Page 115 of A Bluestocking’s Secret Courtship

“Go, go, go!” She urged her family toward the servants’ staircase, but Wolfe was on their heels.

Aunt Beatrice was faster than expected and led her sisters toward the back of the villa. Evangeline lifted her skirts out of the way and ran after them.

Wolfe’s heavier footsteps thudded behind her. He huffed with exertion, the stench of his breath assaulting her nose. She pushed herself harder. They were almost to the stairwell.

A hard yank on her skirts jerked her backward. Her feet flew out from under her.

“Not this time,” Wolfe growled.

She screamed.

Forty-five

The sky morphed from gray to purple and pink as Jonathan and his fellow Regent’s men tracked Farrin and Wolfe. Margrave signaled for them to rein in their horses and he dismounted. He crouched in the dirt, soft from a recent rain shower.

“More footprints.” Margrave looked in the direction they led. “And there’s another fresh print.”

“Is it the same person?” Wedmore asked, sitting his horse like a man unafraid of losing it all. He’d had decades to suppress the fear, and his calm put Jonathan more at ease.

Margrave nodded. “Still only one set, but I agree with Hackberry. The heel is different from the local footwear. It has to be Farrin or Wolfe.”

“I wonder what separated them,” Jonathan said, shading his eyes to check the horizon. In the distance, ruins rose up like gravestones of those forgotten.

“Knowing Farrin,” Margrave said, “he left Wolfe for dead somewhere. Wolfe is too loyal to leave him.”

“How long before we overtake him?” Jonathan asked.

“It isn’t a sundial.” Margrave stood, dusting off his gloves. “But I think we’re close.”

Whichever man they were tracking, he had become turned around in the dark, veering west first before walking south and now east. He was essentially walking in a circle that carried him several hundred feet off the well-traveled road.

There was still no sign of a horse, so Dom hadn’t met up with Farrin yet. Maybe he had reached the rendezvous point further north and was waiting. Then again, Jonathan had intercepted the message. Dom could be unaware Farrin’s plan was in motion.

Jonathan’s gut tightened. All this time he had lived alongside Dom, believing they were aligned. He’d played Jonathan, kept alive the lie of Wedmore being a traitor. Dom had urged Jonathan to follow orders—no, demanded—knowing all along the true traitors’ identities. Hell! Dom was one of them.

“The terrain is growing too rocky for the horses,” Margrave said. “We need to track him on foot.”

Jonathan agreed. He was more comfortable climbing than sitting a saddle anyway after years of working digs. They secured the horses to a cluster of olive trees and followed Margrave.

Their party stopped when he held up a fist and examined the ground. He pointed out another footprint and trampled brush. When he waved them forward, they moved in silence.

Ahead, silvery brush shuddered as something larger than a rabbit moved through it. They held position, waiting for someone, or something, to reveal itself.

The silhouette of a man walked into a clearing forty feet ahead. He turned, freezing when he spotted them. Slender build, average height. It wasn’t Wolfe.

Jonathan exhaled, muscles tensed.

Farrin raised his arm to shoulder height. There was a flash and fizzle.

Jonathan dived for cover a second before the bang. He shouted for Wedmore and Margrave.

“Here!”

“Here!”

No one was injured. Farrin had taken his one shot.

“Let’s catch this bastard,” Jonathan said and ran after him.