I hope you do marry her, Alex, because if you don’t, I will. What a sneaky little—”
“Marry her?” It was Luc’s turn to scowl. “Who said anything about marrying her?”
Alex stopped listening. She couldn’t get far on foot. She knew that. He’d track her down and— Another dreadful thought occurred to him. He started running down the lane toward the clearing where he and Seb had left their mounts. She wouldn’t—
She would.
Seb’s horse was happily chomping the foliage, but a patch of trampled grass was the only indication that Bey had ever been there.
Alex raised his fists to heaven and counted to ten, then exhaled slowly, but he could still feel a muscle ticking in his jaw and the blood pounding in his temples.
The thieving little baggage! She’d stolen his horse, and all of the jewels. The only one she didn’t have was the sapphire in his pocket.
Bloody woman!
He stalked back to the others.
Did she think she could hide from him forever? He’d chase her down. And not because of the jewels—he truly didn’t care who had the bloody things anymore—but because he simply couldn’t imagine life without her. She was a brilliant, conniving, sneaky little weasel. And he was fatally in love with her.
Alex kicked a stone with the toe of his boot. Seb was right. Marrying her to protect her was just an excuse. He wanted the daily battles marriage to her would provide. The teasing and the banter and the irritation. He wanted her, body and soul.
He’d do whatever it took to get her back. He’d find her and make her marry him, dammit. If nothing else, she should accept him out of sheer gratitude for sparing her from imprisonment. For getting Danton off her back.
He kicked the stone again, harder, sending it skittering into a tree stump. No. That wasn’t true. He wanted her to accept him because she returned his feelings. Because she loved him, too.
Did she? He thought she might. She’d given herself to him, hadn’t she? She desired him physically. But could that make up for the resentment she bore him for catching her? Was it completely idiotic to imagine they could ever make a life together?
Where the hell had she gone?
Chapter 42.
Emmy hadn’t visited her parents’ graves for months. It took her a little while to locate them, even in the pale morning light.
The grass was wet with dew. A few tendrils of mist snaked eerily around the tombstones as she unfolded the rug she’d brought with her and sat. She wasn’t afraid; the dead couldn’t hurt her. Only the living could do that. And besides, at this hour, there were only a few servants and tradesmen about in the streets. No one would bother her.
She leaned forward and placed a tiny bunch of violets on each grave—the little purple petals were already drooping.
She hadn’t slept since she’d stolen the jewels from the coach and galloped away on Alex’s magnificent Arabian stallion. She’d gone to the one place she, Luc, and Sally had always agreed she would go in just such an emergency: the lodgings of Sally’s actress friend Molly O’Keene.
Molly’s small apartment was, ironically, less than a quarter mile from Bow Street, conveniently near Covent Garden and Drury Lane, but it was a world away from the refinement of St. James’s Square. It was the perfect place to hide—under Harland’s very nose.
Molly hadn’t asked any questions when Emmy had arrived close to midnight, her hair a tangled mess from her wild gallop, her cheeks red from the wind. She’d welcomed her inside, summoned a lad she trusted to deliver Bey back to the Tricorn without being accosted, and had shown Emmy upstairs to a cramped but comfortable attic room.
Emmy had collapsed on the small truckle bed, her body exhausted but her mind spinning. So many schemes. Her brain was practically bursting with them. She’d lain awake, trying to sort through all the endless permutations of what to do next. Dawn had found her no closer to an answer, but she’d been seized by the need to come here, to her father and mother, for clarity.
Father had been very specific about where he wanted to be buried, next to her mother, here in this quiet London churchyard. Emmy sighed. Her parents had loved one another deeply. Her mother had died trying to bring her younger brother into the world, and while Emmy could barely remember her, perhaps her father’s decision to become the Nightjar had been an understandable way for him to