Free Letters to a Lady by Joan Smith Page A

watch house preacher, lad.”
    Realizing that the servant thought Ronald was alone, Diana held her breath and prayed her brother wouldn’t tell the man she was there. Though he wouldn’t purposely hurt a fly, it would be just like him to blurt it out. She began looking around for a weapon to knock the servant out and free Ronald. At least the man didn’t carry a gun.
    Before she could find anything, the man took Ronald by the arm and hauled him from the study, thinking he’d caught an ordinary criminal, come to loot the flat. She listened, heart pounding, as Ronald protested his innocence. “An outrage! I just came to borrow a book.”
    “And decided to let yourself in by smashing the glass. Lucky chance for me I was only next door having a heavy wet with a buddy and heard you. Come along easy, lad. It’d be a shame to have to darken your pretty daylights and draw your cork.”
    These menacing words turned Ronald completely docile. He allowed himself to be taken away, and Diana found herself alone and shaking like a leaf in Lord Markwell’s study. As the flat was now empty, she left by the front door and ran around the corner to Harrup’s carriage, to follow Ronald to whatever watch house he was taken to. When she saw him being led in, she pulled the check string and spoke to Harrup’s groom.
    “Would it be proper for a young lady to go in and bail him out?” she asked calmly.
    “No, miss. It wouldn’t. What you’d best do is tell his lordship what happened.”
    “Oh, I don’t think it’s a very good idea to bother his lordship,” she said, biting her underlip. “Perhaps you would be kind enough?” she suggested, glancing to the watch house.
    “You need bail money, you see, miss, which I don’t have. ‘Sides beyond, they’d not put him under the protection of such a one as myself. It’s his lordship you must tell.’’
    “Very well,” she agreed, and settled back against the squabs, clutching the precious letters. Harrup couldn’t cut up very stiff when she had recovered his letters. She ardently hoped the Grodens were not making a night of it at the house.
    John Groom apparently deemed the errand urgent, for he bolted the carriage in great haste to Belgrave Square, while Diana was jostled around inside. She went around to the kitchen door to discover who was in the house.
    “Good Lord above us,” Miss Peabody shrieked when she saw her bedraggled charge, her hair tumbling about her ears; her gown was soiled and ripped at the waist from squirming in the window, and the hem of her dress covered in mud. “What happened to you?”
    “We had an accident,” Diana said briefly. “Ronald is—is just fine. I left him off at his rooms. Is Harrup here, and have the Grodens left?”
    “They just went out the door a minute ago. Diana, you must not let Harrup see you like that. Where is your cape? Was it stolen?”
    “My cape!” she exclaimed. “Oh, dear!” It was not fear of being identified by the garment that bothered her, but its loss. It was her very best, especially beloved for its sable collar. “I’ll have to go back for it.”
    “Back where? Where did it happen?”
    “It’s rather urgent, Peabody. I’ll see Harrup first, then tell you.”
    “He’s in his study,” Mrs. Dunaway told her.
    “Thank you, Mrs. Dunaway,” Diana said very formally, and scampered upstairs, her muddied hem dragging behind her.
    Harrup had just sat at his desk and poured himself a glass of wine. He was weary from an evening with his in-laws-to-be. Groden was a dead bore, his lady a mute, and with the parents along, there had been no privacy with Selena. In fact, the girl hardly glanced at him. A shy little thing, but beautiful. His eyes glazed over as he remembered her raven curls and ivory skin, her pellucid blue eyes and those cherry lips. She was very well built for a young girl, too. He looked up impatiently when the tap came at the door.
    “Come in.”
    The door opened slowly, and a bedraggled person