He pushed back his chair and stood up, toppling it in his haste. “Oh, good Lord, yesterday I broke off our engagement!”
“You’re the fool,” Hugo remarked placidly, reaching for the bowl of potatoes.
Gabriel didn’t bother to dispute this slur or even respond to it, for he was already halfway to the door. Impatiently he took the various stairs three steps at a time and when he reached Livia’s bedchamber it took all his self-restraint to knock and wait. It would all be all right, it was all going to be fine, everything was wonderful again—
There was no answer and Gabriel went into her room. She wasn’t there. The bed was made and the curtains still drawn. Well, perhaps she was . . . where? It was entirely possible, given the convoluted maze of staircases and passageways, that they had bypassed each other and she was, at this very moment, sitting in the breakfast-parlor eating breakfast (if Hugo had left any, that was).
But she wasn’t.
A few hours later, every servant in the Hall having been dispatched to help search for her, it seemed pretty clear that Livia was gone.
“My God, I’ve driven her away,” said Gabriel to Hugo, who had just come down the stairs into the Great Hall carrying his neat rucksack. Then he blinked. “You’re leaving? Now?”
“Yes, I to my business, you to yours,” said Hugo with a breeziness that to Gabriel bordered on callous flippancy. He clapped Gabriel on the shoulder. “Thanks for your hospitality, coz. Much appreciated. She loves you, you know,” he added. “Heart and soul. Can’t hope for such devotion myself, but I’m glad for you.”
With that Hugo was gone, leaving Gabriel to marshal his scattered thoughts. He learned that Livia hadn’t taken a horse from the stables, and one sprightly lad reported seeing bootmarks in the path that led toward the lodge. On Primus, Gabriel followed the indentations, which seemed to approximate the size of Livia’s feet, all the way to the village where they were lost in the welter of everyday traffic. There he made inquiries about an auburn-haired young lady who might have recently departed on a coach for parts unknown.
Opinions were varied and contradictory, running about half and half for Exeter versus London, and becoming increasingly heated when suddenly silence fell, and a plump old dame stepped forward, very much in the authoritative manner of Moses parting the Red Sea, and accordingly all the other villagers seemed to recede in two separate but equal waves.
“I seen it in my tea leaves this very morning,” she pronounced, and by this Gabriel was given to understand that here before him was the acknowledged oracle of Riverton.
“Not London, nor Exeter,” she said, casting a scornful glance about her. “There was a good bit of tea left in my cup, sir, which means the ocean, of course. And I seen a yellow pitchfork as well. Old John Roger over there—he’s my husband, sir—said it was only pieces of straw, but that’s rubbish! I seen what I seen. That’s where you’ll find your good lady.”
Gabriel felt like he was grasping at straws but said to the crowd at large: “Did a coach leave from here toward the ocean?”
“Oh yes, sir,” piped up somebody else. “The Bristol diligence passed by just about daybreak.”
Gabriel waited no longer. He rode off, hoping he wasn’t the stupidest man in existence to place his faith in a village seer with straw in her teacup. Was his love—his dear, noble, infinitely brave love—actually planning on boarding a ship somewhere, and if so, where did she think she would go? For all he knew, she was planning on sailing to Porto de Galinhas, just as he had once thought to.
How long ago that seemed.
Oh God, he hoped she was safe. He hoped she was all right.
He hoped he wasn’t too late to tell her what was in his heart.
Chapter 18
She was dreadfully hot and uncomfortable. Her head felt like someone was cruelly beating it with a cudgel—and her throat was raw—and every other part of her felt painfully achy—and she was dying of thirst. Why did no one come to help her? Someone—anyone?
A sudden chill swept over her entire body, as if snow had been dumped upon her. Livia told herself to pull up her blankets. Too weak to even open her eyes, she set her hand groping feebly amongst the bedsheets and touched rough, thin, unfamiliar fabric.
Then it all came back to her: her flight from the Hall, the diversion to the little town of Barrow Gurney which she had thought so clever until, after a tense two days spent hiding and then boarding a coach to Bristol, she discovered that she’d contracted the ague which seemed to have afflicted both her neighbors on the tediously long journey out of Riverton.