Barbara Metzger (14 page)

"Stanford the top sawyer?” Tim asked.

"Stanford the nonesuch?” Tom asked.

"Stanford the scoundrel,” Miss Merrihew replied. “The dastard drove up and carried her away without so much as a by-your-leave.” She meant the viscount had not waited for her permission; the twins assumed she meant their quarry had been abducted against her will.

Tom looked at his brother. “She ain't his type."

"She ain't no one's type,” Tim responded.

"So what did he want with her?"

They both looked at Miss Merrihew, who answered, “Nothing good, you may be assured. The female was in my care and he stole her away, despite my arguments. I wouldn't be surprised if she contracts a congestion of the lungs now.” She wouldn't be unhappy either.

"He stole her?"

"And she could still die?"

They looked at each other. Obviously they had to rescue Miss Lockharte.

The Heatherstone twosome left in such a hurry, Tim forgot his hat. Miss Merrihew was so angry, she stomped it flat, then kicked it into the fireplace. Good thing the twins hadn't forgotten the kitten.

They tore off, headed in the right direction by luck alone, Tim driving. “What are we going to do when we catch up to him?” his brother wanted to know.

"Steal her back, of course. Chap can't go around snatching up schoolteachers, now, can he?"

Stanford had, and Tom considered that he just mightn't be willing to give her back. “Uh, Tim, do you have a pistol?"

Tim reached under his seat and brought out a pistol.

"I better take that,” the other said. “You have the reins."

"You have the kitten."

"I'm a better shot."

Tim slowed the horses. “You know, Stanford is a better shot than either of us."

Tom nodded. “He never misses at Manton's. Handy with his fives, too. Seen him working with Gentleman Jackson himself."

Tim pulled his curricle to the side of the road. “Maybe Stanford doesn't mean any harm to the female."

"He stole her, didn't he? That must mean he intends to dishonor her."

"We already did that. Stanford can't ruin her reputation if it's already gone.” He set his jaw. “Someone's got to make it right."

Tom nodded. They'd discussed that beforehand. “Someone's got to marry the chit"

Both chose Stanford.

"We'll have to call him out, don't you know."

"Thought you wanted to marry his sister?” Tom shook his head. “Not good form, challenging the man about to be your brother-in-law."

Tim had to think about that. “You know, Miss Alton is a handsome woman."

"And well dowered."

"But I don't think Stanford will let me marry her anyway."

"I wouldn't, was I in charge of some innocent miss."

"That's all right then, we can challenge him.” He gave the horses the office to start.

Tom was petting the kitten, inside his coat. “Ever seen the viscount fence?"

They could just make out a sleek black carriage ahead, moving up a hill. “We'll stop them at the rise,” Tim said, cracking his whip over the horses’ heads. “Hang on."

Before they could reach the hill, though, a single rider galloped past them. His horse was in a lather and his face was covered by a black scarf.

Both twins shouted, “Miss Lockharte!” at the same time.

Miss Lockharte was drowsing after her bout of nausea. She was getting used to the motion of the carriage or she was too tired to care. Then she heard the shouts and the pistol shot.

"Halt!” a voice called. “Or I'll shoot again!"

The coach came to a stop amid much cursing, then the door was wrenched open. A masked bandit brandished a smoking pistol, with another stuck in his waistband. “Get out,” he ordered Rosellen, “or I'll shoot you where you are."

Rosellen couldn't move a finger. Besides, she had the distinct and unpleasant impression that the highwayman was going to shoot her no matter what she did. She felt sorry for the damage to the interior of his lordship's fine coach, but so be it.

"Get out, I said!"

"I..."

Then there was a great clamor of carriage wheels and shouting, another gunshot, horses neighing their upset. Rosellen shrank back into her corner. In less than a minute the masked bandit was gone, replaced in the doorway by two red-haired demons from her past. My word, Rosellen thought before she passed out, now she was seeing quadruple.

"Lud,” Tim said, “just look at the mort. I knew Stanford was handy with his fives, but this beats the devil."

"That Merrihew female said he didn't mean any good by her, but who would have thought the viscount would strike a woman?"

Tim stepped back from the doorway for a breath of fresh air. “Who would have thought the dirty dish kept his carriage in such a mess?"

"Uh, bro, just where is he?"

