Peregrine,
I regret that I am
occupied with another Matter at present and must unfortunately decline your
invitation to dine. However, due to that pressing Matter, I am obliged to
address the substance of your message immediately. In short, although
grateful for His Majesty’s magnanimity, I don’t want it. If he and the
director truly wish to thank me, I beg of them one thing only: Clemency for
a single Act of Villainy that I will shortly commit.
In Service to King
& Kingdom,
Raven
Raven,
His Majesty promises
Clemency. The director guarantees it.
—Peregrine
P.S. Try not to get
yourself killed.
T
he Mail Coach to Cardiff via Swindon was more cramped than the vehicles Diantha had ridden in from Manchester to Shrewsbury, and much more rickety. But the London driver—who could by all rights be surly due to traffic and rain—was wonderfully friendly.
Naturally, Mrs. Polley didn’t care anything about this as she napped. But the couple sharing the seat with Diantha were full of stories about other journeys they’d taken, with which they regaled her while munching on tasty-looking pies that unfortunately they did not offer to share.
Diantha’s stomach rumbled. It was nearly dusk and she’d long since finished the lunch Cook had prepared under duress. None of Serena’s servants had been happy about her leaving. But they promised silence until the footman who took her and Mrs. Polley to the Mail Coach inn returned home. Then, if asked, they would tell their master and bear the consequences of it.
She stared at the rain-streaked window, thick sadness in her throat overcoming the hunger in her belly. Despite her vow not to trouble others, she had put Serena and Alex’s servants in a difficult position. Mrs. Polley was a dear to come along, and insisted that she didn’t need the position at the abbey, but Diantha suspected that was nonsense too.
She swiped a tear from her cheek. She had purpose now, a new plan with which she could help others without requiring anyone’s lives to change for her, and that would take her out of her family’s hair for a time. Owen’s stories about the horrid accommodations for children at the mines in Monmouthshire had preyed upon her for weeks. With her pin money—which must be a fortune to such children—she could help some of them, especially the sick ones like Owen’s sister. When she spent it all, she would return to Glenhaven Hall. Her stepfather had, after all, tolerated her mother for years. He would tolerate a wayward stepdaughter if she promised to be very quiet and good.
Another tear fell and she was quite certain she was lying to herself now. But she saw no other solution.
The coach swerved, tilting violently, and Diantha’s shoulder slammed against the woman beside her.
“Good gracious!” The woman clutched her bag.
“What in the devil’s going on up there?” her husband demanded.
Mrs. Polley started awake, the other passengers jarring to attention as well. The coach jolted again, and the crack of pistol shot sounded outside. The coach swung to the other side, throwing them against one another anew.
The woman screamed. “Highwaymen!”
Diantha pressed her face to the window. Through the rain obscuring the glass she saw only the dim outline of trees, but the coach was slowing.
“We are to be robbed!” came from behind her.
“Mildred, keep your head about you or we will all be murdered!”
Heart jumping, Diantha patted Mildred’s arm and returned Mrs. Polley’s worried stare with a shake of her head. Muffled shouts came from above, then from the road ahead. Mildred’s bosom rose in preparation for another scream.
“Do not panic,” Diantha said in the calmest tone she could muster. “They will want our money and other valuables. If we give them those quickly, they will go away.” She didn’t know where her words came from. But the others seemed to relax.
Mildred gripped her husband’s hand and he said, “Listen to the young lady, dear.” The man beside Mrs. Polley nodded. Even Mrs. Polley’s round fingers loosened their grip on her bag.
A strange, soft certainty passed through Diantha. This was what she did well. She comforted people. She might be a wretched hash of a lady, a disappointing daughter, and a troublesome sister. But she could give comfort to people that needed comfort, and that was something. It might fill the empty place in her heart, at least a little.
The trouble with that plan, of course, was that her heart was not empty. It was too full, but without the object of her affections with which to share that fullness.
The coach shuddered to a halt. Her stomach clenched. “Remember, don’t panic,” she said quietly.
