Unmasked by her Lover, page 5
Now, slipping into the cover of the trees, he faced them on more equal terms, armed and without fear for Meg or the child, or even the enigmatic Mrs. Garrow. In fact, he had the advantage. He had led troops silently over more difficult terrain than this in surprise attacks. And he could hear the robbers blundering about in the undergrowth, unaware he was following them. It would never have entered their heads.
Although, on some level, he was aware of his wound aching, it did not trouble him now he was in the midst of action. He moved silently and rapidly between the trees, following the sounds of the undergrowth and then their voices.
Before long, he could tell they had paused, perhaps to split the loot between them, perhaps—a more dangerous prospect for Harry—to meet up with comrades. He slowed a little, taking greater care as he approached them, but the trees were thick enough to provide reasonable cover.
He found them in a small clearing, crouched around his open valise. To one side of it, his purse lay open, the loose paper money extracted from Meg, presumably to prevent the breeze robbing them of their ill-gotten gain. On the ground on the other side of the valise, lay a pistol.
Since Harry had planned only to stay one night at Calvert Court, there was not much in the valise besides a change of clothes and a few overnight necessities. But the robbers were shaking out his shirts, even feeling the linings and pockets of his spare coat. Which was odd and tended to confirm at least one of Harry’s suspicions.
He strained his ears to listen to their conversation but could make out very little.
“There’s nothing in here,” one said disgustedly, throwing his coat on the ground and rifling beneath his undergarments. “If you ask me, there is nothing.”
The other only grunted in reply.
Harry decided to take a hand. He stepped out from behind his tree and strolled into the clearing, cocking his pistol as he went. Both robbers leapt to their feet.
“If you tell me what you’re looking for, perhaps I can help,” Harry said mildly. “No, stand still,” he added as one edged toward the pistol on the ground. “You’d be dead before you touched it. Hands in the air if you please. Now, satisfy my curiosity. Who paid you?”
The men still wore their masks and overcoats, although they’d pulled the scarves down from their faces. They both looked very clean-shaven.
One said, “You did.”
“Yes, but I’m taking it back,” Harry said, gesturing with his pistol to make them back off a few paces. He bent and picked up the purse. “Let me try a different question. Who instructed you?” He felt the presence of Dewar’s ring through the leather and pocketed the purse, along with Meg’s money. “You are not inclined to tell. No matter. You still have the lady’s earrings.”
He made one of his frequent sweeping glances about the surrounding trees, wary of approaching accomplices who would not hesitate to shoot him. He had no time for interrogations. Something moved at the edge of the trees, a fleeting glimpse of blue. The color of Meg’s pelisse.
Oh, yes, he had run out of time.
The thief nearest him reached for his right-hand pocket, perhaps for the earrings he had demanded.
“Slowly,” Harry instructed, though by the hang of the large pockets, the thief’s pistol was in the other. His next, darting glance showed no signs of anyone else in the woods, but Meg emerged from the trees as silently as she had ever played hide and seek. From the corner of his eye, he was aware she even held her skirts above her shapely ankles to prevent them from rustling on the ground.
The thief in front of him produced the earrings. His hand, gloveless now, was smooth and well-manicured. Slowly, he held them out to Harry at arm’s length. Harry, keeping his gaze on the man’s face, stepped closer.
The other thief stood very still, poised, all his attention on Harry as he waited for his chance, no doubt to snatch up the pistol barely two feet away. At least this goal kept him from noticing Meg flitting up behind him.
Harry closed the distance to the first highwayman and held out his hand. The thief’s right hand dipped as though about to drop the earrings into Harry’s open palm. His eyes barely flickered, but Harry had already sensed the clenching of the man’s left fist and knew what was coming.
Only feet away, the other highwayman had suddenly seen Meg. He dived for the pistol, but she was quicker, snatching it up in triumph.
