Chapter 63

Rain drummed ceaselessly on the coach roof, much as it had on the journey to here. Not that Cass felt any better now than then, especially given the fact the blinds had already been rolled down, so she couldn't see a thing of her surroundings.
"Pourquoi ne font pas vous me bandez les yeux? Ce serait plus simple," she muttered as the coach door opened. Not especially graciously. Was it any wonder? Colonel Caruthers had kept her here-wherever here was-under lock and key for four months now.
The French she'd learned and the geography, the codes, and the ciphers. It was all very interesting if she was meaning to learn these things. She wasn't. And, fancy not being able to escape, even if there was nothing to escape for. Owned? It made her time with Devorlane Hawley seem rosy by comparison. Damnable and all as he was, at least he'd never insisted she eat frog legs. If only she'd never found that letter, she'd be there yet. Cassidy Armstrong of Barwych, instead of Cassidy Armstrong of the parish poor. Cassidy Armstrong whose mother hadn't even bothered to name her. All these years thinking her name was unusual? Laugh? She could end herself.
"Well, I might, Miss, if you'd tell me whot it blasted is I've got ter bandes. Blimey, they ain't bin tyin' yer eyes 'ave they?"
Cass's lips parted in shock. What was it about her and coaches? "C-Charlie? What the soddin'--?"
"Shh." Swiftly he clicked her door shut. "Don't go givin' the game away."
"You can't be here."
He sank into the leather seat opposite. "Sez who?"
"Charlie-"
"The guvnor sent me."
"The-"
"Dev."
Cass swallowed. "Devorlane Hawley?" She licked her lips, bone-dry all of a sudden. "Hawley sent you? Charlie, that's-"
"Wif a little 'elp from some friends of yours." Charlie winked knowingly.
"What frie--?"
"Ruby and Pearl. And believe it or not, after a bit of a set to about it, Misses Belle, Eudora, and Tilly too."
Belle? And Tilly? Eudora she could just about understand. But Belle and Tilly? Not after what had been said to her that Christmas Eve, although everyone had gone for a certain kind of bankruptcy that night. "Charlie, please, this is crazy. You can't be here. What if you get-"
The coach jolted forward and she held to her seat.
"Don't look loike it. Anyway, it's all taken care of. Oih'm the 'onorable gent what's been engaged ter take yer back to Lun'on. Well, Oih am now anyways."
"What do you mean now?"
"Somethin' shockin' the accidents some folks meet wif. Nothin' serious. Nothin' ter get in a twist about. Lun'on's only eight miles away. Did yer know that?"
"I didn't know anything."
How could she, stuck behind these God awful walls? Not even allowed to walk outside unless escorted under armed guard. As if she was going to run away when she'd given her word. Sort of anyway,
"Well, Dev'n me thought that."
"Him and you? You mean you've been snoop-"
"Except we ain't goin' there."
"What?"
My God. Worse than any trick she'd pulled as Sapphire. Her throat tightened so she couldn't breathe. Four months? Of steadily piecing herself back together after she had disintegrated into fragments that Christmas Eve. Of believing she would never see Devorlane Hawley again. It didn't matter how he'd kissed her that night, what he'd said, her palms still bore the marks from that period of raging insanity. It didn't matter the light she left on for him at nights when she was lonely.
She'd managed through these four months, four months of torture in many ways-just--by flattening her emotions, by giving herself these tiny inches at nights. Oh, she might wish herself back in Chessington, but it didn't mean she'd been happy there. She couldn't go back to that. Unless he only meant to free her?
"Charlie ... you can't. I can't. For God's sake, let me out of here."
The door handle was there. Even as she sprung for it, Charlie grabbed her wrist.
"Whot the bleedin' 'ell do you think you're doin'? The driver and escort belong ter the colonel. Still, just as well Dev warned me whot you was loike."

***
As he waited in the low roofed bedroom of the modest house that had belonged to his mother, Devorlane's palms sweated.
The plan was simple, but the simplest plan could go wrong. Charlie might not manage to convince the driver to stop at the inn. What if the horses weren't ready? Even if they were, the head start would be short. Ten minutes at most. The colonel's escort was small but enough to give chase.
Then there was her. Need he start about her and how perfectly capable she was of refusing to get out the coach, or get on the horse-unless it was to make off with it? Saying she wanted to go to France, because she loved Paris? Emptying yet another ton of things she'd blithely stolen from the colonel out of her bag?
He sighed to the pit of his bones. He needed to stop this, didn't he? And he needed to understand, as he hadn't understood very well before, that while love wasn't always rational, it was always forgiving. It didn't possess, as he'd tried so hopelessly to do. It especially didn't try to possess a woman like her.
But if he had to let her go? Well, love did that too. Didn't it? Sort of. Sometimes anyway. Christ, Belle had finally let go of him. Wasn't the most important thing freeing Cassidy Armstrong from Caruther's clutches after she'd gone and placed herself in them. Just the sort of thing she'd do. Thank God he'd forgiven her before. It crystallized what he felt now.
He tilted the bottle and filled two glasses from the set he'd unearthed earlier. He just prayed what he'd spent weeks planning, scheming, and dreaming was enough to convince her where her place was. That this could work. It didn't matter her position was hardly glittering.
He wanted her and he could give her something anyway. Christ, when he thought about how, with all her pride, she'd been abandoned at some church door, he wanted to give her everything. To tell her it didn't matter a damn she'd been left like that, not to him. He meant every word of what he'd said on Christmas Eve.
Hearing voices outside, he held his breath. Held his breath? He almost suffocated. Eudora. Charlie. His ears strained above the wild tumult in his chest. He couldn't help it. Her.