The elder Heatherstone swung around, the empty pistol making a wide circle.

Tige, the driver, was finished bandaging his arm from where the first highwayman had winged him. “His lordship is at the Blue Bottle Inn, varlets, and he's going to have both of your loose-screw hides."

"So long as he ain't here, that's aces."

"But what'll we do with her, bro?"

"Well, we can't leave her with him, that's for sure."

So they gathered up the unconscious female in a man's greatcoat and slung her onto the curricle seat, squeezed between them. Tige was reaching for his blunderbuss, so they whipped up the horses and headed for a stretch of woods they could see, following a dirt track too narrow for the Stanford traveling coach, just in case.

Rosellen was jostled awake. “What...?"

"We're saving you, Miss Lockharte, that's what,'’ one of her captors proudly announced.

The other nodded. “We rescue you from a fate worse than death, and you don't bedevil us from the grave."

"Rescue me? I was already saved by Lord Stanford."

"You was? Uh, you were? Didn't look in prime twig to us, Miss Lockharte."

"You should have seen me before,” she muttered.

"And Stanford didn't, uh, get rough with you?"

"Lord Stanford was everything kind and gentle,” Rosellen said, surprised to realize that it was so. “But where are you taking me?"

The twins looked at each other. They hadn't thought of that. “Can't take her to the Albany. No females permitted."

"Can't put her up at a hotel; pockets are to let."

"Hmm."

"Uh, Miss Lockharte, where was Stanford taking you again?"

"To the Blue Bottle Inn, on the road to Brighton."

"And he never hurt you? You wouldn't mind landing back in his care?"

Out of the rain, in a promised hot bath, away from these two imbeciles? “No,” she answered fervently. “I would adore being returned to the viscount's protection."

Tim looked over her head and winked at his brother. “I smell orange blossoms, bro, don't you?"

Tom sniffed, then reached inside his waistcoat. “I smell cat piss, is what."

Wynn was waiting in the inn's courtyard, under the big blue bottle that swung from the inn's sign. The doctor had been sent for, water was heating, the innkeeper's wife was cooking a restorative broth. So where was his carriage and the blasted female? The sooner she got there, the sooner he could consign her to the landlady's care and get on about his business.

He was damp through and his boots were ruined. Deuce take it, this was the last time he was going to travel without his valet, the viscount swore. At least Jupiter was nicely bedded down in the stable, with Roger, the groom, who hadn't found any useful information.

Wynn took to pacing, a cup of mulled wine in his hand. The cup fell to the ground as his carriage tore around a corner into the yard. His prize horses were sweating and rolling their eyes; Tige's arm was bloodstained and bandaged. The driver wasn't wearing his hat either, for the thing had blown off in his mad dash after the highwaymen. It was Tige's favorite, with his initials inside, just like the nobs', but Tige Henley didn't think he'd be needing his hat; the viscount was likely to have his head.

"What the deuce happened, Tige?” Wynn shouted, rushing toward the coach.

"We was held up, m'lord. Robbed."

"In broad daylight on the king's highway to Brighton?"

"Right you are. Three of them there was, one in a mask on horseback and two redheaded devils in a curricle."

"Two..."

Tige bobbed his head up and down. “Identical, they was. Like peas in a pod."

The Heatherstone twins? Who else could it be but the brothers he was looking for? This was one coincidence too many to be halfway believable. Wynn didn't believe it for an instant. He didn't understand any of it, nor the connection to Miss Lockharte, but he'd get to that later. “What did they want?"

"The female, I s'pose, ‘cause they snatched her right out of the carriage and made off with her along some goat path I couldn't follow."

"I'll kill them,” Wynn swore.

Tige nodded again. “That's what I told ‘em, m'lord."

Stanford was pulling open the coach door. She hadn't gone willingly, for there was her precious lap desk. He slammed the door shut and shouted for his groom. “Roger, saddle Jupiter and find my pistols."

"But I just finished—"

"Saddle him. And then help Tige clean the carriage."

The two servants were still cleaning the coach's interior half an hour later when the curricle pulled into the innyard. “It's them!” Tige yelled, grabbing up a pitchfork and running toward the curricle. Roger put his fists up, as he'd seen the toffs do at sparring practice.

