Glory.
There could be no other name for the golden exhilaration that poured through her now, illuminating every cell, pooling around her wounded, caged heart.
And shattering the lock.
She now took her first full breath of free, loved air.
She gave a soft laugh now, and suddenly she heard again Magnus standing outside of her cell in Newgate:Let her out, he’d ordered.
Goose bumps spangled her everywhere.Thatwas what he’d been doing yesterday morning. Planning, and getting those documents in order.Everthe strategist.
“Oh, Magnus.”
He loved her. She loved him. Heknewshe loved him, too. He must.
For if she was not mistaken...
Her beloved beast had called her bluff.
Alexandra hurtled out of The Grand Palace on the Thames as though she’d been lit on fire, startling a pair of yawning maids who were desultorily applying feather dusters to things in the sitting room. She carried only her shoes and her bonnet, and a little pocket watch.
She leaped right into his carriage—now her carriage, apparently. It shocked her not at all that it had been waiting just outside for her, near the little garden. Magnus would have seen to that. Still, she prayed it meant her instincts were correct.
“Rossington Arms Coaching Inn, please!” she told the driver, who probably already knew. “Please hurry, if you can.”
She was thrown back in her seat when he cracked the reins. She finished lacing her dress and smoothing her hastily pinned-up hair and tying her bonnet in the carriage.
At the end of the Barking Road, a slow-moving costermonger’s cart ahead of them ate five precious minutes of the mere seventeen or so she had to get to him, and it was all she could do not to leap out of the carriage and run. Instead, sheclosed her eyes and prayed. She squeezed her little watch in her palm until it was sweaty and willed time to slow. There was no hope for her heart slowing. It raced ahead of her. It was already with him.
But the driver understood his mission, and he was skillful. At 7:00 a.m., Rossington Arms Coaching Inn at last came into view, and oh thankGodthe stagecoach was still visible, its gleaming red bulk rising above a teeming crowd of travelers and well-wishers and spectators, all threaded through with barking dogs and children and costermongers. The departure of a stagecoach was always a spectacle.
But the horses were harnessed and trunks had been lashed to the top. The driver was clambering up into his seat. He reached a hand down to help up another man who would be enjoying the cheaper, more scenic, and considerably less comfortable ride on top.
And this, if she was not mistaken, meant at least some of the other passengers had boarded. They could leave any second.
When the coach halted, she leaped out and plunged into the fray, which refused to cooperate by parting for her.
“My husband. I’m looking for my husband. Please, sir, madam, if you’d just let me through—it’s urgent!”
Surely Magnus would be obvious in the crowd. But her path everywhere was blocked by milling humans around which she could not see, and her voice scarcely penetrated the hubbub.
“I’ll be your husband!” a man called cheerily. “Step right over here, miss.”
She ignored him.
“He’s the Earl of Montcroix. Colonel Brightwall? He’s very tall—you really can’t miss him! Please, have you seen a very tall man?”
She was babbling. She knew it sounded like lunacy even before people shied away from her wild eyes and shook their heads. An excitedly barking dog nearly tripped her.
A man stepped in front of her. “Of course he’s an earl, luv,” he called. “And I’m the King of England. You’d best try your luck with me.” His fingers scrabbled at her elbow, attempting a grip.
She spun and snarled, “Take your hand off me or I’ll stab you with a hairpin.”
He leaped backward.
A thicket of people clogged her path in every direction. Every time she feinted to the left or to the right, someone stepped in her way. She couldn’t see around them or over them. She’d had nightmares like this: running and running to try to reach someone as the distance grew ever longer.
“MAGNUS!”