Lisa heard him stride up the hall, but when she heard the office door open and close, she hurried out of the room, up the hall and straight out the front door. She couldn’t talk to Robert. They would argue, he would kiss her, they would end up in a naked heap in the parlor, be discovered and the decision of who to spend the rest of her life with would be taken from her.

Her fleeing was a purely panicked reaction with no real destination in mind. But when she spotted the hack in front of the house, she immediately rushed to it, pausing just long enough to tell the driver where she wanted to go before climbing inside and collapsing on the seat. The coach was already moving before it occurred to her that she’d forgot to bring Bet and the footman with her.

“Sorry it took so long, my lord,” Smithe said as soon as the greetings were over and Robert had ushered him to a chair.

“That’s all right,” Robert muttered, settling in the chair behind the desk and eyeing Smithe expectantly. “I presume you found Mrs. Morgan?”

“Yes, but it took some fancy footwork. She’d gone to ground. Was lying low and just vacationing. It made it harder to find her than it would have if she’d set up shop right away. We had to talk to countless people, and search all the way to Paris before we found someone who recognized her, and then that was just happenstance. They’d traveled over on the same boat. She’d told them she was heading to Paris, but they saw her get in a carriage heading north.”

“North?” Robert asked with a frown. Paris was south of Calais.

Smithe nodded. “She traveled north along the coast to Amsterdam and then southwest to Dusseldorf, Weisbaden, Stuttgart, and then on to Milano and finally Firenze.”

Robert scowled. It sounded as if she’d been on something of a rushed grand tour, a damned expensive venture. “How the devil did she afford that?”

“The suitor was apparently at the house when they discovered your Miss Madison had escaped,” Smithe said dryly.

Robert’s head went back at this news. He had apparently gotten Lisa out of there just in time. An hour hadn’t passed between his getting her out of the room and returning to Morgan’s brothel, but the woman had already packed and fled. It must have only been moments between his taking her from the room and the suitor’s arrival to claim her.

“He has deep pockets,” Smithe continued. “Told her where to leave from, where to go, and paid her well to keep her from setting up shop again until he sent her the all clear.”

Robert nodded grimly.