“And when I do reach twenty-five?”
“Oh, I am sorry, my dear, I thought you understood. You won’t see twenty-two. Stavely will be able to settle handsomely in the colonies, and you?” He shrugged and picked up his newspaper again, holding it to the window for better light. “Whoever knows what finally happened to that demented Miss Avery?”
“And you think I’m just going to sit here all the way to Dover and not make a fuss at every toll and changing stop?”
He looked at her over the top of the paper. “Oh, I don’t think you’ll cause much of a problem. That wine you just drank was dosed with enough laudanum to put a horse to sleep.”
*
By eleven o’clock Gard was in possession of a special license, thanks to his godfather the bishop; a ring, an emerald, naturally, surrounded by diamonds; and promises from three modistes to deliver within the afternoon everything a lady of fashion needed and dressmakers to make sure it all fit.
By twelve o’clock he was at the Clarendon, asking after Sir Vernon.
“I’m sorry, my lord. The baronet checked out early this morning.”
“Did he happen to mention where he was going? I have some information for him.”
A coin helped the clerk recall: “He didn’t leave anyplace to send messages, if that’s what you mean, but he did ask to see the shipping schedules from Dover.”
Excellent. The cur was leaving the country and saving Lord Gardiner the effort of encouraging his departure.
Not so excellent. By one o’clock he realized Annie was gone. So did the rest of Grosvenor Square, when he was finished shouting. How could his butler have let her go out unaccompanied? How could Henny and Rob go off and leave her in a strange house? How could his mother sleep all morning on his wedding day? How the hell could he make up Thompson’s lead?
Thompson had a cumbersome coach and four that had to stick to well-traveled highways. Lord Gardiner on Midnight and Tuthill on Seraphina had no such restrictions beyond resting the horses occasionally. These horses were bred for stamina besides, not like the tired nags Sir Vernon had to hire at the changes. At each posting inn where the earl or Rob inquired, they were closer to their quarry, close enough by late afternoon to stop for some bread and cheese and ale. One more hour of hard riding should put the coach in sight.
“There she is,” Rob finally shouted, taking the pistol out of his waistband. The earl followed suit and would have ridden straight after the carriage, but Rob indicated they ride across a hill and come out ahead of the coach, face on. “And let me say it, gov’nor, please?”
Before Gard could ask what the deuce Tuthill wanted to say, they were coming down the slope. Rob fired his pistol, then he yelled in an awesomely authoritative, menacing voice: “Stand and deliver!” He ruined the effect for an astounded Gard by following his command with “Damn, that felt good.”
Any coachman worth his salt would have known he could never outrun two mounted horsemen, armed and in front of him to boot, but Stavely wasn’t a real coachman. What he was, was ready to face near death instead of the certain death he saw looming ahead in the person of Lord Gardiner.
He was already having trouble controlling the frightened cattle after the gunshot, but he lashed them with his whip anyway to get more speed.
The carriage horses bolted forward, sending Gard and Rob flying out of their way and then after them again.
“Pull up, man!” Gard ordered, brandishing his pistol at Stavely, but the footman couldn’t have stopped those horses if his life depended on it, which it did. As chance would have it, there was a sudden bend in the road. Without a steadying hand at the ribbons, those wild horses were never going to make the turn. As the earl swore from one side of the leaders’ heads and Rob cursed from the other, Stavely decided to save himself from the inevitable accident and the implacable earl. He jumped. If he’d waited a few more seconds, he’d have hit some bushes instead of the rocks.
By dint of incredible skill and a measure of luck, Rob and the earl were able to turn the horses after all. They couldn’t stop them yet, but the frenzied beasts would be winded soon. Meantime Rob wiped his forehead as he rode alongside the left leader. “Just like old times,” he said, grinning at the earl. “Damn, I forgot how much fun this is!”
Inside the coach, all the commotion and being tossed around had roused Annalise from her stupor. Her head ached and she was more nauseated than ever from the effects of the ether, the laudanum, and riding backward. She never had been a good traveler.
