one else heard it, and they won’t. I already swore Dougie to silence. He knows he’ll be turned off without a reference if he breathes a word of it to anyone else, including the other lads.”
“Thank you, Tanner.”
He went back into the house, feeling strangely numb, and knocked on Lord Ravenscar’s door. Ravenscar came to the door, glowering, with his nightcap on his balding head and a dressing gown flung hastily around his shoulders.
In a low voice, Michael explained what he had learned. Ravenscar stared back at him blankly for a long moment, then his cheeks flushed red. “What? What are you saying?” he barked. “Do you dare to imply that—”
“I am not implying anything,” Michael responded coolly. “I am just asking if Lady Ravenscar might step into Miss Aincourt’s room and see if she is in her bed.”
Ravenscar looked as if he would have liked to shut the door in Michael’s face, but after a moment he turned away, and Michael heard him talking to his wife. Michael stepped a few feet away and waited. A few moments later Lady Ravenscar rushed out of the room, a dressing gown wrapped around her, the ribbons of her nightcap fluttering as she rushed down the hall. Michael caught only a glimpse of her face, but he saw that it was white and taut with fear. He was suddenly sure that she knew something her husband did not.
Lord Ravenscar went down the hall after her at a more stately pace. Before he reached the door, his wife stepped back out into the hall. If possible, her face was even paler than before. She looked at her husband, then at Michael, fumbling for words. Impatiently, Ravenscar shoved past her into the room. Michael strode down the hall to Rachel’s mother and took her arm to steady her. She looked as if she were about to faint.
“She’s gone, then?” he asked in a low voice.
Lady Ravenscar nodded dumbly, tears pooling in her eyes. She raised her hands to her cheeks. “I don’t know what he will say.” She cast an anxious glance behind her toward the room into which her husband had gone.
Michael steered her into Rachel’s room and closed the door behind him, guiding Lady Ravenscar to a chair. Ravenscar stood in the middle of the room, shock turning to rage on his face.
“Are any of her things gone?” Michael asked quickly, forestalling the imminent explosion from Ravenscar.
Lady Ravenscar shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Her vanity set is still there.” She gestured toward the dresser, where a silver-backed set of brush, mirror and comb lay.
Michael glanced around the room. The bed had been turned down, the fire banked. A woman’s white nightdress and dressing gown were tossed onto the bed. She had dressed for bed, he surmised—no doubt because of the presence of her maid—then had discarded the nightclothes and redressed, slipping out into the night. There was no sign of a letter on the bed or anywhere else. He wondered if she had gone out wothout intending to leave the estate, or if she had left her things behind to conceal what she had done for a while longer.
“Do you have any idea who he is?” Michael asked Lady Ravenscar.
“Of course not!” Ravenscar snapped.
Michael noticed that Lady Ravenscar cast a furtive glance at her husband but said nothing. He turned to Lord Ravenscar. “They have not been gone long, and Dougie said they were riding double. It is quite likely that we can catch up with them if we leave quickly. I will send down to the groom to saddle two horses if you want to accompany me.”
Ravenscar, still looking as if he might fly into a rage at any moment, nodded his head shortly. “I’ll get dressed.”
He strode out of the room. Lady Ravenscar started to follow, but Michael laid a hand on her arm. “Do you know his name, my lady?”
Rachel’s mother cast him an agonized glance. “I—I’m not sure. There was a man—the silly girl thought she had developed a tendre for someone. But I made sure he was not admitted to our house any longer and that she was never alone. She hasn’t seen him in four months, I would swear it. I thought she had forgotten him.”
“What is his name?” He had to know, though it cost him some pride to ask.
“Anthony Birkshaw.”
“Birkshaw.” Michael cast around in his mind for a face to go with the name. He faintly remembered a darkly handsome young man among the flock who had hung around Rachel before her engagement. “She loved him when she accepted my proposal?”
“Love? The chit doesn’t know what love is!” Lady Ravenscar retorted contemptuously. “She was flattered, and he was a presentable young man. I explained to her that it was impossible. She knew where her duty lay. I cannot imagine what can have possessed her to throw away her future like this.”
Her duty. The words lay like lead in his chest. He was the duty her family had laid upon her. He had known she did not love him, but there had been hope. But the knowledge that she loved another, that she had fled from Michael at the last moment, unable to bear the thought of wedding him, cut through him like a knife.
There was a part of him that wanted in that moment to simply go back to his room and shut the door, to let her go to her love, to simply wrap himself around with his misery and let Ravenscar answer the storm of questions from the guests.
But he knew that he could not. He had seen the light of fury in Ravenscar’s eyes. He could not allow him to catch up to Rachel alone. Besides, her reputation would be damaged beyond repair if word of what she had done this night got out. The scandal would stain his name, as well, of course, but he was the injured party, after all, and, after this, once again a highly eligible bachelor. He cared little for London Society, anyway, and he could ride out the storm alone up here at Westhampton, far away from the pitying glances and malicious whispers about what had driven the Aincourt girl to take such drastic measures.
It would be Rachel who would be excoriated by the gossip. Leaving a bridegroom almost literally at the altar…eloping to Gretna Green, with the several nights spent alone with a man, unmarried, that that would entail…her reputation would be in shreds after this. Whispers would follow her all her life. There would be many hostesses who would not invite her to parties or receive her if she called on them. Of course, given what Lady Ravenscar had said about Birkshaw’s finances, doubtless Rachel would not be able to afford to move in her family’s social circle any longer, anyway. She would be living in some rented room, not sure where her next meal was coming from, mending her dresses because she could not afford new ones, no doubt burdened even further by children whom she would have to worry about feeding, too.
Michael supposed that such a gloomy picture of Rachel’s future should have assuaged his spirits somewhat, but he found he could not bear to think of her in such dire circumstances. She had been unutterably foolish. Why had she accepted his proposal? Why had she not told him that she loved someone else? But the ruin of her life was too cruel a punishment for her adolescent mistake. He had to find her and stop her from throwing away her future.
So, turning away from Lady Ravenscar, he went out to ride after Rachel.
4
Michael sighed and stood up, running his hands over his face tiredly. It had been a long time since he had thought about the night when Rachel ran away from him. For the first two years of his marriage, that night had haunted him constantly, but over time the memory of it had blessedly receded. But when it did come to mind, as now,
