Page 6 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
“We should go,” Charmaine said.
Vivi’s mother slowly turned to peer at the girl. In Mama’s deadly regard was her answer to Charmaine’s statement.
“He’s not coming, Madeleine!” Charmaine was so irreverent. “They’ve got Papa, I bet. Tate and Diane, too.”
And Beau.
Charmaine fumed now, crossing her arms. “I do not want to go to prison!”
Vivi’s mother narrowed her gaze on the girl. “Be quiet.”
“I don’t—”
“Shut up!”
Charmaine blanched, but soon recovered. “You are fools to think you’ll survive this if we wait.”
Madeleine de Massé, the woman who had been wed to one man and, when a widow, was taken by that man’s older brother as his mistress, clamped one hand over her niece’s and dug her fingernails into the girl’s flesh.
Charmaine flinched.
But Mama did not let go. “If you wish to leave us, Charmaine, do.”
Charmaine opened her mouth.
But Mama flung her hand away toward the door. “Go,” she said through gritted teeth, “and be done.”
Charmaine settled into the squabs. For the first time since they were very small, Vivi watched Charmaine slowly shed tears. Not many. Not for long. And as she came to the end of her little show of despair, their coachman shouted.
Alarmed, Vivi saw another hired coach approach, and it came at dizzying speed. The coachman lashed the reins and the horsesscrambled to a stop. The carriage moved forward, parallel to their own.
Commotion inside the cab sounded like someone disembarking.
Suddenly, Tate appeared at their door, peering in their broken window.
With a shout of triumph, he pulled and yanked and finally opened the door and climbed in. Winded, his clothes ripped and filthy, his cheek bloody, he fell onto the bench beside Vivi and handed her the little dog. Beau whimpered and snuggled into Vivi’s cloak.
She leaned over to Tate, her hand to his brow. “Diane?”
“No.” He gulped. The tracks of his tears on his bruised cheeks told her of his own despair. “No. I…I could not. They had her. Gendarmes. Too many of them. And they took her to the tribunal.”
“At this hour?” In the eerie moonlight, Charmaine went pale.
He only stared back at her, his eyes glazed. Then he turned his head toward the squabs and swiped at his face with his knuckles. Presently, he calmed.
Vivi took his hand. She knew how honorable he was, and believed he had done all he could to recapture her sister. If he said he could not take back Diane, then it was so.
At length, she drew away and noticed the cuts on his temple and cheeks. “I have ointment,” she told him. “In my trunk. What else hurts?”
His left hand lay limp and swollen in his lap. He glanced down. “This.”
Vivi gasped. He should have told her before this.What to do? What to do?She unwrapped the scarf around her neck. “Your hand. Is it broken?”
“I don’t know. Hurts like hell,” he murmured, his grimace full of pain.
“Charmaine has laudanum in her reticule in one of her étui. Charmaine?”
The girl pulled away. “It is a small dose. I will need it for my headaches.”
