Exmoor. Closing her eyes, leaning her head back again, she focused on that. An isolated moor. They’d have to walk to any mine… the coachman would have to stay with the horses…
As the day rolled into evening, she behaved precisely as Sir Freddie wished. She considered pretending to fall apart, weeping and despairing, but she wasn’t that good an actress, and if Sir Freddie suspected she wasn’t resigned to her fate… instead, she behaved as she imagined a French duchess would have on her way to the guillotine. Head high, haughtily superior, yet with no hint of any struggle against an overwhelming fate.
He had to believe she’d accepted it, that she’d go haughtily but quietly to her death. Given his background, that was very likely the behavior he’d expect of her, a lady of his class.
The farther they traveled, stopping at inn after inn to change horses, the more evidence she detected of his natural conceit overcoming his caution. He even allowed her to use the convenience at an inn, although she had no chance to speak to anyone, and he remained within sight of the door at all times.
Night fell; four horses pulled the coach steadily on. Closing her eyes, feigning sleep, she felt her nerves tensing and tried to relax. Exmoor, he’d said, and Exeter was still some way ahead; it would be hours yet before she got her chance. Her one chance at the life she now knew beyond doubt she wanted. The life she was prepared to fight for, the life she was determined to have.
Not as Tony’s mistress, but as his wife. As his viscountess, the mother of his heir, and other children, too. She had far too much to live for to die.
And she knew he loved her; not only had he said so, but he’d shown her. If she’d had any doubt over what his feelings truly were, the picture Sir Freddie had painted, the question he’d asked: how would Tony react to finding her dead? had blown all such doubts away.
Devastated was too small a word—she knew precisely how he would feel because it was the same way she’d feel in the converse circumstance.
They loved each other, equally completely, equally deeply; she no longer questioned that. Once they were past this, free of Sir Freddie and his deadly scheme, she would speak with Tony. He might not yet see things as she did, but she was perfectly marriageable, after all. He’d established her as his equal in the eyes of the ton; if his mother was anything like Lady Amery and the Duchess of St. Ives, she doubted she’d have any difficulties there.
She wanted to marry him, and if that meant she had to broach the subject herself, then she would. Brazenly. After last night, she could be brazen about anything, at least with him.
The prospect—her future as she would have it with Tony by her side—filled her mind. Joy welled; fear hovered that it would not come to be, but she shunned it, clung to the joy instead.
Held to the vision of a happy future. Let it strengthen her. Her determination to make it happen—that it would be—soared.
Unexpectedly, she slept.
The noisy rattle of the wheels hitting cobblestones jerked Alicia from her doze. It was deepest night, past midnight; she’d heard the sound of a bell tolling twelve as they’d passed through Exeter, now some way behind.
Sir Freddie had fastened back one of the window flaps. Through the window, she glimpsed a hedgerow; beyond it, the ground rose, desolate and empty. The coach slowed, then halted.
“Well, my dear, we’re here.” Through the gloom, Sir Freddie watched her. Holding to her resolve, she didn’t react.
He hesitated, then leaned past her, opened the door, and climbed down. He turned and gave her his hand; she allowed him to assist her to the cobbles, leaving her cloak on the seat. When the time came to run, she didn’t want its folds flapping about her legs. Her skirts would be bad enough.
She’d slipped the cloak off sometime before; Sir Freddie didn’t seem to notice—there was no reason he should care. He’d stepped forward to speak to the coachman; she strained her ears and caught the words she’d hoped to hear.
“Wait here until I return.”
When she’d first emerged from the coach at an inn, there’d been no footman; she assumed he’d been set down in London. The coachman had avoided her eye; she knew better than to expect help from that quarter. All she needed was for the man to wait until his master returned. If things went her way, his master wouldn’t return, not before she did and raised help from the cottages she could see just ahead, lining the road.
Sir Freddie turned to her. Again, he studied her; as she had all along, she met his gaze stonily.
He inclined his head. “Your composure does you credit, my dear. I really do regret putting an end to your life.”
She didn’t deign to answer. Sir Freddie’s lips quirked; with a wave, he indicated a path leading from the narrow road. Within yards of the hedge, the path plunged into a dark wood; beyond, the moors rose, alternately illuminated, then shrouded in gloomy shadow as clouds passed over the moon.
“We have to walk through the wood to reach the moors and the mine.”
Sir Freddie reached for her arm, but she forestalled him and turned, and calmly walked to the opening of the path.
Tony swore; hauling on the reins, he swung the latest pair he’d had harnessed in Exeter onto the road to Hatherleigh.
Why here, for heaven’s sake? Was it the isolation?
He’d had hours to consider what Sir Freddie was about while following his path across the country. It had been decades since he’d driven at breakneck speed—he’d been pleased to discover he hadn’t forgotten how—but even the exigencies of managing unfamiliar cattle hadn’t stopped him from thinking first and foremost of Alicia, of the danger facing her.
Up behind him, Maggs was hanging on grimly, every now and then muttering imprecations under his breath. Tony ignored him. He’d caught up with Maggs at Yeovil; before then, whenever Maggs had stopped to change horses he’d sent a rider wearing a red kerchief back along the road. Tony had stopped each flagged rider, and thus known which road to follow.
As it happened, it was a road he knew well—the same road he’d traveled countless times between Torrington Chase and London. The familiarity had helped; he’d have missed their turning to Hatherleigh if he hadn’t known to ask at Okehampton.
Sir Freddie taking Alicia so far from London had been a boon initially, giving him time to catch up. Even though Sir Freddie had been rocketing along, always using four fresh horses, Tony knew he was close on their heels.
While they were traveling, he had no fears for Alicia. Once they stopped…
His experience lay in pursuing someone he needed to catch, not save. Every time he thought of Alicia, his heart lurched, his mind stilled, paralyzed; shutting off such thoughts, he concentrated on Sir Freddie instead.
Why this route? Was Sir Freddie intending to drive through to the Bristol Channel and rendezvous with some lugger? Was Alicia a hostage? Or was she intended as the scapegoat Sir Freddie had from the first sought to make her?
That was Tony’s blackest fear. The landscape, the desolate sweep of the moors rising up on either side of the road fed it. If Sir Freddie intended to stage Alicia’s murder and make it appear a suicide, and thus quash the investigation…
Tony set his jaw. Once he got hold of her, he was taking her to Torrington Chase and keeping her there. Forever.
Sending the whip swinging to flick the leader’s ear, he drove the horses on.
TWENTY-ONE
ALICIA EMERGED ONTO THE MOOR WITH A SENSE OF RELIEF; the wood had been dark, the trees very old, the path uneven and knotted with their roots. Here, at least, she could breathe—dragging in a breath, she looked up, tracing the path they were following to where it skirted a pile of rocks and earth, the workings of the disused mine in which Sir Freddie planned to drown her.