“But the claptrap about witchcraft and the Devil?”
Arabella pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I have not seen him in person, but they say his face is indeed scarred, not by the Devil, mind you, but by…”
Thea leaned in. “By?”
“By…a cat.”
“A cat?” Thea glanced at the fine white lines running up the back of her hand, a souvenir from her childhood attempt to befriend a stray cat that did not wish to be befriended. “Then I have the Devil’s mark too,” she scoffed. “To think him a witch for a mere cat’s scratch.”
“Good grief, Thea, he is an English aristocrat, and would never suffer the scratches of an ordinary cat,” Arabella scolded lightly. “He was attacked by nothing less than a jaguar, while in the forests of New Spain.”
“Ja-gu-ar,” Thea repeated, trying out the strange word in her mouth. How unfortunate that her limited education had taught her only how to be a lady, and omitted any mention of strange cats and foreign forests. “What is a jaguar?”
Helen drew on her slightly more extensive education to explain, “A jaguar is a very big cat. With very big claws, and very big teeth, and very little sense of humor.”
“Impossible,” Thea said. “If it is a cat, then it doubtless believes it has an excellent sense of humor and it’s the humans that cannot take a joke.”
Arabella almost smiled. “I daresay you can ask the earl all about jaguars and their jokes when you meet him.”
“I am happy to say that I have no desire whatsoever to meet the Earl of Luxborough.”
“Unfortunate for you, then, that he is arriving at my parents’ house this evening too.”
Before Thea or Helen could respond to Arabella’s astonishing announcement, a call from the yard warned that the stagecoach north was about to depart. Helen grabbed the small bag Thea had brought, gave her a one-armed hug, said, “Wish me luck!” and dashed out the door on a waft of happiness and swine.
Thea darted to the window, Arabella by her side. It felt like an eternity until Helen emerged. With her clerical hat pulled down low and her greatcoat flapping about her breeches and boots, Helen jogged across the yard and jumped into the coach. Thea hardly dared breathe, praying Ventnor’s men had not noticed that the fellow in the greatcoat was Helen. Other passengers boarded. The carriage door slammed shut. The coachman hollered at the team of six horses, and the huge stagecoach rumbled off. Still Thea and Arabella waited, until the stagecoach was well out of sight. No one followed.
Another coachman maneuvered a stylish barouche into the yard. A liveried footman and an inn employee carried out a traveling trunk and lifted it into the barouche. Thea recognized the trunk as Helen’s. Well, her trunk, now that she was Helen.
Arabella tapped the glass. “No one is chasing Helen, and my barouche is ready. Assuming Ventnor’s men did not notice her leave, we need only smuggle you past them without them seeing your face.”
“If this Earl of Luxborough never leaves his estate, how is it that he is visiting your house?” Thea asked Arabella’s back, as they filed down the narrow, stuffy stairs toward the tavern and its din of chatter and calls.
“I hesitated to mention this before, but Lord Ventnor is giving the earl some rare plant specimens,” Arabella replied, her ostrich feather sweeping the air as she half turned her head. “As Warwickshire falls about halfway between their estates, Ventnor has sent them to our house for the earl to collect. Apparently, Lord Luxborough is a keen botanist when he is not wandering through the Americas being attacked by giant cats.”
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Thea pulled Arabella to a stop. “Lord Ventnor sent these plants to your house, at the same time that he believes Helen to be your guest,” she said in a low voice. “Does that strike you as more than coincidence?”
“It does, rather. On the other hand, Lord Ventnor has a finger in hundreds of pies. There is no reason he should not make such an arrangement with Lord Luxborough, given he is his father-in-law, or with Papa, given their acquaintance. Either way, the Earl of Luxborough cannot possibly know who you are, and it is too late to stop your scheme now.” Arabella shot a glance at the door leading into the noisy tavern and extended her left elbow. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Thea slipped her fingers around Arabella’s elbow and looked down, the tunnel formed by the bonnet’s brim revealing little more than the toes of her half boots and a circle of uneven flagstones. She swung her head but all she could see of Arabella was the blue skirt of her pelisse, the little white tassels down the front perfectly aligned.
“When I came in, Ventnor’s men were seated at a table that will be on our right as we leave,” Arabella said softly. “Remember, chances are they will identify you only by your dress and not bother checking your face, but no need to give them the opportunity to prove they are not complete muttonheads. Whatever happens, keep your head down and do not look at anyone.”
Thea was already fighting the urge to look up. “I shall try, but it will tax my resources immensely, and I’ll likely faint with exhaustion at the end.”
“Duly noted. If you manage to cross this room without looking up, I shall commend you to the Crown for a medal of valor.”
Arabella set off, and Thea let herself be guided into the tavern like a horse in blinders, eyes on the floor, which did not bear such scrutiny well; it could use a good scrubbing. The thick air dried her throat; a man ranted about a missing box; the smell of burned toast filled her nostrils. Through it all, Thea did not look up.
“Ventnor’s men have seen you,” Arabella drawled in a low, bored tone. Thea did not look up. “Keep walking. They are watching you, but they do not seem suspicious. We are almost— Oh dear.”
Arabella stopped abruptly. Thea stopped too and zealously studied the floor.
“What?” she hissed. “What is it?”
“Nothing. Don’t look up.”
Thea looked up.
First, she saw boots. Men’s boots, dusty and scuffed. Their toes were pointed toward her and Arabella, from which Thea deduced the rest of the man must be facing them too. Even with her limited education, Thea could discern a finely crafted boot of expensive leather: Whoever this man was, he was not one of Ventnor’s rough hires.
And as though someone had attached a string to her bonnet and was pulling on it relentlessly, Thea’s gaze traveled up, up that expensive, dusty leather to the top of those boots, up the man’s long, powerful, buckskin-clad legs, to an exquisitely tailored dark-blue coat—he was definitely facing them, and definitely not moving, and he was not only sufficiently big to block their path, but also sufficiently rude. This man was an aristocrat, Thea decided, for only an aristocrat would stand so nonchalantly in their way.
Up, up her gaze traveled, racing against the brim of her bonnet, up past the rows of buttons spanning a broad chest, to the white neckcloth and collar, to the darker hue of his long, angular jaw.
To his scars.
Ah. Now she understood. This man must be the Earl of Luxborough.
The thick lines, too jagged to be truly parallel, began on the high crest of his left cheekbone and continued relentlessly down, over the hollow of his cheek, narrowly missing his ear to disappear under his neckcloth. Another two thick marks scored his temple.