Princess of Glass - Jessica Day George [52]
“I don’t know,” Poppy said, squinting at the dancers. “But Roger and I are doing all we can to—There she goes, quick!”
The dance had ended. Lady Ella had looked at the clock at the end of the ballroom and was now excusing herself to Christian. Poppy checked the clock, too, and saw that it was a quarter to midnight; roughly the same time that Lady Ella had left the gala the week before.
The princess saw Roger standing near the entrance hall and signaled to him with her fan. The ballroom was crowded and people were taking notice of Marianne’s return to the party. Poppy wasn’t sure she would be able to make it to the door in time to see where Ella went.
But Roger faded out through the doors just before Ella got there, with Christian as well as several other satellite admirers still trailing her. Poppy turned Marianne over to the sympathetic ladies who surrounded them, and aimed herself at the door out of the ballroom with as much speed as she could muster, considering the people in her way and the heavy gown she was wearing.
Poppy got outside just as the strange, basketlike gold carriage was leaving with Lady Ella. Roger was sitting in his own small buggy, which he had had brought around just behind Lady Ella’s carriage and held at the ready. Poppy scrambled up onto the seat beside him, cursing and hoping fervently that she didn’t ruin her new gown, and Roger whipped the horses forward.
He was wearing a large cloak over his evening clothes, and an old-fashioned three-cornered hat he had borrowed from a coachman. He took the reins in one hand and pulled a dark carriage rug from under the seat with the other. Poppy spread it over her light-colored gown.
Earlier, before Christian had fainted, Poppy and Roger had gone outside to see if they could get any information out of Lady Ella’s servants. The carriage was easy enough to spot: no one had ever seen the like before and the horses gleamed so bright and white that they didn’t look real.
But not only were all of Lady Ella’s servants mute, their expressions were so hostile that Poppy found herself backing away, and the coachman went so far as to brandish his whip at Roger when the young man continued to snoop around the carriage. So Roger had a groom get his buggy ready and slip it into the queue of waiting carriages so they could follow Ella when she left.
And now they were racketing through Castleraugh after the golden carriage, which was traveling at an insane speed. It was fortunate that there were a number of carriages about this night, or it would have been very noticeable that they were being followed.
After a number of twists and turns, the golden carriage and the buggy following it had to slow down as they entered a well-lit but narrow alley that ran behind some very fine manors. Looking around in confusion, Poppy recognized the back of one of the enormous houses.
“We’re behind Seadown House,” she hissed to Roger, who nodded.
After their wild chase through the streets, they had looped right back to where they had started out, or almost. Normally those riding in the carriages were let out in the front of the house, not back in the mews.
To Poppy’s continued consternation, Lady Ella’s golden carriage drove through the Seadowns’ back gate. Where could Ellen possibly hide a team of horses, a golden coach, and half a dozen servants?
Roger stopped the buggy in the alley close to the fence, and they stood up to look over at what was happening in the back courtyard. A large bonfire had been built near the kitchen garden, but had fallen to ash. As they watched, the coachman drove the horses straight for this ashy, cindery mess.
Poppy almost cried out: the red heart of the bonfire was still visible, and the horses would be burned for certain. But Roger put a hand on her arm to stop her, and they watched in awe as the horses unfalteringly walked through the remains of the fire and disappeared, followed by the golden coach with coachman, footmen, Ella, and all.
“Did you see that?” Poppy’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Yes,” Roger replied, sounding