Vaughn had said he wasn't leaving till Tuesday. If he were the diabolically clever Black Tulip, he might have been deliberately laying false clues, but Henrietta didn't think his alarm at hearing a footstep outside the door had been feigned. Their best chance was to return to London and inform the War Office of everything that had transpired and allow them to take the appropriate steps.
Tearing into the coffee room, narrowly avoiding a slender man in an immense cravat, wearing a high-crowned black hat pulled low over his ears, Henrietta grabbed Miles by the arm and tugged. "I really think we ought to go now."
Miles looked at her quizzically. "The food only just arrived."
Henrietta cast him a look of urgent appeal. "Please? I'll explain in the carriage."
Miles shrugged, bemused but game. "Righty-ho, then."
Rising, he stretched — Henrietta gave an agitated little hop — snagged his hat and gloves from the chair beside him — "Come on, come on," urged Henrietta under her breath — and tossed a few coins on the table.
"That ought to cover it."
"But — " began Turnip, gesturing inarticulately to the platters and jugs arrayed before them.
"Sorry, Fitzhugh" — Miles paused in the doorway to wave his hat in the Girection of his friend — "must be going."
Miles abruptly staggered out of view from the door frame as Henrietta applied pressure to his arm.
"Havey-cavey," muttered Turnip, shaking his head after them. He speared a piece of mutton and regarded it fiercely. "Deuced havey-cavey!" Henrietta chivvied Miles out into the yard, glancing anxiously behind them as Miles sent for the curricle. There was no sign of Vaughn in the doorway, or lurking around the sides of the building (Henrietta hadn't discounted the possibility of other exits) or at the windows above their heads. Only the dandy in the absurd cravat had strolled out behind them, yawning in the afternoon sunlight as he waited for his carriage and team to be brought about. There was something vaguely familiar about the man, but Henrietta didn't have time to waste chasing memory to its lair. Undoubtedly one of the many chinless wonders with whom she had stood up at the series of endless events that comprised her two and a half Seasons on the marriage market.
"You seem to have acquired an admirer," Miles commented shortly, boosting her into the curricle. He paused to glower at the man in the doorway, who continued to admire his own stickpin, supremely unconcerned. "Hurry," urged Henrietta. As if to back her up, the horses, a new team, pranced restlessly in their harness as the ostler handed off the reins to Miles.
Miles slapped the horses into motion. "Do you care to explain what's going on?"
Henrietta flapped an agitated hand at him, twisting to stare over the folding back of the curricle at the rapidly receding inn yard. "Later!"
Since it took Miles several moments to get the measure of the new team, and Henrietta seemed more inclined to squirm in her seat and cast anguished glances behind them than speak, it was several moments before Miles broached the topic again.
"Not that I mind being bereft of Turnip's company," said Miles, steering his way expertly around two hens that had decided to cross the road, "but why the sudden desire to leave? Dare I hope it was a passionate desire to be alone with me?" His eyebrows drew together. "Was that man bothering you? If he was, I — "
"No, nothing like that." Henrietta cast a haunted look back over her shoulder. A black post chaise, clearly a private vehicle, although a well-worn one, tooled along the road behind them, but it was far enough away to ensure them a modicum of privacy. Nonetheless, just to be safe, Henrietta hunched towards Miles and lowered her voice for greater secrecy. "There was something suspicious going on back there."
Miles grimaced. "Something about a propitious dancing bear?"
Maybe her voice hadn't needed to be quite that low.
Henrietta started again. "When I went upstairs, I overhead Lord Vaughn in the private parlor."
Miles shot up in his seat. "What!"
Since Henrietta had been speaking quite clearly that time, she correctly assumed that Miles's exclamation had more to do with surprise than lack of comprehension. "He was speaking with a woman with a foreign accent — it was a very light accent, but still noticeable."
Miles smacked one gloved hand against the side of the curricle. "Fiorila!"
"Flowers?" said Henrietta, perplexed.
"Poisonous ones." Miles hauled on the reins, preparing to bring the carriage about. "Why didn't you tell me before we left?"
"Shhh!" exclaimed Henrietta, glancing anxiously behind them. The other carriage had also checked.
"I don't think they can hear us." Reluctantly, Miles slapped the reins, signaling the horses to go forwards. "It's probably too late to go back," he said, more to himself than to her. "Vaughn and his companion will have flown the coop by now. Damnation! If I'd known — "
"That's exactly why I didn't tell you. It just didn't seem like a good idea." Henrietta struggled to rationalize her impulse. "We don't know who he had with him — "
"Oh, I have a very good idea of that," Miles muttered.
" — or if he was armed," continued Henrietta pointedly. "If he is the Black Tulip, doesn't it make far more sense to apprehend him in London, with all the might of the War Office at your disposal, rather than out in the middle of nowhere. For all we know, the inn might have been swarming with his men! Or he might not even be the Black Tulip," she added as an afterthought. "Something didn't sound quite right."
"Ungh" was what Miles thought of that reservation, but he grudgingly admitted the validity of the former. "I'll go see Wickham tomorrow morning."
"Why not tonight?" asked Henrietta.
"Because tonight" — Miles raised a pair of sandy eyebrows — "is my wedding night."
Henrietta discovered a sudden interest in the scenery.
Wedding night, thought Henrietta, staring unseeingly at Streatham Common. That was what generally followed after a wedding. Usually at night. Hence the term, wedding night, which combined the concepts of both wedding and night.
Henrietta bit down hard on her lip, making a concerted effort to rein in her wayward mind before she launched into a long and tangled analysis of wedding customs from the Anglo-Saxons to the present, and what exactly the etymology of the word "night" might be.
The origin of the word "evasion," she thought, glowering at a cow grazing on the Common, would be more to the point.
There were so many thoughts to evade that Henrietta didn't even know where to begin. Did Miles's mention of the wedding night mean that he intended to go through with the marriage? Or was he bringing up the topic in the hopes that she would broach the ridiculousness of their remaining married? His face had been as inscrutable as it was possible for Miles's face to be. He hadn't looked particularly put out at the notion of consummating their marriage — he hadn't sounded bitter or resigned or angry, or any of the other sentiments one might expect of a reluctant bridegroom — but he hadn't seemed particularly enthused, either. Bleargh.
Miles reined in slightly to allow a farmer's cart to pass. The carriage behind them reined in, too. Henrietta frowned.
"Miles?" Henrietta asked uneasily. "Am I imagining things, or has that carriage been behind us for a very long time?"
Miles shrugged, unconcerned. "It might have been. It wouldn't be surprising if it were. Now, about Vaughn…"
Henrietta twisted in her seat to stare back at the carriage. "But don't you find it the least bit odd that they rein in every time you do?"
"What?" Miles twisted sharply in his seat, inadvertently giving a sharp tug on the reins. His horses checked abruptly.