Page 63 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

“Did he follow?” demanded Danielle.

Edwina shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She paused to gulp down the final swallow of water that remained; the tumbler shook in her hand. “I knew you’d all be here, so I came right up. I didn’t want to alarm the servants, and with Alistair gone, I didn’t know what else to do—”

“Alistair—I mean, Lord Ryland—is away from home?” Constantia repeated.

Her slip seemed to have gone unnoticed. “He told us at dinner a few days ago that he had to meet with a solicitor in Exeter. He left the next morning,” explained Harriet.

Frederica added, “He’s due back tomorrow.”

That explained why Lady Posenby had chosen Thursday evening for the unveiling of her portrait.

Had he left Rylemoor to avoid seeing Constantia?

None of that mattered, of course, not in the face of what had happened to Edwina. She was peeling off her gloves and making motions for her sisters to return to their seats. “Please,” she said. “I’m all right.” Her fingers trembled as she reached up to untie her cloak. “I’d rather not talk about it anymore. Can’t we just return to the lesson?”

Reluctantly, her sisters obliged. As Constantia turned toward the table at the front of the room, she glanced instinctively out the windows, as if she expected to see the monster who had attacked Edwina lurking somewhere just outside. But a drizzly rain had shrouded everything in mist.

When she faced the class, she saw that Edwina had risen to remove her cloak and watched as she laid it over an unused chair. Previously only the checked lining of the garment, flung back from her shoulders, had been visible.

But now that Constantia could see what the cloak was made of, her pulse began to throb in her temples and all the strength left her legs.

Gray-green wool, remarkably similar to the mantle she had purchased at Price’s Mercantile. In fact, if she hadn’t just seen her own mantle hanging in her bedroom when she’d gone to fetch the water, she might have thought they were one and the same.

Had the hulking stranger on the moor in fact been looking for her?

For days, she had been presented with signs that it was time for her to leave Rylemoor: The bruise on her cheek had all but vanished, her wrist was better, Mrs. Swetley had laundered and mended all her gowns. And of course the most obvious sign that she’d overstayed was her foolish infatuation with the Earl of Ryland himself.

She had ignored every one of those signs.

But this? This was different. She glanced back at Edwina, whose cheeks were still flushed red from the exertion of fleeing a would-be predator.

Constantia was putting others at risk, just as she’d feared.

Tomorrow, once she had presented Lady Posenby with the finished portrait and been paid for it, she must be gone.