Читать книгу The Regency Bestsellers Collection - Bronwyn Scott - Страница 41

“Run away?” Alex echoed, hoping that she might have misheard the housekeeper.

Mrs. Greeley broke down in tears.

Chase didn’t wait for further confirmation. He bolted into the house, and Alex followed him.

Together they rushed up to the nursery and across the room to the open window. A knotted rope ladder dangled from the windowsill down to the street.

Oh, no. Oh, Lord.

Alex flew to the girls’ trunk and dug through it frantically, all the way to the bottom. Just as she’d feared. “It’s gone.”

“What’s gone?”

“Rosamund’s bundle. I came upon it by accident once, weeks ago. She had money squirreled away. All those pennies and shillings added up to a significant amount. There were other things, too. Like maps and coaching timetables.”

“And you didn’t do anything about it? Christ, Alex.”

She wilted under his stare. “I didn’t want her to know I’d found it.”

“You should have told me. You should have taken it away.”

“She would have only packed a new one. The best way to keep her from running was to make her feel she had a home. And I thought she was feeling that way lately. I can’t imagine what might have changed her mind.”

Chase shook his head. “The letters. It has to have been the letters.”

“What letters?”

“Letters from every decent boarding school in England, offering the girls admission. I left them on the desk last night.”

“Oh, no.”

“She probably came down hoping to pocket a shilling or two and saw them.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “Where will they have gone?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps toward a port city.”

“A port city?”

She briefly closed her eyes, feeling sick. “They may be planning to pose as boys and find work aboard a ship.”

Chase swore with a viciousness to rival even the most black-hearted pirate.

Alex cursed herself. She ought to have known. Rosamund hadn’t joined the piracy game to indulge her whims. She’d been paying attention. Not only gaining the skills required of a ship’s boy, but learning how and where to find work. All this time, Alex had been striving to make the girls feel they had a home. Instead, she’d given Rosamund lessons in how to run away, so fast and fearlessly that no one could catch them.

Chase left the nursery as decisively as he’d entered it, bounding down the stairs. And once again, Alex followed.

“I’m so sorry,” she said weakly. “This is my fault. It’s all my fault.”

He didn’t slow down to apportion blame. “I’ll have the groom ready a fresh horse. I’ll begin with the southerly coaching inns, ask if anyone fitting the girls’ description has purchased tickets, and if so to what destination. If that turns up nothing . . . Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. You’d only slow me down, and one of us should remain here in case they return.”

“But I—”

“Stay.” Chase went to her and held her face in his hands. “I’ll find them. No matter where they’ve gone. I’ll find them, and I will bring them home.”

Night was falling when Chase finally returned to the house. He wasted no words on pleasantries. “Tell me they’re here.”

Alex dearly, fervently, with every fiber of her being, wished she could tell him just that.

Instead, she had to shake her head in the negative. “I sent notes to Penny and Nicola. Neither has seen them, but they’ve promised to send word first thing if they do. I wrote to your brother, as well. John’s gone out searching.”

“But no word yet.”

“No.”

The pale, bleak cast of his face was like no expression she’d ever seen him wear. He staggered to a chair, fell into it, and dropped his head in his hands.

“Oh, Chase.” She hurried to him, kneeling on the carpet and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “We’ll find them. We will.”

“I’ll go back out.” He braced his hands on the chair’s arms and pushed himself to a standing position. “I can’t just sit here.”

“You’re exhausted. Let me go instead.”

“I told you—”

She laid her hand on his chest, firmly pushing him back. “It should be me. I have the best chance of finding them. I all but drew them their escape plan.”

Alex would hire a ship of her own and sail off in pursuit, if that’s what it took. The thought of sailing the ocean still terrified her, but that terror paled in comparison with her fear of losing the girls. And losing Chase, too.

The doorbell sounded.

They rushed to the entrance hall.

When the door was flung open, there she stood—the mulish, pilfering, ten-year-old answer to a prayer.

“Rosamund.” Chase pulled her into his arms, clasping her head close to his chest. “Thank God. Thank God.”

Alex scanned the steps and pavement. “Daisy. Where’s Daisy?”

“She’s in the hackney. She’s been hurt.”

“Petersfield.” Chase tipped back a swallow of brandy. The amber liquid burned its way down his hoarse, weary throat. “They made it all the way to Petersfield. That’s nearly to Portsmouth.”

Alex nodded and sniffed. “I know.”

The hours since Rosamund had appeared on the doorstep had been divided between three activities.

First, calling for doctors.

Next, teasing out the details of their adventure.

Last, sitting in the corner of the nursery, watching the both of them sleep.

“Petersfield,” he repeated numbly.

Apparently, Rosamund’s grand plan had been to travel to Portsmouth via stagecoach—only nine hours’ journey, she made a note of mentioning. Upon arrival, just as Alex had surmised, the girls planned to cut their hair, put on homespun trousers, and search for work as ship’s boys.

The plan had been executed flawlessly, except for one hitch. On her way down the rope ladder, Daisy had fallen and landed on her arm. Rosamund ignored her sister’s complaints of pain for much of the journey. After all, Daisy was expert at inventing maladies. However, once the swelling and bruising set in, there was no ignoring that she needed a doctor. They’d exited the coach at Petersfield and caught the next coach going north.

“You must admit, it’s rather remarkable how well they handled it. Rosamund knew to return home, and she and Daisy made it safely back. That shows a great deal of courage and ingen—”

“Don’t,” he clipped. “Don’t look for the bright side of this. If Daisy hadn’t fallen at all, they’d be a full day’s sail from England by now. And if Daisy had taken that fall any harder, or from a slightly greater height . . .”

