“The deuce! And what did she say that could possibly turn Miss Harriet against me? There are no skeletons in my closet, Prenderbury.”
“She told Miss Harriet the names of five of your mistresses.”
“So? I am sure even an innocent like Harriet cannot expect a man of my age to have lived like a monk.”
“It was what you did to these mistresses.” The marquess listened in growing horror as Mr. Prenderbury primly recited a catalogue of beatings and rapes. “Don’t you see how wicked and cunning it all was?” cried Mr. Prenderbury. “Miss Harriet would never have believed Lady Bentley, but, alas, she trusted Agnes.”
The marquess’s butler appeared in the doorway. “Your carriage awaits, my lord.”
“Good-bye, Prenderbury,” he said. “God willing, you may dance at my wedding yet.”
Harriet decided to walk to the next village on the road back to London before finding any refreshment. She hoped her few shillings would be enough. Food was very expensive due to the long war with Napoleon’s troops.
The next place she came to was very small, consisting of only a few houses, but it had a very grand posting house with a daunting number of outdoor and indoor servants.
Harriet contented herself with a small meat pie from the bakery and a handful of water from the village pump.
There had been no sign of Bertram, and although she dreaded the weary miles ahead, a long, long walk was preferable to having to endure the sight of him. Harriet now had plenty of leisure time to turn over the perfidy of Cordelia in her mind. She, Harriet, should never have left Pringle House. God was punishing her for sponging off a sister who did not even like her. Harriet tried very hard not to think of the Marquess of Arden because every time she did she experienced a feeling of shame combined with a sinking sensation of loss.
For a time, the walking was pleasant enough. A warm wind had risen and the sun had come out. Her hair was blown about her face, making her look like a gypsy. Her clothes became dusty and the road dried, so the people in passing carriages did not pause to wonder who she was, taking her for some local village girl with her wild hair and her once-modish clothes begrimed with dust.
At a crossroads, the bodies of three felons danced and swayed on a gibbet, and Harriet hurried by, holding her handkerchief to her nose.
But the sight of the bodies reminded her of footpads and the terrors of the night ahead. Once the sun went down, she might become sport for any ruffian finding a solitary woman walking on a lonely road.
She trudged wearily through a flat landscape, ribbons of fields running away of either side. The sun began to sink lower in the sky, and there was a shivering chill in the air. A line of tall poplars beside the road threw long bars of shadow across her path.
Harriet was tired, thirsty, and very much alone. She regretted that she had treated Aunt Rebecca in an offhand manner. How silly to blame that good-hearted woman of selfishness. Was it not natural that a woman as old as Aunt Rebecca should dread another long, cold winter at Pringle House? Then all at once she thought of the strength of the marquess’s arms and the warmth of his lips, and tears made tracks down her dusty cheeks.
She blinked her tears away as she turned at a bend in the road and then shrank into the shelter of the hedgerow. For standing in the middle of the road was Bertram’s carriage. She stood where she was, shivering with fear, until it dawned on her that the carriage had neither occupants nor horses.
She walked forward slowly and cautiously.
The carriage was standing at a crossroads. As she approached, she saw the windows had been smashed and one of the doors had been wrenched off its hinges.
She moved around to the front of the carriage. The traces had been cut and were lying in the dust. She looked around wildly, expecting to see Bertram’s body in the ditch, but there was no sign of him.
Poor Bertram, thought Harriet with a shudder. He has been set upon by footpads. Pray God he escaped unharmed.
All of her rage and fear about Bertram and his behavior fled, leaving her worried about the carefree boy who had taken her for drives in the park and who had made her laugh.
The Marquess of Arden drove like a man possessed. His coachman sat beside his master on the box with his eyes shut, sure that they would overturn and land in the ditch. The coachman could never understand now his lordship could get his cattle to go at such a breakneck pace. They had changed horses twice, and each time the marquess had stroked the restless animals on the nose and had talked to them. And when he had set out, the horses had reached a fifteen-mile-an-hour pace, which everyone knew could bring on apoplexy. It was an unnatural speed, grumbled the coachman to himself, and resolved to say a few harsh words to one of the young grooms hanging on to the back who had started to sing at the top of his voice, carried away with the excitement of the chase.