"A mill!” someone shouted until the yard was filled with flailing arms.

"Where?” Tom asked excitedly before Tige reached up and dragged him out of the curricle. Tim leaped after, dropping the reins in Rosellen's lap. What she was supposed to do with them, she couldn't imagine, since one wrist was already broken and the other held a trembling kitten. If the tired horses wanted to bolt, she wasn't going to stop them. She was, however, going to stop this idiocy in the innyard so that she could have her bath. Placing the kitten on the bench beside her, she carefully reached under the seat and found the pistol Tom had reloaded. By willpower alone she managed to bring the pistol high enough to fire without shooting her own foot off. “Stop it this instant,” she shouted, unheard above the din. So she pulled the trigger.

"Gor'blimey,” the innkeeper swore. “She killed my blue bottle!"

Aggravation, aggravation, aggravation. That's all Baron Haverhill was getting. His gout was bothering him from the rich food, his rheumatics were bothering him from the damp weather, and having to deal with Mirabel Merrihew was bothering him most of all, from past experience. The woman made him feel as if he were back at school, trying to explain why his Latin assignment was not completed. It was not completed because Townsend Haverhill hated Latin, and he hated poker-backed, beady-eyed, skinny women with their hair scraped back and their chins thrust forward. Miss Merrihew's chin was extended about as far as it could be without jutting into the next county.

"You!” she exclaimed when the baron limped into her parlor.

He looked around. He'd sent in his card. Whom was she expecting? “Yes, well, I've, ah, come about m'niece."

"Too late by half, you are. She's gone."

"Ah, so the chit did die after all. Too bad."

"It's too bad she didn't!” It was too bad neither Jonas nor Lord Vance was having any success or suggestions. “That baggage isn't dead, and why everyone assumes she is, I'll never understand. I said she was gone, and good riddance."

"Not dead, you say?"

"Gone, run off, done a flit, taken French leave. She has turned my school upside down with her wanton ways. The students are so agitated that I shall never get them back to their lessons."

"Run off ... Rosellen?"

"I shouldn't have taken her in, not with her spotted reputation. She was not fit company for my girls. I knew it all along. You'll hear from me, Baron, if I lose any students over this matter. I did you a favor and this is the payment I get, a scandal. And Stanford, of all people."

The woman could have been talking Latin for all the baron understood. “Viscount Stanford? What's he got to do with m'niece?"

"The libertine has
got
your niece. You figure out the rest."

Rosellen and Stanford? How was it possible the country chit knew Clarice's intended? The intentions might be all on Clarice's side, but she was a determined puss, his daughter. But Rosellen and Stanford? “The man must be a bigger rake than I considered,” the baron thought out loud, “to be messing about with virgins."

Miss Merrihew's beady eyes turned to slits. “If your niece was such an innocent, why did you toss her out?"

"Quite right, quite right. Gal's no better'n she ought to be. Said so at the time.” Clarice had said so, anyway, and now he believed her. In fact, he was relieved that Clarice hadn't been lying, upset that he'd distrusted her. His daughter was a Toast, while his sister's child was a trollop. This time he could wash his hands of her permanently.

Of course he didn't want to be the one to tell Clarice that her beau had run off with her dowdy cousin. Speak of agitation! Moreover, if Stanford was still in the neighborhood, Haverhill would be forced to call him out, he supposed. A gentleman had to demand satisfaction for such a slur to his family. And, damn, Stanford was a crack shot. Why did the cursed chit have to toss her cap over the windmill for such a prime goer? Aggravation, that's all Lord Haverhill foresaw.

"Don't stop until we're in Reigate,” he ordered his driver. “Then take your time getting into London.” Six months was what it should take for Clarice to get over Stanford. The baron pulled his hat down over his eyes and took a nap.

"They said what?” Wynn had ridden back to the Blue Bottle after three hours of trying to find a trace of the miscreants and the missing schoolteacher. He was cold, wet, and hungry, and not pleased to be met by the landlord, demanding reparations. He was less pleased to find that his groom had a black eye and his driver had a broken nose.

Miss Lockharte, it seemed, had been returned soon after he left, not much the worse for wear, considering how bad was her state before. The female had most likely given the clothheads the edge of her sharp tongue, he supposed, to get her dumped back in his own lap so quickly.