“How did they find us?” she whispered in a fearful hush.
“They haven’t found us, not yet. They’re checking all the major roads. We’ll have to stick to back roads from now on. It’ll slow us down, but we dare not risk anything else.” Together we loaded our meager belongings into carpetbags and carried them down the back steps silent as mice, with Sharkey tucked under my arm. Day was just breaking over the eastern moors, which were shrouded in a thick silver fog. If we could disappear into that fog while the police were distracted, we would have a chance.
Behind the inn, the horses stamped at the hardened earth, blowing jets of warm steam into the cold morning air as Montgomery harnessed them. “I’ve put Edward inside the carriage. I don’t need to tell you how fragile his condition is. Balthazar will ride inside with you—his appearance is too distinctive, and we don’t need anyone paying extra attention to us.”
I opened the door to the carriage, where Edward lay flat on the bench-seat, moaning incomprehensibly. His eyes were closed, the chains still wrapped tight. I climbed in, pulling Lucy with me. Balthazar lumbered in behind her and held Sharkey in his lap. Quietly as he could, Montgomery drove the horses to the road, letting their soft steps get lost in the mist, until we were so swallowed up in the fog that I could no longer see the inn. He cracked the whip, and the horses bolted.
I grabbed the window for balance. Lucy sat next to Edward, his head in her lap, her fingers trailing through his sweat-soaked hair as she muttered sweet reassurances to him that he would come through the fever and be eating cinnamon cake again in no time. I didn’t have the heart to tell her he likely couldn’t hear her, nor would he remember anything she said. Balthazar soon nodded off. The man was able to sleep through anything.
I pushed aside the gauzy curtain every few minutes to make certain we weren’t being followed. After an hour, then two, I began to relax. The fog burned off as the morning stretched into midday, but the heather was endless, a sea of rolling red hills and frozen earth, beautiful in its desolation, hypnotic in its monotony. Twice we passed small hamlets, nothing more than clusters of stone cottages with smoke rising from mossy chimneys; once a farmer, wizened and bent, riding a donkey down the dirt road.
Other than that, there was nothing but the moors, the storm clouds building to the north, and the ceaseless pounding of my heart.
THREE
THE AFTERNOON TURNED DARK as the storm grew. A sudden clap of thunder shook the carriage, making me jump. The first drops of freezing rain fell against the glass. I thought of Montgomery alone outside, hunched in his oilskin coat against the wind and the rain.
A flash of lightning lit up the dark clouds. I peered through the window, looking for bobbing lanterns on the horizon that would mean the police carriage was following us, but there was nothing.
Thunder clapped close enough to wake Lucy with a shudder. Her eyes met mine.
“Just a storm,” I said softly.
Balthazar reached over and patted her hand, his dark paw engulfing her delicate fingers. There had been a time when Lucy had been terrified of the hulking man, but now she squeezed his hand in return and reached over to straighten his shirt collar, which had gone askew.
“Will the staff at Ballentyne be afraid of me?” he asked her.
She laughed. “Everyone is afraid of you at first sight. You look a walking terror.” She brushed dust off his threadbare coat tenderly. “But once they get to know you, they’ll adore you just as I do.”
When I turned back to the window I saw lights ahead of us, unmoving. Another hamlet. No, larger than that. A village. After only a handful of signs of life for the past few days, the prospect of a village, tiny and crumbling though it must be, still made me anxious. Lucy’s brow was knit, too.
“Surely they wouldn’t have a police outpost in such a small place, would they?” She laid a protective hand on Edward’s chest. His lips moved, but no sound came out.
“I can’t imagine they would,” I said hesitantly. “Anyway, I’m positive they’ll give up the search after a few more days.”
It felt like a hollow promise, and the hard look Lucy gave me confirmed it.
As we rode closer the lights took shape—candles in windows, lanterns hung outside doors. The village was nothing more than a few intersecting dirt roads, but after the desolation of the moors, it whispered of civilization.
Montgomery stopped the horses outside a tavern. He came to the carriage door, opening it just a crack to keep the rain from drenching us. “I’m going to ask for directions. We can’t be far now.”