Our speed added to the chilled night breeze, the rush of cold air nipping at my nose and lips. I braced my feet more securely against the footboard and settled into managing Charlotte’s excellent pair of bays and the task at hand.

Somewhere out there were our runaways. Beside me, Julia clutched the gold cross around her neck, no doubt praying that we would retrieve Hester and Miss Grant before Lord Deele found them. Since I could not add a prayer, I briefly looked up at the cold, star-filled sky as we drove along the gravel drive. There might be no God, but there was a fast phaeton, five committed people, and a sense of true justice that burned through us all.

34

“Good God, Gus, slow down,” Julia shrieked in my ear as one of the large back wheels left the road on a particularly bumpy stretch.

I steadied the horses, the phaeton bumping back down onto its four wheels. Julia gasped at the jolt and braced her feet wider on the footboard beside my own. Ahead, Evan and Mr. Kent galloped in tandem, the glows from their lamps seesawing across the dirt road and dense woodland on either side. Our lamp had gone out about a mile back, and now Weatherly grimly clamped it between his knees while hanging on to the blunderbuss and the edge of the groom’s seat.

“Still there, Weatherly?” I yelled over my shoulder.

“Still here, my lady,” he yelled back.

We had all caught sight in the distance of a horse without a rider standing on the road, and increased our speed. Was it Hester and Miss Grant’s horse? And if so, why was it abandoned?

“I do not see anyone near it,” Julia said over the sound of our wheels and hooves. “Do you think they are on foot?”

“Duck!” I ordered, unable to avoid a low arch of overhanging branches. We all ducked, the bare twigs scraping along my riding hat. I glanced back at Weatherly. He was bent double over the gun across his thighs but had lost his own hat.

“Sorry,” I yelled over my shoulder.

“Only so far I can duck down, my lady,” he replied, at his driest.

Understood. Unless I wanted a headless butler, best to avoid the branches. A six-foot man was not meant to sit in a groom’s seat.

Evan and Mr. Kent had slowed their momentum into a trot, no doubt in an effort not to spook the horse ahead. I drew on the reins in my hand, slowing the bays to a trot, then a walk. Ahead, I saw Evan dismount and hand his reins to Mr. Kent. The abandoned horse must be near.

I drew the phaeton to a halt. “Weatherly, go to their heads.” The phaeton rocked as our butler clambered down from his perch. “Do you feel up to taking the reins, Julia?”