Lord Dashwood Missed Out by Tessa Dare

Author:Tessa Dare
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Griff pulled his gelding to a halt at a crossroads. Colin, Bram, and Thorne did the same, clustering around him for direction.

It had to be well past midnight, or so Griff assumed. He wasn’t sufficiently curious to unfreeze his fingers from their clutch around the reins and go fishing his pockets for a timepiece.

It didn’t matter how late it was. It was dark and cold, and the horses were trudging more and more slowly through the snow. And despite a thorough survey of the past twenty miles, they yet hadn’t found any sign of the stagecoach or Miss Browning.

“The coach would be coming from that way.” He nodded in the direction of the east fork. “We’ll continue to follow the route in reverse, stopping in at each turnpike, inn, and tavern to inquire after them. Either their progress is slow, or they stopped somewhere to wait out the rain.”

“Snow,” Thorne corrected, brushing a fresh dust of flakes from his sleeve.

“To wait out the snow, then. Right.”

Griff jammed the brim of his hat down over his eyes, trying to shield himself from worry. Neither rain nor snow was foreign to Sussex roads. The drivers and teams managed to keep their schedules in inclement weather all the time. If everyone in England stayed home for a spot of rain or snow, no one would ever go anywhere.

“Let’s be on our way, then.”

“Wait,” Colin said. “I think we need a name.”

“A name?”

“A name. You know, for our group. We might as well be a cricket team or a crime gang, so long as we’re wearing these.” He indicated the poorly knitted, violet-­and-­green-­striped muffler about his neck.

The mufflers were a gift of Griff’s mother, the Dowager Duchess of Halford. The woman was a menace to yarn.

“We don’t need a name,” Bram said.

“No, we don’t need one,” Colin said. “But it would make this little outing immeasurably more entertaining.”

Griff nudged his horse into motion.

Colin was, as ever, undeterred. “How about the Sons of Debauchery?” he suggested, his voice carrying over the wind. “Or the Lost Lords. The Fallen Fellows? The Hellraisers. Oh, I know. The Duke and His Dissolutes.”

Griff shook his head. The Duke and His Dissolutes? That last was a bit too close to describing his old life. Before Pauline, he’d surrounded himself with the worst sorts of reprobates. Colin Sandhurst among them.

Was it any wonder she’d doubted him when he’d refused to name his mysterious friend?

“We don’t need a name,” he repeated.

“A musical theme, at least?”

“No.”

This answer came from Griff, Bram, and Thorne in unison.

Colin harrumphed. “I’m telling you, you lot have no sense of adventure.”

They stopped and dismounted to let the horses drink. The layer of ice glazing this creek was the thickest they’d encountered yet.

“Don’t worry,” Bram said. “If she stopped this far east, that means they stopped before the worst of the weather hit. She’s likely snug in an inn somewhere near Rye.”

“Probably,” Griff agreed.

And he knew forcing his friends to continue this quest was folly.

“You should turn back,” he told the three of them.

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