Harry snatched the earrings just as “his” thief swung a brutal left hook. Prepared, Harry ducked, and before the earrings even hit his palm, he changed direction, plunging his hand into the man’s other pocket to seize his pistol.
Staggering as his fist missed its target, the highwayman was caught off-balance, and Harry leapt back.
He glanced desperately across at Meg, who was pointing the pistol at her own thief who merely curled his lip.
“It isn’t loaded,” he snarled and reached for her.
Harry didn’t think twice. He fired the pistol in his right hand while ramming the one just received against his man’s ribs. His shot was wide—he meant it to be—but the warning jerked Meg’s attacker to a halt.
“Enough!” Harry roared in his battlefield voice. There was no longer any point in silence. If there were accomplices close by, they were already on their way. “Meg, fetch the valise if you’d be so good. No one else is to move or, by God, my next shot kills, do you understand me?”
Meg, her eyes wide and frightened yet still filled with that wild excitement he remembered from their most daring youthful pranks, ran to the valise, stuffing everything in and fastening it shut. Though her hands shook, they did the work with swift efficiency, and she rose to her feet beside him.
“Both of you, turn around,” Harry ordered and watched them reluctantly obey. They probably thought he was about to kill at least one of them. Well and good. “Now, count aloud to twenty. If either of you stops or turns, I will shoot you.” He pushed Meg in the direction of the road and shouted to the thieves, “Start counting!”
On the count of “One,” he backed away.
“Louder!” he commanded.
“Two!”
Harry turned, snatched the valise from Meg, and grabbed her hand instead. They ran amongst the trees as “Eight!” rang out.
Meg’s fingers gripped his, and she let out a sob, but when he glanced at her in quick concern, her eyes were brimful of laughter and mischief, just as if they hadn’t faced down two desperate, armed thieves and taken back what had been stolen.
“You are mad, Meg Winter!” he said breathlessly, dragging her on. “Why couldn’t you stay in the carriage?”
“Why couldn’t you?” she threw back.
“Because they took the last gift of a friend.”
Her fingers tightened, but she asked no more.
Behind them, the thieves had stopped counting. He didn’t know if they had other weapons. At least, he could not hear them or anyone else in the woods, though he and Meg were making enough noise to drown out anyone being remotely stealthy.
As they reached the edge of the trees, he made out the rumble of carriage wheels in the road.
He paused. “Do you suppose strangers would take up such disreputable characters as you and I, if we explained about highway robbery?”
Meg laughed. “No need. Look.”
The carriage had stopped, and Aline Garrow was hanging out of the window, waving at them.
*
As she tumbled back into the carriage, and the coachman stowed Harry’s bag once more, Meg was conscious, chiefly, of exhilaration. Somewhere, the risk Harry had taken appalled her, for they were no longer children, and they hadn’t just faced an angry farmer or thwarted parents. In defying highwaymen with nothing to lose, they had had no privilege of birth. That was terrifying, but for now, all she felt was triumph and the sheer joy of reunion with her old friend.
“Oh, goodness!” Mrs. Garrow exclaimed while Basil jumped up and down with glee beside her. “I am so relieved to see you, the pair of you! What on earth happened?”
“Harry held them up, we stole their pistols, and took back everything!” Meg said merrily. “Oh, Harry, give Mrs. Garrow back her earrings.”
Mrs. Garrow accepted them as though entranced. “You are both quite insane! And where are our highway robbers? You didn’t shoot them, did you? For I heard a shot.”
Harry only smiled faintly at her, so Meg said, “No, though Harry did fire at one of them, and I really did think he would shoot the other. Oh, Harry, do you think the pistol really wasn’t loaded?”
Harry, easing his leg, stretched out his hand for the pistol she had taken. He examined it gingerly. “Well. It really wasn’t loaded. What a very odd highwayman, to be sure.”
“Perhaps they could not afford more bullets,” Mrs. Garrow suggested. “Is the other one loaded?”
“It is,” Harry said grimly. “I suppose they didn’t need more to threaten us.”
