A/N: This chapter was very difficult to write, least of all because the material on Bristol in the 19th century available online is sparse and I'm presently not even in England. It was very important to me that we see it first from Diggle's perspective, least of all because what happens here will have important ramifications for his interaction with Lyla later. I had to do a lot of guesswork as to how a person of African or Carribbean descent would be received in Regency Bristol, inferring from what little records I could find, and then hating and doubting myself whenever I tried to write Diggle's thoughts on it. I sincerely hope that I do not offend anyone in my portrayal of this moment - I did not want to harp on slavery too much but I also did not want to pretend that it was not happening, and that Diggle would be completely oblivious to the historical context. If I have offended, I am very sorry and please send me a message so that I can correct it to be as historically appropriate and sensitive as possible.
I had very little to work on for the topography as well, barring what little I inferred from re-reading Courtney Milan's Unravelled and frantically trying to google things. Just as a point of comparison, I've never been to Bristol and have read just one book set in the Victorian era there. I've read a whole book on London's 19th century history, not to mention all the HRs set there, and have been to both London and Cambridge. So the Bristol arc, given its themes, context and development, is the hardest I've ever had to guess. I hope I didn't guess too wrong and that you enjoyed this chapter. Sorry in advance to anyone from Bristol who's laughing hard at my sense of geographical bearings.
Full list of additional references will be up on my tumblr (pulpklatura), assuming you don't want to personally google the significance of each flower and new name mentioned. Also I hope you enjoy seeing Tommy's side of things for the first time!
"You would think that travelling so far would mean a change in the weather, but English skies seem resolutely inclement wherever you go," John muttered, mostly to himself, as evinced from the lack of response from the Duke of Starling, who was grimly watching the hustle and bustle at Bristol's newly built Floating Harbour with him. It seemed that Oliver had left his sense of humour, uncharacteristically present over the past two days, back in Cambridgeshire, and reverted to his saturnine ways the moment they left Slade's estate.
They skirted round the cobbled corner into the city centre, entering a street filled with shops. Donna Smoak had been left in the coaching inn they stayed the night at; still deep in a blissful slumber she had happily fallen into the moment they arrived from travelling without stopping, beyond the time needed to change the horses. John rather envied her, as he tampered down the beginnings of a yawn creeping up on him. It had been three days since he had had a good nights' sleep, uninterrupted by the duke's emotional or physical maladies.
As they passed a bookshop or two, he became steadily aware of the fact that he did not draw the same attention he would were they walking on the streets of London. Despite Bristol's central importance in the slave trade, abolished a mere five years ago, it was also home to a significant community of emancipated slaves and free men, and a hotbed of abolitionist activity, which made his present accoutrements less odd to the man on the street. The high concentration of coloured men in the slums of East London marked him as an anomaly when he was seeing to his duties by himself on Bond Street in London, and even when he accompanied Oliver he still invited stares, much as it was not unheard of for the head of a well-to-do family to have a coloured personal servant.
But now John walked as any other citizen would, anonymous for all purposes beyond the questions about how much he would pay in an establishment, inferred from the refinement of his appearance and quality of clothing.
He adjusted the fit of his coat over his shoulders, shuddering from the strangeness of it all. This was a brave new world he was yet unused to. He rather thought he could become accustomed to it.
They now were in the heart of the city, some distance away from the bustling harbor, but nevertheless in a district that qualified as stolidly middle-class. The economic importance of Bristol dating back to the Middle Ages, possibly even in Roman times, precluded any open spaces from being found in the cramped city conditions, where crooked beams and close-packing was rife, though not to the levels in London. There was no hothouse to be found here.
"I thought we were looking for the proprietor of a hothouse. For flowers," John addressed the duke. The thought that the hothouse in question might actually be a bordello crossed his mind, and he swallowed and cast a look at the duke for confirmation about the nature of the establishment.
"We are," Oliver replied, continuing his crushing pace.
John tried for patience. The duke had an irritating tendency to fail to explain himself, and while he was privy to Oliver's schedule, which put him above the entire Queene family combined, questions like why, who and how were still left unanswered most of the time. "If it will please your grace to explain, what are we doing in the city center where no flowers may be cultivated?"
Oliver came to a standstill before a shop front, indicating the sign on the door with the carved tip of his cane. "It's a Wednesday."
