Alex’s face was an immobile, dark, shadowed mask. Patrick walked his desperately exhausted horse back the few steps to the cleft in the road. Alex looked at him.

“She’s going to leave me, Patrick,” he finally said, hoarsely. “I promised I would trust her, and I failed her. I have to get to the house and follow her. I have to find her.”

Patrick sighed. He hadn’t been able to get any sense out of his twin since Alex grasped the fact that his brother not only had no part in his wife’s pregnancy, he hardly knew the woman.

“Charlotte is not going anywhere! She’s pregnant. Pregnant women don’t travel.” Patrick vested his voice with a deep layer of authority, dismissing his memory of pregnant women trundling happily up and down the roads of India. “Think of mother. Don’t you remember when she was pregnant? She went to bed for months.”

It was an unhappy thought, one that drained the last bit of color from Alex’s face.

“My God,” Alex whispered. “What if she’s like mother, what if she dies, Patrick?”

“Charlotte is a sensible woman, Alex. She wouldn’t endanger the life of her child. She will be sitting in Downes Manor waiting for you when you get back. I’m not saying that she won’t take your head off. But she won’t risk the child’s life to run away.”

Alex blinked. That was the first argument he’d heard that made sense. Maybe he was wrong in his deep conviction that Charlotte was, even now, riding away from him on some road. That he would never see her again. She wouldn’t endanger the babe, that was true.

Patrick sensed his victory and grabbed Alex’s bridle again, forcing his horse to walk off toward Buffington.

“We’ll be up at dawn. Even if she did decide to travel to Scotland—and mind you, I think the chance is exceedingly slim—she necessarily will go very slowly. We won’t have any trouble catching up with her.”

Alex didn’t respond, just nodded. They plodded their way into the Queen’s Ankle, Buffington’s best inn, ate squirrel stew (the only food available), and fell into the two beds that graced the innkeeper’s sole spare room.

“Lord,” Patrick said crossly. “When do you suppose that fat ass downstairs last had the straw turned in this damned mattress?”

Alex didn’t bother to respond. He was staring up at the uneven planks above him, wondering where his life went wrong. What led him to suspect Charlotte of adultery? His mind kept replaying the scene in the little summer house, as if to torture himself. Charlotte would rise, a tremendous sweetness trembling in her eyes and mouth, and then … he would reject her. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh and grating.

“If she’s gone, I don’t know what I’ll do, Patrick.”