“She speaks of the Earl of Luxborough,” Arabella said. “Although when he eloped with Katharine Russell, he was only the earl’s penniless third son.”
Helen’s eyes were comically wide under her clerical hat. “And since he became the earl, they say he keeps to his estate in Somersetshire, where he practices his sorcery, making potions and poisons, keeping company only with foreigners and heathens and witches.”
“What utter nonsense,” Thea declared. “You cannot believe such rumors are true.”
“Rumors about other people are always true,” Arabella said. “It’s the rumors about oneself that are false. But some of that story is fact: About thirteen years ago, he ran away to America with Ventnor’s daughter. After a few years, they returned to England, she died in mysterious circumstances, and he left again. Now he is back, he never goes into society.”
“But the claptrap about witchcraft and the Devil?”
Arabella pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I have not seen him in person, but they say his face is indeed scarred, not by the Devil, mind you, but by…”
Thea leaned in. “By?”
“By…a cat.”
“A cat?” Thea glanced at the fine white lines running up the back of her hand, a souvenir from her childhood attempt to befriend a stray cat that did not wish to be befriended. “Then I have the Devil’s mark too,” she scoffed. “To think him a witch for a mere cat’s scratch.”
“Good grief, Thea, he is an English aristocrat, and would never suffer the scratches of an ordinary cat,” Arabella scolded lightly. “He was attacked by nothing less than a jaguar, while in the forests of New Spain.”
“Ja-gu-ar,” Thea repeated, trying out the strange word in her mouth. How unfortunate that her limited education had taught her only how to be a lady, and omitted any mention of strange cats and foreign forests. “What is a jaguar?”
Helen drew on her slightly more extensive education to explain, “A jaguar is a very big cat. With very big claws, and very big teeth, and very little sense of humor.”
“Impossible,” Thea said. “If it is a cat, then it doubtless believes it has an excellent sense of humor and it’s the humans that cannot take a joke.”
Arabella almost smiled. “I daresay you can ask the earl all about jaguars and their jokes when you meet him.”
“I am happy to say that I have no desire whatsoever to meet the Earl of Luxborough.”
“Unfortunate for you, then, that he is arriving at my parents’ house this evening too.”
Before Thea or Helen could respond to Arabella’s astonishing announcement, a call from the yard warned that the stagecoach north was about to depart. Helen grabbed the small bag Thea had brought, gave her a one-armed hug, said, “Wish me luck!” and dashed out the door on a waft of happiness and swine.
Thea darted to the window, Arabella by her side. It felt like an eternity until Helen emerged. With her clerical hat pulled down low and her greatcoat flapping about her breeches and boots, Helen jogged across the yard and jumped into the coach. Thea hardly dared breathe, praying Ventnor’s men had not noticed that the fellow in the greatcoat was Helen. Other passengers boarded. The carriage door slammed shut. The coachman hollered at the team of six horses, and the huge stagecoach rumbled off. Still Thea and Arabella waited, until the stagecoach was well out of sight. No one followed.
Another coachman maneuvered a stylish barouche into the yard. A liveried footman and an inn employee carried out a traveling trunk and lifted it into the barouche. Thea recognized the trunk as Helen’s. Well, her trunk, now that she was Helen.
Arabella tapped the glass. “No one is chasing Helen, and my barouche is ready. Assuming Ventnor’s men did not notice her leave, we need only smuggle you past them without them seeing your face.”
“If this Earl of Luxborough never leaves his estate, how is it that he is visiting your house?” Thea asked Arabella’s back, as they filed down the narrow, stuffy stairs toward the tavern and its din of chatter and calls.
“I hesitated to mention this before, but Lord Ventnor is giving the earl some rare plant specimens,” Arabella replied, her ostrich feather sweeping the air as she half turned her head. “As Warwickshire falls about halfway between their estates, Ventnor has sent them to our house for the earl to collect. Apparently, Lord Luxborough is a keen botanist when he is not wandering through the Americas being attacked by giant cats.”
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Thea pulled Arabella to a stop. “Lord Ventnor sent these plants to your house, at the same time that he believes Helen to be your guest,” she said in a low voice. “Does that strike you as more than coincidence?”