The sign above the doorframe was old, aged by constant contact with the salty tang of the air. A gust of cold wind came and disturbed its leisurely hover over the ground, lifting the wooden slab upwards, but John saw that the shop was called 'The Canary's Posies'. As if to confirm his observation, he noticed a dazzling array of fresh blooms in its window that obscured anything inside from clear view as he came closer to the establishment. On the door itself was a small sign with a message that read, 'Please leave all mail and inquiries here. Requests may be made in person only on Wednesdays.'
They entered the shop, and were greeted by more potted flower arrangements, which formed a serpentine path to the sole desk next to the stairwell at the back of the shop's space on the ground floor. As they followed the meandering direction of the flowers, John identified jonquils, pink carnations, petunias, as well as a smattering of large orange plants each resembling a bird's beak that he had never seen before.
He heard Oliver clear his throat upon their reaching the desk.
"Excuse me?" Oliver called, retrieving the letter Felicity Smoak had handed to him from the inner pocket of his coat. "May I know if the owner is in today?"
The duke rapped on the table with his knuckles, and his impatience was rewarded by the creaking sound of someone coming down wooden steps. "I'm afraid Mrs Raatko is occupied at the moment," a female voice responded. "How may I help you?"
All who were present in the room froze as Helena Bertinelli emerged from the flight of stairs leading to the shop front.
It occurred to John later that a woman at a normal level of sanity would have run upon coming face-to-face with her former lover and patron, whom she had left after luring him to his murder. It also occurred to John that a normal woman might have even picked up a pot of nearby daffodils to hurl them in said former lover's direction, perhaps to hinder his ability to pursue her flight.
All in all, he was rather gratified that his assessment from the outset was true: Helena Bertinelli was no woman at a normal level of sanity.
She emitted a horrifyingly high-pitched cry upon laying eyes on Oliver's face and reached for the nearest pot to fling into his face. Then she snatched up a pair of what looked like sewing scissors and purported to stab him with them.
John jumped to action, catching her by her armed hand and pulling her backwards before she could reach the duke's person, as he watched Oliver catch the pot with both hands and set it down behind him. It took him mere minutes to twist her arm into an unnatural position behind her back, and gently apply force to encourage her to drop the scissors. A grab of her other wrist, and Helena Bertinelli was pinned facedown to the table with her hands behind her, sufficiently trussed up for Oliver to interrogate.
"Let me go," she spat, struggling to no avail under John's hold. He leaned slightly forward to put his weight on her and she stopped squirming.
"Helena," said Oliver, as he put his appearance to rights. "We need you to answer a few of my questions."
There was the sound of another person descending the stairs and a blonde woman dressed in dark blue appeared, a cross expression on her face. Stopping midway, she surveyed the fractious tableaux and glared at the duke.
"Ollie," she said imperiously, her hand on the bannister tightening its grip. "What is the meaning of this?"
"Ollie?" echoed the Bertinelli woman.
Ollie? John thought. The only people in the duke's acquaintances that addressed him as such numbered few, and were all family and childhood friends.
"This is not what it looks like, Sara," Oliver began, and John racked his mind for any person with that name. Sara Lance, he guessed. That was the only person with that name in his file on the Duke of Starling who could possibly call him 'Ollie'.
"Good, because it looks like your man is attacking one of my guests, and it sounded like hell was being raised before I came down. Please release Helena immediately."
John shook his head adamantly. "Not unless she gives her word that she will not attack his grace, ma'am," he said.
To his surprise, the woman complied with his requirement. "Helena will not attack Oliver unless she wants me to turn her out for the night. Now, release her."
He did as asked, and Helena sprung to her feet, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Ever the gentleman, Oliver pulled out a white handkerchief John had stayed up last night to press and offered it to the virago. She snatched it out of his hand without so much as a thank-you before she held it up to her face.
As Helena Bertinelli daubed the edges of her mouth with the duke's handkerchief, she cachinnated, rocking slightly back on her heels from the humour she alone partook of.
"You're Sara Lance…" she finally uttered between shallow breaths. "You're the woman he ruined at the age of seventeen, leaving your own sister stranded at the altar…"
The blonde woman John presumed to be Sara Lance did not look amused at the sordid recount of her past. "Yes, well, it didn't quite happen like that," she stated, turning her blue eyes to Oliver's person. "What are you doing in Bristol?"
"A request from a friend," he replied, holding out the letter he had been charged to deliver to her. Her lips pursed as she scrutinised the scribble-like mark that franked the front of the envelope.
