Pursued by the Rake Page 7

  “Eventually, I just backed off, but the old buffers followed me, berating me and waving their sticks at me. The next thing I knew, two riders appeared, and they joined the old gentlemen against me. So, I jumped on Bertie’s back and bolted—straight into the magistrate’s men. There was nothing for it but to dismount, slap Bertie, and send him back to you.”

  Frowning, he looked around his brothers and sisters. “You should have gone back to Aunt Vale.”

  “Well, we couldn’t have,” Irene pointed out. “Because Miss Hazel and Sir Joe had come to visit Amelia, and when Bertie came home without you, we had to tell them what was going on.”

  “I should scold you for not sticking to the plan,” Bart said, “but I’m heartily glad you didn’t.”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” Sir Joseph said mildly. “It’s quite possible one of your victims—or captors—recognized Bertie as the vicar’s horse. He does appear to have a unique personality.”

  Bart paled. “Do you think so?”

  “Or the pistol you used. Where did you get that? And is it in the magistrate’s possession?”

  “Yes, it is, but it isn’t Armitage’s. It was my father’s, part of a pair of dueling pistols.”

  “I pointed the other one at you,” Irene admitted to Sir Joseph.

  “Oh, dear God,” Bart said faintly.

  “In fairness, she had more right than you,” Sir Joseph pointed out. “We had just walked into her home uninvited.”

  “That was our fault,” Edward put in. “We left the front door unbolted, in case you came home in a hurry, and we didn’t hear you.”

  “Your plan,” Sir Joseph informed Bart, “was half-baked.”

  Bart’s gaze dropped to the table. “I know it. And entirely wrong in every way. I suppose I was too angry and desperate to think straight.”

  “Was it really all for love?” Hazel asked curiously.

  Bart perked again. “All,” he said fervently. “If you met her, you would understand.”

  “What is her name?” Hazel asked.

  “Agatha,” he breathed. “Agatha Renleigh.”

  “How long have you known her?” Hazel asked, banishing the inconvenient image of her own fierce and aged great-aunt Agatha in Scotland.

  “Oh, several months now. Since June, when her parents returned to Harton Hall after the Season. No one could understand why she is not already engaged because she is the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen.”

  “That is probably true,” Irene interjected. “She is astonishingly pretty.”

  “But she cares nothing for outward beauty or for wealth.”

  “Obviously not, if she likes you,” Edward said.

  Bart threw his napkin at his brother and apologized to Hazel, who asked only, “Does she like you? Is there an understanding between you?”

  “Oh, yes. But when I asked her father for her hand, he threw me out and barred me from calling there anymore. We are reduced to secret notes passed by her maid.”

  “How old is this young lady?” Sir Joseph inquired.

  “Seventeen,” Bart said gloomily, “so we have years to wait before we can marry without her father’s consent. And the trouble is, she is so sweet-natured that she’s afraid she’ll end up marrying someone she doesn’t give a fig for, just so that her parents are not upset.”

  “She has no backbone,” Irene observed.

  “You know perfectly well that is not the case,” Bart retorted.

  “Love is blind,” Irene said wryly. “But at least you see why he was so desperate for money—to see her again and arrange an elopement.”

  Hazel could think of nothing to say to that that wouldn’t sound like a sermon.

  Sir Joseph laid down his fork. “Wouldn’t you have been more sensible remaining in the vicinity of her home to arrange such a thing?”

  “Probably, but I had a raging quarrel with my aunt and uncle who refused to disgorge any of my meager inheritance early, even though I will be twenty-one in November and am in dire need now.”

  “You don’t believe she can hold out for three months?” Sir Joseph asked.

  Bart blushed. “You don’t understand. There are all these rich noblemen dangling after her.”

  “And you don’t believe in her constancy?” Hazel asked. “Are you sure such a relationship would work once you had it?”

  “Yes! Because I do believe in her constancy of affection and purpose. Just not in her power to withstand a barrage of persuasion.”

  It crossed Hazel’s uneasy mind that Bart could have subjected the girl to just such a barrage. “If I were you,” she said carefully, “I would wait three months until your birthday.”

  “To marry, yes. Especially after yesterday’s debacle! But I cannot wait three months to see her.”

