The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,21
needed help. Comfort. For this anguish only existed because she’d never felt her mother’s warmth in the first place, and had set off to find someone, anyone, to hold her.
Wyndham shook his meaty finger in the air. “I don’t pretend to know the facts, girl, but one thing is clear to me. Finn is looking for a fight. Your mother and I won’t stand for it. Our family name has been dragged through the mud enough, don’t you think?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “I’ll give you one month. That’s long enough for you to return to London and place the boy with his father. I don’t care which man that is, so long as you’re sure he’s the right one. I want the gossipmongers silenced, do you hear?”
She could only consider him mutely. Her whole world, her son, hung over the edge of a precipice. How dare Nicholas come here? How dare he?
Wyndham’s thick brows drew together. “If you don’t end this farce in one month, I will choose for you. Lady Montborne may have tugged at your mother’s heartstrings, but I smell a rat. When it’s my word and the captain’s against yours and that feckless Alexander boy’s, whose do you think the courts are going to believe?”
She knew one thing for certain. It would never, ever be hers. Her father had the influence to make good on his threat with a snap of his fingers. In one month, he would snatch away her baby…if he could find her.
She didn’t wait for daybreak. An hour before the sun rose, she thrust her precious son, his nurse and the balance of her entourage into the two carriages and gave the order to pull away.
Now she could run. The last string tying her to England had truly been severed. Her parents didn’t love her. Moreover, her own father had just become a threat greater than Nicholas himself.
Her carriages made haste for the port city of Ellesmere. From there, she might sail to Dublin, or north to Scotland. France was out of the question, as was the majority of the Continent due to the ravages of the recently ended war, but it hardly mattered where she landed next. She would never be safe in England, so long as her father was willing to set the law on her.
Maybe Ireland wasn’t far enough. Could she be extradited? How was she to know?
Mrs. Dalton rode rear-facing. Her wide brown eyes shone in the dark. In that direction churned another question: would the nursemaid come, too? What about the rest of her staff? None of them had intended to defect when she’d told them to pack for Shropshire. What if they refused to follow? What would she do alone in Dublin, with a few pieces of jewelry and a small coin purse, while waiting for the post to travel back and forth between her solicitor and herself?
If she was declared a fugitive, would her accounts be frozen?
It was all so overwhelming. She’d have to see to severing her lease and organize the removal of her personal effects, all from another country. A new city where she’d have to set up her life all over again…for the third time within a single year.
She was too exhausted to close her eyes, and then there was Oliver to mind. This time, she hadn’t been strong enough to let him out of her sight. She’d directed Oliver, Mrs. Dalton and the large bag filled with Oliver’s necessities to her carriage, rather than the second. Elizabeth held his small body upright while he bounced on his baby legs. His soft fingers gripped hers and he gurgled happily. She had to be strong. She must do this. Otherwise, he would never know her. He would grow up thinking she hadn’t loved him. He might even believe she’d abandoned him—there was no telling what Nicholas would claim.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, she estimated there were a few hours yet before they arrived at Ellesmere. If the weather held, she might have six more hours of sunlight. Even so, the horses must be changed again before they continued on. She rapped on the carriage ceiling and fished out a coin from her velvet satchel. If they must stop, they should rest a moment, too. There were few taverns along the sparsely populated road and Mrs. Dalton looked half-starved.
They were seen into a private dining room while the rest of the servants were given ale and a meal in the