“Hmm.” Smithe nodded. “And yet there they sit in the Radnor carriage not two carriage lengths behind you, watching the house as steady and grim as you three.”

“What?” Richard asked with shock.

“Didn’t notice them, huh?” Smithe asked mildly. “Well, don’t feel bad. You were no doubt focusing on the house. Besides I’m trained to notice the little things, like great huge coaches with noble crests.”

Daniel cursed and was out of the hired coach in a heartbeat with Richard right behind him.

“May as well follow them,” Smithe suggested easily to Robert. “Bigger coach anyway and we need the women’s help.”

Nodding, Robert followed the other two men with Smithe on his heels.

“What the devil are you doing here?” Richard was asking when Robert stepped up into the coach and claimed the bit of space remaining on the bench beside the couple.

“She is our sister, Richard,” Christiana reminded him quietly. “Where else would we be?”

“But how did you even know—”

“How do you think we knew?” Suzette asked with exasperation from the opposite bench. “Bet was worried sick and listened at the door when Harry brought the hack driver back to the house. She heard everything and told us.”

“Of course,” Daniel muttered.

“Yes, of course. She is a loyal girl who doesn’t try to keep secrets. So of course she told us what our husbands should have,” Suzette stressed accusingly.

“It wasn’t my secret to tell,” Daniel said quickly, and Suzette’s eyes narrowed.

“Now where have I heard that old song before?” she asked dryly.

“We didn’t want to worry you,” he amended. “We planned to get Lisa back and then tell you so you wouldn’t fret.”

“Or try to be involved,” she guessed dryly.

“Well, as to that,” Smithe put in, drawing everyone’s eyes to where he had settled on the bench with Suzette and Daniel. “I was just saying to the men that we need your ladies’ help to get Lisa out.”

“Anything,” Christiana said at once.

“They are not dressing up as light skirts and distracting the men,” Richard said firmly. “We shall have to think of another distraction.”

“Light skirts?” Christiana and Suzette asked together with interest.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Lisa shifted uncomfortably on the small cot with the lumpy mattress. Lumpy because she’d removed some of the straw and done a hurried and ineffective job of redistributing what remained in the filthy skin. She had no intention of taking the time to better fix it, but it was damned uncomfortable, she acknowledged and shifted onto her side facing the wall. Her hand tightened on the bed leg she held, and she moved it close to her body. She’d tucked it under her skirts by her leg while on her back. It was just as well hidden now, she hoped.