"I will be going upstairs to read my mail," she announced. "You may conduct your conversation here insofar it is, in fact, a conversation, and everyone emerges with their limbs intact. Do not disturb the plants or I will turn my gardener on you, and I assure you that it is me you would rather deal with."
With a toss of her head, she turned and disappeared up the stairs.
John caught Oliver's eye. "Do you have any women in your acquaintance, whom you're not related to, that are not deranged in any way?"
He raised an eyebrow. "You liked Felicity."
"Excuse me?" The Bertinelli woman made a sound of outrage at the same time.
John waved a hand in Helena's direction to indicate that the duke should probably start cross-examining her and strode to the shop's window to give him a measure of privacy. The streets outside were peppered with shoppers, both casual and determined, and a family just a stone's throw away caught his eye in particular.
The woman looked like any other ordinary shopkeeper's wife he could find in London, but her husband's delight at something she said was as evident as the swarthy complexion he shared with their young mulatto boy.
The War Office did not, as a matter of principle, encourage its operatives to be too aware of local politics and happenings, and John had been told strictly that no amount of abolitionist sympathies he harboured could be allowed to compromise his work. Nevertheless he had heard of mixed marriages in some parts of Britain, despite never seeing one with his own eyes thus far.
His brow furrowed, just as the corners of his mouth lifted. Lyla, his traitorous mind thought, just as his equally treasonous heart responded with a pang of longing as the family walked past the shop, the father swinging his son onto his shoulders mid-step to raise him up.
John had loved Lyla from the moment he had first laid eyes on her when she came to stay at her father's estate Colyton at the age of ten, accompanying the baronet on one of his infrequent visits to Devon when he sought to discharge his duties as the Member of Parliament for Honiton. He had not known it then, but the questions Sir George had asked of him and his brother when he invited them to share in lessons with his daughter's governess were part of the Secretary at War's plan to recruit them for the impending war with Napoleon. He had worked hard at those lessons, savouring every moment he could best the annoying little girl whom insisted on calling him 'Johnny' – as if he was still a small boy when he had a couple of years on her – and whom stuck her tongue out at him whenever her governess was not looking.
Age and experience taught him what his youthful fixation on her reactions to his progress in studies really was, cemented by the many letters she had sent to him when he was in Flanders and in India. John loved her – completely, painfully and unconditionally. He had thought of marrying a good woman as did his brother several times over the years and starting a family, but even as she had married, as was expected of a young woman of good breeding like herself, the torch that he would always carry for her stopped him.
It would always be Lyla for him, and to give less of himself to a woman would only break her heart, as he had witnessed Carly's break while she devoted herself to trying to nurse Andy back to his former self in their marriage.
"…they gave me coin, and so I sent the message to you. My betraying kiss to your cheek, as it was. I do not know their purpose." Helena Bertinelli sounded weary of the topic, and her lithe form was slouched over as she perched her elbows on the edge of the table.
John's attention transferred to their conversation in time to hear Oliver demand, "Let me ask you again, Helena. Who's 'they'?"
His voice had altered sometime during the exchange, and the one that questioned Helena now was guttural, almost animal in quality. Oliver's face was contorted into a menacing glower, and John felt the hairs on the back of his hand horripilate from the threat exuded by the duke's whole person.
There were times when John wondered if throwing his lot in with the present Duke of Starling was the right thing to do. He had often sensed this feral urge simmering under the duke's external façade, particularly when Oliver had an upsetting encounter during the day, such as when he was forced by social convention to ride in a carriage, or in the brief times he had spoken of his father's murder.
The duke was a man who had killed and would kill again if sufficiently provoked, he had no doubt. It said much about John himself that the type of provocation that would prompt Oliver's lethal action was one he adjudged to justify retaliation by homicide.
Helena apparently also felt the intimidating effect of the duke's aura, because she huffed and said, "I only dealt with a man, whom I understood to be a mere courier. But he referred to his employer the last time I saw him, when he delivered my payment. He called him 'Stellmoor'."
John stirred, for he knew that name. He kept silent now, waiting for a more opportune time to raise that information to Oliver, who was steadily retreating back to the polite mask he wore when in public.
"Thank you, Helena," the duke finally said. "I appreciate your assistance."