Toll keepers felt the lash of the marquess’s voice if they were tardy at running out to open their gates.
Some village women crossed themselves in terror as the carriage with its satanic-looking driver sped past, and many said ever afterward that they could smell brimstone.
The coachman never knew quite what happened, but one minute they were racing at breakneck speed along a road toward a crossroads, and the next the marquess had slewed coach, horses, and all right across the road.
He jumped down lightly, holding his whip, and the coachman, who had closed his eyes again in fear, opened them and saw that another carriage had plunged to a halt in front of them, the horses rearing and snorting.
The marquess went up to the other carriage and quieted the horses. Then, ignoring the coachman, he strode around the side and called, “Out! Out of there immediately, Bertram.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of water gurgling in the ditch and the clear song of a lark high in the sky above.
“Bertram!” called the marquess again. He went and looked in the window of the coach. There was no sign of Harriet. Only Bertram crouching, white-faced, on the floor.
With a great oath, the marquess swung the butt end of his whip against the carriage windows again and again until all of the glass was splintered. Then he seized the door and wrenched it off its hinges.
“Out!” he said grimly.
“Don’t hit me,” squeaked Bertram. “I’ll tell my mother.”
“Where is she, damn you?” raged the marquess. Bertram sat down on the carriage step and began to cry.
“Stop blubbering,” said the marquess, beside himself with fear and rage.
Bertram scrubbed his cuff across his eyes like a schoolboy. “I thought I was doing the r-right thing.” He hiccupped. “She seemed to be afraid of you, and Cordelia told me it was my duty to rescue her. It is all Cordelia’s fault! It’s not
my
fault. I was the soul of courtesy and kindness, and she punched me in the stomach and hit me on the head … and then she ran away.”
“Where was this? Which way did she run?”
“A village, several miles back … That way,” said Bertram, pointing down the wrong road. He did not want his cousin to find Harriet until he, Bertram, was well out of reach. He shuddered to think what the marquess would do to him after Harriet told him he had struck her.
“So you simply went off and left her to walk back to London?” said the marquess softly. “Well, a little of your own medicine will do you the power of good.”
He called to Bertram’s servants. “Get down.”
Then he took a knife from his pocket and slashed the traces. “Mount!” he said to the servants. “And ride to London as hard as you can. It may be that I shall be close behind you. If I catch you dallying in the hope of aiding your master, I will make life very unpleasant for you.”
Despite Bertram’s loud pleas, threats, and lamentations, his servants quickly mounted and rode off without once looking back.
Bertram thanked his stars he had had the foresight to bring a great deal of money with him. Certainly it had been meant to pay for the costs of an elopement, but now it would do to pay for a comfortable sojourn at a pleasant inn and then for the hire of a chaise to take him back to town.
To his horror, the marquess seized him by the cravat and jerked him upright. His nimble fingers searched in the tails of Bertram’s coat and brought out a heavy bag of gold.
“You will not be needing this, coz,” he said. “You may call on me later this week and pick it up. Good day to you.”
While Bertram stood, dumbfounded, the Marquess of Arden climbed nimbly into his carriage and picked up the reins. Soon he had vanished down the wrong road in a cloud of dust.
Bertram shook his fist at the retreating carriage. “You bully,” he raged. “My mother will have something to say on this matter—see if she don’t!”
The light was fading fast from the sky. Harriet walked on wearily and slowly. She was hungry and thirsty and tired. She was also very frightened. If poor Bertram could be attacked in broad daylight, then what horrible perils the darkness of night must hold. She had originally planned to sleep for a little behind a hedgerow, but she was too cold, and a thick dew lay glistening on the grass.
Faint yellow candlelight suddenly appeared on her right.
Harriet decided to go to whatever lodging it proved to be and beg shelter for the night. The building was situated on a small side road leading off the main London road.
As Harriet approached, she saw that it was an inn—more of a hedge tavern. She stood for a moment, searching in her reticule. All she had was one half-crown. But that would surely pay for some food and drink. The inn seemed too poor and small to boast any bedchamber other than that of the landlord, but they might allow her to sleep on a settle in the tap.
