Kate Moore (3 page)

This speech was greeted by harsh laughter that sounded ugly on the empty heath. “That’s what we like. The work done for us.” The first man drew a pistol while the second slid from his horse and advanced on the two ladies.

Susannah took Juliet’s hand and pulled her back from the approaching ruffian.

“This one looks plump as a partridge, George,” said the man. The strong smell of sour ale washed over them as he spoke. “You fine ladies have any jewels about you?” he asked.

“No pearls to cast before swine, if that’s what you mean,” Susannah said.

“Hah, Dick, pearls afore swine, a wit that one,” said the man on horseback, and he went off into his peculiar harsh laugh.

“Crack your wit on me, will you,” said Dick. “I’ll crack you.” He raised his arm.

“I wouldna’ if I were you,” came the first highwayman’s voice from the shadows behind the two robbers. Dick’s hand froze in mid-air and the robber on horseback swung his gun toward the voice. A shot rang out, and the rider shrieked and dropped the pistol. “I’m hit, Dick, let’s give it up. It’s a bad lay.”

Dick stared at Susannah and Juliet, apparently undecided. Then a new sound caught their ears, a long, low groaning, like a lion in pain.

“Come on, Dick,” urged the injured robber.

Dick hesitated a moment longer, then spat as if to mark the scene with his contempt. He snatched up his partner’s fallen gun and scrambled toward his horse. The two would-be robbers rode off as fast as they had come.

The low groan came again, and Juliet and Susannah turned to the sound.

“Tim Dachet, is that you?” Susannah called.

“Ooooh, me head,” came the reply. There was a rustle in the bushes, and Mr. Dachet staggered toward them, holding his head.

For a few minutes Susannah and Juliet ministered to their injured protector, offering their handkerchiefs to wipe the cuts and scrapes on his face. Coachman grumbled at Tim’s lack of wit, but gave him a restoring sip from his flask.

Then the highwayman spoke again. He had emerged from the shadows as they tended Tim and now stood in the road, holding his horse’s reins. “Ladies, I’d like to see you on your way. Can your guard regain the box?”

“Sure I can, no thanks to you,” said Tim roughly.

Juliet whirled toward the stranger. “You did save us,” she whispered fervently.

Tim Dachet squared his shoulders, swayed slightly, and staggered toward the box.

The young highwayman stepped up to Juliet, though Susannah noticed that he avoided the pool of light cast by the carriage lamp. “I think your friend . . .”

“My cousin, Mrs. Bowen . . .”

“Your cousin would say that I brought you into danger in the first place. I beg your pardon. That was not my intent.”

“Of course not. You intended something high and romantic, a rescue from tedium,” Juliet assured him.

Susannah groaned, and the highwayman laughed. “I will claim that boon of you then, Miss . . .?”

“Lacy,” Juliet told him candidly. “I will gladly give you the boon for which you asked, sir.”

“No,” Susannah protested. She stepped between her cousin and the young highwayman. “Sir, think what you are about. You may harm Miss Lacy much more by stealing a kiss than by robbing her purse.”

“Susannah,” wailed Juliet. “You don’t understand.”

“Pardon me, Miss Lacy,” said the highwayman. “I mean neither harm nor disrespect.” He reached inside his cloak, and Susannah tensed, wondering if he meant to draw his pistol again. “If the proprieties won’t allow me a kiss, let me leave you my card.” He held out a small white card that showed faintly against the black of his clothes. Juliet stepped forward, but the highwayman held the card out of her reach.

“Into the coach with you, Miss Lacy,” he urged.

Susannah did not need daylight to recognize the sulky cast of Juliet’s features, but the girl complied and Susannah followed.

The highwayman doffed his hat and presented the card with a bow. Juliet snatched it and held it close. The young man closed the door and sprang back on his horse, and Coachman cracked his whip.

“Adieu, my lady Juliet,” came the highwayman’s voice drifting back to them from the heath.

Juliet breathed a soft sigh, and Susannah knew it for the first breath of love, against which reason, propriety, and regard for worldly advantage, all that she was charged to keep in her cousin’s mind, would be powerless. It was going to be a dreadful season.

