Page 49 of A Duke for Adela
What in blazes was she doing?
Julius stayed quiet but now grinned from ear to ear.
Adela finally popped her head up and held up a package in triumph. But she quickly handed it to her friends and then sprinted out of the packed hall after the gentleman.
“Oh, hell.” Ambrose turned to his brothers as he prepared to spring out of his seat. “She’s gone after him. Pretend you know what you are doing up here. Blast the girl, I told her to stay put.”
He shot out of his chair and darted out the rear of the stage, ignoring the shocked looks on everyone in the packed room.
Where was his Bow Street man?
He shoved open the door and scanned the hallway.
The lecture hall was on the upper level where his office and the general administrative offices were located, so no one would be up here unless attending the lecture or working for him.
His heart sank when he found it empty.
However, the exhibition hall’s main floor was filled with visitors, he noted as he peered over the railing to the massive entry hall below and the crowd meandering toward one exhibit or another.
Where in blazes was Adela?
How hard could it be to spot her in that lilac gown?
CHAPTER 10
ADELA RAN OUTof the lecture hall and hurried down the back stairs in search of the black-caped man who had left the mysterious package beneath his chair. She would have seen him on the main staircase had he gone in that direction, so it was an easy deduction to guess he was fleeing out the back. But why was he running away at all? “You there! Stop! I want to talk to you!”
The man turned a moment, obviously having heard her, and then kept running.
She spotted him as he was about to enter the Hall of Planets, the most popular exhibit in the Huntsford Academy. “Drat,” she muttered, knowing she had to get to him before he could shake her off in that crowd.
Her ridiculously fashionable slippers were made for sitting around and sipping tea, not for chasing scoundrels. Her gown was equally useless, not designed for any activity other than looking pretty while men ogled their fill.
She tore after him as best she could, racing past Mercury, Mars, and Venus before she spotted the perpetrator trying to blend into a crowd studying the rings of Saturn. The fool was too tall not to be noticed. But as she gained on him, he took off again toward the main hall from which he could then exit onto the street. “Stop him!” she called out to the guards, but the hall was too noisy and her cries drifted upward to be swallowed up in the ceiling.
With a final, desperate effort, she lunged at him, managing to grab hold of his cloak. But he did not stop running and merely dragged her along with him as he raced to the doors leading onto the street.
As she held onto him for dear life, two thoughts raced through her mind. The first, how ridiculous she must look clinging to this oaf’s cloak and wiping the floor with her gown as he attempted to tear out of the museum.
The second thought was even more humiliating, for this man was not Runyon, so who was he and why was he desperately trying to get away from her? He was bigger and heavier set than Runyon, something she ought to have noticed immediately and left him alone.
She could not do so now.
If he had nothing to hide, why would he not stop?
And what was in that package he had left under his seat?
She would be in quite a bit of trouble if it had nothing to do with Ambrose’s stolen book. Oh, Ambrose would be livid with her meddling, and perhaps angry enough to call off their betrothal.
But this still begged the question…if this had nothing to do with the lost book, then why was this man running?
“You meddlesome slut!” he said in a harsh rasp and was about to kick her in the ribs when a shadow fell over both of them and then a massive fist flew into the man’s face.
He crumpled to the ground and lay moaning beside her.
She tried to catch her breath and rise, but that large shadow now put his hands gently around her waist and lifted her in his arms. “Blast it, Adela. You might have been hurt.”
“Ambrose, I’m so sorry.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tightly to this wonderful man. “I thought he was Runyon. But he isn’t and now I don’t know what I’ve done. He left a package under his chair. I gave it to Syd and–”
