“Oh, something very logical.” Georgette sat primly, uncertain how much space she ought to take up. She had reached for Hugo’s hand, but he did not seem to want to be reached now. “You might map all the possible vectors from Strawfield and Doncaster, then note where the lines intersect.”
“You mentioned vectors,” Hugo said. “Very nice. But no, it wouldn’t be fair to pit that method against your plan to collect gossip.”
“Ah, because you know your map would fall short. But Hugo, you’re under an insurmountable disadvantage already. I’ve worked in a bookshop. I know far more about the ways of the world than you do.”
“No, I meant that it wouldn’t be fair because I’ve studied . . .” He trailed off. With a double thump, his boots hit the floor of the carriage, and he turned to face her again. “Curse it, Georgette. You’re baiting me, aren’t you? Traveling with you consists of continuous violations of my dignity.”
“You love it,” she said. “You think it’s entertaining and delightful.”
“Don’t be so sure.” But he was almost smiling. Wasn’t he?
“I know you value evidence,” Georgette said. “I do too. That’s good sense. But in this matter, gossip is as close to evidence as we’ll get unless we stumble over the stolen trunks.”
As the afternoon wore on, they unpacked the hamper and shared out the coffee. A light rain began to fall, tracing idle, winding lines down the carriage windows. The inside of the coach became smaller and smaller, until Georgette felt Hugo could, if he wished, idly reach into her mind and pluck forth every one of her plans and ideas.
At each coaching stop, she had more ideas and fewer plans. And each stop brought the inevitable end of the journey closer. She did not know what she would do when it came, and when the day no longer began and ended in the company of Lord Hugo Starling. Confronted by the towering organization of his plans—those perfect perfect perfect plans—she was more and more unsure.
She could not permit herself to be unsure. She could not afford to rely on help that would soon, inevitably, be withdrawn—or on the heart of a scholar who thought someone was all right if she but walked around in a world that mystified her.
As the day went on, gossip guided them north. Blobby bits of gold had been used to pay for items as distant as Northumberland, someone’s sister’s cousin’s friend had heard. Another distant connection had heard that the Doncaster maid had been freed, and that she had fled north instead of returning to her post.
The Bow Street Runner had been seen at some inns, for the servants remembered his questions, but at others Jenks must have passed by without stopping. Always, he inquired about income, rumor, locations to the north. Maybe as far as Doncaster; maybe even beyond.
There was more trail to follow; the journey wouldn’t end yet. Not for a few more days. At least that.
When the light faded to a sunset of pink and gold, Hugo agreed with Georgette that the next coaching inn would be their resting spot for the night. For the first time, Georgette thought beyond the immediate implications of her lie to Jenks: that they were a married couple.
Oh. No. No, she couldn’t share a room with Hugo.
Not that she doubted he would act as a gentleman ought. No, she only doubted that she’d be able to get her mind in order again. To think of him in the proper way, which was . . . whatever it was. Her brother’s friend, her cousin’s bookshop customer.
Her own partner in adventure, recently.
“We needn’t keep to our story about being a married couple,” she said as Seckington turned his carriage into the courtyard of the White Lion, about forty miles from Northampton. They’d made decent progress considering their number of stops. Doncaster lay northward, another day and a half of travel before them. And beyond that, who knew? “Here we could be siblings. That would be wiser, don’t you think?”
“It probably would.” Hugo was peering through the window, scanning the travelers arriving at the inn for a night’s rest. “Except that I see Mr. Jenks in the inn’s entryway, questioning everyone as they arrive.”
* * *
Yes. Jenks, the Bow Street Runner, had recognized them. Hugo had known he would, after the careful scrutiny with which he’d regarded them. The Runner greeted them by their supposed names, Mr. and Mrs. Crowe.
Damnation.
Was that suspicion glinting in his eyes?
Damnation again.
Then he twitted them about wanting a room for the night, a newly wed couple such as themselves.
