“In your condition?” He shook his head firmly. “You would be more miserable and likely arrive in London covered in bruises.”

Adelaide gripped his arm. “I can manage. Please, Harrison. I would like to help you tend to your brother in his hour of need. Perhaps this might heal relations between you.”

His dark eyes searched hers, and she could see the indecision there. “Is it safe?”

“Entirely,” she assured him, though she was not as certain as he might have liked. “The doctor says I am likely six weeks from my time, so I may still travel and ride and anything else I have the stamina for.”

That, at least, was true.

“Very well,” Basset conceded, nodding. “Order your things packed. I’ll send word to Emblyn so she will not miss us.”

“Might she come as well?” Adelaide asked on a whim. “She has never been, and as we are not going for entertainment but for family, she might enjoy herself.”

He laughed once. “Not likely, but I will invite her anyway. Be as quick as you can, my dear. It will take us long enough to get there, and it seems that Richard is in a poor way.”

Adelaide nodded and turned from the room, moving as hastily as the child and her ungainly size would allow.

It was not difficult to find Richard in London, as he had remained exactly where Harrison’s man had said he was. He would never suggest that the wastrels and blackguards of London took care of their own, but they certainly did have their own way of doing things, and that seemed to remain the case now. While Richard’s friends had indeed left him in the gutters to potentially die of his vices, some good soul had carried him to a poor excuse for a boarding house where he was being tended to.

At least he had been kept alive. It had taken an uncomfortable sum to pay off the landlady for her care, but at least now the debts were discharged, and Richard was lying abed, amidst his feverish suffering, in Basset House.

Harrison would have preferred any other location in London, quite literally any, but his wife had insisted that was no way to treat one’s family, and he could not exactly argue without going into a very great sermon about Richard’s misdeeds and what sort of family they had been to each other.

He was not prepared to get into that conversation while Richard was under his roof. If ever.

Emblyn had wisely kept away from their brother while Richard was coherent, which was not often, and Adelaide had vowed to keep her a secret if Richard ever asked.