* * *
Bella clungto Greg as though her life depended upon it, and a moment ago it had. She didn’t know what she would have done if he hadn’t shown up. But it sounded like he couldn’t breathe, so she released her hold on him and scrambled from atop him.
“Greg, are you all right? Did I hurt you?” Bella’s heart hammered in her chest.
“The…hack…” he seemed to choke out.
The hack? Bella glanced across the square and there was indeed a hack. “Can you stand?” Goodness, what if she’d broken his leg in the fall?
Greg nodded, though he still looked to be in a lot of pain.
Bella pushed up to her feet and lifted her hand to him. Honestly, she didn’t have a prayer of pulling him to his feet, however. He was so much larger than her. Something he realized too as he shook his head.
“Get to the hack. I’ll be right behind you.” He was starting to sound more like himself, which Bella took as a good sign.
But she wasn’t going to leave him, not until he was on his feet. “Can you really stand?”
To prove he could, Greg pushed up to his knees and then all the way to his feet. And though the two of them should have run for the hired coach, he pulled her into his arms and held her. “I was so worried about you.”
And she’d been worried about him too. She hugged him tighter, so relieved that he was whole and hale.
But then Greg dropped his arms from her, took her hand in his and said, “We have to go, Bella. We have to go right now.”
He was right. She knew he was. Heaven help them if anyone came upon them right now. So together they rushed across the street to the awaiting hack.
As Bella climbed inside, Greg said to the driver, “Park Street, please. Thurlstone House.”
Thurlstone House? Why in the world were they going there?
Greg settled onto the bench beside her and slid his arm around her shoulders as the hack lurched forward. “My God, Bella, you took ten years off my life just now,” he said with a shake of his head.
She rather thought she’d taken ten years off her own life, but she hadn’t had any other choice. Just as she didn’t now. “Greg, I need to get to a coaching inn.” Some place where she could buy passage north, somewhere her grandf – goodness, it was so strange not to think of Chatham as her grandfather – but she needed to go somewhere the duke wouldn’t think to look for her.
“I’m sure we’ll find several on the way,” he said, squeezing her hand. “But I’ll need to get my coach first, and in case your grandfather arrives at Avery House while I’m there, it would be best if you’re somewhere else.”
“Thurlstone House,” she guessed.
Greg nodded. “I think he’d look for you at Cordie’s. But Thurlstone’s should be safe for a bit.”
Bella didn’t even know Lord Thurlstone. She’d heard of him though, and he didn’t have the most pristine name to recommend him, but then…she was a bastard and the last person who should be casting stones. But nothing else Greg said made sense. “Why are you getting your coach?”
“Do you have to ask?” He smiled down at her. “Your grandfather may refuse to let me marry you here, but a blacksmith in Gretna Green won’t care in the least.”
He wanted to elope, like his sister and his brother had done. Bella sighed. How she wanted that too, she wanted it more than anything in the world. But she couldn’t marry Greg, not now that she knew the truth. It wouldn’t be fair to him, especially after everything he’d done for her. The duke was right about that.
“Greg,” she began softly, her heart breaking in her chest. Oh, goodness, how could she tell him? She had no idea how to explain her unfortunate situation to him, but one thing was very clear. “We can’t be married.”
He frowned at those words. “It’s not the way we wanted to do so, but…”
“I’m a bastard,” she blurted out before she lost her nerve, because he was owed an explanation, he was owed the truth.
Greg simply blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“My mother and I don’t know who.” Bella winced at the truth of it all. “His Grace told me all of it this evening. It’s why he wants me gone and now that Papa is gone…”
* * *
And she thoughtGreg would want her gone? She didn’t know him at all if she thought that. Though he had kept that part of himself hidden from her, hadn’t he? He was not, after all, as honest as she was. It was one of his many faults. “I don’t care which side of the blanket you were born on, Bella. I love you and nothing will change that.”