She snorted, "It's the least you could do after forcing me to run off with what little I could carry by getting yourself stabbed in my rooms." She swung a leg upwards, studying the top of the shoe that peeped out of her heavy skirts as she continued, "That oaf bodyguard of yours was poking round the theatre first thing the next day, claiming that I had injured his employer, and the next thing I knew, I was fired by the manager with nowhere to go."
Helena looked at John as she broke off. "He doesn't even have the decency to look apologetic."
"I'm sorry you lost your job," said Oliver, "but Diggle was doing his."
She snapped to a straighter sitting position, knees quivering with excitement and her hands in her lap so she could lean towards Oliver. "…and now I get the nice ducal treatment. When you first approached me, your grace, all everyone told me about was how you were a deliciously naughty blackguard that ruined his fiancée's little sister. And now after a few weeks of listening to you murmur the former fiancée's name in your sleep, I see the way you look at her sister…and the way you question people. Who are you really, your grace? And which sister is it that you really love?"
John did not know what she was on about. The duke grew wistful and morose whenever he returned from an encounter with Miss Lance and his brief interaction with Miss Sara only indicated an awkwardness born of familiarity between them. There were strong feelings, certainly, but not ones that John would label with the way he understood love.
He had never seen Oliver gaze at any woman the way John watched Lyla when she was not looking.
John cleared his throat now, to alert them to the arrival of the younger Lance sister.
"Oliver, where is the elder Miss Smoak at present?" The woman Helena had addressed as Mrs Raatko asked, treading off the last step of the staircase and bearing the letter in her hand, which John noticed had a ring.
"I have her housed in the Full Moon," Oliver replied.
Sara considered the information, and swept a glance over her shop. "I will come with you to retrieve her. Helena, if you could watch the shop until I come back?"
Helena nodded begrudgingly, raising her eyes heavenward as she did so.
"I'll be back soon." Sara went back into the private quarters of the shop – to fetch a bonnet and gloves, John saw – and led the way out. As he joined her on the streets, she flashed him a tentative smile, a hand raised to push back a stray strand of her hair.
She opened her mouth to address him directly, which somehow did not astonish him despite it being a breach of social etiquette for a woman to speak to someone she had not been introduced to. In all fairness there was something distinctively unorthodox about the whole morning anyway.
"Oliver has neglected all introductions altogether, but considering the circumstances of our meeting, I suppose it would not be impertinent to simply state that I'm Sara Raatko."
He bowed, identifying the last name she used as Arabic in origin, which would not raise much suspicion in a port city like Bristol, barring the fact that its owner was entirely Anglo-Saxon in appearance. The name was familiar – the Office had spoken at length of a vizier from the Ottoman Empire by the same name during the Anglo-Turkish war which had concluded just three years ago.
"Pleased to meet you, Mrs Raatko. I am John Diggle, his grace's valet and your humble servant."
She beamed, and then turned back to Oliver. "Shall we then, your grace?" She had stressed the last two words and sounded almost playful as she voiced them.
Oliver did not dignify her formal address of him with a response and started solemnly forward in the direction of the inn, leaving them both to scramble to catch up. Once again John did not fail to notice that he drew no stares from the other inhabitants of the pavement, all of whom were going about their business with no reaction to him.
The woman that had been Sara Lance strode by him exuberantly with a spring to her every step, emitting a soft hum to fill the silent void that was Oliver and John's contribution to the conversation.
The tune she was humming belonged to a nursery rhyme he had heard before, a song by the cryptic name of 'Birds of Prey' commonly heard when nannies escorted their charges to Hyde Park.
"Mr Diggle. You know of my family in London," she finally said to John, more of a statement than a question.
He inclined his head downwards in affirmation.
"How are they?"
John hesitated. He was not well-versed with the comings and goings of the Lance family, since his assignment had always been focused on the Queenes, and his present commitment to help Oliver solve his father's murder had only heightened that focus. What little he knew of the Lances did not go far beyond the summary in the report he had received on the Duke of Starling himself, that Oliver had ruined Sara Lance and so disgraced his fiancée and childhood friend Laurel, drawing Viscount Lance's ire. There was an additional line that Sara Lance had disappeared from London, and her whereabouts were hitherto unimportant enough to the War Office to track. His own observations were that the Lances avoided Oliver at the rare social gatherings when they were all present, and that though physically well, neither the viscount nor his eldest daughter appeared happy.
