He ignored her protest and her state of undress, and went directly to the dressing-room door, opened it, looked inside and turned on his heel to confront her. ‘Where are you hiding her?’
Chapter Nine
‘Marguerite is not in this house and I have no idea where she is if she is not at the hotel. I have not seen her since the concert, you have my word on it. Now will you kindly get out of my bedchamber, Lord Cannock?’
For the first time Lucian focused on the furious woman in front of him and realised that Sara was wearing nothing but a flimsy muslin nightgown which, as she was standing with her back to the window, might as well not have been there. His body reacted with an inconvenient inevitability, despite the anxiety that consumed him.
‘Your word?’ He put the slightest doubt into the question and it was enough to keep her gaze, fixed and furious, on his face and not any lower.
‘Do you not believe that a woman can have honour to pledge? You would like to search the house, perhaps? Look under my bed? Check the roof? The bread bin? Please, go ahead.’
‘I believe you. I apologise.’ He should have known better, should have trusted her. The stinging contempt in Sara’s voice was enough to extinguish a forest fire, let alone a brief flare of lust. He was duly grateful. Lucian dug the note out of his pocket and held it out. ‘I will go downstairs and wait. I would value your assistance with this.’ He was reduced to begging, but Marguerite was more important than his pride, especially with Sara. With her he did not seem to have any protection for his feelings or his emotions and certainly not for his weaknesses.
‘No, wait.’ To his amazement Sara pulled on her robe, jerked the sash tight and curled up in the armchair, with a wave of her hand towards the chaise at the foot of the bed. ‘Sit down while I read this.’
He deserved to have the chaise thrown at his head, he was very well aware. Lucian sat, marvelling at the infinite unpredictability of women, and tried not to tear his hair as he watched Sara’s face as she read, then re-read the note, her lower lip caught between her teeth. She was beautiful even with her hair tousled and her face shiny with sleep.
‘Where was the note?’ Sara asked.
‘In the sitting room. I woke up thirsty, realised I had left the water carafe on the table last night and found the note was propped up against it. Normally I would have slept another hour and a half, perhaps two. It was simply luck that I had forgotten to take the carafe into my room.’
‘So, her Gregory is alive and has come for her and they have run away to marry,’ Sara summarised as she looked up from the note. ‘But why did you come here? I would have expected you to be giving chase.’
‘Because if I were her I would go to ground here, in Sandbay, until her wretched brother had gone galloping off in pursuit to the Border and then I would follow at a safe distance.’
‘That would take strong nerves and a degree of cunning.’
‘Which is why I thought they might be here,’ he confessed. She was the most intelligent woman he knew, one of the most intelligent people, come to that, and she had the nerve to take risks and to think around corners.
Sara regarded him through narrowed eyes and then gave a gasp of laughter. ‘Thank you for the compliment, if that was what it was. They are not here, but Gregory cannot have been in Sandbay long and finding his lodgings might give us a clue.’
‘How do you know how long he has been here?’ he demanded, his suspicions resurfacing.
‘Marguerite’s mood at the concert. Looking back, I can see she was happy, truly happy, not putting a brave face on things as I thought at the time. She must have seen him that day, I think. Oh, what an idiot I am—of course, the man in the library.’ She jumped to her feet and began to pace, her skirts swishing around her, untied ribbons fluttering.
‘One of my customers was upset yesterday because a man with a severely scarred face was in the circulating library. When I went in later and spoke to Mr Makepeace he said that Marguerite had been tearful the day before when she saw this person—and yet she did not mention it to either of us, did she?’ When Lucian shook his head, she nodded. ‘I thought so and it would have been very natural for her to speak of it. She was weeping because it was Gregory and he had been injured, not in revulsion at the sight of a maimed stranger as Mr Makepeace thought, or simply because of heightened sensibilities.
‘I went into the reading room myself, through curiosity, I have to admit, but could only see him against the light, which was no doubt intentional. From where he was sitting he could have heard anyone come in and, if you had entered and he recognised your voice, he would have been able to hide behind his newspaper. I think only one side of his face was injured—my customer referred to him as a Janus—and that also explains something odd that
James Makepeace said. “So tragic, under the circumstances.” You told me Gregory was very handsome and James would have thought the disfigurement even worse if it marred such a face. He was wearing an eyepatch.’ She came to a halt in front of him, her face alight with triumph at having worked it all out.
‘He will have trouble disguising that eyepatch, it will make him easier to track down.’ At last something positive.
‘I can discover where he was lodging—but only if you promise me that you are not going to harm him,’ Sara offered.
A moment’s thought brought him to the same conclusion that her reasoning had. ‘I have no need to negotiate on that.’ Lucian ignored the way her brows drew together in a frown. He rather suspected that Sara Harcourt would rarely approve of anything he said that related to his sister. ‘He would have registered with the circulating library if he wanted to use it and I imagine Makepeace knows the town well enough to spot a false address. I will ask him. Where does he live? Over the library?’
For a moment he thought she would defy him, then Sara got to her feet. ‘Let me change and I will come with you, otherwise you will simply go and find a directory and look it up, you stubborn man.’ She tugged the bell pull and when the maid appeared, her face a picture of barely suppressed amazement and speculation, told her to go and wake the cook. ‘Coffee for both of us as soon as possible, then ask her to fry bacon and make sandwiches.’ As the maid scurried out she shrugged and made shooing gestures towards the door. ‘If you have to give chase, you may as well do it with a packet of sandwiches in your pocket. Now, let me change.’
*
Cook, it transpired, had been awakened by the noise and was already making up the range and he had hardly finished a scalding cup of coffee when he heard Sara coming down the stairs. Or, rather, he assumed it was her, but the person who walked into the drawing room and took the second cup from the tray was almost unrecognisable.
The slim figure was dressed in a full-skirted, fitted coat of some dull dark blue brocade, high at the neck and split to the waist front and back. Trousers of the same colour tucked into soft leather boots could be glimpsed beneath the skirts and a tight black turban completely covered the hair.
‘I thought it best to dress for travelling,’ Sara said calmly as he tried not to choke on the coffee, his throat closing with a mixture of outrage and desire. ‘This what my mother and I wore to ride in India and we still use it at home in the country. We have to check here first, of course, but if Gregory and Marguerite have fled and you are determined to follow and stop them, she is going to need a female chaperon if we are to contain the scandal. It will obviously be a hard, fast journey.’
Over my dead body, clashed with, That makes some sense. ‘I hardly think that if you are seen dressed like that—’ Lucian began, working out why he actually felt pleasure at the thought of Sara’s company. Which was inexplicable. This was a crisis, a nightmare and most definitely not a pleasure outing.