Damnation to the third power. Exponential damnation.
“We require a room,” beamed Georgette. “I always welcome the chance to be with my darling, handsome, wonderful husband.”
He was reminded of her falsely effusive praise of him before the Duchess of Willingham. Is any of that true, Miss Frost? I could wish everyone thought so well of my youngest.
Sometimes no compliment was to be preferred.
“Forgive my bride,” he told Jenks. “She’s tipsy. Been enjoying some wine along the way.”
“Apprehensive about that job from her uncle?”
“The what?”
Jenks looked at him blandly. “The job for which you’re traveling north.”
Georgette was going to elbow him again as soon as she got the chance. “Of course I knew what you meant,” Hugo replied. “I was only distracted by the use of the term ‘apprehensive,’ for never in her life has my wife been apprehensive.”
“You will put me to the blush, my delight,” Georgette said with a most un-Georgette-like titter. “And where are you off to, Mr. Jenks?”
“Northward. Same as you.”
“Do you know my uncle, then?” Her voice was all innocence.
Jenks was not impressed. “Unlikely, unless your uncle is Sir Frederic Chapple.”
Georgette’s eyes went saucer-round. “But this is incredible! What are the odds, my love?”
Hugo recognized his cue. “I cannot begin to fathom them. My love.” Chapple . . . Chapple . . . he scrolled through his memories of Debrett’s Peerage. He had never studied it closely, as had his mother and sisters-in-law, and couldn’t place the name. “And is Sir Frederic still living at . . . ah, what was the name of that charming house of his, my angel of distress?”
Georgette glared at him for a second, then added sweetly, “I never thought of it as anything but home.”
Jenks was following their conversation with a look of polite uninterest. “Did you? Interesting, that, since he’s only been baronet for a few months.”
“I meant before that,” Georgette covered. “Of course, now that he is baronet, everything will be different. I hope he will still have time for a mere niece! Will he even remember me, my paragon?” Hugo could tell she was enjoying herself, just as she had when playing Bone-box.
“Let me guess,” Jenks said. “He might not know you at all. Because of the baronetcy having gone to his head, or something of that sort.”
“Oh, you are familiar with his ways,” Georgette cooed. “He is remarkably forgetful, sometimes, though at other times he is not. It all depends. But then, you must know that.”
“I’ll find out soon enough,” Jenks said. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Once the Runner moved off, Hugo arranged with the innkeeper for a supper and a night’s lodging. And for the innkeeper’s wife to help Mrs. Crowe with her clothes and hair. And for extra bedcovers, as the night might be cold.
In truth, he planned to use them to create a pallet on the floor for himself. In case Jenks might still be listening or observing, he thought that wiser than arranging for two separate bedchambers.
By the time they had eaten and were established in their room, the sun had turned in for the night. Hugo carried a taper and a branch of candles into the chamber, finding a pleasant fire already lit. The room held the familiar scent of coal.
Their chamber was on the second floor, tucked under the attics. The courtyard was a long look down, lit by lanterns carried by servants and swinging on
arriving coaches. This far above, it all seemed small and far away. Those other travelers had no notion that up above, Lord Hugo Starling had found himself in a dreadfully compromising position with a respectable young lady.
Not that he would let it become so. Lighting every candle he could, he brought the room into view. It was not unusual: a bed, a desk with an oil lamp on it, a privacy screen, a washstand. He would be able to shave in the morning.
For now, he set his leather case atop the desk and lit the oil lamp with a taper. The innkeeper’s wife had followed Georgette in, and that lady helped unfasten her stays—or so Hugo surmised—behind the privacy screen.
Hugo didn’t know, didn’t care, wasn’t interested, wasn’t even thinking about it. He wasn’t. He seated himself at the desk and unrolled his hospital plans, looking them over for the hundredth time. The thousandth. There was always something more to add, to make sure the building was prepared for every eventuality.