“But you were mad to go after them, my lord!” Mrs. Garrow scolded. “What on earth possessed you?”
The last gift of a friend. Harry smiled deprecatingly. “Pride.”
*
Thanks to his mother’s ploy of pretending the hold-up was a game—and Harry and Meg’s enthusiastic support—Basil did not appear to be in the least concerned about the highwaymen. In fact, he gazed constantly out of the window, eagerly awaiting more.
When they stopped to change horses, Mrs. Garrow took him into the inn for quick refreshment, leaving Meg and Harry strolling around the inn yard “to keep watch.”
“You don’t truly believe they will follow us here?” Meg said.
Harry shook his head. “No. They didn’t even follow us through the woods back to the road. I think their work was done.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, they were looking for something particular and already knew it wasn’t there.”
Frowning, she stopped beside a gate leading to a small paddock and looked up into his face. “Such as what?”
He shrugged. “That, I don’t know.”
“But…you mean, they picked our coach on purpose? It makes no sense.”
“Not yet,” he agreed.
“I don’t even see why you might suspect it.”
“Aline—Mrs. Garrow—was not afraid.” He lowered his gaze from the horizon to her face. “And she already had her story ready to keep Basil from fear. She even allowed you to follow me into the woods.”
“She could not have stopped me,” Meg said flatly.
A smile flickered across his face, banishing the unusually stern expression. “That is probably true. But leaving aside her possible involvement, I overheard the highwayman saying it wasn’t there, whatever it was. Besides, they were very well shaved for ruffians, and though I only saw one of their four hands without gloves, that was decidedly clean and smooth.”
“Some prank, perhaps?” Meg said doubtfully. “I’m sure Johnny once held someone up for a wager. My father was livid.”
“I did not feel…pranked,” Harry observed.
“Neither did I,” she admitted, resting one arm along the gate. She glanced up at him once more. “What did your friend give you that you pursued them for it?”
She suspected he might fob her off, but instead, he took the purse from his pocket and reached into its depths to bring out something small and gold. He held it out to her—a gold ring, minutely engraved around each edge.
Something twisted inside her. Had a woman, a lover, given him this? Indeed, there was some tragedy.
“He died after Toulouse,” Harry said abruptly. “Beside me in the hospital. Just before, he gave me this for his wife. I had been planning to go north and see her when I received your mother’s summons to Grosvenor Square.”
“I’m sorry,” she managed.
His lips quirked, and he dropped the ring back into its hiding place. “Don’t be. I was glad of the distraction. I still am. But I’m damned if I’ll lose the ring at this stage.”
*
With all the excitement, it was only as they drew onto Calvert land that Meg began to wonder nervously how many guests she would find with her sister, and whether or not she would be able to speak to her alone before Martha let the cat out of the bag.
Oh well, she would just have to brazen it out.
Footmen hurried out of the house to let down the carriage steps and carry in luggage. Meg alighted and swept up the steps to the front door.
Wilkins, the butler, smiled rather more warmly than she expected.
“Good afternoon, Wilkins,” she said cheerfully. “Please have Mrs. Garrow shown to her rooms. Where will I find…?”
“There you are!” exclaimed a delighted male voice.
Lord Calvert strode out of the ground floor library, beaming. Meg, who knew she wasn’t expected, was rather baffled to be greeted quite in this way until it entered her head that a letter from her parents must have already reached him. However, Calvert seemed to mind neither her scandal nor her late arrival, for he strode right up to her with rather more enthusiasm than she was used to.
“Selwyn,” she murmured, offering her cheek.
To her amazement, her brother-in-law threw both arms around her and kissed her full on the lips.
Chapter Six
There was a time when she would have swooned with happiness to receive such a sign of affection from Lord Calvert. At this moment, she was conscious chiefly of outrage and a powerful desire to box his ears. Her arm even twitched outward.
His lips left hers rather quickly, then.