  “Then go back and make peace with your uncle and aunt. Surely, you will meet the girl in local society?”

  “No, for she is going with her family to visit in Sussex, and I only had the means to get as far as this part of Essex.” A smile flickered across his face. “Hence the highway robbery.”

  Hazel nodded with sympathy. “We should all bend our minds to the problem.”

  “Talking of problems,” Edward said, “what do we do if the magistrate comes sniffing around after Bart? Or Bertie?”

  “Hide,” Sir Joseph advised. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll say we’re merely looking after the house for the vicar and invite him in for tea.”

  *

  In the isolated vicarage, listening to the children’s increasingly wild and not entirely serious plans to win Bart his beloved, Hazel’s ruin felt very distant and unreal. After a boisterous game of hide and seek, she felt able to retreat to her chamber and again examine the newspaper cutting. Opening the shutter a crack to let in a narrow beam of sunshine, she sat in the window seat and read it several times.

  It might have been someone else’s evening she was reading about. There seemed to be very little connection between her and what she read, or even to the other young ladies whose initials followed her own. Thoughtfully, she folded it up and stuffed it back into her reticule before peering out through the crack in the shutter.

  The countryside spread out before her. Harvesting had begun, and the fields were busy with workers. She could see the village, too, pretty and quaint with its thatched cottages and splashes of summer color in the gardens. Amelia Sprigg had found a lovely spot to make her home, and she deserved it. Hazel hoped Mr. Armitage deserved her, but the children seemed to like him, so she didn’t really doubt it. Nor was Amelia the kind of woman to accept just anyone because it was better than her current, single life.

  Shifting the angle of her gaze, movement in the vicarage garden below caught her eye. Sir Joseph was strolling among the roses, although he didn’t appear to be paying them any attention. He was too deep in his own thoughts.

  She wondered what they were. How to escape the various madnesses she had dragged him into, probably. On impulse, she rose, fastened the shutter again, and hurried downstairs. The French window from the dining room was the only one unshuttered since it could not be seen from the path or the church.

  The children had spread a blanket on the grass outside and were bringing out tea and cakes.

  “What a lovely idea,” Hazel said. “I shall join you in a moment.”

  First, she followed Sir Joseph into the rose garden, feeling suddenly shy at approaching him. But he must have heard her, for before she could say his name, he turned and smiled, causing her heart to flutter with something that was not quite relief.

  He waited for her to catch up. “The children are arranging an al fresco tea. I feel we must be eating the poor Armitages out of house and home.”

  “Actually, I think the children already did that. Now we are on to the food I bought at the market this morning. With your money.”

  “Then I may rest easy.”

  “You may.” She took a deep breath. “Sir Joseph—”

  “You might as well
call me Joe,” he said mildly. “Everyone else does.”

  “I’m not quite sure how that came about.”

  “Louise asked me if my brothers and sisters called me Sir Joseph. I said they called me Joe when they were being civil.”

  “They like you,” she observed.

  “I like them, too.”

  She regarded him curiously. “When I first met you, I would never have imagined you would have any patience at all with children.”

  “It does depend on the children,” he assured her. “But I interrupted you. What did you want to say?”

  “Just that I hope you know you are not obliged to stay with us any longer. I shall stay with the children until Amelia returns.”

  “Oh, I never feel obliged to do anything,” he assured her. “I am, in fact, mulling over the best thing to do for all of us. We can’t stay undetected here for very long. And I doubt your staying in a house without a hostess in my company—with no better chaperones than a parcel of eccentric children—will do your reputation any good at all.”

  “I don’t think we need to consider that,” she said wryly. “I am well ruined already. In which case, my presence isn’t good for the children either.”

  He was silent for a moment, then, “I think we have to proceed on the assumption of your innocence. If we believe it, others will, and what everyone believes will be the truth. Until we discover what the devil was going on at Connaught Place.”

  “You make it sound very simple.”

  “It probably is.”

  “Perhaps,” she said doubtfully. “We don’t actually know that anything was going on, apart from bad behavior and an administrative mix-up concerning which of Her Highness’s ladies were on duty. However…” She glanced up at him. “I read the article again, and it’s as if not only the writer was absent from the event, but as if whoever told him about it wasn’t there either. Apart from us, no other women are mentioned by name or initial, even though I recognized a famous actress and a sought-after singer in the drawing room. A couple of well-known rakehells get initials, the rest are just generalized.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he confessed. He bent and plucked the broken stem of a bright yellow rose. “It’s as if it was aimed to hurt you and the other ladies and written before it actually happened, hence some prominent names are missing, even though they would have made a better story. Someone planned the whole thing very carefully.”