A soft laugh and unintelligible conversation sounded from behind the screen. Not that he was listening.
The hospital walls ought to be thicker. Walls could never be too thick, too sturdy. He drew in a pencil line indicating the alteration, then turned over the paper to add the date and a description of the alteration to his ongoing list. As he wrote, a whssssh caught Hugo’s notice; out of reflex, he looked for the source.
Georgette’s gown had been flung over the top of the privacy screen. It looked frail and thin, the pale fabric no more than a suggestion of a person’s shape.
With this, she had covered herself today. It was not much of a barrier between her body and the world. And now there was no barrier between them at all, save for the privacy screen and whatever she might have been wearing beneath her gown.
Which was not what he was thinking about. He was thinking about the ink-drawn pages before him.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Spectacles. He needed his spectacles. Then he could read his plans better—though he knew their every line by heart—and make the needed alterations. To the windows, maybe. Should the windows be smaller, the better to keep out negative humors from the outside? Or ought they to be large? Would fresh air be beneficial?
He flipped the architectural plan over to its front and turned his attention to these questions with a determination he had seldom before adopted. Or if not exactly determination, then focus. Intense focus. After a few minutes, the innkeeper’s wife bade them a good night, and Georgette emerged from behind the screen, and in all that time Hugo had done little more than squint at the paper and not know what to do next.
“We learned quite a lot from Jenks,” she commented. “Now we know where we must go. That is, we will once we discover where Sir Frederic Chapple makes his home.”
The Runner hadn’t been fooled by anything they said, Hugo was certain. But the man saw no harm in them following him.
Or perhaps he wanted them to, suspicious as he’d initially seemed. Perhaps he was drawing them along after him. And how far would they end in going?
“This journey will beggar me,” he said.
“Because of the travel expenses?” Her question was halting.
It was ungentlemanly for him to imply that Georgette’s schemes were burdensome. Especially when, though he could hardly credit it, her decision to follow Jenks had been the right one. “No, not that. It is only that Seckington demanded a room of his own instead of sleeping in the stables.”
“I had no idea hiring out a carriage was so lucrative. When the hunt for the Royal Reward is done, I shall see about taking up the profession.”
Soft footsteps—bare footsteps—crossed the room to stop behind him. Hugo dragged his hands through his hair; rubbed at his face; settled his spectacles straight across his nose.
“You are upset? I am sorry,” Georgette said. “Being without funds is a dreadful prospect. I have money saved. It would be right for me to cover my expenses.”
Oh, excellent. Now he’d made her feel guilty. “No, no. Please don’t worry about it.” He mentally totted up the amount he’d laid out so far. “I was complaining about Seckington; I didn’t intend to complain about you. Besides which, duke’s sons aren’t ever really beggared.” Another quarter’s income was never more than ninety days away. Hugo’s purse wasn’t empty yet, and at the end of June his accounts would be replenished.
“It must be good to be the son of a duke,” she said lightly.
“It bears privilege, to be sure.” He smoothed the papers before him; plans for a hospital that no one believed in but himself. “Though sometimes, not enough.”
The sons of dukes were equipped with a quiverful of fine schooling, but society prevented them from firing off their expensive education in any useful direction. A gentleman didn’t have to work. A gentleman didn’t choose to work.
What good was a gentleman, then? Younger sons such as Hugo had no land, no promise of a title. Of people to watch out for, to care for.
Hugo would find a way to do so all the same. If he could get some damned money.
“Poor Lord Hugo,” said Georgette. “Poor Mr. Crowe. He’s handsome and healthy and has all kinds of money, yet sometimes the world dares thwart him.”
“You are mocking me.”
“It was not mockery. It was merely an observation.”
“You are definitely mocking me.”
Her voice was farther away now. She must be standing before the window. He would not turn, though; not until she said he might.
Or until his head burst from all he confined within it. So many plans and wishes and musts and need-tos. So many wonderings and denials. So many unexpected twists to an unexpected journey. It was all too much for one brain to hold.
