‘How dare you!’ Montagu yelled in outrage, brandishing a fist. Radcliffe evaded the appendage easily and pulled on the ear again to get the boy’s attention.
‘Where is Miss Cecily?’ he asked grimly. ‘Is she hurt?’
‘I must say I do not think it any of your business, my lord’ – another twist of the ear – ‘ow, stop, let me go. She’s in there, she’s perfectly well.’
Radcliffe dropped him immediately. ‘We’ll be having words in just a moment,’ he said grimly.
The innkeeper was watching proceedings with a supercilious air of satisfaction. ‘I told you, boy,’ he said to Montagu. ‘Told you people’d be after you.’
‘Send one of your men to wait on the road,’ Radcliffe instructed the man. ‘Look out for my carriage and flag it down – it shouldn’t be too far behind now.’
He passed a coin over, and then strode into the antechamber to find a red-nosed and thoroughly miserable-looking Miss Cecily sitting close by the fire. She looked up, shocked.
‘Radcliffe? What are you doing here?’ she asked in surprise.
‘I might ask you the same question. Are you hurt? I saw the carriage.’ He scanned her person for injuries.
‘I am unhurt,’ she said faintly. ‘It had already thrown the wheel before the tree fell, so we were all fine – even the horses.’
‘Good. Well, up you get – we’re going back to London, now,’ he said briskly.
‘No, I’m not,’ she said mulishly. ‘I don’t have to do what you tell me.’
‘I am here,’ he said – gathering some last vestiges of his patience from the very bottom of his soul – ‘on your sister’s behalf. Had you thought how this would worry her?’
‘As if she would care!’ Cecy said, standing, her whole body trembling. She was taking to dramatics beautifully. ‘All she cares about is parties and flirting and a-and—’
‘And solving your family’s financial troubles so that you have somewhere to live?’ he suggested.
She deflated, looking suddenly more like the lost child she was.
‘I could not think what else there was to do,’ she said miserably. ‘She can be so hard to talk to sometimes – I did try.’
‘Come,’ he said gently, softening in the face of her distress. ‘I think it best you try speaking to her again. You can return to London in my carriage, with your maid by your side. Montagu will remain here, to attach no whisper of impropriety to your name. No one need ever know.’
Cecily nodded, tremulously. This agreed, Radcliffe left to procure her some hot tea while they waited for the carriage. He walked almost immediately into Montagu, who was hovering by the door and looked to have gathered back some of his gumption.
‘I say!’ he said loudly. ‘You can’t just take her – you might be a kidnapper for all I know! An abductor! I won’t stand for it, you hear!’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Radcliffe said softly, but with a sharp bite. ‘You have already almost caused irreparable harm to that young lady’s reputation; do not make things worse now. Now, listen to me. Listen. You are to stay here tonight – get yourself a room – and you are not to breathe a word of Miss Talbot’s presence here. You will tell people you were on your way to see a family member, when your carriage was damaged. I do not want a whisper of scandal to be attached to her name, do you hear me?’
Montagu swallowed, gulped back a retort, then nodded too. His dramatically tall pomade drooped upon his head.
‘I love her,’ he said, simply. ‘I don’t want anything bad to happen to her, ever.’
‘Then be glad I got here when I did,’ Radcliffe told him. ‘Now off you go.’
Lawrence was less than an hour behind, in the end. He must have been driving like the devil to manage it, but he supervised the changing of the horses with no sign of fatigue. They would have to leave Radcliffe’s horses here, at the inn, to rest, which Radcliffe knew did not sit well with Lawrence – and indeed, his eyes and tongue were equally critical as he lectured the stablehand on the horses’ care.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ Lawrence stressed. ‘Once they’ve had a chance to rest. So don’t be lending ours out – they cost more than your life,’ he threatened.
‘That’s enough, Lawrence,’ Radcliffe said gently. ‘Remember it is they who are doing us a favour.’