you taking me?” Looking down, she set her mug back down. Carefully, as if she were nervous and tense.
Fletcher shot her an assessing glance. “We’re taking you further north.”
She looked up, met his gaze, tried for beseeching. “But how far? Further up the Great North Road? Or somewhere else?” She managed to imbue the last words with an unspecified dread, as if there were something she feared in the north, something other than her abductors’ employer.
Fletcher frowned. “Like I said — north.”
“But
Her tone suggested she was close to panic at the idea they might stop too close to that something.
Fletcher frowned harder. Leaning forward, he lowered his voice. “I don’t know what bee’s got into your bonnet, but we’re stopping at Carlton-on-Trent overnight.” He searched her face. “Is there any reason we shouldn’t?”
Breckenridge might not have heard.
She raised her head, hauled in a breath. “Carlton-on-Trent?” She summoned a weak smile, then shook her head. “No, no. . there’s no reason we can’t stop at Carlton-on-Trent.”
“Good.” Fletcher sat back, still frowning, then he glanced at the other two. “Eat and drink up. Let’s get back on the road.”
The other two grumbled. Heather quickly ate a few more bites of her nearly cold lunch. The others were still clearing their plates; heads down, none of them noticed the large man who rose from the next booth. Without a single glance in their direction, Breckenridge walked out of the inn.
“Come on.” Fletcher pushed back his plate and stood.
The others more slowly followed him out of the booth.
Heather played the obedient abductee and allowed Martha and Cobbins to usher her outside. Stepping into the forecourt, she was just in time to see Breckenridge, in drab, dull clothing quite unlike his usual elegant attire, turn a plain curricle out of the inn yard and set his horses pacing up the highway, heading north.
She surmised he’d decided to go on ahead of them.
Fletcher hadn’t taken any notice of the curricle and its driver; he’d gone straight to their own coachman and had started some discussion. She didn’t think Cobbins had noticed Breckenridge either, and Martha had emerged from the inn behind her; at best she would have seen his back, and that at a distance.
Fletcher opened the coach door and waved her in. She climbed up and settled on the seat, in her now usual position. While the others climbed in, she prayed Fletcher hadn’t realized her ploy, hadn’t realized Breckenridge was following, and had therefore told her a lie.
If she lost Breckenridge’s protective presence. .
Even as the thought formed, along with the realization of how very alone she would feel if she didn’t know he was close, how very much more afraid and truly panicked she would be, she couldn’t help but recognize how ironic it was. How strange that her nemesis — he who she habitually avoided and thoroughly disliked — had somehow transformed into her savior.
She very nearly snorted. Turning her head, she looked out of the window as the coach lurched, and rumbled out of the yard.
Breckenridge swept into Newark-on-Trent in the middle of the afternoon. He’d driven like a demon to get far ahead of the coach carrying Heather, and the pair of grays were flagging. He turned in at the first large posting inn and shouted for the ostlers and stableman.
Despite his unprepossessing attire, they responded to the voice of authority and came running. Stepping to the ground, he tossed the reins to the first ostler, spoke to the stableman. “I need the best pair you have, harnessed and ready to go in. .” He drew out his fob-watch, checked the time, then snapped it shut. Tucking it back in his pocket, he met the stableman’s eyes. “One hour.”
“Aye, sir. And the grays?”
He gave the man the direction of the posting house in High Barnet, then strode out of the inn yard and made for Lombard Street.
His first stop was the local branch of Child’s Bank; once he replenished his supply of cash, he followed the bank manager’s directions to the town’s premier bootmaker, and was lucky enough to find an excellent pair of riding boots that fit him. His next stop was the best gentlemen’s outfitters, where he created a small furore by demanding they assemble for him outfits suitable for a groom and for a north country laborer.
The head tailor goggled at him and the assistants simply stared; holding onto his temper, he brusquely explained that the outfits were for a country house party where fancy dress was required.
Then they fell to with appropriate zeal.
It still took longer than he would have liked. The tailor fussed with the fitting until Breckenridge declared, “Damn it, man! There’s no prize for being the most perfectly dressed groom in the north!”
The tailor jumped. Pins cascaded from between his lips and scattered on the ground. His assistants rushed in to gather them up.
The tailor swallowed. “No, of course not, sir. If Sir will remain still, I will endeavor to remove the pins. . although really, such shoulders. . well, I would have thought. .”
“Never mind about showing off my damned shoulders — just make sure I have room to move.” The instant the dapper little tailor stepped back, Breckenridge swung his arms up, then forward. Neither jacket nor shirt ripped. “Good — these will do.”
He nodded at the other outfit and the jacket and breeches he’d traded his evening coat for back in the Knebworth tavern. “Just parcel those up. I’ll wear what I have on. I have to get back on the road.”
The tailor and his assistants scurried to obey.
Breckenridge paid and tipped them well, grateful they hadn’t led him to lose his temper, which seemed to be riding on a distinctly frayed rein.
The parcel of clothes under one arm, he strode quickly back to the posting inn. A pair of decent-looking blacks had been harnessed to the curricle he’d hired in Baldock to replace the too-showy phaeton. He inspected both horses, then paid the stableman, stowed his parcel beneath the seat, climbed up, sat, and, after testing the reins, nodded to the ostlers. “Release them.”
The ostlers let go. Both horses lunged but immediately felt a firm hand on the reins. They tossed their heads but quickly settled. With a flick of his wrist, Breckenridge sent them pacing neatly to the street, then turned out and headed briskly on, up the Great North Road.
He was in position in the tap of the Old Bell Inn in Carlton-on-Trent when the coach carrying Heather turned in under the inn’s arch and drew up in the forecourt. Seated at a table in the front corner of the tap, he sipped a pint of ale and watched the group descend from the coach. As before, Heather was closely guarded and ushered toward the inn’s front door, which opened to the inn’s foyer.
The foyer, most helpfully, was separated from the tap by a wooden partition. From where he sat, he could hear every word uttered, even muttered, in the foyer, but no one in the foyer could see him. Of course, he couldn’t see them either, but he hoped Heather would have noticed that there was only one inn in the small village, and would assume he’d be somewhere near.
He heard the front door open, followed by the usual sounds of arrival, then someone rang the bell on the counter. He sipped and listened as the innkeeper arrived and quickly set about the business of welcoming his guests and getting them settled. Breckenridge paid particular attention to the room allocations, both the women’s and Fletcher and Cobbins’s. Like the women, the men would share a room, but their room would be in another wing.
Breckenridge listened as Fletcher tried to change the innkeeper’s mind and get a room closer to the women’s. The innkeeper insisted that he only had the two rooms still available, many others being closed due to rain damage during a recent storm. Fletcher grumbled, but reluctantly conceded that he and his friend would take the offered room.
“Good,” Breckenridge murmured. He’d paid the innkeeper to ensure that both Heather’s male captors would be far distant from her room that night. He sincerely hoped that by this evening she would be ready to quit their company and return to London. The further they went. . yet, as attested to by the extra disguises he’d bought, he
