. You must send someone after him. He must be stopped.”

“I believe that’s my office,” said Emily’s father quietly. “No rogue jilts my daughter.”