Still, she’d absorbed enough of the drug to have to fight with every bit of willpower she had to keep from sliding into unconsciousness again.
If she didn’t stay awake, she couldn’t escape.
Time passed. She fought the drug with everything she could think of, mentally reciting poems and rhymes she’d learned over the years, reciting her times tables, counting backward, keeping her eyes wide open, staring into the dark, and scrunching up her toes and tightening and relaxing her muscles to keep her legs from falling asleep again as they had before.
She needed to keep her legs in full working order in case she got the chance to escape.
• • •
“Any news?” Rose said before she was hardly in the room. She and George had just returned from their morning ride. Emm had practically had to force them to go out as usual.
Emm shook her head. Rose flung herself onto the settee. “I hate this, hate going about pretending Lily is just sick in bed upstairs. I don’t know why we have to go riding and pretending everything is all right. I need to do something!”
“I know, my dear,” Emm said patiently. “But though it doesn’t feel like it, you are doing exactly what needs to be done. It’s the best—the only—way we can protect Lily at the moment—act as if nothing is the matter.” They’d had this out before. The girls were desperate to take action of some sort, but there was nothing they could do except wait. And hope and pray that Cal would find Lily soon and bring her home safe and sound.
In the meantime they must all act as usual, so that nobody would suspect anything was wrong.
“But it’s unbearable, having to make meaningless, polite conversation when anything could have happened to poor darling Lily!”
“I know. Mrs. Pinkley-Dutton commented today that Lily must be afraid of a little rain, missing two morning rides in a row—and I wanted to hit her!” George said.
“We can’t protect Lily, but we can protect her reputation,” Emm reminded them. The trouble was that neither Rose nor George cared much for their own reputations.
And women must wait. Whoever wrote that didn’t know how very difficult waiting was. Action was so much easier.
• • •
Lily lay half dozing in the dark, waiting for her next opportunity.
Twice more they had stopped to let her relieve herself, and each time, Lily pretended to be more affected by the drug than she was. The third time, as Lily was stuffed back into her prison, she managed to wedge a fold of her cloak between the catch and the hook.
She held her breath, waiting for him to jerk open the lid and pull away the cloth impeding the catch. But nothing happened. He hadn’t noticed.
The coach set off again, swaying and jolting along the road. Eventually Lily worked up the courage to push ever so slightly against the roof of her prison. It lifted.
And again, Nixon noticed nothing. He was taking her helplessness for granted.
Despite the cruel bite of the gag, Lily smiled. She was still trapped in the dark, still bound and gagged, still battling the effects of the drug, but she was no longer locked in. She could push the lid up, and the knowledge gave her a fierce surge of hope.
She just had to wait for the next posting inn or some other chance to escape. The journey to Scotland took several days. An opportunity was bound to arise.
• • •
“I have heard a whisper!” Aunt Agatha announced. There was a short silence. She raised her lorgnette and examined each of them one by one, with unnerving thoroughness. “Well?”
Emm sent a warning glance to Rose and George. “What have you heard, Aunt Agatha? The ton is full of whispers.”
“Where’s the other gel?”
“Lily? She’s indisposed,” Emm said.
“With what?”
“A cold,” said Rose.
“A sprained ankle,” George said at the same time. She glanced at Rose and said, “A cold and a sprained ankle.”
Aunt Agatha gave them both a withering look and rolled her eyes. “I thought as much. What is going on, Emmaline? And don’t prevaricate, for as I said, I heard a whisper.”
Emm sighed, accepting the inevitable. “Lily has gone missing. We think she’s been abducted.”
“Why did you not immediately inform me?” the old lady said crossly.
“We thought the fewer people who knew, the better.”
Aunt Agatha snorted. “I am not people! I am family! And if one of my family gets herself into trouble—”
“Lily did not ‘get herself into trouble,’” Rose snapped. “She was abducted! Through no fault of her own!”
Aunt Agatha gave her a thoughtful look and said in a surprisingly mild voice, “When did she disappear?”
“The same night that duke of yours didn’t turn up at the opera,” George said.
The old lady narrowed her eyes at George, but didn’t rise to the bait. “And who, outside the family, knows she is missing?”
“Nobody. Cal has gone to France because that’s where we think she’s been taken. But he also sent some men to search for her on the Great North Road, in case his information was wrong. But they’re men he’s worked with before, in whose discretion he trusts.”
“Sylvia knows Lily went missing,” said Rose. “And the Mainwarings.”
“But we’ve told them all Lily was just feeling ill and went home early without telling us,” Emm said. “Lady Mainwaring was glad to hear it—sorry for Lily’s indisposition, that is, but reassured that it was nothing more serious.”
Aunt Agatha swiveled in her seat and directed the lorgnette at Rose. “And this Sylvia person you mentioned?”
“Sylvia Gorrie, a former school friend of the girls’,” Emm explained.
“No friend of mine,” Rose muttered.
“Cal thinks Sylvia’s cousin abducted Lily,” Emm continued. “He questioned Sylvia on the night Lily disappeared, but she knew nothing about it and seemed more upset that her cousin had left without notice and owed money
