The Regency Romances by Laura Kinsale

Author:Laura Kinsale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2017-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

Robert sat silently, watching Sir Howard. Still the man had not spoken, and Robert said nothing to him. When a boy brought a biscuit and small ale, Sir Howard flicked the dry bread contemptuously onto the floor.

He looked up, meeting Robert’s eyes, and then away again.

“I don’t know how you and she were entangled in this,” Robert said.

Sir Howard did not appear inclined toward explanations. He merely stared straight ahead at the deck between his bare feet.

“I’m sorry for it,” Robert said.

Sir Howard closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wood. His face was set in an angry sneer. Robert sat still, trying to put together what had happened at Vauxhall. He did not think Folie had received that wound while sitting in her box in the middle of the brilliantly-lit colonnades. He could not fathom Dingley’s presence.

“Why was she not with Lander?” he asked Sir Howard. “I sent him to guard her.”

But the man just shot him a scathing glare. Another suspicion began to congeal in Robert’s mind: the gardens of Vauxhall were notorious for lovers’ assignations.

Folie stirred. He supported her head while she was racked with the dry retching again. She was trembling. Robert found a red-hot fury rising in him against Dingley, that somehow, some way, he had let this happen to her. She should have been with Lander.

A jailer came, different from the first guard, without a uniform. He shoved open the door, looked at Folie and Robert, and then bent over, unlocking Dingley’s shackles. “Up,” he said, though Sir Howard was already standing, brushing himself off. “Superintendent to interview ye.”

In spite of the low ceiling and his shirtsleeves and bare feet, Dingley held his shoulders very straight and proud. “I will take care of this,” he announced, speaking to the air, or perhaps the cabin in general. His cheeks were burning as the jailer snapped manacles on his wrists. “It is all a great mistake.”

The door shut behind them. “I’m glad to hear it,” Robert muttered. He could predict what was going to happen. Dingley thought this was some case of mistaken identity, that he could merely explain who he was and be released with profuse apologies. But if money, and plenty of it, had not changed hands to get them here under false names, stripped of any way to prove themselves, then Robert was the devil himself.

“Thirsty,” Folie whimpered.

Robert helped her to sit up and held the mug of watered ale to her lips. She groped for it, sipped and choked and shivered.

“I can’t see,” she said plaintively. “I can’t see.”

He held her hand hard for a moment. “Everything will be all right,” he said, having nothing else to say.

“I don’t understand how—” She paused, breathing hard and fast, as if to hold back a gag. “—how we came to be here.”

Robert gave a savage chuckle. “My suspicion that someone is determined to be rid of me appears to be something more than my disordered nerves.” He rested his head back. “Damn you, Folly.

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