Sara spoke then, clearly interpreting his silence wrongly. "Did Oliver instruct you not to speak of them to me? That infuriating man… You might be wondering why I would ask you instead of him, but the truth is that he's been extremely highhanded each time I enquire, and keeps saying that I should go back to London to see them myself. As if I can ever return after what has happened…"
"You could send someone to keep you updated," said John, frowning. It was becoming readily apparent that someone needed to fully explain to him what had happened between Oliver and Sara five years ago, which had brought her to this city as the proprietor of a hothouse, and apparently, someone who sheltered destitute women.
"Yes," she agreed. "But it would have to be someone with access to my family by virtue of class, for Oliver has refused me access to his little network of spies, and my work keeps me too busy to send my own person. Moreover, Nyssa hates London with a passion and never wants to go there when she comes to England."
There was deep affection and a beleaguered humour to the way she had pronounced 'Nyssa'.
"Nyssa Raatko. Eldest daughter of the vizier better known as the Demon's Head for his military prowess among the Ottoman Sultan's Imperial Council," Sara said, her eyes daring him to ask about the relationship between the two women. "The Lances would receive such a personage, wouldn't you think? If not for the recent war, of course. We must thank the Treaty of the Dardanelles for removing some of the awkwardness."
John considered his next words very carefully. "Have you been in Bristol this whole time over the past five years?"
"Oh yes, apart from the occasional trip to the Continent when convenient. The war being one of my impediments, especially when the Ottoman Empire clashed with our British interests."
"And your Turkish friend…does she visit?"
Sara smiled. "Naturally. You may have noticed, Mr Diggle, that Bristol does not operate as rigidly by the rules, rules we have internalised by now, as in London. The constant motion of ship schedules, the incessant coming and goings of peoples of all walks… It is a space created by anonymity, one where anyone may define happiness differently from the mere acquiring of land and social position. I do not presume to know what sort of challenges you face, but my disposition has been to prefer the happiness I can decide."
"Are you happy, then, Mrs Raatko? If it is not too forward of me to ask..."
She flushed with pleasure, her face a beatific picture of contentment as the corners of her lips raised and she seemed to be thinking of something or someone as she formed her answer. "Incandescently."
They stopped at the façade of the Full Moon Inn, which had originally been built to accommodate visitors to the nearby St James's Churchyard. Oliver passed through the iron arch over the yard entrance, into which visitors were still streaming in and out, testament to the inn's central importance in the public stage-coach network that dominated travel in England.
"I hope you have time and money, Ollie," said Sara, as the three of them passed the sash windows and entered the building. "We are going to have to buy Donna Smoak a new wardrobe."
Tommy regretted dearly his rash actions the night before. Laurel had said nary a word to him in the morning and had launched directly into her search for Sara when they reached Bristol at midday, barring the most cursory of instructions about their plan of action when they stopped briefly at his family's townhouse in Clifton.
They were in the Stag and Hounds in Old Market, where the city's Tolzey Court could be found in the large paneled room on the upper floors on certain days. There was no hearing at present, but the public house was teeming with travellers with dusty feet all the same.
He watched Laurel push past the crowd as she descended the stairs, pausing to place a hand on the railing's twisted balusters whenever she gave way to another person. For ease of travel they had agreed to leave her maid at his house, on the pretext that they would still be posing as Mr and Mrs Drake.
"No one seems to recognise this," said Laurel, finally reaching his side. In her hand was a miniature that Sara had gifted her, a self-portrait of reasonable-likeness.
Tommy tried to take the miniature from her, not missing the way her fingers twitched and her expression froze when his gloved hand brushed hers. He tried not to dwell upon the way she snatched her hand back to her chest as he lifted the picture to inspect it better.
"I must say her talents lay in painting others, not herself," he observed, feigning the flippant air that he had always used to hide his true feelings of hurt since childhood.
Laurel tilted her head in perfunctory agreement, opening her hand to demand the portrait's return. As part of their guise, the Merlyn ring was on her finger, and Tommy stared at the silver band as he dropped the miniature into the centre of her palm.
Who's pathetic now? He asked himself.
Unaware of his thoughts, Laurel went back to the bar, intent on asking the barmaids and servers once again if they could identify the woman in the portrait.
The Merlyn family jewels would certainly suit her complexion, he mused. Each generation of Lady Merlyn had a string of rubies and ear bobs to match the ring she now wore, and she could even wear the bracelet he bought her years ago. That was the only reason why he bought it then, as an oblique hint to the burgeoning feelings that plagued him, a reference that no one else would have understood but him.