“Stop the coach,” she cried weakly, and ridiculously, under the conditions. There was no one to hear her, however, for Sir Vernon was standing up across from her with his head and upper torso out the coach window, trying to get off a clear shot at the earl from the jolting coach.
If she were a man, with a man’s strength, Annalise considered hazily as she absorbed the situation, she could lift Sir Vernon’s legs and hoist him out the window. But she could barely lift her head, much less Sir Vernon. If she were less a lady, or perhaps less dizzy, she could take a page from Mrs. Throckmorton and kick him, but her booted feet seemed miles away, all four of them.
So she did what she could, since it appeared no one else was going to stop this hurtling vehicle before she cast up her accounts. She picked up the heavy bottle of drugged wine and swung it with every ounce of strength she could gather, slamming it against Sir Vernon’s leg with a satisfying crack.
Luckily for Annalise, Thompson dropped the pistol when he smacked his head on the carriage roof, trying to get back inside to collapse on the seat, clutching his shattered leg. He would have killed her for sure right then if the gun remained in his hand.
Annalise stared in amazement at the still-intact bottle in her hand, then at the blood dripping down her stepfather’s face and oozing between the fingers on his leg. She clamped her hands over her mouth just as the carriage stopped and the door was flung open.
“Annie, my darling! Are you—”
“Get out of my way, I’m going to be ill,” she managed to say, running to the other side of the carriage.
So much for grateful maidens swooning into the arms of their gallant rescuers.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
They did not reach Dover that night at all, what with having to locate the magistrate, a surgeon for Sir Vernon, and an undertaker for Stavely. Squire Josiah Nutley, the magistrate, was a florid-faced, friendly man, delighted to invite nobility to accept his hospitality for the night. His wife gathered Miss Avery to her ample bosom, weeping over the sad story and vowing to make sure the poor girl had everything she needed, once Squire whispered into her ear that he’d actually seen the special license in his lordship’s pocket.
Fanciful tales of abductions and evil stepfathers were all well and good for the Minerva Press; Mrs. Squire Nutley liked happy endings, which to her meant orange blossoms and church bells, not any young couple riding off into the night with naught but an unsigned scrap of paper to keep them respectable. No, she wouldn’t hear of them traveling on to Dover, not when Miss Avery could share a bed with her oldest girl and the boys could bunk together so Lord Gardiner could have their room.
After the briefest of rests and a bite to eat in the kitchen, Rob Tuthill volunteered to ride back to London that night to reassure the earl’s household and to fetch Henny with Miss Avery’s new wardrobe. There was no way Rob was staying in a magistrate’s stable. There was also no way Annie was going to return to London without Lord Gardiner, she insisted, and no way he was leaving without seeing Sir Vernon embark on a ship bound for anywhere far away. They’d all meet tomorrow in Dover, it was decided.
While Rob was riding by moonlight on a borrowed horse, just wishing he’d be set upon by one of his old friends, Annalise was upstairs, gritting her teeth, listening to girlish giggles and rapturous sighs over her handsome betrothed, who had already reminded her at least thrice that if she hadn’t been such a peagoose as to run away in the first place, she would never have been abducted. His lordship, meanwhile, was drinking inferior brandy with the genial squire and settling Sir Vernon’s fate.
The baronet was induced, by the simple expedient of withholding his laudanum, to sign a confession in the magistrate’s presence. The crimes enumerated included the abduction, the fire, embezzlement of trust funds, attempted murder, and enough other legal-sounding terms to have him clapped in prison if he ever set foot—or crutch, as seemed likely—in England again. Gard was satisfied, or would be as soon as the dastard was carried aboard a ship, and the squire was almost satisfied that justice was being tempered with the right amount of mercy for such a blackguard as Sir Vernon. He was getting off easy, feared the squire.
“One thing puzzles me, my lord,” Nutley complained when the baronet was securely locked up for the night. “If the young lady broke his leg with a bottle, and he broke his head on the carriage, how did his jaw get broke and his gun hand get a knife through it?”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? He tried to escape on the way here.”
