“Perhaps someone had a picnic here.”
“It’s hardly suitable for a pleasure walk,”
she pointed out.
He smiled warily. “For some pleasures, men prefer seclusion.”
She frowned in perplexity. “I am speaking of petticoat dealings,”
he added bluntly. “A footman or groom might be aware of this private oasis.”
“My footmen and grooms don’t have mounts. There’s been a horse or two here as well. I don’t like this, Mr. Meecham.”
“What is it you suspect?”
“I—I don’t know,’
she said, and was suddenly taken with an anxiety to leave. What she suspected was that Captain Johnnie had hidden his mount here. The bottle of wine told her Captain Johnnie was a guest at her hotel, and common sense pointed to Mr. Meecham as the culprit. Common sense also whispered that if he realized the direction of her thoughts, he might detain her—permanently.
She hastened to the doorway, afraid he’d stop her, but he only followed quickly at her heels. He didn’t realize she suspected him, then, and she must be cautious not to alert him. Once back in the sunlight, her fears faded somewhat, and she tried to behave normally.
“What you have is two sets of trespassers,”
Mr. Meecham explained. “Poachers using horses, and errant footmen meeting their light-o’-loves for trysts.”
“That would explain it,”
she agreed quickly.
“What will you do?”
he asked.
Her mind raced to find the most clever answer. “Probably nothing but put a lock on my wine cupboard,”
she said airily. “I don’t mind the poachers thinning out the rabbits. The place is overrun with them, and as to the footmen—why, I suppose they will meet their girls somewhere, and they bother no one at the barn.”
She looked closely at her companion as she mouthed this lie and didn’t think she was imagining the relief she saw there. She’d alert the constable to keep an eye on the barn, and with luck, Captain Johnnie would be in irons after his next holdup.
“Generous as well as beautiful,”
he said approvingly.
Meecham accompanied Esther back along the path to the dower house. Newly leafed bushes in blossom scented the air, the sky was an azure arch above them, and birds warbled their mating calls, but this spring beauty went unnoticed by Esther. It was all she could do to keep from breaking into a run in her eagerness to get away from Captain Johnnie. When they encountered an overgrown tangle of bush and weeds, he stepped in front of her.
“Let me go first and break a way through the bush for you,”
he offered.
Once they were past this barrier, the more cultivated garden of the dower house was reached. The backhouse boy was working on the cucumber hills, and with her own servant nearby, Esther felt she had reached safety.
They stopped and looked back over the wildflowers that bedizened the grass and up at the pattern of trees against the sky. A calm satisfaction settled slowly on Meecham’s face as he gazed around. “It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?”
he asked softly, as though speaking to himself. “Almost like a little Garden of Eden, cut off from the world. You can’t even see the inn from here or hear it. I wish I could throw up a little hut here at your back door, camp beside the Thames as we used to camp along the Tag—Tamar when I was a boy.”
The scenery and his idyllic description had lulled Esther into calmness, but she looked sharp when he stumbled over the name of that river.
Meecham quickly spoke on to distract her. “The company in those days was not nearly so charming or so beautiful,”
he said, with a conning smile. Not the real smile of earlier; the mood had changed.
“Camp along the Tagus”
was what he had started to say. That river was well known from the Peninsular campaign. Any bivouacking Meecham had done had been in Spain or Portugal. He was an army man like Captain Johnnie. She studied his complexion. It was weathered, not tanned dark like a newly returned officer’s. No, he had been home from the Peninsular War for a few years. And Captain Johnnie had been ruling Hounslow Heath for eighteen months.
Esther found herself staring into his dark eyes. She might as well have spoken her thoughts, for the knowledge in his was easily readable. His conning smile faded; a quick frown pleated his brow when he realized she’d noticed his slip. It was followed by a questioning look, doubtful, soon settling to knowledge. All these changes occurred in an instant. Before another instant had passed, a reckless, rakish smile flashed, and Mr. Meecham pulled Esther into his arms.
He crushed her against his chest, and his lips came down hot and hard in a scorching kiss. She made a futile attempt to push him off, but it was like a kitten fighting a tiger. He easily overpowered her and held her for a long embrace that, strangely, began with a ruthless attack and eased to gentleness as Esther stopped struggling.
