if oddly educational, search of the gardens, they returned to the anteroom carrying an emerald-green silk domino and the remains of a half mask missing some of its green glass stones.
Regina could barely put one foot in front of the other. They’d found the—dear Lord, Robin Goodfellow had called what they’d found evidence—at the very back of the gardens, near a gate that led to an alleyway, and he’d noted that there looked to be signs of a small struggle.
In any event, in any case, Miranda was gone.
Regina plunked herself down in the chair beside a terrified Doris Ann, put her masked face in her hands and at last gave in to despair.
Her cousin was gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Abducted.
“Stay here,” Robin Goodfellow told her and then placed his hand on her shoulder and waited until she managed to nod that she’d heard him. “I’ll take this domino and mask with me and show them around to the servants. There has to be someone who remembers seeing your cousin earlier in the evening. Maybe that someone remembers who she was with at that time.”
“Miss Regina?”
Regina raised her head and carefully eased the mask away from her face enough to wipe at her wet cheeks. “We’ll find her, Doris Ann.”
“Yes, Miss. But if we don’t?”
Regina’s entire body sagged at the question.
She would have to tell Mama, who would cry and bring up Grandmother Hackett again. Papa would be livid that she might have destroyed his dream to marry her to a nobleman. They’d have to tell Aunt Claire and Uncle Seth. They’d be aghast, terrified.
And everyone would blame her.
Not that such a minor thing mattered. What mattered was that Miranda was gone, God only knew where and to what purpose.
Regina picked up a green glass stone that had fallen into her lap.
And she hadn’t gone voluntarily.
She squeezed her hand around the stone and closed her eyes, began to pray.
“Regina?”
She looked up at the sound of her name, frowning before she remembered that Robin Goodfellow must have heard Doris Ann refer to her as such. She quickly got to her feet. “You’ve learned something?”
“A little. We need to go now.”
“Go? But I can’t leave. What if Miranda comes back? She’d need me to be here.”
“She won’t be coming back.” He signaled for Doris Ann to come with them and led them outside to the street, where a strange coach awaited, a footman holding open the door, the steps down and waiting. “On my honor, such as it is, after a very brief stop at my residence for a change of shirt and cravat, I am taking you directly home, wherever that is. I will accompany you inside and speak with your mother and whomever else you wish me to speak with, telling them whatever story the two of us manage to conjure up on the way. I’ve already worked out the broad strokes, but I will leave it to you to fill in the details.”
“But … but we have to tell them the truth.”
“Only as a last resort and only if you make a botch of the lie. Remember, your father was in attendance tonight. I doubt he’d be best pleased to know his daughter had been here, as well,” he said, handing her up into the coach. “How trustworthy is the maid?”
“Doris Ann?” Regina’s mind was whirling. He had just said he was driving her to his residence? So that he might change out of his shirt? Was she being abducted now? “Doris Ann will not be questioned. She’s only the maid.”
“And lucky for her that she is. Aren’t you, Doris Ann?”
The maid bobbed her head in agreement.
“And she won’t say a word to anyone, or else she will be escorted out onto the street without a reference, if not tossed into gaol. Will you, Doris Ann?”
The maid shook her head so violently her mobcap flew off.
“Good. I located the coachman and groom without much difficulty, and they have been persuaded to believe they have been beset by a band of cutthroats who dragged your cousin off at pistol point before disabling the coach, which is why it will not return to your cousin’s domicile until morning. Damned uncivilized place, London, even in the finest neighborhoods at times. I’m surprised anyone is safe. Related to the Earl of Mentmore, are you?”
Regina’s head was spinning. “How … how …”
“The crest on the door. Only an idiot would arrive at Lady Fortesque’s ball in such an easily recognizable coach. How do you think I located the correct coach so easily? You’re not very proficient at intrigue, are you?”
“But you are?”
“As a matter of fact, yes, I am, luckily for you. And now that we’re settled on that head, my coachman has been instructed to drive straight to the mews behind my residence, where you will remain with the coach while I nip inside to rid myself of this betraying costume. You have between now and the time I return to come up with any missing details sufficient to the problem. I suggest you think in terms of where you were, why you were farther afield from wherever you should have been, why you have no chaperone and why you weren’t taken, as well.”
“I … I stabbed the man who had hold of me. With my hat pin, the one Mama says all chaste young ladies always carry with them. And … and he let me go.”
“Very good, for a beginning,” Robin Goodfellow complimented as the coach pulled into a narrow alleyway and stopped just outside a stable. “Perhaps even too good. You’ve the makings of a commendable liar, Regina.”
“Yes, I know. It’s in my blood,” she said forlornly as he opened the door and jumped out, even before the coach had come to a complete halt.
While Doris Ann sat sniffling, Regina did her best to concentrate on the fib—the great, big, whopping lie—she would tell her mother. Except that her mother had been left alone with her “company,” and even if the wine had been watered, by this time of night she would be of no help to Regina or to anybody.
And her father? Regina felt her stomach turn over inside her. No, her father wouldn’t be at home when she arrived in any case. How she loathed the man. He was as base and as common and as uncouth as … as any man who would sink to attending such a licentious ball.
She reminded herself that Robin Goodfellow had been there.
This did nothing to lighten her mood, which was rapidly descending into the very depths of desolation.
Yet Miranda’s brother had received an invitation. There were bound to have been other men, supposed gentlemen of the ton, in attendance.
Were all men so base?
It really was too bad she had no desire to enter a nunnery….
“Miss Regina? How can we go home without Miss Miranda? Her mama will be that upset, and his lordship will go spare, he really will.”
Regina