With a busted leg and a banged head? Now the magistrate was happy. Justice was served best with a firm hand, he always said.
*
Sir Vernon was deemed well enough to be transported to Dover the next morning, if one didn’t have to listen to his moans. Squire and Mrs. Nutley lent a driver for the coach and a maid for Miss Avery, but the maid had the unhappy task of tending the baronet instead, for Miss Avery refused to share the coach with him. She much preferred to ride a well-rested Seraphina next to his lordship’s Midnight.
Lord Gardiner installed Annalise in two rooms and a private parlor at the Three Sisters Inn before seeing Sir Vernon aboard the packet for France. He sent the Nutleys’ servants home in a hired coach with a generous tip and a finer bottle of brandy than Squire was used to drinking. This one even had excise labels on it. He also sent a smoked ham from the inn’s kitchen along to Mrs. Nutley, to thank her for the hospitality. Then he went in search of a vicar, but the nearest man in orders was at a deathbed vigil.
“Dash it, the wedding will have to wait for tomorrow after all,” he announced to Annalise in the private parlor, going to warm his hands by the fire.
“There will be no wedding, my lord. I thought I made that clear.”
The chill reached his toes. “You did not deny it to the Nutleys when I said we were engaged.”
“I couldn’t let those nice people think…”
“What everyone else is going to think,” he completed. “And worse, if Tuthill and his wife do not get here soon. You widgeon, you
have
to marry me.”
“No,
you
have to marry
me
because of your confounded honor, which you may now consider satisfied by the offer. Thank you, but I do not want an unwilling husband who has to be forced into marriage.” Annalise was proud; her voice hardly quivered at all.
“But I am not unwilling.” Gard insisted. He held out his arms. “Come, I’ll show you how much I am looking forward to the wedding.”
“That’s lust,” she said, keeping her distance. “You don’t love me.”
Gard blinked. “I don’t? Then why have I gone around milling down everyone who looks at you sideways? Why have I moved heaven and earth to get the special license so I could have you next to me forever, without waiting another day?”
“You do? You really love me?” Tears started to well in her eyes.
The earl gathered her into his arms. This time she went eagerly. “Of course I do, you adorable ninny.” He addressed the curls on the top of her head. “I loved you from the first day I saw you in the park. I thought you were royalty, you know, so proud and elegant.”
“And then you discovered I was just a hobbledehoy coal-miner’s granddaughter. You must have been disappointed.”
“Never, I just found how right I was. You are the queen of my heart, Annie. Please say you care for me?”
She looked up, eyes shining, without leaving the warmth of his embrace. “I must have loved you forever, I was so jealous of those other women. You were calling me Miss Green and them ‘sweetheart.’ I was green with envy!”
“There will never be another, I swear,” he declared, and sealed his vow with a kiss.
When Annalise could speak again, she smiled and said, “I know.”
Gard raised an eyebrow. “You know what? That I’ll never have another woman? Just what are you planning, Annie?” he asked suspiciously.
“Just this.” She wrapped her arms more firmly around him and raised her lips for another kiss, telling him without words that she’d bind them together with love and passion enough for any man.
Some moments later Gard cupped her face in his hands and gently kissed the beauty mark to the side of her mouth. “Then it is all settled? The vicar can come in the morning and you won’t have flown away before the ceremony?”
“Well, that depends. You haven’t asked me.”
Gard was confused. “Asked you what, my love?”
“You haven’t asked me to marry you, my lord. You simply told me. You informed me that I had to marry you or you had to marry me. I believe those were statements, not requests. Either I have equal say in this marriage, which means my wishes are consulted, or I won’t do it.”
Gard tossed a cushion from the sofa onto the floor at her feet and kneeled on it. “Lud, what I don’t do for you. And you wonder if I love you?” Then he took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Miss Avery, my dearest Annie, will you do me the greatest honor, make me the happiest man on earth, by accepting my heart and my hand in marriage?”