“Play along,” he breathed in her ear, then more loudly, “Honestly, Martha, you are never happy except when you set the house on its ears. Come and tell me what you have been up to before tea.”
His arm still behind her waist, he swept her toward the library.
Aware of watching servants, of Mrs. Garrow on the stairs who might or might not have witnessed this oddity, Meg bore it until they were inside the library when she threw off his arm and spun indignantly away from him.
The door shut with a definite click, and both Meg and Calvert glanced over in startlement.
Harry leaned against the door. “My lord.”
Calvert frowned, clearly irritated, though baffled at the same time. “Um, Captain, is it?”
Harry straightened and bowed. “Harry de Vere. We have not met for several years.”
“De Vere? You are Staunton’s brother?”
“Of course he is, Selwyn,” Meg said impatiently. “And more than that, he is a family friend who has had the goodness to drop everything and escort me here. So the least you can do is give him a glass of wine while you explain why you suddenly can’t tell your wife from your sister-in-law.”
“Of course I can,” Calvert said, stamping impatiently across the room to a decanter, where he slopped rather than poured sherry into two glasses. He paused, glancing at Meg.
“Yes, please,” she said recklessly.
Harry strolled forward and took the glasses, while Meg, wary of further contact with Calvert, avoided the sofa and sat in an armchair.
“Well?” she demanded, accepting the glass from Harry with a murmur of thanks. He leaned his hip casually against the arm of her chair. His presence there felt oddly protective, and, shaken despite herself by Calvert’s intimate greeting, she was glad of it.
“Well? No, not very,” Calvert said impatiently. “I have always been able to tell you apart, though I confess when I saw you from the window, I did think for a moment you were Martha.”
Meg scowled at him. “Where is Martha?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you! We are expecting guests for a fortnight, culminating in a grand masked ball—all of which Martha planned—and yet she has chosen this moment to absent herself.”
“That does not sound remotely like Martha. Where has she gone?”
“Away.” Calvert dragged his hand through his hair and paced toward the window, where he paused, taking a sizeable gulp of sherry. “She did not say where.”
Meg peered at him more closely, the first twinges of unease seeping through her. “You quarreled.”
Calvert waved that aside. “We are married. We quarrel. She doesn’t usually run away in high dudgeon.”
“Run away!” Meg repeated, startled. “When was this?”
“At some point between yesterday evening and eleven o’clock this morning when I realized she had gone.” Calvert sank onto the sofa. “I went looking for her, of course. Those I can trust have looked, too, and she is nowhere on the estate.”
“Was she riding?” Harry asked briskly. “Did she take a carriage?”
“The mare I gave her is gone. She saddled it herself unless the grooms are lying.”
“And Mathews? Her maid?” Meg asked.
“Knows nothing,” Calvert said impatiently. “My only hope is that she rode to London, to you. Well, to your parents since you are here.”
“Hope?” Harry repeated in disbelief.
Calvert knocked back the rest of his sherry. “I know. Riding all that way alone, without even a groom. The dangers are unthinkable. As to what happens to her reputation… Well, we can at least save that part of the matter while I discover her. You, Meg, must be Martha to greet our guests.”
“Your only guests so far know I am Meg,” she said dryly. “And I will not recline here playing Martha while she is at the mercy of every villain between here and London.”
Calvert stared at her. “But you would know, wouldn’t you? You would feel it if anything happened to her? Even if she was afraid.”
“I don’t know that I would.” Meg met his gaze. “We are not children anymore. Our lives went in different directions. We no longer sense what happens to each other.”
“Martha told me you did.”
Meg’s gaze fell. It was true she had been aware of her sister’s unhappiness since her marriage. But that was as much observation as whatever connection they had shared as children.
“I have been too involved with my own problems to be aware of Martha’s,” she muttered. “You should know I am ruined. I came here to pretend I could not have been in the Princess of Wales’s house two nights ago.”
