Never to Part (21 page)

“She’s m’sister. Must be ’nother way,” he muttered.

“Another way?” Eldridge asked blandly as he strolled into the library.

Geoffrey scowled at him. “Go ’way.”

“How can you treat a dear friend so shabbily,” Eldridge asked with an injured air.

“Not m’friend.”

“I convinced Jason Wardick not to take insult from his last meeting with Daphne. He’ll hand over a bank full of blunt for that pretty sister of yours.”

“Wouldn’t need ‘im if you hadn’t—”

“Now, now,” cautioned Eldridge with the bite of steel in his voice. “Can’t blame anyone but yourself for your problems.”

Geoffrey covered his face with his hands. After drawing a ragged breath he dropped them and stood. He stumbled to a side table and picked up a key.

“What do you mean to do?” Eldridge asked.

“Daph hasn’t given an inch since I locked her in her room. Lettin’ her out.”

“That will mean the Marshalsea for you both. Do you really want to force her into the debtors’ prison?” Eldridge cautioned. “There is no hope to settle your debts without this marriage.” He walked to Geoffrey and put a comradely arm across his shoulders.

“Let her think on it one more day. Good lord, she’s almost on the shelf. Her marriage is the best answer for both of you,” he said.
The prospect of wheezing old Wardick laying his hands on her will make Daphne very creative in her effort to escape and find the treasure,
Eldridge thought with glee.
She’ll bolt and lead me to the treasure soon enough
. He eased the key from Geoffrey’s lax hand and pocketed it.

“Jes one day more,” Geoffrey slurred. “If’n she hasn’t agreed I let her do as she wishes. M’sister.”

“You’re the best of brother’s,” Eldridge assured him, making no effort to conceal his content even when Geoffrey cringed.

 * * * *

Waking hours after midnight Daphne sat up with a start. Her empty stomach rumbled a loud protest. Ignoring it, she threw back the coverlet and hurried to the door. It was still locked. She walked slowly to the window which glinted with moonlight. Raising the sash, she shivered in the blast of cold air and peered down into the darkness below. A solution had flitted through her dreams.

“It might work,” Daphne murmured. She had believed Geoffrey would relent. It hurt that he had not. Squaring her shoulders she decided to act.

Her candle lit, Daphne reached far under her mattress and extracted the pair of bank notes secreted there before they had gone to Heart Haven. She jerked the sheets from the bed.

Grim with determination, Daphne tore them into strips. Once the strips were tied together she dragged her bed to the window. One end fastened to the metal headboard, she flung the other out the window and then pulled on her heaviest coat.

“Please Lord, do not let me fall,” she prayed as she edged one leg and then the other over the sill. Hand over hand, her feet braced against the outer wall, Daphne inched down the knotted strips.

When her feet touched the ground Daphne almost shouted with joy and relief. But she was only half way to escaping. During the long day Daphne had realized it would be unwise to head to The Hound on a public coach without the protection of a companion. Saddie was necessary if she was to succeed.

Daphne crept to the door at the back of the house and slipped inside the kitchen. The lack of a fire banked in the stove told her the remaining staff had been dismissed. After lighting a candle stub she stole through the house. Everyone was gone except for Saddie. Daphne soon had her door unlocked. A short time later they hurried out the front door, portmanteaux in hand.

“Where are we bound, miss?” Saddie whispered as they hurried down the street.

“To salvation, if I succeed,” Daphne told her. The proposed forced marriage loomed before her. “Damnation if I fail.”

Luck was with Daphne. When she and Miss McRae reached the coaching inn two outside seats were still available.

Three hours later pounding rain deteriorated the rutted road into a deeply pockmarked morass. Daphne and Saddie huddled beneath sodden coats and clung to the rails atop the coach. The rain pelted them while the coach horses plodded, their tack jingled, and the coach creaked loud objections to the deep ruts.

“My hands are near frozen,” Saddie shouted. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”

“We should be nearing The Hound,” Daphne yelled back.
Please God, make it so
, she prayed. Chilled to the bone herself, she had grown increasingly concerned about Saddie. They were trapped atop the coach until it reached its next halt.