He shuddered, pushing aside the nightmarish image of Daisy’s blood pooling on cobblestones.

“Their return journey took money, cleverness, and courage,” she said. “They could have used that same money, cleverness, and courage to go anywhere else. But they came here. They came home.”

Chase’s jaw tightened. How dare she. How dare she praise their remarkable achievement of not quite dying, and try to spin this all into a moralistic fable designed to puff him up.

This time, she was the one who needed to face facts.

He would show them to her.

Chase stood and quietly motioned for Alex to follow. After leaving the nursery, he went to her bedchamber.

“This is what will happen.” He yanked one of her cottage-for-let notices from where Alex had tacked it to the wall. “I’m going to buy you this cottage, or one like it.” He took a closer look at the advertisement. “Actually, I’m going to buy you a cottage that’s much better. One with enough room for you and the girls.”

“Me and the girls?”

“Yes. I’m offering to extend your employment as their governess. Indefinitely.”

“Their governess? I don’t understand.”

“You’re right. What am I thinking? You won’t be their governess any longer. I’ll hire another governess to live with you and teach the girls. You’ll be an astronomer, of course.” He looked through the other advertisements tacked on her wall. None of the properties appeared remotely satisfactory. “You’re going to need a larger property for that. One with a hill. Barrow can find something.” He left her room, heading for the stairs.

Her footsteps pattered behind him. “Chase, stop. You are not making any sense.”

This time Alex had it wrong. He was returning to his senses. Accepting what he’d known from the beginning, but had stupidly tried to ignore.

“You seem to be saying that you’re sending me, the girls, and some other governess to live in a country cottage.”

“A large cottage. Near a hill.”

“And where are you in this plan, may I ask?”

Chase set his jaw. “Far away.”

“Oh, no.” She put her hand to her temple. “Yesterday, you were ready to embark on a life together. The four of us, as a family. One thing goes wrong, and the whole plan is off? Everyone goes back to living miserably?”

“At least living miserably means being alive. This wasn’t a tiny mishap, Alex. She fell from the window. She could have died in the street. And once again, I was nowhere to be found. I was off in an inn with some woman.”

Her chin jerked. “‘Some woman’?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do.” She reached out and took his hand in both of hers. Her voice was calm, rational. “I know exactly what you mean, and I understand precisely why this terrified you. But it isn’t the same. Daisy’s going to be fine.”

He gestured wildly. “Her arm is broken!”

“Her arm is broken. But she is going to be fine.”

He shook his head and went to the study, fishing the key from his waistcoat fob to open the money box. He counted out banknotes. “Five per week. Two hundred at the end of the summer.” He squared the stack. “There. That’s two hundred and fifty. Your wages.”

“Chase, don’t do this to them. Don’t do this to me.”

He flung the keys down with a clatter. “I have to do this. My mistake was believing, for even one moment, that I could do otherwise.”

Alexandra claimed to be sensible. Practical. Straightforward. Chase had wanted to believe that, too. He’d almost been convinced that she saw him. Truly saw him, for everything he was and everything he wasn’t, and that her mirror-finish eyes reflected everything he could become.

But that had been an illusion. Today was the proof he needed.

She would keep fooling herself that he was a better man, and she would persist in telling him the same. No amount of argument or evidence on his part had convinced her otherwise. She wouldn’t see reason, and that left him only one way to get the message across.

He had to wound her. Deeply.

Even if it left him gutted and bleeding, too.

“I should never have suggested we marry. It was my mistake.”

“Why are you doing this?” Her voice was shaky now. “I know what we shared last night. I know you love me. Perhaps you’re too frightened to face it right now, but that doesn’t change the truth.”

“Even if I do love you, it doesn’t matter. I’m Rosamund and Daisy’s guardian, and I’m going to be Duke of Belvoir. I need to be heeding those responsibilities. As it is, I’m barely skating the boundaries of good society. Think of how it would damage the girls’ prospects if I married so far beneath me.”

“Beneath you? You’re being absurd, Chase. I know you, of all people, don’t believe that.”

“Everyone else will. And the Sir Winston Harveys of London will make sure no one forgets that you were once ‘just’ a governess.”

“I’m not ‘just’ a governess. I’m not ‘just’ anything.”

He pushed the banknotes toward her. “As of this moment, you’re not a governess at all.”

A tear formed in the corner of her eye. It clung to her eyelashes, wobbling there. She didn’t do him the mercy of dashing it away. She let it fall, and he watched it trail down her face.

Chase wanted to rip his own heart from his chest and hurl it into the fireplace. For all the good the thing did him, he might as well be rid of it.

She ignored the heap of banknotes. “I don’t believe for a moment that you meant anything you just said. I know you better than that. You’re a good man with a loving nature. But even if I can dismiss your words, that doesn’t mean they don’t hurt.”

“Take the money, Alexandra. The telescope, as well. I’ve no need of it.”

“I don’t want your money. As if it’s some even trade for your heart?”

“To be honest, I think you’re coming out better in the bargain.”

She shook her head. “Tomorrow, or the day after, or maybe next week, you’re going to wake up and realize what an idiot you were, and you’re going to want to make things right with me. I’m telling you now, it will be too late. This will be the last time I raise my hopes, Chase. The last time I dare to dream of a future with you, only to watch those dreams dashed.”

He looked her square in the eye and nodded. “Good.”