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protect—”
    “What about my reputation?” she demanded. “Can you protect that? Volkov promised to destroy all hope of a suitable marriage.” Despair enveloped her; she felt her body sag.
    “I shouldn’t have come,” she breathed. “I should have avoided you all.”
    She pushed away from the table. “I have to leave. I can meet Aunt Marianne on the road. I can try to minimize the damage.”
    “I’ll escort you,” Glenaire said. From another man that would be a polite offer. From Glenaire, it sounded like a command.
    “No need. I will send the earl’s horse back to him.”
    He followed her past the taproom to the courtyard; she couldn’t prevent it. “Wait here,” he ordered, “while I get our horses.”
    Leaning against the wall, Lily squinted at an orange and red sunset. The air already grew colder and night would come on fast. Cold from the stones seeped into her. She tried to silence the drumbeat of worry. Volkov will know. Father must be protected. Volkov—
    The Marquess burst from the stables in a rush, looking as if the Furies rode his tail.
    “That damned old man outmaneuvered me,” Glenaire spat, rushing past her.
    “What do you mean?” She hurried after him.
    “He took our horses,” he growled over his shoulder without slowing. Lily skipped to keep up with his long stride. She followed him into the sort of public room no lady should enter; it reeked of ale and stale bodies. Horror over the consequences of her impulse to seek out Sahin ate at her.
    “Rent two more,” she suggested in desperation. “You can afford them. You can afford to buy them.”
    “Sahin Pasha beat me to it. He bought them all,” Glenaire said over his shoulder. He strode up to the bar and demanded the innkeeper.
    Sahin, favored uncle, don’t do it , Lily moaned inside herself.
    The old man wanted to delay Richard long enough to get couriers out of England on their way to Thessaloniki. They would outstrip her father’s travel arrangements. She leaned one hand on a filthy table to keep from toppling over from the sick feeling in her stomach.
    The innkeeper bustled over.
    “What happened to our damned horses?” Glenaire demanded before the man even came to a stop.
    “The mussulman gentleman told me you ordered him to take ‘em, to help like. Have a powerful need for horses do the mussulman folk,” the man said. He looked genuinely confused. He wrung his hands.
    “What did the bastard pay you?” Glenaire demanded. The innkeeper looked at Lily. He pretended to look affronted at the marquess’s language for her sake.
    “I have to leave. I can’t stay here,” Lily cried, panic rising.
    “The mussulman gent told me you would be well protected, and so you will be.” He glanced up at Glenaire. “Promised to send horses, he did. Only take a day. No more’n two, once he finds more. Fer now—” He wiped his hands on his apron, ready, Lily suspected, to extort large sums from two people he mistook for fools.
    “You heard the lady,” Glenaire growled. “She cannot stay here. You will send someone to Chadbourn Park to fetch a carriage. You will do it now.”
    “M’lord!” the man exclaimed. “It is come dark already. Send a man ten miles on foot in the dark? Even if a man don’t lose his way, he could fall in a ditch or be gored by Harry Martin’s bull. Safer in t’morning.”
    Neither Lily’s pleading nor Glenaire’s aristocratic bullying moved the man, who insisted, “T’ lady and gent can stay til morning.” When Glenaire threatened to bring the full weight of the Foreign Office, the man suggested Glenaire might meet the full weight of the village blacksmith by morning.
    Dear God. I am trapped at an inn with the Marquess of Glenaire. Volkov will know. All of London will know.
    “I have to leave,” Lily choked. “I can’t stay here.”
    Before Richard could respond, she pushed aside the inn door with one hand and stumbled out. Shadows engulfed her, her graceful figure swallowed up in growing