“You can’t condemn me unheard,” she said on a surge of desperation.
After a long pause, he said, “Yes, I can.”
They reached Liverpool’s best inn midmorning. Leath was still ahead of them. In fact, he’d made up time. At the last stop, they’d learned that he was at least four hours in advance.
Pen felt sick with guilt. If Cam had traveled alone, he wouldn’t have stopped so often. Not that he’d precisely made the trip comfortable, but he’d pulled back from the
punishing pace he’d established leaving London.
Their carriage bowled into the Bear and Swan’s bustling yard. After the lonely road, the noise and crush were dizzying.
“Shouldn’t we go to the docks?” It was the first time she’d spoken in hours. Cam’s discouraging response to her ill-timed attempts to explain had daunted her.
“No.”
She bit back a sigh. The silent treatment had lost its meager charm about twelve hours ago.
Then to her surprise, he went on. “I’ll reserve our rooms and arrange more discreet transport.”
It made sense. She ventured another question. “What about Leath?”
To her astonishment, Cam’s lips lengthened in a smile. A grim smile, but his first sign of amusement since leaving Rothermere House. She wasn’t fool enough to think he was thawing, but nonetheless, she was heartened.
“We have the advantage.”
She was even more astounded to hear him say “we.” But when he looked at her, the real Cam had retreated far, far behind his eyes. So far that she knew she’d never reach him.
A wave of misery overwhelmed her. She’d made so many mistakes. Now she paid the price.
Any further chance for conversation disappeared in the business of arriving. Only when they were inside a closed carriage did Pen pursue the subject of Leath. “Why do we have the advantage?”
From the seat opposite, Cam regarded her with the shuttered gaze that she began to loathe.
Wait until you’ve lived with it for fifty years.
She ignored the bleak little voice and waited, without hope, for Cam’s reply.
“I have shipping interests here. I know the city well. Leath’s business is in mines and property. He’ll need time to get his bearings.”
“And you know where to go?”
He shrugged. “I’ve got a good idea.”
“What if Harry and Sophie have already sailed?”
“Then the New World is welcome to that pair of nitwits.”
Even as she spoke, she knew she wasted her time. “Harry loves Sophie.”
His stare was frigid. “Don’t.”
She bit her lip. She hated Cam’s contempt for love. All her life she’d cursed his self-centered parents for warping Cam’s attitudes. Never so bitterly as at this moment.
He continued. “I doubt they’ll get straight onto a ship. They’re likely holed up in a boarding house.” Another hint of grim humor, but this time she knew better than to take encouragement. “I wonder how Sophie likes life away from the luxury of her brother’s home.”
“Sophie’s stronger than you think,” Pen said, although she too had worried about the girl coping with hardship. The grand romance of running away with her lover might fade in squalid surroundings.
“We’ll see.”