There was a pause. Sinclair looked irritated and distinctly uncomfortable. “No one is forcing Miss Belmont to go.”
“My brother will need me,” Eugenie said cautiously. She knew then they had been discussing her predicament, as if she was something untidy to be sorted and tucked away.
“There, you see,” Sinclair declared triumphantly. “Miss Belmont wants to come with me.”
His uncle frowned. “She hasn’t exactly said that, Sinclair. Is that what you really want, Miss Belmont?”
Suddenly Eugenie felt as if she was at a crossroads. He was asking her if she wanted to remain here and pursue her friendship with Nicholas. She was not silly enough not to realize Lord Ridley had been blatantly throwing them together over the past days. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t enjoy his company, but he was in love with someone else. Just as Eugenie was.
Well, there was her answer. She’d give up the Nicholases of the world any day to go off with the duke to who knew where and get into all sorts of trouble. If she was honest it wasn’t only the need to help Terry that was driving her but the need to be with Sinclair.
“I want to go with the duke,” she said firmly.
Lord Ridley sighed and shook his head. “Dear me, you are as bad as each other. Very well then. Now that is settled . . . With the roads in the state they are it will be quicker if you go by canal.”
Eugenie saw that he had set out a map on the table before her, evidently he and Sinclair had been examining it before she arrived. She could see that it displayed the north of the country with its growing industrial towns and vast tracks of moorland and mountains. There were blue lines crisscrossing the land, some wide and some narrow. They passed through the towns and cities, intersecting and then traveling in all directions, to the ports on the coast as well as on to smaller towns and villages. For some reason there seemed to be a great many blue lines.
“Canals,” Lord Ridley explained, tapping his finger on the intricate network. “They cut across the countryside, using water as a means of transport as opposed to badly maintained roads. The larger canals are used for barges carrying raw materials to the mills from the ports, for instance from Liverpool to Manchester, and then when the cotton has been spun or the wool woven, it is returned to Liverpool to be shipped out. But there are many smaller canals used for transporting local produce from town to village and back again, or carrying passengers.”
He’d grown enthusiastic, and Eugenie could see that the canals were a passion with him.
“And one of these barges will take us on board?” Sinclair said doubtfully.
“Oh there’s no need for that. I have a narrow boat of my own, a vessel built especially for traveling the canals. I find it very restful on the water, once I leave behind the busier commercial routes. And I always have horses stabled at the end of my journey, in Wexham. Once there all you’d have to do is head for the border and stop the lovelorn pair from plighting their troth.” He raised his eyebrows. “So to speak.”
Sinclair shifted restlessly. “I don’t know, Uncle. A narrow boat seems a peculiar way to follow someone.”
“Nonsense, my boy! It is the perfect way to follow someone and I won’t hear any more objections. I consider the matter settled.”
Sinclair was wearing his haughty look but he didn’t offer any further arguments.
“I must write to my family before we leave,” Eugenie said, hastily getting to her feet again. “They must be dreadfully worried.”
At least she hoped so, she thought, avoiding Sinclair’s cynical eyes. Her father would be disappointed if the elopement didn’t come off, but the rest of the family would be relieved to have gotten out of yet another scrape.
“Be ready to leave in an hour,” Sinclair called after her curtly.
“Give the poor girl two,” Lord Ridley retorted. “What woman could be ready in one hour?”
“Eugenie can,” Sinclair said with a note of pride in his voice.
“Oh-ho,” his uncle murmured, with a wink at Eugenie, “then she is a unique specimen of her sex.”
“She is matchless, Uncle.”
Eugenie closed the door, her heart thumping. Matchless? Did he really mean that or was he teasing her? She didn’t have time to consider the question now, she told herself, as she hurried toward the stairs. She had to pack and pen a brief note. Perhaps it was just as well she had so few clothes to worry about, although Lord Ridley’s servants had cleaned and pressed what she did have so she was fit to be seen.
It occurred to her to wonder what Annabelle must be feeling. From what Sinclair had said his sister had taken very little with her, too, almost as if she was intent on leaving the past behind. But Annabelle was not Eugenie. All her life she had been used to having the best of everything. Eugenie could not help but wonder how much the duke’s sister was enjoying being out in the world, cut off from her family, reliant upon her own wits and Terry.
Remembering the way Sinclair had behaved when his comfortable coach was taken from him, she did not think Annabelle would be enjoying it at all.
Chapter 30
Terry had reluctantly let the coach go and taken to horseback. Annabelle insisted that was the only way she could continue the journey north and he was willing to believe her. But Annabelle was no horsewoman, and he should have remembered that. After only a day of riding she declared her back broken and could not rise from her bed at the inn. Lizzie, herself stiff and sore from the unfamiliar motion of the horse, eventually coaxed her into eating some toast and then they went out for a stroll, to stretch her “poor aching legs.”
Manchester was one of the larger and smokier northern cities, and the noise from the mills, running day and night, was not something any of them was used to. Annabelle held her handkerchief to her nose and mouth and gasped and groaned, while Lizzie gazed about wide-eyed. Finally they succumbed to Annabelle’s complaints and returned to the inn, where Annabelle shook out her skirts and pointed out the soot she found upon them, as well as the reek of smoke in her hair.
“How can people live like this?” she wondered.