“Aye, my lord.” The coachman took the note, raised a hand in salute. “And good luck to you, sir. Hope you catch up with those blackguards right quick.”

Breckenridge hoped so, too. He watched the pair climb up to the box seat of the town carriage. The instant they’d turned it out of the yard, heading back to London, he strode to the sleek phaeton waiting to one side. A pair of grays the innkeeper rarely allowed to be hired by anyone danced between the shafts. Two nervous ostlers held the horses’ heads.

“Right frisky, they are, m’lord.” The head ostler followed him over. “They haven’t been out in an age. Keep telling the boss he’d be better off letting them out for a run now and then.”

“I’ll manage.” Breckenridge swung up to the phaeton’s high box seat. He needed speed, and the combination of phaeton and high-bred horses promised that. Taking the reins, he tensioned them, tested the horses’ mouths, then nodded to the ostlers. “Let ’em go.”

The ostlers did, leaping back as the horses surged.

Breckenridge reined the pair in only enough to take the turn out of the yard, then he let them have their heads up Barnet Hill and on along the Great North Road.

For a while, managing the horses absorbed all of his attention, but once they’d settled and were bowling along, the steady rhythm of their hooves eating the miles with little other traffic to get in their way, he could spare sufficient attention to think.

To give thanks the night wasn’t freezing given he was still in his evening clothes.

To grapple with the realization that if he hadn’t insisted Heather leave Lady Herford’s villa-hadn’t allowed her to walk the twenty-cum-fifty yards along the pavement to her carriage alone-she wouldn’t have been in the hands of unknown assailants, wouldn’t have been subjected to whatever indignities they’d already visited on her.