3

On the evening he began his search for a bride, Warne dined at White’s with his brother-in-law, the Earl of Rumsford. Rumsford, twenty years Warne’s senior, had married Lady Cassandra Arden when Warne was ten, and their marriage had produced a degree of felicity with which neither found fault.

With the covers cleared and a good claret to sustain them, Warne revealed his intention to marry.

“Ah, that explains the satin knee breeches,” said Rumsford referring to Warne’s evening clothes. “Going to look over this year’s crop, are you?” he asked.

“I thought I would try the Duchess of Somerset’s ball,” Warne replied. He had called on his sister’s friend Maria Sefton that afternoon, and she had recommended the duchess’s ball.

Rumsford nodded approvingly. “Too bad Cassandra is in Bath. She could tell you about this year’s girls. Remarkably good information she has. Daresay Maria will look after you.”

Unspoken was the awareness that Warne’s welcome in society would not be warm. “Thanks, Rumsford, but I will manage,” he replied.

“Or some gel will manage to snare you, Warne,” said his brother-in-law with a chuckle. “Did I tell you about my Alice? Picked Moreton out at a Venetian breakfast. Might have been buying a bonnet.” At a slight smile from Warne, the earl launched into the anecdote.

He had hardly reached his point when another man stepped up to their table with an abrupt movement that cut Rumsford off mid-sentence.

“Maitland,” Warne said, acknowledging the newcomer, a tall man with sleek dark looks and the tight-lipped intensity of the offended.

“What is the meaning of this, sir?” demanded Maitland. He threw a card at Warne, and the stiff rectangle of white paper landed face down on the table.

“Evening, Maitland,” said Rumsford, quietly reminding the newcomer that civility was called for.

After a pause Maitland managed a curt, “Evening.”

Only then did Warne pick up the card and turn it over, though he knew what he would find—his own name and the enigmatic message—
With my father’s compliments.

“Where did you get this, Maitland?”

“Where did I . . . where did . . . as if you did not know, Warne. I will have satisfaction for this,” Maitland said grimly.

“For a card?” said Rumsford. “Surely a gentleman may leave his card without giving offense.”

Maitland glared at Warne. “Not in the bedroom of another man’s mistress.”

Warne tried to recall whether he had heard the name of Maitland’s current
cher amie.
The man consumed partners with the same voracious appetite for sensual indulgence that had marked Warne’s father.

“In this instance, Maitland, I am as puzzled as you are. Who is it you have in keeping these days?” Warne asked.

“Do you deny a connection with Diana Ferris?”

Diana Ferris.
Warne had not seen the “Fair Ferris” for years. It was a shocking measure of her decline that she had taken up with Maitland, who no doubt beat her. Warne felt his muscles tighten and the hot bitter taste of anger on his tongue. For a mad moment he considered giving Maitland the satisfaction he demanded. With one shot Warne could free Diana. But he was done with bitterness. With a bank draft he could probably do as much for his former lover.

“My connection with Miss Ferris is past, Maitland, and that someone has had the bad taste to remind her of it is not grounds for a duel.”

“Someone!” Maitland was choking with his rage. “This is your card, Warne.”

“My dear Maitland, this is
Warne
,” Rumsford interposed, as if he had explained everything. He raised his brows and shook his head at the younger man, as if to say,
This is the Iron Lord, the man who ruined his own father.

Maitland appeared struck by Rumsford’s expression and for the first time seemed to waver in his conviction that Warne had poached on his preserves. Warne had to admit there were certain advantages to his reputation. Carefully he put the card on the table.

“Did Miss Ferris tell you I left my card with her?”

Maitland’s glance shifted away. Warne could see that the other man wanted to conceal whatever had happened between himself and the woman. Diana Ferris was most likely laying compresses to her bruised face even as they talked. Warne’s hands closed in fists.

“The card arrived with a bouquet of roses for Miss Ferris this morning,” Maitland said tightly.

“That’s what she told you?”

There was a silence as Maitland apparently weighed his next words. “That’s what her maid said.”

Warne rose without ceremony. “Then very likely, it’s true. Excuse me, Maitland, I have an engagement this evening.”

Warne turned to Rumsford and took a cordial leave of the older man. Without a backward glance he left the club.