When he released her, she gazed mutely at his darkly dilated eyes. He wasn’t smiling triumphantly, and he wasn’t angry. He looked rather startled, and so did she.
She pulled away, her cheeks flaming from the unexpected interlude. “I’m sorry, Esther—Miss Lowden,”
he said.
As she glanced down, she noticed he was still holding her two hands in his. “You’ll be giving me the idea you’re the kissing bandit, Captain Johnnie,”
she said. Her voice was unsteady, but her gaze was firm. He didn’t flinch or try to deny it.
“I knew what you were thinking. Since I was suspected of such villainy, I foolishly decided to play the part. It was rash. I do apologize.”
“I will expect you to check out of the inn immediately,”
she said.
“Don’t be so foolish,”
he scoffed. “I’m not the Royal Scamp.”
Esther lifted a haughty brow. “Are you not, Mr. Meecham? Still, I would prefer not to take any chances. And it does give the clients an odd impression to see guests clambering into their rooms by means of a ladder, you know.”
His brow lowered in anger. “I haven’t done anything. The only way you can make me leave is by blackening my name, and if you do that, you’ll open yourself to an expensive slander suit.”
“Mr. Meecham! You are the one who is foolish. You can’t go on using the inn now. I know who you are. I'll notify the constable. You’ll be watched incessantly.”
“A fine scandal that would cause. Miss Lowden, proprietress of the Lowden Arms, claims to have caught the Royal Scamp. Why, you’d be immortalized with a ballad before a week was out. Is that what you want, to be a byword in the taverns? No, Miss Lowden, you may be slightly eccentric, but I can’t believe you want your name broadcast so indiscriminately. I think you will keep your suspicions to yourself. That’s all I ask.”
“Don’t try to intimidate me,”
she said, and strode angrily away. She resisted the urge to turn around when a low rumble of laughter trailed after her.
Esther wanted to discuss Mr. Meecham’s suspicious behavior with someone more sensible and worldly than her chaperon, yet she hesitated to take her story to the constable. Neither a lawsuit nor a scandal involving her inn was desirable.
Joshua Ramsay was the logical person—older, worldly, presumably wiser, and Mr. Meecham’s surety. But Joshua was in London, and besides, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was in a hobble. His cousin Buck couldn’t be relied on to keep it quiet from Joshua, either. Within ten minutes it occurred to her that Mr. Fletcher was a possible confidant, and within fifteen she had sent a note to the inn requesting him to meet her by the Thames.
He came promptly, his blue eyes agog with curiosity. “Miss Lowden, what is the matter?”
he asked. There was a noticeable air of concern about his handsome brow; he possessed her two hands and gripped them tightly.
“How kind of you to come,”
she said, and squeezed his fingers as tightly as he held hers.
His concern softened to a smile. “You knew I would”
was all he said, but the simple words suggested a high degree of devotion. “Now tell me what has got you hipped, and we shall sort it out.”
“It’s about the Royal Scamp and Mr. Meecham.”
They began a slow turn along the gravel walk, and Esther emptied her budget to him, explaining all her suspicions, but skimming rather lightly over Meecham’s physical attack on her.
“It’s intolerable that he is staying at the Lowden Arms, rubbing elbows with respectable people like yourself. Is there no way I can get him out without causing a scandal or laying myself open to a lawsuit?”
she asked.
Mr. Fletcher gave her fingers an avuncular pat and considered the matter a few moments. They sat on a wooden bench at the end of the walk. It was situated behind a stand of ornamental shrubbery that provided privacy.
“I think I know what you should do, Esther,”
Mr. Fletcher said at length. “I—I hope you don’t mind my calling you Esther?”
he asked apologetically. “It slipped out.”
It seemed hard to insist on the formalities when she had sent for him, and she graciously consented. Soon she agreed to call him Beau as well. “What do you think I ought to do?”
she asked.
“Let him stay.”
“Let him stay?”
she exclaimed. “My whole purpose in sending for you was to discover how I might turn him off.”
“Turn him off if you like; he won’t set up a revolution. If he is Captain Johnnie, he doesn’t want publicity any more than you do. That was mere bluster. He shan’t stay long now that you’ve tumbled to his identity, but as long as he is here, it gives us an excellent opportunity to observe him. With luck we might even capture the Royal Scamp. That would be quite a coup for your inn.”
