Page 49 of A Duchess' Irresistible Tutor

“Well, what does he say?” Bertha demanded almost as soon as Daisy had finished reading. Daisy couldn’t bring herself to repeat the words in the letter. Instead, she knew that if she didn’t begin to plan immediately, she might lose her nerve.

“Bertha, I must go to the Earl of Elgin’s countryside estate,” she announced, her entire body tingling with what she was about to do. “I must escape this place and find Philip. I cannot stand another day of your mother’s wedding planning.”

“Daisy, what are you saying?” Bertha asked, looking quite confused and perhaps even a little excited.

“I am asking if you and Thomas will help me,” Daisy explained. Gripping Philip’s letter tightly in one hand, she gripped hold of Bertha’s arm in her other and asked, “Will you both help me to sneak out tonight as you have done before? Will Thomas be able to get me a horse?”

Bertha looked uncertain. Daisy could practically see the cogs of her mind turning behind her eyes. Then finally, she breathed in a deep sigh and nodded. “You have helped us so many times. Of course, we will help you.”

“It will be dangerous,” Daisy pointed out.

“If what I believe is true, then my mother has a lot to answer for,” Bertha pointed out with another sigh. “I will gladly help you put an end to her plans, no matter what the cost, just as you would do the same for me.”

Chapter 28

Philip waited for a response for as long as possible, but by mid-afternoon, his father’s under-butler, the man who remained to care for the townhouse while the head butler was in the countryside along with their master, was urging him that soon it would be too late to travel.

Knowing he was right, Philip finally left the townhouse and entered his carriage once more to return to the countryside to face his father’s solicitor to ensure everything was in order, just in case the worst should happen. He was loathed to do it, certain that his brother ought to have been the one to do it, though knowing that his brother was even further away on other important business for their father.

The journey felt even longer than it had been on his way back to Oxford. With each turn of the carriage wheels, he could feel himself being pulled further and further away from Lady Daisy, away from all that he truly wanted. And every mile away from Oxford, he became increasingly agitated until he could take it no longer.

“Stop the carriage!” he called suddenly, jumping up to hammer his fist on the carriage wall where the coachman was sitting just beyond the wall. The carriage jerked to a halt as the horses whinnied and neighed.

Anticipation clawing at his stomach, Philip pushed open the carriage door and swung himself out, leaning out of the door so that he could look around at the coachman to instruct him, “I have changed my mind. We shall be returning to Oxford.”

“With all due respect, Mr Radcliffe, I would advise against it,” the coachman replied. Having been a servant under the Radcliffe family for years, the coachman was no stranger to the whims of his master’s sons, so he was obliged to have his opinion.

Philip gritted his teeth, knowing that he would offer it whether he liked it or not. “The horses have already come this far, and I am unsure whether they shall make it all the way back to Oxford. Besides, it is the middle of the night.”

Philip didn’t exactly need him to tell him the last part. After all, all he need do was look around to see that night had fallen long ago. Darkness swelled out all around them, spreading over the fields that stretched out on either side of the lane, all the way to the horizon. It was pitch black, and they were in the middle of nowhere. All was silent save for the sound of bugs chirping in the undergrowth that filled the ditches on either side of the lane.

“I would like to turn back,” Philip instructed the coachman.My father’s solicitor can wait. Lady Daisy is far more important.

He thought again of how he had awaited Bertha at the back gate to the Lockhart’s garden, how he had half-expected her not to have even snuck out that night to meet her groom, the groom that Philip knew he ought not to know about but that Lady Daisy had allowed to sleep one day during their tutoring sessions.

He remembered Bertha’s promise to be sure that Lady Daisy would receive his letter and how hopeful he had been that he could trust her. Yet he also couldn’t help wondering whether someone else might have intercepted her just as they seemed to have with every other letter he had written to Lady Daisy recently.

I should return to her window and refuse to stop throwing pebbles until she comes down to face me,he thought, knowing very well that if he did that, the likelihood was that someone else in the house might hear him, and then he would be in serious trouble.

“Are you certain that is what you wish, My Lord?” the coachman asked with a raised eyebrow, his hands raised with the reins as if ready to urge his horses on. “If so, then I must carry on to the next crossroads to turn the carriage around. This lane is far too small to do it right here.”

Philip gritted his teeth, unsure whether he could handle going any further away from Oxford. Inhaling deeply, he nodded and replied, “I wish to return to Oxford. The solicitor will wait.”

“As you wish, Mr Radcliffe,” the coachman assured him with a tipping of his hat.

“Thank you,” Philip responded before dropping back into the carriage and slamming the door shut behind him. He tapped on the carriage's wall to tell the coachman that he was situated back in his seat and felt them begin to move again.

He felt the steady motion carrying them further down the lane and then the carriage beginning to turn back on itself. Peering out from behind the window's drapes in the door, he saw that they were indeed turning around at a crossroads.

Then he could see nothing but hedgerows and the odd piece of fence leading out into fields once more. Breathing a sigh of relief, Philip relaxed back against the cushion of the bench, safe in the knowledge that soon he would return to Oxford and then he could see Daisy once more.

Bertha’s insistence that she was sure Daisy had written to him often during his time away left him certain that all was not right with Lady Daisy’s engagement to Lord Bessington; it had made him even more determined to seek the truth, and it was all he could think about as he headed back towards the city.

Yet they couldn’t have been moving for more than ten minutes or so when the carriage suddenly stopped dead, the horses offering their protests once more. Philip’s teeth gritted, and his stomach churned at the thought that something terrible might have happened. Had one of the horses cast a shoe? Was one of the carriage wheels splintered? Would he be struck for the rest of the night with no way of going back or forth?

With his teeth still gritted, Philip pushed open the carriage door and called out to the coachman, “Is everything alright?”

“Another traveller approaching, sir,” the coachman replied. A curious tone in his voice made Philip inquisitive, so he leaned further out of the carriage, glancing past the side of the carriage and the horses to look further down the lane.

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