An especially lengthy creak ended with a sharp splintering crack. It scarce gave warning of trouble before the coach tilted sharply as the left wheel collapsed beneath it. Shrill neighs, screams and shrieks of alarm accompanied the coach’s descent.

Daphne clutched Saddie’s arm as her companion skittered off the seat and threatened to fall over the side. The coach came to rest half in the ditch and half out. With the help of the man in the seat ahead of them, Daphne lowered her companion to the muddy ground.

Her heart thundering in her breast at the near calamity, Daphne clambered over the side. Her drenched garments proved almost too great a weight. When she dropped to the ground her feet sank into a foot of thick cold mud. Daphne took Miss McRae’s arm. “Are you unharmed, Saddie?”

Miss McRae nodded but her shivering increased.

Daphne guided Saddie as they slogged through the mud to the side of the coach. Leaving Saddie resting against the coach, Daphne made her way to the broken window and peered into the interior which was very dimly lit by the guttering flame of an outside lamp. “Is everyone all right?”

Accompanied by sniffles and a curse, assurances came that they were.

“Is there room for one more?”

A man climbed out and helped Saddie into the coach.

Daphne looked at him expectantly but he only pulled his coat collar up and hugged himself as he hovered close to the coach. She slogged through the mud to the driver who was checking his leaders.

“Sir, how far are we from The Hound?”

“Too far,” he grunted without looking at her. “Four—maybe five miles, I reckon.” The driver straightened. Water sloughed off his long oil-coated great coat. “The lead team ain’t hurt. Reckon I’ll ‘ave ta ride one ta ‘Hound and fetch another coach back.”

The man who had helped Saddie joined them. “You must take my mother with you. I fear she has broken her ankle. She’ll catch her death waiting for you to return.”

Daphne shivered, her soaked cloak little protection in the cold rain. “He’s right,” she conceded with reluctance. “My companion can ride with her to help keep her atop the horse.”

The leaders unhitched, the driver put Saddie and the woman with the injured ankle on one horse and took up another older woman behind him. They rode into the sheeting rain. The black night swallowed them. Daphne turned away and settled against the coach to shelter from the rain.

Some time later the sounds of a coach approaching caught Daphne’s attention. A man stumbled out of the coach and followed her as she trudged towards the road.

“Halloo! Hallooo!” Daphne shouted. She frantically waved her arms when the vehicle came into sight but it never slowed. “Help!” she shouted. “Please help!”

As the carriage sped past it spewed water and mud over her. Daphne was so angered that she considered scooping up a handful of mud to fling at its back.

Only when the man beside her threw an arm across her shoulders did Daphne realize he was not the one who had sent his mother with the driver. She looked up at him.

He belched in her face.

Days of perspiration and strong slightly sour spirits pierced Daphne’s chilled stupor. She tried to step away but staggered beneath the pull of the mud clinging to her skirts and jean half boots.

“Stay here,” leered the man. He pawed at her. “Ye’ll warm up in a trice.”

Daphne pushed at his arm.

He shoved back.

Wildly failing her arms Daphne struggled to stay upright but failed. She fell hard into the cold morass. As she struggled to get up against the pull of the cloying mud, she heard another carriage approaching, once again from the way they had come.

Please let it be someone with a kind heart and room in their carriage
, Daphne prayed as she wrestled to her feet.

A blood pair loomed into view seconds before the high-perch phaeton it pulled.

“Blasted blackberries,” Daphne swore. Only a London dandy would bring an impossible vehicle like a high-perch phaeton out in such weather. That he would prove considerate of others was too farfetched to believe even for her.

Damnable weather,” Lord Ricman shouted gleefully through the wind and rain. He had been delighted that Richard had started for the Hound as soon as he had forced Geoffrey Stratton to admit he had no idea where his sister was. Dry despite the weather he leaned forward from his stance beside Dremore’s tiger. “Remind thee of anything?” he asked his wife seated beside Dremore.

Lady Laurel raised a hand over her shoulder and clasped his fingers. “The dearest knight I have e’er known.” She glanced back at him and winked. “That night t’was akin to wonder too.” The baroness peered through the rain-pierced black night.

“Does thou you think Richard’ll catch Miss Stratton before she reaches the Hound?”