Esther beamed a dazzling smile on her companion. “How clever you are!”
she exclaimed. “But we shall need help, Beau. We can’t capture him by ourselves. And I would rather not ask for Joshua’s assistance. He’s so arrogant, there’s no bearing it.”
“I have my groom.”
“If you need more men, you could recruit some footmen or stable hands at the inn,”
she offered, and gave him a few names.
It was settled satisfactorily between them that Beau would watch Meecham like a hawk and follow him if he left the inn after dark. “I believe I’ll dine at the inn again tonight,”
Esther said before leaving.
“Please don’t. I don’t want you in harm’s way, in case anything happens. And besides,”
he added with a bantering smile, “it gives me an excellent excuse to call on you this evening to make my report.”
This gallant answer sent Esther home with a smile on her lips and a rising heart. It wasn’t till a rather tedious afternoon had been got in that she realized she was missing out on all the excitement. It was only the anticipation of Beau’s visit that evening that kept her at home.
To her dismay, when Beau came, he was accompanied by Joshua Ramsay, hot from London. It turned out the gentlemen had come separately and met on the doorstep.
“I’ve spoken to Townsend,”
Joshua said. “He is setting up two-man patrols every mile along the heath. Five miles of heath, five sets of two men. It should do something to ease the current rash of robberies.”
“Any news in town?”
Lady Brown asked.
“I heard a Mrs. Fineway was relieved of her reticule, but it wasn’t the Royal Scamp’s work. He wouldn’t bother with her plain old black carriage. He specializes in robbing the well-to-do. He seems to know that his victims are well inlaid, and traveling with money and jewels.”
“I expect he hangs about at some popular inn and keeps an eye on who’s leaving,”
Beau said. He didn’t look at Esther, but she knew the remark was a slur on Meecham.
“Yes, some such spot as the Lowden Arms,”
Joshua said with a satirical grin.
“It serves the nobility right for blazoning a crest on their carriage doors—an open invitation to theft,”
Esther claimed.
Joshua lowered his brows and stared at her. “Do you consider it an invitation to be molested when a pretty lady displays her charms in a low-cut gown? You misplace the blame to put it on the victim.”
“Touché
.
”
Esther smiled. “Something has sharpened your wits, Joshua. You don’t usually speak so much to the point. There were no robberies reported at my inn tonight?”
She darted a secret glance toward Beau.
“It’s a bit early for it,”
Joshua said unconcernedly.
A glance at the head-and-shoulders clock on the mantel showed her the truth of this. It was only nine o’clock. In her eagerness to see Beau she hadn’t thought that his coming prevented him from guarding Meecham. Beau saw her worried look and sought a way to reassure her. When Lady Brown cornered Joshua for some quizzing of the sort elder ladies inflict on younger gentlemen, Beau moved to the sofa by Esther and said, “Don’t worry about Meecham.”
“Should you not go back to the inn?”
she asked.
“My groom’s keeping an eye on him. If Meecham leaves, he’ll bring my saddled mount to me and I’ll be after him.”
Esther felt a sinking sensation. She began to fear that Beau was more interested in dalliance than in capturing Captain Johnnie. If the terror of the heath had a head start of ten minutes, there’d be no hope of overtaking him, but she worded her objection discreetly. “That gives Meecham an advantage of several minutes.”
“I don’t believe he plans to go out tonight at all. He’s settled into a private parlor with a group of guests, playing cards and drinking rather heavily. He’s half disguised, to tell the truth.”
“Not making a racket, I hope?”
she asked. There was more than one way to ruin an inn’s reputation, though her manager was good at handling such contingencies.
Beau reassured her and soon they rejoined the general conversation. His visit was short, and as Beau left, he indicated that he’d return to the inn and continue his vigilance.
Joshua turned a sapient eye on her “Setting up a new beau, Esther?”
he asked.
“Not at all. New implies there is an old one lurking in the background,”
she parried.
“I stand corrected. Setting up a beau, period. And a demmed poor choice, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“I do mind, not that that will stop you. Fletcher is amusing, but he’s not the only onion in the stew. What have you against him?”
“We don’t know a thing about the man. He might be anyone.”