The Gilded Lily Read Online Free PDF

trouble and then he would come bleating to Titus for help. Lately his requests for assistance had become tiresome. Titus owned he
should perhaps make more effort to stay in touch. He would make the time. But then he realized there was no more time.
    ‘You’re hurting,’ Isobel said, pulling her hand away. ‘Thank goodness we are leaving this festering climate. I cannot wait to be home. Some strange malady is at work
here, best not to tarry.’
    ‘We are not going home. Not until we find them.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You heard. You were witness to the exceeding speed of the Netherbarrow law,’ he said. ‘If you want something doing properly, best to do it yourself. I have no confidence in
that constable. I am going to find those girls and make them return every last farthing.’
    ‘But I have a dressmaker’s appointment the day after tomorrow . . .’
    ‘For God’s sake, Isobel, have you no sense of propriety? My brother is dead and you see fit to chatter about your dressmaker? One word more, and I’ll put you off and you will
walk home from Netherbarrow.’
    Isobel turned her back to him with a heavy sigh and they continued the journey in silence. After a while, Isobel said, ‘What about Alice?’
    Titus did not answer. Of course he knew they should inform the wife, but Titus had never been able to bear her. She was no use at all to Thomas as far as he could see. Titus never saw the point
of her wasting her time with her insipid paintings, her hair all hanging wild and in disarray, her sleeves dribbled in paint. And besides, the constable had informed him she was in the gaol at
Lancaster. Accused of meddling in the black arts. It was outlandish – bizarre – that any member of his family should be so accused. He would not want his hands tainted with that. Did
not he have enough to deal with? His friends in the guild would laugh at him. No, he told himself, find the thieving sisters first and restore order to Thomas’s estate. The wife would have to
wait.
    Lancaster. Preston. Warrington. Newcastle-under-the-Lyme. Eccleshall. At each town they had reports that the girls had just left. Desperate and sleepless, for this was now
Titus’s fourth uncomfortable day in a tooth-rattling carriage, he made several wild goose chases, until he got word of a mule and cart sold just outside Lichfield. They galloped there, to
discover no trace of the girls or the goods.
    Isobel refused to get back in the carriage. ‘No more,’ she said.
    ‘We will try Coventry, now get in.’
    ‘No. I refuse to go a single furlong more. What if we never find them?’
    Titus looked at her blankly. ‘Get in, or I shall go without you else. You are wasting time.’
    Isobel sat down on the carriage step and began to weep. ‘I want to go back.’
    ‘I will not return to Netherbarrow until I find them.’
    ‘Not Netherbarrow,’ she blubbed, ‘home. I want to go home.’
    ‘We are going to Coventry. Now stop greeting, it does nobody any good,’ he snapped. Her crying annoyed him. Men were not allowed such displays of feeling. She didn’t
understand, he could no more think of Thomas not existing than he could think of waking up without an arm.
    Isobel wiped her eyes again and climbed back into the carriage. She twisted her kidskin gloves in her hands and stared out of the window.
    ‘We will take respite at an inn on the way,’ he said, but Isobel did not reply.
    That evening Titus was forced to leave the coach and four at Coventry, for he could not make the beasts go any further no matter how much he told the driver to apply his whip. The ostler at the
inn had nearly set on him and had insisted he change horses. But there were no matching pairs to be had, so he had been forced to take a single mount. It wasn’t much of a horse for the money,
a ridge-backed roan with splinty legs. He thwacked it a cutting blow to keep it to speed. A great anger had seized him, he scarcely knew what he did.
    Isobel had not hidden her relief that