“The boy’s a fair whip, I’ll give him that. We’d be out of it but for his friend loaning him this pair last halt.”

A dim light faintly penetrated the darkness on the road ahead.

“By the saints, I think he’s caught her,” crowed Lord Ricman.

Lady Laurel leaned forward as the light grew brighter. She peered at the two figures standing outside the coach. One, a woman from her silhouette, struggled with the other briefly and then fell.

“Make certain he halts the phaeton,” Lady Laurel commanded her husband.

With a flourish Lord Ricman vanished and reappeared at the team’s head. He grabbed hold of their bridles and even though he felt Dremore start to rein them in, metamorphosed into a shimmer of light.

A light flared from nowhere near Richard’s team’s heads as they galloped heavily through the worsening mud on the road to The Hound. They panicked. One reared while the other kicked at the traces.

Richard fought them to a halt. When he had them under control he saw a coach perched at an odd angle half way into the ditch not far from his phaeton. The broken wheel, the injured wheelers, and the missing leaders told him what had happened. He swiped rain from his eyes and raised a brow at the state of the woman sitting in the muddy road.

Then the man beside her staggered toward the phaeton.

Injured or foxed
? Richard wondered. He saw the woman struggle to her feet. In her movement and stance he recognized her.
Daphne. Damnation, I knew it
, he thought. Richard clamped down against the urge jump from the seat and run to see if she was unharmed.

“Are you all right?” he shouted.

“Wetter’n fish in riv’r,” the drunken passenger slurred as he trudged slowly through the mud towards the phaeton. “Need yer fancy gig.” Reaching the horses he lunged for the reins.

Richard jerked them out of his reach. He flicked open his jacket so the man could see the pistol pocketed there. “I’ll use it if I must,” he warned. Then to his tiger, “Get their heads.”

The lad jumped down from his perch at the rear of the phaeton. He nimble footed it through the mud and rain and took hold of their bridles. “Safe ‘nuf, milord,” he yelled.

Richard secured the reins and jumped down, hand on his pistol’s butt. “Get back to the coach,” he ordered the drunk and started to draw out his pistol when the fellow hesitated. He followed the man as he backed away from him.

“Is any one injured? Has the driver gone for help?”

“Ye got space on thet fancy piece fer one ‘sides yerself,” the drunk chided belligerently. “I’ve ‘nuf blunt ta buy it.”

“Keep your money in your pocket,” Richard told him. He eyed Daphne. She shivered in her thoroughly soaked coat. Lord, she must be chilled to the bone.

Ask for my help
, Richard mentally commanded.
You thought to get ahead of me but now you can’t. Ask.
Indignation coalesced into fury as the seconds ticked away and the rain pounded them. When a gust of wind caused Daphne to visibly stagger he threw aside years of calm consideration and carefully considered action.

“Bravo,” cheered Lady Laurel as Richard swept up Daphne. She joined her husband on the tiger’s perch.

“The fool,” Lord Ricman chimed. “He can’t manage the mud coated wench in this quagmire.”

“Same thing happened to us,” Lady Laurel said taking her husband’s arm and snuggling close. “Isn’t it marvellous.”

“She’ll bring disaster down on ‘em both with her struggles. At least you were a willing occupant of my arms.” He enfolded her in them and bent his head. “Not nearly my fondest memory of the night,” he whispered.

“Put me down,” demanded Daphne as Richard determinedly slogged toward the phaeton. She pushed against his chest and kicked her legs.

Richard wavered and almost lost his balance. “Stop it,” he gritted through his teeth. “Do you want dropped into this stew?”

 “Just put me down,” she said through rain streaming down her face.

Tightening his hold, Richard’s heart shuddered. Her teeth were chattering so badly he almost couldn’t make out what Daphne said. Wild visions of pneumonia, lung fever, and deadly agues paraded through his mind.

His heart leapt when she fell silent and then laid her head on his shoulder. She even pressed close.
Probably to warm herself
, he cautioned his pounding heart.

Richard halted when he reached the phaeton. “I can’t lift you up to the seat,” he told her. “Can you manage the climb?” He willed Daphne to become aware of his intense concern. When he looked down at her she nodded.