Page 56 of The Runaway Duchess

Advertisements for sulfur hair restorers. Wine of phosphates. Wholesale coals and potatoes. “The Tale of the Cat-Hammed Cow,” a humorous skit for sale at the undermentioned booksellers for sixpence.

Nothing about a missing duchess.

Cranbrook had kept things quiet. She didn’t have to worry that every farmer in the West Country had been mobilized to flush her from the hedges.

A wan sorrow mixed with her relief. Her mother had been expecting her to write from Fowey. Cranbrook would have to have told her. Shouldn’t her mother have forced Cranbrook’s hand, gone to the police herself, scandal be damned? For all she knew, her only daughter was dead in a ditch.

It helped Lavinia, of course, the lack of public outcry. She didn’t want to be found.

But it also hurt.

By the time she and Neal had boarded the second train, she’d managed to let go of her sorrow and her fear. In part, because she hadn’t let go of Neal. Touch bolstered her. She began to feel a bit giddy with him at her side. His presence comforted and excited her at once.

He wasn’t hers. He couldn’t be. She’d have to let go eventually.

Unless.

She watched as he followed the grandfatherly ostler into the inn. He hadn’t kissed her in the cab, as she’d imagined he might. He’d seemed preoccupied, distant. Something weighed on his mind.

His mother’s illness, perhaps. He would move heaven and earth for his mother, it was obvious. And if he had gone missing at Bodmin Station, that mother would doubtless be out scouring the hills herself, no matter how sick she was.

Lavinia stood in the sun, not caring that it warmed her cheeks. Birds were twittering. Her sorrow returned, stole up on her. She missed her old life in London, before everything fell apart. But no, it wasn’t so simple. The seeds of destruction had been sown long before they bore fruit, long before George’s death and her papa’s imprisonment. What she missed was a fiction, the belief that hers was, would always be, a charmed existence.

Two small boys went pelting past. An even smaller girl ran after them, but she tripped and went sprawling, the half-eaten bun in her hand rolling across the cobbles. The cab horse stretched its neck, plucked at the bun delicately with its lips, and devoured it in two bites. The little girl sat up, eyes filled with angry tears.

“Mean old horse,” she said. Lavinia walked the few steps to the girl and crouched down beside her. Princess gowns didn’t permit such indelicate postures. But Lavinia wore a blue cotton dress, with forgiving pleats, one of Emmeline’s, which she’d traded for her lilac silk with the Swiss waist. Not in the least fashionable, but tremendously comfortable, lightweight, permitting ease of movement. With her hair in a simple twist, she blended.

“That looked like a very good bun,” she said. “Was it cinnamon?”

The girl’s sticky mouth showed definite signs that it was cinnamon. Her brow furrowed.

“It’s all gone,” she said accusingly, still glaring at the horse.

“Well then, let’s get another,” said Lavinia, and put out her hand. “We can share it. Would you like that?”

The little girl’s hot fingers closed around Lavinia’s thumb.

The bakery door tinkled as they pushed it open, and the woman behind the counter looked up from the tray of buns she was sliding into place. She had the same wide-set hazel eyes as the girl, the same heart-shaped face.

“I told you not to go running off after your brothers.” She sighed. “Look at your poor elbows.” She sounded more amused than angry. The little girl went up on her tiptoes and flung an arm onto the counter, feeling for a bun.

“You’ll burn yourself on the tray,” said the woman, slapping the little girl’s hand lightly with a floury rag. “Leave over, now. You already had your sugar bun.”

“Horse ate it,” said the little girl, looking to Lavinia for confirmation.

“It’s true,” said Lavinia, stepping forward. “A mean old horse. I told her I’d buy her another.”

“If there’s one thing this child doesn’t want for, it’s sugar buns. Thank you all the same.” The woman smiled a broad, gap-toothed smile. She was pretty, and young, and female, but she wasn’t looking at Lavinia with antipathy. In fact, she wore a decidedly friendly expression.

“I saw you and your husband drive past,” she said, and Lavinia tried to ignore the flutter in her stomach. Neal. Her husband. What if that were the truth of it?

Mrs. Traymayne. Happily married. Easily befriended by wayward children and women who worked in bakeries.

Mrs. Traymayne would never feel this odd loneliness, this sense that she belonged nowhere.

“You’ve just arrived, and already you’re scraping my Annie off the ground.” The woman shook her head. “Usually a newcomer can expect an hour of peace before she steps on one of my children.” She sighed. “Welcome to Mawbyn.”

Lavinia left the bakery with a package of two sugar buns, Annie gripping her thumb in one hand, a bun of her own in the other. Neal was standing outside the inn looking down the street. He turned and she saw the moment he saw her. How his body stilled. Then he folded his arms across his chest. The cabdriver had climbed back up to his seat and chirruped to the horse, which began clopping toward them.