Regency Collection 2013 Part 1. Louise Allen

her corner again. Doctor Ord joined her after an interminable wait that had her believing that Jack had collapsed through loss of blood, or that the bullet had pierced some vital organ after all. Twice she had got up and reached for the door handle, twice she had made herself sit down again to try and wait calmly.

      ‘What did you see?’ the doctor demanded without ceremony as the coachman cracked his whip. One look at her face must have told him the truth.

      ‘Everything,’ Lily admitted. ‘Is he all right? Was he badly hurt?’

      ‘He will live. He is young and tough.’ The doctor regarded her from under dark brows, sighed, and let the window blinds up. ‘Another scar to add to an impressive collection. Don’t you go rushing round there disturbing him and weeping all over him—I have told him to get as much sleep as he can: not that that is an easy task at an inn as busy as the Bull and Mouth.’

      Lily dropped her gaze to her hands, demurely folded in her lap. So that was where Jack was. Yes, let him rest for a day and a night, then she would go to him and apologise. For everything. Not that she expected much from that, but at least they might part as friends. I love you … but you do not want me.

      ‘Thank Heavens Lord Allerton did not kill Lord Randall,’ she said, recalling her other great fear.

      ‘Indeed. Although Lord Randall may yet come to wish Allerton had, when word gets out of how he behaved.’ Lily looked her surprise. ‘Did you not realise? Randall should have waited for the second to call Fire. Effectively he cheated and did himself more damage than Allerton could ever hope to.’

      ‘Did Ja … did Lord Allerton deliberately miss? I can see that might be an added insult.’ Men were so peculiar, with their mysterious honour and their rituals. What was the point of all this lethal business if, in the end, you did not try and hit your opponent?

      ‘Delope.’ The doctor nodded. ‘Yes, it is quite common where one duellist wishes to show that he has no wish to harm the other, merely to make a point. Or sometimes two hot-headed friends find themselves in that position and both delope.’

      No, it seemed she would never understand this male pride, and somehow that made it all worse, that she could not comprehend such an essential part of the man she loved, and that she had misjudged her dealings with him so totally. Well, she might not understand honour, but she did know how to apologise when she had been wrong, and she was going to end this with dignity.

      Attempting to find a single gentleman in the organised chaos that was the Bull and Mouth at nine o’clock on a Thursday morning proved anything but dignified.

      Lily had dressed with care in the most sober and restrained of her walking dresses, studied herself in the mirror and removed half of the items of jewellery she had put on, thought again and removed several more, then had Janet take the plumes out of her new hat. She was still wrestling with the concept that consciously failing to demonstrate your wealth was somehow more of a sign of class than flaunting it, but that approach had certainly seemed to win her approval from the society matrons and, to some extent, from Jack. And she wanted him to remember her with approval.

      She had deliberately left her footman and her maid with the carriage. It might be highly improper to visit a man in his rooms alone, but she had no intention of having any witnesses to her carefully composed, dignified speech of regret, thanks and farewell.

      As a result she had to use her elbows to make her way through the throng, was narrowly missed by a valise thrown from the top of a stage and knew herself to be both flushed and flustered by the time she reached the inside of the hostellery.

      ‘Allerton? No one of that name here, miss.’ The harassed man behind the flap-up counter ran a cursory eye down a bulky register, shook his head and began to turn away.

      ‘Lovell, then,’ Lily persisted, her voice rising to compete with the racket from the coffee room. ‘He was here yesterday.’

      ‘He’s not here either.’

      Exasperated, Lily took hold of the book and swung it round, running a gloved forefinger down the pot-hooked and blotted writing. ‘There! Lovell.’

      ‘That was Tuesday night. He left yesterday afternoon.’

      ‘But—’ But he is wounded! Doctor Ord said he should rest all day and all night. ‘Where? Where did he go?’

      ‘Now how would I know that, miss?’ The man removed the ledger from her grip and shut it firmly. ‘He paid, he left.’

      ‘You mean you have no record of who catches which coach here?’ Lily demanded. She was not used to being treated in such an offhand manner and was inclined to put it down to the plainness of her dress.

      ‘Of course we have.’ The man’s expression made her hackles rise still further. ‘But that’s in the stage booking office, not in here.’ He pointed outside. ‘Across the yard.’

      Lily stalked back outside, was adjured to ‘Mind yourself—got a death wish, have yer?’ by an ostler leading a pair of horses, and joined the long and noisy queue outside the ticket office.

      He has gone. He cannot have gone, he should not be travelling, he is hurt. Where has he gone? Her head was spinning.

      Eventually, after a spirited exchange of personalities with a woman with a goose in a rush basket who attempted to push in front of her, Lily reached the desk.

      ‘Where to?’

      ‘I do not know. I don’t want a ticket—I want to know where someone went to yesterday.’

      ‘What time?’ With a definite air of being put upon, the clerk reached for a bundle of waybills.

      ‘Afternoon.’

      ‘Have you any idea how many coaches leave here of an afternoon, miss?’

      ‘No, and I have not the slightest interest either,’ Lily snapped. ‘How many go to Newcastle?’

      ‘Under Lyme? Only that’s the Manchester coach from the Belle Sauvage.’

      ‘Upon Tyne.’ Lily swung round to glare at the woman with the goose, which was pecking at her pelisse now. ‘Will you kindly keep that creature under control?’

      ‘Name?’

      ‘Lovell or Allerton.’

      The man sucked an inky finger and ran it down the list. ‘Yes. Cove name of Lovell. Ticket through to Newcastle upon Tyne on the three thirty. Inside seat.’

      ‘What time does it get there?’

      ‘Half past ten tonight. Fast coach—thirty-one hours,’ the man added with pride.

      ‘Thank you.’ Lily stepped away from the window and made her way back to her carriage. He was gone. She nodded absent thanks to the footman who helped her in, and tried to work it out. Jack had left at three-thirty in the afternoon, having been up at dawn. He had fought a duel, been wounded, had come back here to this noisy bedlam where he could hardly have hoped to rest and then had set out, jammed into the stage with probably five other persons, to be jolted north for a night and a day.

      And it was her fault that he was wounded and probably her fault he had left London without finding an investor. And they had parted in anger and with him thinking her forward, vulgar, interfering and overbearing. Someone who thought they could buy anything, including a man. A husband.

      Lily bit her lip. She had thought just that. She realised the footman was still standing patiently holding the door, waiting for her orders.

      ‘Oh! Home, please. At once.’

      Well, now she knew better. She could buy herself a husband, but she did not want one who would allow her to do so. Which meant that she had better become used to being single, unless she could contrive to fall out of love with Jack and into love with a man at least as wealthy as she was.

      But there was something she had to do first, and Aunt Herrick was not going to like