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She was an extraordinary woman. He had no idea why she had left home and assumed that foolish disguise. He had expected to have found that out long before now, to have exposed the girl for what she was and marched her back home to be chastised by her papa. Instead all he had learned was that she could use a sword, play whist and had the courage of a lion—and, rather than exposing her, he was going along with the game she was playing.
The trouble was he did not think it was a game; at the back of it all was something deadly serious. Courage she might have in abundance, but she was also afraid. He had seen it in her lovely eyes. He could not wait to get back to her and then, by hook or by crook, he would have it out of her.
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They could not ride side by side until they had passed the Tyburn gibbet. The hanging had been accomplished and the body taken down, but some of the crowd still milled about, talking about it, buying mementoes, waiting to see if there would be any other convicts to meet the same fate. There was usually more than one dispatched on hanging days. As soon as they were on the open road and the noise behind them had faded to a distant hum, Jonathan questioned Luke more closely about his sister’s disappearance. Had anything happened to trigger it off? Had she been unhappy at home? Had she expressed a desire to visit friends or relations? To all of which the young man was noncommittal. And when he asked for a description of Louise, the only reply Luke made was, ‘Oh, she is beautiful.’
‘That is not much help. What does she look like? Is she tall or short? Fat or thin? What is the colour of her hair and her eyes?’ He still had that hazy memory of the little girl in church, in a blue dimity dress with a huge blue bow in her hair. It had been thick, curly hair, he recalled.
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