“You had best watch where you leave your cards, Warne,” Maitland shouted, but too late. Rumsford could not be sure the marquess heard the other man at all.

By the time Warne reached the Duchess of Somerset’s, he had decided on a sum he thought Diana Ferris would find useful and a friend who could be trusted to convey a bank draft to her without arousing Maitland’s suspicions. He found himself sobered by the thief’s rapid and malicious use of the stolen cards and perplexed by the strange message.

In the duchess’s receiving line he tried to resurrect the optimistic spirit in which he had set out to find a bride. He bowed over Her Grace’s hand, accepted her austere delight that he had come to her ball, and moved with the press into the ballroom.

His sister’s friends acknowledged him, but he was conscious of the distrust of most of his fellow guests. He had initiated an economic battle against one of their own, and his success had brought down many. The print shop caricatures of him suggested the Iron Lord used unfair tactics. No one seemed to understand how he had marshaled his money like troops against his father’s interests. Small sums at first, then as the wealth had increased, he had wanted it to produce things as land produced crops. He had sown money and reaped cloth and paper and iron. And the iron had gone to fight Napoleon, but now he could do with it as he wished, and he wished to build bridges and buildings and machines, great engines that pulsed with life and never tired.

Two hours into the ball he was wondering whether he might simply advertise for a bride and interview likely candidates. Or perhaps Bellaby was right, and he should seek an improper widow for an affair. He had seen many
ton
beauties this night, but none had moved him. They seemed like his hostess’s hothouse blooms, showy and forced. If another young woman said, “La, sir!” to him, he would not answer for his actions. He lifted a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing footman and took a stand with his back to a fluted Corinthian column.

A touch on his arm caused him to turn. At his side stood a handsome brunette in willow-green silk. Widowed in her twenties, Margaret Court had taken him to her bed briefly at the end of her year of mourning. Her indiscretion, and their affair, had been indiscreet but had freed her, she claimed, from the importunities of men she found priggish and mercenary. She had since married the Earl of Wilton, a man Warne had known at Oxford.

Briefly Margaret’s green eyes met his, and both looked away.

“That’s a comfort,” she said after a pause. “I thought when I saw you here moving about among the nursery set that the fire had gone out.”

Warne laughed. “It might among the nursery set,” he admitted.

“Well then,” she said, “you mustn’t linger there.”

“But I must if I am to find a wife,” he told her.

Her smile did not dim except in those green eyes, which turned from a fiery emerald to a cooler jade. Someone near them gasped, and Warne turned a cold gaze on a handsome blonde in a feathered peach toque. The woman’s mouth had dropped open in a little circle of astonishment, but she quickly recovered her composure and moved away.

“Oh dear,” said the countess, with a delicate undulation of her ivory fan. “Lady Lacy. You did want your matrimonial ambitions generally known I hope, Warne?”

“I won’t need to advertise?” he asked lightly.

“Consider it done,” said the countess. “But seriously, Warne,
you
marry?”

“It’s time.” The irony was that he had felt himself married for years, had considered each brief affair a breach of faith, and only now considered himself free.

“Then what am I to make of the roses that came this morning?” Margaret asked quietly.

Warne tensed and turned to her. “My card was with these roses?”

“Yes, and the—”

“—strangest message,” he finished.

“You did not send them I take it?”

“No.” He took a deep breath. “Margaret, I am sorry if you were . . . inconvenienced by their arrival.”

She waved her hand, dismissing any awkwardness at receiving a floral tribute from her former lover. “They were delivered by a young gentleman this morning,” she told him. “Apparently the florist’s boy.”

“Which florist?” Warne asked, conscious of a slight edge to his voice. He did not wish Margaret embarrassed now by a scandal nearly five years old. She did not know the florist, but she promised to find out and send word to him. With that Warne had to be satisfied, but he felt certain he was going to need a long, long run in the morning to keep his temper in check.

He left the duchess’s ball puzzled. His affairs with Diana Ferris and Margaret Court had lasted no more than a few heated weeks, and while he had made no effort to conceal them, they were old scandals now. Yet someone had remembered and chosen to remind his former lovers of their connection with him. He could not think why.

He had set out to find a bride, and now it appeared that he must find a thief.