When Beauty Tamed the Beast

Page 62

“I’m not going for that reason,” Piers snapped. “She might be ill, you fool.”
“You’re going for her, no matter how much you protest you aren’t,” his cousin asserted. “I knew you would. You can’t catch her on the way; she’s had too much of a head start. You’ll have to do your groveling in London.”
“I’m not . . .” Piers said.
Sébastien reached in, and gave him a slug to the shoulder, the kind of friendly blow they exchanged as boys. “I like her too. We all want her in the family. And . . . she’s yours. There’s just something about her. She’s yours.”
“She’s mine,” Piers said, tasting the words on his tongue. They fit, they fit in his heart. “She’s mine.” It wasn’t really a question.
“So, go and fetch her back,” Sébastien said, laughing.
Piers reached up and whacked the carriage’s ceiling. “Out of the way, Seb. I have—” The door swung shut before he finished the sentence.
“A wife to find,” he said into the empty carriage. “I have Linnet to find, to bring home, to marry.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Llanddowrr was a small village, dreaming in the afternoon sun. Piers stamped through the door of the inn that sat squarely on its high street, wielding his cane like a maniac. He saw no signs of sick travelers . . . in fact, no signs of scarlatina at all. No warning crimson cloths draped from windows, no apparent distress.
“We heard about it, of course,” the innkeeper said, his eyes fearful at the thought. “A great crew of people came through here, a duke’s household. They stayed for a meal and then rushed on, getting away.”
“The Duke of Windebank’s servants,” Piers said. “They were here for some time?”
“Until early evening.”
“Were they joined by a young lady in another of the duke’s carriages?”
The innkeeper blinked. “Well, I couldn’t really say as to that. There were three carriages, and the wife and I were getting a meal for all of them. Fourteen it were, all at once, piling into the common rooms, see?”
“All at once,” Piers repeated. “But the young lady? She would have arrived in the late afternoon.”
“That I don’t know about, unless she didn’t want a meal.”
Piers thought of Linnet as he last saw her, of the bruised look in her eyes. “She might not have wished for a meal.”
“We’ll ask the hostler,” the innkeeper said, coming out from behind the counter. “He’s the one to know if a fourth carriage came along after the others. They were terribly nervous, that I do know. Kept saying that the duke told them to keep going if he didn’t come by twilight.”
“But surely they did wait for the duke,” Piers said, controlling his voice.
He must not have done a good job, because the innkeeper glanced nervously over his shoulder before bustling out the door shouting. “Daw! Daw, where in the blazes are you?”
Daw was inspecting Piers’s horses, wiping them down and having a good gossip with Buller. He jerked upright at the innkeeper’s roar.
“Did a young lady come along in another carriage and join them three carriages as belonged to the duke?” the innkeeper demanded.
Daw shook his head. “They waited, ’til ’round about eight. Which was a mad time to take off down the north road, but they were all tetchy-like and afraid of getting sick. They meant to drive through the night, I think.”
“She never came,” Piers said, his heart sinking. She had left the castle around three that afternoon. She should have arrived with time to spare before the caravan departed.
“They talked about the duke coming,” Daw put in. “But nobody came, so they left.”
She must have gone to the wrong village. Piers tossed a guinea to the innkeeper and turned to shout at Buller. “We’ve got to turn around. Go to Llanddowll.”
“Llanddowll,” Daw said. “That’s not better than a privy, it’s that small.”
“It’s smaller now,” Piers said. “The village was badly hit by the fever.”
The hostler moved back, and the horses were off. Piers sat in the carriage, his fingers drumming against the windowsill. She never came to Llanddowrr. That meant . . . that meant what? She must have driven to Llanddowll.
Why hadn’t she returned to the castle, once she couldn’t find the duke’s servants? She couldn’t have proceeded to London by herself.
Impossible. She had no belongings, no maid. It was all in trunks, gone with the duke’s servants. She couldn’t even unbutton her gown by herself.
What he said to her wasn’t that terrible, that she should run away without a stitch of clothing.
Forest, acres of forest, spun by the window. Llanddowll was in the opposite direction from the castle as Llanddowrr. Finally, he saw the turrets of his castle in the near distance. The horses slowed, then stopped.
“We can’t stop, damn it!” Piers said, swinging open the door and shouting up at his coachman.
“The horses are blown,” the man said apologetically. “If we don’t change them, I’ll have to slow down, and I reckon it will take less time if we just put on a new team.”
What Piers said to this was unprintable, unsayable. It didn’t help. The tired horses ambled home. The sun was drawing in now. Time, time was running through his fingers, and he was still running down that ocean path. He was going to be too late.
Prufrock emerged. “My lord?”
“She never made it to Llanddowrr,” Piers said. “We’re off to Llanddowll.”
“Damn,” the butler said succinctly.
Piers swallowed. “She might have set off for London herself, when the servants weren’t there to be met.”
Prufrock nodded. “That’s probably it. Miss Thrynne wouldn’t have wanted to—” He stopped.
“She wouldn’t have wanted to return here,” Piers said, his heart beating in his rib cage like a trapped bird.
“Then that’s what she did,” the butler said, though he clearly didn’t believe it.
“Any new patients?”
“No,” Prufrock said. “And one of the ones that looked dead for sure, Barris Connah, seems to be pulling through.”
Fresh horses were ready, and Piers climbed back into the carriage, stumbling, almost falling through the door. They were off again.
If Llanddowrr was small, Llanddowll was a speck, hardly carved out of the forest. A weather-beaten inn, a cobbler, a cluster of houses. No mill, which put it squarely on the original patient’s flour delivery route. Fifty souls in all, if that.
It was getting toward dark as they pulled up to the inn. The innkeeper emerged as the carriage drew to a halt. He had a thin nose and hollow cheeks, with a grubby beard and an even grubbier red handkerchief around his neck. He was rubbing his hands, looking guarded but welcoming.
“Good evening to you, sir,” he called, as soon as Piers had his feet on the ground. “And welcome to the Gambling Fool. I’m Mr. Sordido, your host, but I should mabbe tell you now that we’ve had a spot of bother in the village—”
“Scarlatina,” Piers cut him short. “I’m the Earl of Marchant, and we admitted four patients from this village.”