Page 80 of Sacrificing the Untamed Lady Henrietta
“Oh no you don’t,” she mumbled under her breath, as she knocked again. She did not stop, though nobody came to answer the door.
Her cheeks were quite scarlet by the time Ewan stepped to the side and peered in through the ground-floor window. A heavy drape hung across the interior, but a slender chink allowed him to see into the room beyond. If anyone had lived here, they had abandoned it. There was no furniture to speak of, and it looked as though the inhabitants had left in a hurry, judging by the mess that lay scattered about the place.
“Will you stop all that banging!” A woman’s face appeared around the neighboring doorway.
“Excuse me, do you know what happened to the young woman who was living here?” Ewan asked, hoping to diffuse the situation before Henrietta started ranting.
“Left last night in the wee hours. Caused an awful ruckus, just like your wife there,” the woman retorted unpleasantly.
“Did they leave a forwarding address?”
The woman snorted. “You’re not in the home counties now, Sir. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were never heard from again.”
“They?”
“Yeah, that woman and the kid she had with her.”
Ewan turned to Henrietta, who had ceased her banging. “A child?”
“Might have been two children. Hard to tell in the dead of night. All I know is, there was someone squalling in that house. Good riddance to them, I say.”
“Thank you. Sorry for disturbing you,” Ewan said, before grasping Henrietta’s hand and bundling her into the carriage.
“Shewasan accomplice!” Henrietta hissed, as the carriage set off towards the Old Bell. “I was foolish enough to believe her, and now she has vanished into the ether.”
“You must not be so hard on yourself.” Ewan squeezed her hand tightly.
“How can I not be, when she has escaped? She might have held the key to all of this, and now she has gone.” She shook her head angrily. “Evidently, she is the one who has been passing all of this information to Mr. Booth. Why, she might have even come into the inn, and I would not have noticed her.”
“Do you think so?”
Henrietta shrugged. “Well, now we will never know. She must have told Mr. Booth of my visit, and he must have spirited her away. We have been hoist by our own petard, my Lord Marquess.”
“We have the ball, Henrietta. We will catch this devil in action, I promise you.”
“Then we must endeavor to be careful of what we say, no matter where we are,” she insisted. “I shall tell Mother and Father not to breathe a word of our plan to anyone, aside from Papa’s men, and to only speak of it in whispers. Yes, and I must ensure that Papa’s men are stationed far from town, so that nobody will suspect anything. You and I must do the same thing—we must only speak of this to one another and in hushed tones.”
He smiled. “We can whisper of it when we are curled up in one another’s arms.”
Her expression softened. “I believe you are right about protecting me in the night, my Lord Marquess. It would be far better if we were overly cautious in such matters, rather than finding myself attacked whilst I slumber. I should welcome your evening company. Although… may I speak freely?”
“We have already done away with that rule, Henrietta. You know you may say whatever you please to me.”
“I should prefer it if we keep that first promise,” she said quietly. “I am not a worldly woman, and I do not know the ways of marital union. I rather like to be kissed by you, but that is where it must end. I hope you understand?”
He nodded. “I understand, Henrietta.”
In truth, the thought of Henrietta ever being with child left a stark icicle of terror in his heart. He had lost Patricia and their son to childbirth. He would not lose Henrietta as well, not if he could prevent it.
“Now, do we ask Lord Averson to look into this mysterious woman?” Henrietta went on, her cheeks flushed pink. He imagined her picturing them curled up in one another’s arms, fast asleep, and the thought brought him a bittersweet happiness.
“That might arouse suspicion in Mr. Booth, do you not think?”
She tapped her chin. “Hm, I suspect you may be right, although I should dearly like to know who this Isobel is. She must be tied to Mr. Booth in some way.”
“We may discover it once we capture the wretch.”
“You are quite right. We must be patient in our endeavors.”
