Page 60 of The Sprinter
“Dead?” Maggie said laughing. “Now that’s a joke, as I never did see Lady Barlow more alive than she’s been these weeks past. Nurse Maddington here has got your ma back on her feet again.”
“I don’t understand,” Grace said, her thoughts spinning in tight circles of relief and confusion. “Lady Marilyn sent a carriage for me and I received a letter from that lady as well as from my mother.”
“A carriage?” Maggie said. “I wonder how she could do it? She only has the one and it was here to take your mother to the Munsons’. How does it get all the way to London and back since then?”
“Then, she did not get a new carriage?” Grace said. “And my mother isn’t dying? And I suppose the nurse did not drive you and Cook from the house?”
“Nurse Maddington drive us from the house?” Maggie said laughing. “We’ve been gettin’ on like wool on sheep, we have.”
Grace sank down on a chair. Nothing she had believed for the past few hours was true. Her mother was alive! But who would wish to make her believe she was dying?
The nurse approached her warily. “There dove, I think your nerves have got the better of you. Like mother like daughter, I expect. Maggie, perhaps a bit of sherry from my special bottle?”
“Well, I thought…that is, I was told…that you’d done something to my mother.”
The nurse laughed, rich and deep. “Oh, I done something to her all right. I got her up, I got her some fresh air, and I got her some good food. She hardly needs me now, I don’t think, but she says I must stay. She rather enjoys speeding ahead of me on our walks and tells me she would miss it.”
Grace did not know how she came to be in a carriage that was not Lady Marilyn’s, racing to her apparently not dying mother late at night. But it seemed that was what happened.
What had also happened was that she had run from the masque without a word to Lady Heathway. She had been tricked, she had run off again for no reason, and she’d most probably embarrassed Lady Heathway and all her family. Again.
Mr. Jacobs must have planned it. Grace did not think there was anybody else capable of it or wishing her such ill-will. Lord Gresham did not wish her a happy future, but he would never be so outrageous as to embarrass Lady Heathway in such a manner. Though, if itwasMr. Jacobs, she could not fathom how he’d done it. The letter from her mother had been in her own handwriting! At least, she’d thought so.
She must be grateful that the letter had not been from Lady Barlow after all. What mattered most was that her mother still lived. And thrived, apparently. Lady Barlow had not been out to an evening entertainment since the viscount died.
Of course, it also mattered that she’d fallen for the trick.
But who drove the carriage? She might be able to pry some information out of that footman who had apparently lied so smoothly.
Grace raced to the door and flung it open.
The moonlight showed the drive empty. The carriage was gone. It must have gone so stealthily, at a slow walk, to get away without her hearing it.
Whoever those devils were, they had disappeared into the night.
Grace stood very still. In the distance she could faintly hear the pounding hooves of a horse. It sounded like a lone horse, though. It could not be the carriage, that was long gone.
She could never go back to London. As kind as Lady Heathway was, Grace was all but certain she would not be wanted back after this disaster.
She would never seehimagain. She would never lay eyes on Lord Gresham again.
What was wrong with her? That was the least of her problems! She was supposed to be practical and steely-eyed and devoid of silly emotion. She was supposed to be rescuing her mother out of this wretched cottage.
Instead, she was pining over a gentleman who had no interest in her, other than making sure she did not embarrass his family again. Which she had just handily done. It was a disaster! No matter who she married, if she ever had a chance to marry anybody, she would always think of him. She would compare and be dissatisfied—dissatisfied with whatever poor man she’d married and dissatisfied with herself for being dissatisfied. And especially dissatisfied that she’d been such an idiot!
What a fool Grace Yardley was, to have ruined her own chances. She turned and shut the door against the empty moonlit drive.
The nurse had brought her a glass of sherry, a rather large glass she thought. Grace took it gratefully—she would need courage to face down the next few hours. Her mother would return from her card party and Grace would have to inform her that their chances of escape from Barlow House were ruined. She would like to have been able to say that they were ruined through no fault of her own, but that was not the truth. She had been rash and impulsive and ill-considered. Twice. She had not depended upon the wisdom of Lady Heathway, though that lady had proved her worth time and time again.
Nurse Maddington had guided her to a chair and sat her down as if she had become a patient, along with her mother.
At this moment, she must just keep the one piece of good news at the forefront of her mind. Lady Barlow lived and found herself well enough to attend a card party. Whatever was to happen next, she still had her mother.
A sudden clatter of hoofbeats and a pounding on the door caused Grace to almost drop her glass.
Chapter Seventeen
The pounding onthe door had caused them all to stare at it.
