“Embarrassment, perhaps.” She stopped. “In retrospect, I was quite frightened. Too frightened to feel much at the time.”
He really didn’t think he could breathe.
She went on, “If I hadn’t spotted the guard outside, I don’t know what I would have done. And I probably would have immediately asked—”
“One moment, please,” he interrupted. That last part hadn’t made sense. He and Harris had decided to ask Lady Sarah to find Millie and use whatever excuse she thought best an excuse to bring Millie to the retiring room.
But if all had gone as they had planned, Sarah would be here, too. She was not. But perhaps she was waiting just outside the door? “Where are Lady Sarah and Lady Eltenham?”
“I haven’t any idea.” She sounded not only completely confused but stunned. “Before the guard mentioned Lady Sarah, I didn’t even know Harbury’s sister was here tonight. Pity I didn’t run intoherin my mad dash through the corridor.”
Mad dash?!
“And as for Lady Eltenham, she left the box at the start of intermission.”
Lady Eltenham left the box? Millie’s chaperoneleft the box? “Your chaperone left you in a box full of young, unmarried men?”
“No,” she said as if this was obvious. “Willard had already ordered them out.”
Neville yanked his hand through his hair. Millie’s position had just become so, so much worse than even he had imagined. Not—he forced himself to calm—as bad as it could have been.
Butbad.Did Millie have any idea how close she had come to—
He slammed the door on that thought.
If she didn’t, he would not burden her with his terrors now.
“Lord Willard was quite… put out after I slipped away,” she began again, her tone maddeningly conversational. “Not at all his usual self. His father is going to be livid when he hears how he tore through the crowds in the corridor. I wonder which made him angrier—that I thwarted his plan to have his lackeys catch us kissing, or that I took his knife just before I escaped?”
Neville emitted a choking noise.
“He must have grabbed ten or more ladies while searching for me in the crowd.”
Neville’s head bowed in utter defeat. “What am I going todo?”
“Interesting question,” she said, her tone shifting from conversational to considering. “Although I think the question applies to us both. We’re in a bit of an awkward situation, aren’t we?”
Neville snorted. The situation was more thanawkward.
No one had caught Willard compromising her as he must have planned. But, earlier, everyone had seen Millie with Willard. And, by her own account, a mass of people in the hall knew Willard did not know where the lady he had been escorting had gone.
The implication was that she’d been alone with Willard, but had left, possibly even with one of the other young men.
Perhaps if Lady Eltenham could be found, she could be persuaded to say Millie had been in her care the whole time. But God only knew what had happened out in the corridor since she’d entered the royal retiring room.
In fact, shouldn’t the play have resumed by now? He didn’t hear any actors or music. Instead, milling voices leaked in from both the hall and the theater proper.
He should have paid more attention to what was happening in the rooms beyond. Instead, he’d—
He grunted in self-disgust.
The only possible ray of light was that Millie hadn’t been caught with Willard. If she had, her fate would have been in his hands now.
Still, her options were few.
Though she didn’t seem to be aware, soon, far too soon, she’d have to make a choice. Willard—if he offered. But, no, Neville really would kill him first. Banishment—a permanent separation from her sisters, the people she held most dear. Or…Or…
Another answer crystalized out of nothing, cold, clear and immutable.