crowded conditions there. It had shocked him for sure to see them out here, and made his beloved countryside seem an alien place.
He’d known that times were bad. He’d read the letters from home, listened to James rant about news in the papers. But that wasn’t the same as seeing it, not by a long shot. He knew Lucy felt the same; he’d seen it in her face as they traveled. And not a blessed thing he could do about it.
Now, she sat slumped across from him in the loud, smoky room, every line of her showing how tired she was. “Eat your dinner,” Ethan urged. “You need to keep your strength up.” To set an example, he took a bite of stew. It was passable, not like the swill at the last stop.
“What’ll we do when we’re there?” Lucy asked wearily, and not for the first time.
Ethan didn’t mind repeating himself. “We’ll go to Sir Alexander’s place first. It’s nearest where the stage stops. They all know me there, o’ course, and they’ll lend me a horse. I’ll ride over to Lady Isabella’s house. It’s not far. And then we shall see.”
“What if she’s not there? What if we made a…?”
“The note said the country. Has to be her house. Where else would it be?”
Lucy’s lip trembled. “Oh, Ethan, what if something bad’s happened to Miss Charlotte?”
“Now why would it? No need to think that.” Though how could you help it, Ethan thought, with the way things had been going.
“What else am I to think?” Lucy pushed her stew around the plate.
“Eat,” Ethan urged her again. He spooned down his own portion. “And quit worrying. I’ll take care of this,” he assured her.
“How? We don’t even know what it is…”
“However I can. However I have to. I’d do anything for you, Lucy.” The flash of fear in her face touched him. He longed to sweep her into his arms, and for far more than comfort.
“You mustn’t… you must take care. If there’s danger… you don’t think Miss Lizzy could have been right, do you? About kidnappers?”
He shook his head. “Don’t see how. Doesn’t make sense.”
Lucy extended a hand across the table. Ethan took it and held it in his much larger one. His heart swelled within him, and he smiled at her. What better could a man ask than to help and protect those he loved? Yes, he’d like to take her upstairs to bed, and so he would someday. For now, her trust in him was almost as gratifying. “Don’t you worry, Lucy,” he said again. “We’ll make it right.” The smile she gave him in return, tears glittering in her pretty blue eyes, made Ethan feel he could do anything.
Twenty-two
Alec Wylde was as tired as he had ever been in his life. He’d had little sleep since the journey up from London, and what he had managed was fitful, plagued either by dreams of fire and disaster or by vivid visions of Charlotte warm and eager in his arms. Whenever he thought of her, which was constantly despite the troubles he was trying to resolve, he regretted leaving her so soon after their time together. He should have… he didn’t know what he should have done, and that was the crux of the problem.
Failure seemed to be his lot just now. He rode the countryside trying to calm the people, to save them from their own justifiable anger. If they turned to violence, they’d be hunted down and hanged; that he knew. This government had proved it again and again. On his own lands, they listened, but of course they had received some assistance. Beyond its boundaries he was met with sullenness or fury or—worst—a broken recitation of rightful grievances. He had no remedy for these and no answer for the stares of hungry children and their desperate parents.
This morning he was headed for the main southern road; rumor suggested that a group of men intended to set up a barricade there, to disrupt travel in that direction. Nothing was more likely to attract the army and result in arrests and the kind of executions they’d seen in Nottingham not so long ago. He would try to reason with them, dredge his exhausted brain for some argument that would move them. But he wasn’t optimistic. Some of these men believed the government would make changes if they were forced, and they didn’t want to hear the contrary. Well, he wished it himself, though he couldn’t have that