The door of the carriage swung open and there stood a man pointing a pistol at them all.
Mildred screamed. Her husband made a choking sound. Mrs. Polley’s brow beetled and she crossed her arms with a hearty harrumph.
The highwayman bowed elegantly. Rain pattered on the capes of his black greatcoat and his black hat, and his silvery eyes glimmered.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have not come for your jewels or billfolds,” he said in the most wonderfully deep and menacing voice Diantha had ever heard. His gaze fixed on her. “I only want the girl.”
Everything in her smiled—her mouth, her heart, her soul. He offered his hand and she reached for it.
Mildred grabbed her. “You cannot go with him! He will ravish you!”
Mrs. Polley beset Mildred with her bag. “Let a man do his ravishing if he likes.”
Diantha tugged free of the woman’s grasp, placed her hand in Wyn’s, and at his touch everything in her did more than smile; it laughed in joy. He drew her down the steps and a pace away from the carriage into the soft rain. She traced the strong line of his jaw and the beautiful curve of his mouth with her famished gaze then looked into his eyes, and what she saw there turned her knees to jelly.
“You have terrified all those people,” she managed to murmur. “One woman fainted.”
“She did not.” His voice was warm. “I saw her peeking.”
“Some ladies admire dangerous villains, I suppose.” She tilted up her nose. “I, of course, prefer gentlemen-heroes.”
“You have certainly said so.”
“All right, I will ask: why have you come when I have made it very clear I did not wish you to?”
“I came to tell you that I have decided to change my name to Highbottom.” The corner of his mouth tilted up. “Hinkle Highbottom. It has a fine ring to it, don’t you think?”
Diantha sucked in her breath. She was caught. She was rescued. And she was trembling quite uncontrollably. “I—I always have.”
He dipped his head and his gaze was wonderful. “Why did you invent him?”
“Because I did not think anyone else would ever have me.”
With everyone in the coach looking on, he pulled her to him and kissed her. He kissed her tenderly and then deeply, and she leaned into him and let herself be wrapped in his embrace.
He drew back. “I will have you. Not only that, I will have you without further foolish delay. I allowed you your way before—”
“No, you did not. You took me to your hideaway and held me there against my will.”
A gasp sounded from the carriage.
“I did,” he admitted. “But this time, minx, you will do as I wish, without trickery on either of our parts.”
She smiled and his gaze went to her cheeks, one then the other. But she had to be clear.
“You know, I am not precisely running away. I am going to Monmouthshire to care for children who work in the mines.”
“An admirable goal. But not today’s. Today you are riding north with me over the border.”
“North?
To—To
Scotland?”
He nodded, his slight smile turning her inside out.
But she frowned. “We will not arrive there in one day.”
“We will make stops along the way.”
“Does my family know of this plan? It is a plan, isn’t it? It isn’t simply a quick solution to me escaping you today?”
“They do not. Yes, it is. And, no, it is not, but that last should be obvious after the number of times I have begged your hand.”
“My family doesn’t
know
?”
“I aim to marry you, Diantha Lucas, whether anybody else approves of it or not. Over the border I need only the sanction of a blacksmith and the insurance of an anvil. And, of course, your consent.” He touched her chin and his gaze scanned her face. “Will you give it?”
Disbelieving happiness swept through her. “Yes. Yes. Yes.” She flattened her palm upon his chest, the sensation of his heart beating swift and strong lifting hers. “And then what?”
“And then I am taking you to Monmouthshire to save children, if that is what you wish.”
She could not speak, only gaze into his beautiful eyes and try to convince herself it was real.
But one thing was certainly real. She glanced at her fellow passengers, then up at the coachman on the box, who seemed remarkably sanguine about having been halted by a gunman. The coach boy appeared to be flipping through a stack of bank notes.
“You won’t be in terrible trouble for doing this?”
“I have friends in high places. Very high places. And I intend to tell you all about them as soon as we have a moment’s privacy.”
“All?”
“Every last sordid detail.”