“I need a drink,” he said.
“No, come look out the window.”
He shoved back his chair. “I need a drink,” he repeated.
“But it’s snowing!”
“In late May? Impossible.” He stood. Removing and folding his spectacles as he crossed the room, he stood by Georgette and looked out at the night sky. “It is impossible. That is not snow, Miss Frost. Do you need to borrow my spectacles? That is rain.”
“I know that. But you were going to ignore me forever unless I said something unexpected.”
“You could say, ‘Hugo, I want attention.’”
“That sounds so needy. No. I don’t want attention. I just don’t want to be ignored.”
Ha. If only she knew: when she thought he was ignoring her, she was most occupying his thoughts. When he could not look at her, it was because he saw her in his mind’s eye; too clear, too painfully clear. When he did not speak to her, it was because he did not want to say the wrong thing.
“I am not ignoring you.” For the first time since she’d walked from behind the screen, he looked at her with more than a squint. She stood at his side, heavily clad in a white dressing robe tied about the waist. At the neck, he glimpsed the lace edge of what must be her shift. She was not less covered than she had been all day by her gown. Strange, then, that it seemed so intimate, standing beside her in this night-dimmed room.
“I won’t ignore you either, then,” she said. “So don’t feel you have to beg for my notice. It’s beneath you, such begging.”
“I never—”
“Only teasing.” She smiled up at him, her nose scrunched with mischief—then gestured toward the window. “And look, I called you over for a reason even better than snow. In the courtyard, they are dancing in the mist.”
Hugo peered down in the direction she indicated. The fine rain was still falling, making halos about the lanterns that starred the courtyard. In the shifting light, a maid and an ostler—both of whom ought to be worn and exhausted from the day’s labor—had caught hands and were twirling in the stable yard. A laugh drifted up through the quieting night air.
“I wonder why they are dancing,” he said.
“I shall guess. She has nursed a passion for him for years,” said Georgette. “But he never noticed her until today, w
hen she dropped a bucket of oats on his head.”
“That would certainly gain my notice.” Hugo studied the pair, tiny and dim at this distance. “I cannot guess how they met.”
“Oh, you can guess. It probably won’t be right, but what does that matter?”
“Fine. They met here at the coaching inn. And they are dancing because he asked her to dance.”
“He observes the letter of the game, but not the spirit,” sighed Georgette. She crowded close, her arm brushing his side. “How do you think she knows the steps? I always wondered that about Cinderella. She was so busy working, she would never have had time to learn a reel or a country dance. So how did she know what to do when she went to the ball?”
She was very near, and she smelled of floral soap. The braided coronet of her hair looked soft as silk thread, and he couldn’t collect his thoughts to understand what she asked.
She tapped at the small-paned window. “Maybe true royalty always knows the right way to behave.”
“The Prince Regent should be example enough to prove that hypothesis false.”
“You said ‘hypothesis.’ I am weak in the knees.”
Hugo cleared his throat. “I’m going to see you safely back to your brother, Benedict,” he croaked. “Soon. As soon as ever I can.”
“If it pleases you to think so, go right ahead.” She pressed her nose against the glass. “Ah, here comes Jenks. He is making them stop dancing. Why should he care about that?”
“There must be some law against it. Or a petty rule in this establishment.”
“Maybe.” She straightened up, leaving a palm flat against the cold glass. “I think he doesn’t like anything unexpected.”
Who does? thought Hugo, though he suspected Georgette would answer in the affirmative. But the unexpected had taken so much from Hugo, he would never be caught unawares by it again. Thus the plans, the plans; more and more plans.
“I’m going to get a drink,” he said. “I still need one.” With a herculean effort, he stepped away from all that sweet-scented impertinence.
“I’ll make a second bed with the bedclothes before you come back.” She let the draperies fall back over the window. “Be of good cheer, Hugo. We know now that we are on the right path.”
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