At sixteen her eyes were like bright stars from the sky when they landed on Oliver, and at eight and twenty he was still an abysmal poet who was entirely besotted by the Honorable Miss Laurel Lance.
Laurel had been cold and distant throughout their travel that morning, which pointed to her private uncertainties. Where he compensated for his insecurities and despair by laughing louder and making more outrageous jokes, she would withdraw into herself, seemingly entirely focused on the completion of a task and distant to all who spoke to her until she could work out how they related to each other, or restore her external world to rights with the grand inner vision she had.
Laurel was someone who hated not knowing exactly what to do and how to react, and this morning's icy demeanour had been entirely targeted at him. This meant that he was the problem in question that bothered her.
He sighed, wondering if it was better to apologise about his little prank last night or just pretend it never happened.
The worst thing about the whole situation was, that had been no joke on his part. There had to be something in the beef stew last night, or perhaps the unfamiliar surroundings had addled his pate, but when he approached her, he had fully believed that he would finally kiss her for the first time, something that had hitherto only been the subject of his fevered dreams.
Then he saw her flinch, and doubt came crashing in like the proverbial floodgates had been opened, his irritating tendency towards insecurity rising to the fore to wrest control from what lunacy and confidence that had governed his actions up to that point.
This was Laurel, the most important woman in the world, he thought. What if he hurt her?
A small part of him also asked, What if she did not see him as a man so much that she hated his kiss?
So Lord Thomas Merlyn did the one thing he knew how to do best. He laughed, hard, and pretended that the tears that came to his eyes were of mirth, just as he had done when his father had curled his lips with disgust upon Tommy's falling off his horse at the age of five, and just as he had done when his father received a letter of complaint from his tutors at Oxford.
He laughed, because when one laughed the world could not laugh at the hurt feelings that welled up in one's heart, and had to laugh together with you at what a fucking colossal joke your whole life was.
He could even laugh now, because it appeared that he had still managed to screw up the one good thing in his life, in the way she was avoiding him.
Life was a joke, but at least it was funny.
Laurel came back then, her eyes glimmering with hope.
"Tommy," she cried, obviously forgetting the alias they were travelling under. "He says he has seen someone like this!"
He shook himself out of his reverie, and renewed his attention on the search. "Whereabouts did our informant see her?"
"That man there says a similar-looking woman by the name of 'Mrs Raatko' frequents a florist on Wednesdays, a shop located a few streets from here…" She frowned in thought. "Yes, that should be within the area that the runner I sent spoke of…"
Tommy pulled out her parcel from where it had been under his arm and offered his elbow to her. "Shall we take the curricle straight there then? What is the place called?"
She was bubbling with excitement, her previous discomfort entirely forgotten for the moment, as she spoke of being reunited with her sister. "What do you think she's been doing, Tommy? Do you think she's been living well? Why does she keep going to that florist? She was never one to love flowers…"
Her animated chatter did not cease as he took his reins in hand, her own hands busy with fiddling with her parcel's wrapping. They turned into a street filled with shops, looking for a sign that read 'The Canary's Posies' amidst the bookstores and cobblers.
"There!" Laurel exclaimed, clutching at his hand to direct their vehicle.
Tommy bit back a smile. How like Laurel to attempt taking control of the reins, he thought, bringing them to just before the shopfront. He passed her the reins when they drew to a stop and dismounted, crossing over to Laurel's side to help her down.
The shop door opened then, and two blonde women emerged. One was a middle-aged woman he had never set eyes on before, and the other, shorter one, was unmistakably the Sara that had been something of a wild hellion who failed to follow the instructions of her elders whenever they had played together as children.
She was dressed in a dress of navy blue and seemed to be leaving the premises, her face turned back as if she was giving instructions to someone. Another figure, this time male, bearing parcels of all sizes piled higher than his head, came out of the shop.
The man leaned to the side to better hear Sara's words, and a sinking feeling hit Tommy's gut as he recognised his best friend, the Duke of Starling.
Bloody hell, he nearly said out loud, fearing to think of what impact the sight would have on Laurel as he whipped his head round to her.
Laurel's face was inscrutably glacial, and she had pulled back the hand she was about to put in his, to tighten her hold on the reins of his curricle. She flicked her wrist before he could utter a single syllable of restraint, and off went the vehicle at top speed, careening towards an uncertain destination insofar its driver was in the furor of her roiling emotions.