“Sordid?
Really
?”
“Not for the most part.” He smiled. “But I know how you like drama on occasion and I wanted this day to be special for you.”
“Wyn,” she whispered. “I must ask you something.”
“Anything, minx.”
“Why did you stop drinking spirits after Knighton? It wasn’t entirely so you wouldn’t touch me, because you did of course, even after that.”
“I stopped because I did not want to spend another moment in your company less than thoroughly aware of every detail of you. I wanted to wake up from the nightmare and find you there. I wanted you and I wanted to be worthy of you.”
She caught her breath. “I already thought you were worthy.”
“And that is one of the many reasons—” He halted and his eyes grew especially silvery, like a stream at midday. “Diantha, I am in love with you. Beyond reason. Beyond anything I have known.”
“Ohh.”
“I loved you at the abbey. Days before that. And I loved you even more greatly yesterday morning when you refused me because you believed me unworthy of myself. I should have told you earlier. I should have told you immediately. I love you.”
“Even though I make you insane?”
“Because you make me insane.”
She could not manage words. She could not manage to make her lips cease trembling.
He circled his arm around her waist, drew her to him and stroked his hand along her cheek. “And you love me.”
She released a soft sigh, and Wyn wanted nothing but to hear her sigh like this in his arms for the remainder of his days.
“I suppose I shall have to admit to that,” she said.
“At your convenience.”
“What if my convenience does not come until we have been married thirty years?” Her dimples peeked out again. “Can you wait until then?”
“I shan’t have to.” He tightened his arms about her. “I shall simply refuse to marry you until you satisfy me in this.”
“That is singularly unchivalric of you.”
“I am the villain of this piece, pray recall.” He nodded toward the coach.
“Oh, well.” She rolled her blue, blue eyes up and sighed again, this time with a show of reluctant tolerance. “I suppose I do love you after all.”
“You suppose?”
“I suppose.” But her cheeks were pink and she ducked her head and began to fiddle with a button on his coat. “I suppose I may have loved you since you asked me to dance on that terrace, actually. I suppose I always dreamed of you loving me but I never thought love was real until I could not bear the notion of not spending every day with you. I suppose I love you more than I ever imagined a person could love another person, and that love inside fills me up and bubbles over and makes me want to share it with the world, which is really why I was going to Monmouthshire, because I simply could not contain it and you didn’t want it after all.”
“Diantha?” He whispered, and there was something in his voice that grabbed at her overflowing heart. She looked up and his face was so handsome, his eyes glittering, but not with cleverness, instead with tears. “I do not deserve you.”
“Oh, well, there you are wrong. Because I am quite certain you do. I am very troublesome, you know.”
“I have heard that.”
“And somewhat wayward.”
“Somewhat?”
“And I occasionally invent astoundingly reckless plans.”
“Never.”
She screwed up her brow. “You cannot mean it.”
“Your reckless plan brought you to me.”
“I had another plan.”
The corner of his mouth tilted up. “What was that?”
“I was going to Monmouthshire because it was the closest I could think to go to the abbey. I thought perhaps from there I could visit you and—well—throw myself upon your doorstep until you agreed to take me in.”
“You knew I would.”
“I only knew that when I was there I was the happiest I have ever been in my life.”
“Happy? You had a surly servant, a limited menu, and an irascible, ill man to care for.”
“I had you. All to myself.” Beneath his greatcoat she twined her arms about his waist and tucked her face against his chest. “It was like a dream, never mind the evil-smelling well.” She couldn’t stop smiling. “Will you really abduct me now and carry me across the border to marry me?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps along the way you could ravish me so that I am unfit for any other man? Repeatedly?”
“Yes, although technically that is already taken care of. And most certainly yes.”
“Even if I protest, like a proper damsel in distress?”
“Even if you protest, if you wish it.”
“You
are
a villain.” She went onto her tiptoes and kissed his delicious mouth, and like every time she’d done so, he kissed her back. She whispered, “My one true villain.”