Page 83 of The Runaway Duchess

She sipped her ale. When she looked at last to Neal, he was leaning on his elbow, head angled toward Muriel, talking easily. In Latin. Not entirely in Latin, of course. But Latin enough that Lavinia was shut out completely.

Eventually, they segued into English, so they could debate the theories of Charles Darwin.

Finally, Lavinia rose to make her exit. Neal and Muriel sat surrounded by empty glasses, locked in a heated exchange about intelligent design.

Neal broke off as she stood, looking up at her in confusion, almost as though he’d forgotten who she was. Or more accurately: as though he’d remembered he hadn’t known in the first place.

“I’ll accompany you,” he said, but she shook her head. His house was around the corner from the hotel. And he’d been mid-sentence, eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. She could see how eager he was to express the idea forming behind them.

“You were about to make a point,” she said. “Science isn’t incompatible with faith because . . .”

She left them to it.

—

It was well past midnight when she finally heard Neal’s footsteps in the hall. She hadn’t wished that he’d stop at her room, that he’d knock. That would only have made things harder.

He hadn’t stopped.

He hadn’t knocked.

She rose early, but not before Mrs. Lampshire. The kind housekeeper hurried about, spectacles winking in the gaslights. She was confused, clearly, that Lavinia was leaving so early. And leaving alone. But she packed saffron buns for her journey and roused the other members of Neal’s small staff to see her safely off to the station.

Wrapped in her warmest shawl, Lavinia waited on the platform with her trunk.

The train wouldn’t depart until nine. Under normal circumstances, Neal would wake long before.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. He’d been out late, drinking deeply, communing with Muriel.

What a poor Mrs. Pendrake Lavinia had made! The contrast confirmed it.

She gave a small cough, pulling her shawl more tightly around her. A crumb of the saffron bun she’d been nibbling had lodged in her throat. That was why her eyes were watering.

Swallows swooped about. The sun was burning away the mist, but there was a chill in the air.

She’d traded her wedding ring to the clerk for the shillings he had in his pocket plus a first-class ticket, but not to Plymouth. To London.

The ticket’s value was only a fraction of the ring’s worth.

But already, she felt lighter.

With Cranbrook in Fowey, she could return to Harcott House. Take the chance and tell her mother the truth. The Yardleys weren’t the Traymaynes. Her parents had failed her dreadfully. She’d failed them too. But it mightn’t be too late. Perhaps she and her mother could unite. Figure something out. Her mother could face Cranbrook for her, and . . . what?

Her mind blanked. But she had no better hope, not really. Sailing to France with a pirate was one thing. Boarding an oniony steamer to Roscoff alone was quite another. She’d lain in bed before dawn, imagining Paris, the life she’d lead there, shut out of her favorite shops by penury, friendless and deplorable. She’d imagined arriving at Le Manoir, imagined those stone angels turning their backs to her.

At least her mother would give her a chance.

The thing was done now. Decided. Irreversible.

Even though she kept her gaze fastened on the east, in the direction of the city center, she didn’t wish that Neal was climbing out of the next coach, or the next.

She didn’t wish that he’d appear, that he’d sprint toward her. Wait. Don’t go.

She was the last person on the platform. The last person to board the train.

Chapter Fifteen

The butler held the tall front door open and stared, mustache twitching. He couldn’t place her, rumpled and weary, half in shadow, and so Lavinia straightened her spine, stepped forward into the light, and announced herself.