Free Scandal in the Night by Elizabeth Essex Page B

with her at a London ball. So he did her the honor of spitting into his own hand, and once more grasping hers in his own, sealing their pact.
    And with it, sealing his fate.

 
    Chapter Six
     
 
    Catriona took the narrow, twisting steps of Wimbourne Manor’s servants’ stair two at a time. She had to make haste. She had to move now, while the household was still at sixes and sevens. While she was alone and free to go. Before anyone could stop her. Or kill her.
    If Lord Jeffrey’s groundsmen were chasing tracks to the south, she would go north. There was a mail coach that came through the village at two o’clock every afternoon that would take her north to Windsor and from there east toward London and the docks. There was time enough to catch that.
    Or if she missed it, she would simply find a farm cart going east toward the forest. Anywhere but south. If asked along the road, she would concoct some likely story about going on to London after leaving an imaginary sailor husband at Portsmouth.
    It ought to shame her, the ease and willingness with which she thought up such lies. It really ought. But honesty was a luxury she could no longer afford. Not now, not really in India, and certainly not before that, in Scotland. Oh, no. Every year it had become even harder and more expensive to cleave to the truth.
    Despite her normal state of fitness, bolstered by long walks and plenty of exuberant play with the children, Catriona was winded by the time she reached the sanctuary of the lovely, light-filled suite of rooms Lady Jeffrey had created for her charges at the top of the house. Or perhaps it was just the shock of seeing Tanvir Singh—who was really Thomas Jellicoe—that had her pausing to catch her breath in the doorway of the schoolroom.
    The room was quiet now that it was empty of the children, almost serene. Oh, but she liked it better when it wasn’t serene, when they were having loud discussions, when the room hummed with young energy. Catriona was bitterly proud of all she had accomplished there. Of the work that covered the walls—the botanical specimens, the time line of English kings, and the map of the county hung with the flagged pins of all the places she and the children had visited and explored together—but most especially of the bonds she had created with the children. It was a terrible, bitter wrench to have to leave it. To have to leave them.
    To leave another family.
    Catriona had to dash some reprehensible wetness from her eyes—she refused to call it tears. Refused. Sentiment was another luxury she could ill afford.
    “Miss?” Annie Farrier, one of the upstairs maids, hurried down the corridor. “Lady Jeffrey sent me to bring you to her rooms.”
    Catriona turned away from the schoolroom and took a deep, steadying breath. And with it she drew on Miss Anne Cates’s cheerful composure as if it were a sensible, well-made cloak. “Of course, Annie. Thank you. Will you be so kind as to let her ladyship know I’ll be down to see her as soon as I have put myself to rights? I’m sure my face is smirched with dirt, and as for my hat—” She plucked at the knotted and mangled ribbons hanging from her throat. “I very much fear it’s ruined beyond all hope of restoration.”
    “Oh, no, miss. Surely not.” Annie reached out and carefully dusted something off the brim. “Just a good brushing, a bit of steam, and new ribbon, and it’ll be right as rain. You’ll recover it yet.”
    “Thank you. I hope you’re right. It would be a shocking waste, would it not, to lose a hat so fine?” It was not in actuality a fine hat. It was a merely ordinary hat. But it was her only hat. A hat she had purchased in Paris with the hush money the dowager Duchess Westing had left for her—just left it, the heavy purse, with the same casual accident with which the shrewd old woman had also left behind an expensive pair of gloves. Gloves which Catriona had also kept to cover her browned and blistered hands. She