For a moment Amber lay, surprised and relieved, half wondering what had happened. Suddenly she burst into tears of anger and loneliness and revulsion. I won’t do it again! she thought. I won’t if he kills me! She rolled over onto her side, crying drearily, and waited for him to come back.
She waited a long time. At last she got up, rinsed her face in cold water and combed her hair. She wondered where he had gone and what kept him, but she did not care very much. For when he did return they would only drive back and she would spend the rest of the afternoon talking to Sally or, if Luke stayed home, playing ombre or gleek and she would be sure to lose because they cheated and she did not know how.
Finally she began to grow uneasy and the suspicion sneaked into her mind that he had taken the coach and gone off, leaving her to get back however she might. It would be like him to take some such means of repaying her for having slapped him. And she had not so much as a farthing with her. She snatched up her fan and muff and mask, flung on her black velvet cloak, and went out of the room and downstairs. The host was leaning over the counter, talking to some booted muddy stranger, and both men were smoking pipes and drinking ale.
“Where’s my husband?” she demanded, halfway down the stairs.
They looked up at her. “Your husband?” repeated the host.
“Of course! The man I came here with!” she cried impatiently, crossing the floor toward him now. “Where is he?”
“Why, he’s gone, mem. He said you was a lady wanted to elope with ‘im and told me to call ’im at half-after-one. He went off in the coach soon’s he came down—said you’d pay the reckoning,” he added significantly.
Amber stared at him in astonishment and then she ran to the door to look out. It was true. Her coach was gone. She turned and faced him, angry and worried. “I’ve got to get back to London! How can I do it? Is there a stage-coach that stops here?”
“No, mem. Few enough of any kind stops here. The dinner was ten shillin’s and the room ten shillin’s. One pound in all, mem.” He held out his hand.
“One pound! Well, I haven’t got it! I haven’t got a farthing! Oh, damn him!” It seemed to her that no one had ever had such scurvy luck, no one had ever suffered such trials as had beset her constantly since she had come to London. “How ’m I to get home?” she demanded again, desperate now. Certainly she could not walk in that pouring rain and the mud.
For a moment the host was silent, measuring her, deciding at last in her favour because of her fine clothes. “Well, mem, you look an honest lady. I’ve got a horse I can let you take and my son can show you the way—if you’ll pay him the reckoning when you get there.”
Amber agreed and she and the innkeeper’s fourteen-year-old boy set out on a pair of swaybacked nags that could not be kicked or coaxed out of a plodding trot. Though not yet two-thirty it was dark and the rain came down steadily, soaking both of them through before they had gone a quarter-mile.
They rode silently, Amber clenching her teeth, wretchedly uncomfortable with the heavy jogging of her belly and the feel of wet clothes and hair clinging tight to her skin. She was wholly obsessed with Luke Channell and how she despised him. And the farther they rode, the more her stomach stabbed and ached, the more chilled she became—the more savagely she hated him. She promised herself that she would murder him for this, though she burnt alive for it.
When they got back into the City the streets were almost deserted. Men with their cloaks wrapped up about their mouths and their hats pulled low leant against the wind. Wet skinny dogs and miserable cats crouched in the doorways, and the kennels down the middle of the streets were rushing torrents of water and refuse.
The boy helped her to dismount and followed her as she ran inside, her skirts sticking to her legs, her soaked hair hanging down her shoulders in long twining tendrils. She looked like some weird water-witch. She ran through the parlour without glancing at anyone—though every eye there turned to follow her in amazement—rushed up the steps two at a time, then down the hallway to burst into her room with a hysterical scream.
No one answered. For the room was empty, her bed still unmade, and everywhere were signs of hurried departure. Drawers were opened and empty; the wardrobe where her clothes had been stood ajar, but nothing was in it; the top of her dressing-table had been wiped clean. The mirrors she had bought were gone from the walls. A pair of silver candlesticks had been taken from the mantel. In his pretty gilt cage the little parakeet cocked an eye at her, and she saw the earrings Bruce had bought at the May Fair lying on the floor, as though flung away in contempt.