She pushed open the door and went in, blinking in the candlelight. Four evil faces leered at her. One belonged to the landlord and the other three to his guests.
They are not evil at all, thought Harriet firmly. Their faces are marred by a lifetime of grog and bad feeding.
“I am sorry to disturb you, gentleman,” she said. “I am walking to London. There was an accident to my carriage.” Harriet did not want to go into long explanations about elopements. “All I desire is something to eat and drink, and perhaps to be allowed to sleep on a chair until daylight.”
The landlord studied her from under his beetled brows. Although she was dusty and hatless, her voice was cultured and her gown was expensive.
Harriet waited patiently while the landlord and his guests exchanged glances. She put their tardiness of response down to the slow workings of the yokel mind, not knowing that she had landed in a thieves’ den.
Some sort of silent agreement seemed to have been reached among the men, for the landlord lumbered forward, bowing in welcome and wiping his hands on his greasy apron.
“My poor lady,” he said, “you must be that tired. Lost yer carridge? Tut! Tut! It warn’t footpads?”
“Oh, no,” said Harriet.
“Turrible things is footpads,” said the landlord. “All oughta be hung.”
This seemed to provoke a burst of bewildering merriment from his guests.
“Anyway,” said the landlord. “You come along o’ me, and you can have a bit o’ a wash upstairs, whiles I fetch you a nice bit o’ rabbit pie.”
“You are most kind,” said Harriet, relieved.
She followed him up a dark and dingy wooden stair to a small room under the eaves. The landlord set the candle down on a table. Harriet tried to hide her dismay. The room was filthy and smelled abominable. There was a broken-down bed in one corner covered with a greasy blanket. There were no curtains at the windows, although the panes were so dirty it was unlikely they let any light in or out.
The landlord pointed to a toilet table that held a ewer and a jug.
“There you are, my lady.” He grinned. “All the comforts of home.”
He went out and shut the door behind him. He listened for a moment, his ear against the panel, and then softly turned the key, locking the door.
“Got her locked up, right and tight,” he said cheerfully as he joined his cronies.
One of them cocked his head to one side. “She don’t know it, for she ain’t started screaming yet. So what we to do with her?”
“Looks like a gentry mort,” said the landlord. “Here, gather ‘round the stove and put our heads together and we’ll plan what to do.”
Upstairs, Harriet looked at the greasy ewer and the dingy water in dismay. But she should not be so fussy. The landlord was dirty and uncouth, but kind. She had no right to expect more. The room was stuffy and cold, with only a couple of coals and a charred pieoe of wood smoldering in the fire.
Harriet gave the fire an energetic poking and then stood, looking into the flames, seeing only the Marquess of Arden’s face and mourning what she was so sure she had lost. The cheerful crackling of the fire quickly died down. It was then Harriet realized she could hear the men in the tap below talking, their voices rising up through the chimney.
She took a steel comb out of her reticule and began to remove the pins from her hair, and then what the voices were actually saying struck her like a hammer blow.
“… so what I say is,” came the landlord’s voice, ‘we have a bit o’ sport with her to make her tell us whether there’s any fambly what would pay a ransom for her. If she turns out to be naught but some sort o’ lady’s maid, we’ll break her in and sell her to some Covent Garden abbess.”
Harriet stood for several moments while the room seemed to turn about her—rather like being kissed by the marquess, she thought dizzily, but not pleasant at all.
Then fear swam over her like a black, roaring wave. She tried the handle of the door. Locked.
“… got your piece?” asked one of the ghostly voices from the fire.
“My gun? Naow. It’s under the mattress.
She
won’t find it, and if she did, she wouldn’t know how to use it.”
Harriet bent down and lifted the mattress. There was a long wicked-looking “birding” gun—a fowling piece with a four-foot barrel. A tin box containing powder and shot was next to it.
Amazed at the steadiness of her own hands, Harriet carefully measured in what she hoped was approximately a drachm and a half of powder. An overloaded gun would be quite capable of dislocating her shoulder. That was followed by approximately an ounce and a quarter of shot. She tested it with the rammer and estimated that shot and charge together came to about eleven fingers. The old gamekeeper at Pringle House used to show her how to clean and load guns when she was a small child, telling her he always liked his fowling piece to have a “full belly.”