Even within the closed carriage, the mob was a palpable presence, their catcalls and laughter penetrating where their bodies were denied. Haverford and his ladies had entered the house by an internal door from the house, and the carriage inside the coach house, invisible to the scoundrels who hid in trees or tall buildings watching Haverford House for any movement. And four identical carriages had left in quick succession from the mews, to fan out in different directions across London, each surrounded by footmen, grooms, and hired guards.
The diversion should at least reduce the nuisance at the railway station, where the Duchess of Winshire was waiting in the private Winderfield railway carriage to take Sally to Wind's Gate.
Haverford eyed his daughter cautiously. She sat rigid, the lift of her chin and the flare of her nostrils the only sign that she heard "The Tart and the Toad," the most popular of the raucous ditties about her supposed peccadillos, started in a loud baritone and taken up by a dozen voices before ending in yells and insults. And blows, undoubtedly, from the batons of the grooms.
She was leaving with reluctance, after what Cherry called, with wry amusement, 'an exchange of firm opinions, Haverford style.' Both he and Sally had lost their tempers, but the blows from her side cut hard because each was true.
Perhaps she exaggerated a little when she said he could blame himself and his own behaviour for the rabid response of the ton to her fall from grace. But beyond a doubt, every poor decision he had made since his first scandal when he was fourteen had come out for an airing, as well as the rumours that nearly destroyed Cherry before their marriage, the claims of adultery and murder that marred the Wellbridges' courtship, and innocent incidents from Sally and Abersham's youth twisted into something dark and evil.
"You will be protected at Winds' Gate," he assured her, and himself.
It was an ancient fortress, and the Winderfields would guard her well. Keep her company, too, while she fretted about Abersham's continued absence.
The dratted boy was on the top of her mind, of course. "And you will send for me, or send David to me, as soon as he arrives." That was the promise she had demanded before she would agree to leave London, where she was trapped in her own home. And not safe there. Five times, intruders had invaded the house: curiosity seekers looking for souvenirs, and a couple of news hounds hoping for some gem to help sell their papers. One had penetrated as far as Sally's private suite, where Wakefield cousins and guards caught him and beat him before throwing him back into the street.
"I have promised, Sally. As soon as he has made satisfactory answer to your Uncle Wakefield's questions." And that was his condition. If Abersham could convince Haverford's clever brother he was not a rabid beast, then Sally would have her heart's desire. Haverford no longer trusted his own judgement and was tired of standing against his entire family.
Cherry nodded, relaxing her own rigidity a little as the carriage outstripped the crowd. "And we will send on any message from him, my dearest."
Both women glared at him, daring him to comment. He said nothing.
"I don't understand why he hasn't come. Or at least sent another messenger."
Sally's unshakeable confidence in Wellbridge's absent heir had been dented by the continued silence, though she insisted Abersham would have a good reason for the delay.
Since the argument in Margate, Haverford had carefully avoided the topic of the rejected proposal. Cherry, though, had told Bella, and now Bella and Nick were cool with him, too.
He had been right about avoiding London, though. Each excursion out in public had been an ordeal, though Sally was as physically safe as they could make her. She went nowhere without several cousins, watchful servants, and guards supplied by the Wakefield enquiry agency.
Four of her cousins turned up, insisting they wouldn't leave until she agreed to a false betrothal with one of them. Sally refused and kept refusing. "I am betrothed to Lord Abersham," she told them. And nothing anyone said could move her.
Cherry said Sally feared David would not return and a false betrothal, which could be set aside when he appeared, would become a real marriage if he didn't. A good thing, too, Haverford thought, but Sally swore that if he took her unwilling to the altar, she would refuse her unwanted groom in front of the archbishop himself.
Her swains took their rejection in good part, and appointed themselves her escorts, but those who stood at her side, or who patrolled her vicinity, or who mingled with guests wherever they went, could not protect her from words, leers, sneers, and rebuffs.
"I will pass on messages from Abersham, yes," Haverford told his daughter. "But I am not sending on those reports on the rumours, Sally." His intrepid daughter had given the Wakefield agency her own commission: to report the essence of each rumour in the toxic brew that was trying to dislodge her from the heart of her family.
He and Sally had had another exchange of opinions about that, and yet another—considerably more vigorous—when she demanded to know all the names of those who had offered either marriage, or a more irregular arrangement.
It had taken three men to haul Haverford off the man who assured him that Sally was prime goods, and that the bastard would keep her in luxury and out of sight of the ton. "You won't ever have to set eyes on the little tart again, Your Grace," the man assured Haverford, just before Haverford's hands closed around his throat.
"Very well," Sally agreed, pulling him out of his thoughts before he could kill the man in his mind for the fifteenth time. "No more reports. I have learned enough."
Too much for Haverford's comfort, for she had used stories about him, and about Wellbridge, with masterly deftness to illustrate all of his flaws and mistakes in their most recent 'exchange of opinions,' when he insisted she retreat to one of their country houses. She had consented in the end, but had chosen Winds' Gate, not one of his properties, where he could be responsible for her protection.
She would be safe, he reminded himself. The Winderfields were a formidable family, and would guard her with all their resources.
The carriage was pulling up. The railway station already? Swiftly, Cherry and Sally completed the quick change of cloak and veiled bonnet that was meant to disguise Sally while she slipped through the crowd to the Winderfield railway coach. Leaving the carriage and entering the train car would be the riskiest points, and they had done all they could to make sure she would not be observed, but still, he was reluctant to let her go to the guards who by now waited outside, in the small shed into which the carriage had been driven.
Sally and Cherry hugged, clinging to one another for a minute. A knock on the door. "One minute," Sally called.
"Only one, Sally," said Wakefield's voice. "We can hold the way clear for another five minutes."
Haverford's half-brother had come himself. That eased Haverford's anxiety as nothing else could. Tentatively, he held out his arms to his daughter, and after a moment's hesitation, she moved into them, wrapping her arms around him and reaching up to give him a peck on his cheek. "I am still angry," she warned, "but I do love you, Papa."
Haverford had a thousand things to say, all jumbling together on his tongue and binding him to silence. He kissed her nose. "Keep safe, my dearest," he managed at last. "And do not worry. Mama and Papa will make it better."
And then she was gone, slipping out the door and disappearing into the shadows of the shed on her uncle's arm.
Cherry moved into the arms left vacant by Sally, and for several minutes they sat in silence, giving and receiving comfort.
"She has done nothing truly wrong, Cherry." He hoped. In the darkness of night, his own youthful appetites taunted him. But it changed nothing if she and Abersham had been fully intimate; she was still his precious girl and no wanton. She had been led by love, and had been faithful to her swain ever since, despite the boy's own fickleness.
"Of course not." Cherry agreed. "Jealousy makes a light-skirt of her. She has offended the rakes by ignoring them, and the moral zealots by showing disdain for their stupidities. And she has made an enemy of every mother with a daughter to wed, or a son whose interest she has spurned. Someone has woven every misstep of Sally's—no, every bold glance or movement—into a farrago of nonsense and is stirring the pot. Oh, I have no doubt that we shall survive, but Anthony, I wish Abersham would hurry and come home. A strawberry coronet covers all manner of scandal, as you and I have cause to know."
"Sir?"
His groom, waiting to take them back to Haverford House. Haverford gave the command but did not release his wife from his arms. A small space of comfort and then back to their beleaguered home.