  “But why?” she asked blankly. “What does it achieve for anyone? It does not even embarrass the princess since she’s probably out of the country by now. And I may be no one, but at least two of the other ladies are from powerful families, daughters of an earl and a duke. Who would be prepared to risk that kind of ire?”

  “Someone with nothing to lose.” He began breaking the thorns off the rose stem. “Someone even more powerful. Or someone who’s confident he can get away with it.”

  “It still doesn’t answer why,” Hazel said.

  “We’ll find that out, too,” he assured her. Unexpectedly, he presented her with the rose, such a natural gesture that she took it with a spontaneous smile.

  *

  Lord Barden stared in disbelief at Captain Curwen’s empty house. He even alighted from his carriage, not trusting his man to have knocked loudly enough, but the house was definitely shuttered, and no servants answered his knock either.

  Baffled by this first obstacle to his careful plan, he stamped his foot on the doorstep. “Where the devil are they?” How could he rub her nose in her ruin, let alone complete it, if he couldn’t find her?

  “Old bloke ambling down the side, sir,” Rogers, his valet, volunteered. “Looks like a gardener.”

  At once, Barden strode up to the fellow, who looked astonished.

  “You looking for the captain, sir?”

  “I believe this is his house,” Barden observed.

  “It is, but he ain’t here.”

  “That much, I have just ascertained. Do you know where he is, when he will return?”

  The gardener took off his hat and scratched his head. “Went back to sea, sir. No idea when he’ll be back. Could be a year. Could be more.”

  “A year!” Barden exclaimed. But he could adapt to this. The girl had other family. “And Miss Curwen?”

  “In London, sir. With Her Highness, the Princess of Wales.”

  The poor fool even said it proudly. Oh, yes, the plan was still working. But this unexpected hitch infuriated him. Striding away from the gardener, he threw himself back into the coach, beckoning imperiously to Rogers.

  “Back to London!” he called to the coachman.

  As the coach rumbled back down the short drive to the road, Barden fumed intently. “When we get back to London,” he flung at Rogers eventually, “I want you to go around all the hackney stands and find out where she went.” If she’d gone after her grandmother to Scotland, he’d just have to follow her, but he didn’t like being quite so far away from the hub of London and the families of the other young ladies.

  Rogers sighed. “Very good, sir.”

  Chapter Seven

  With no sign of the magistrate or anyone else throughout the day, Bart grew increasingly relaxed, keeping his brothers and sisters entertained and his own mind, Hazel suspected, off the horror of his arrest and the idiocy that had led him to commit such a crime. He had so nearly lost everything, including his Agatha, and left his siblings unprotected.

  Hazel helped Irene in the kitchen, more with organization than actual cooking, although she was happy to labor under instruction. Irene obviously had more sense and more experience in culinary matters, which she clearly enjoyed, and by seven o’clock in the evening, she had produced a very impressive three courses.

  “This is spectacularly good,” Sir Joe commented.

  “Even better on the plate than sneaked out of the pots,” agreed Hazel.

  The children, even Bart, looked astonished at such praise.

  “That good?” Bart asked.

  “Don’t you think so?” Hazel inquired.

  Bart took another mouthful of perfectly cooked beef steak with an elegant cream and pepper sauce. “Now I come to think of it, Irene, you are better than either Mrs. Selby or Aunt Vale’s cook. Much lighter touch, more flavor.”

  Irene, already pink from Sir Joe’s praise, looked completely overwhelmed.

  “Maybe you could be Bart’s cook when he marries Agatha,” Louise suggested.

  “My sister can’t be my cook!” Bart protested. “But of course, you will come to live with us, at least for part of the time, when you’re not with Amelia.”

  “That’s a grand ambition, financially speaking,” Sir Joe observed.

  Especially for a man who had taken to highway robbery just to afford his stagecoach ticket to Sussex.

  “Money won’t be a problem when he’s married to Agatha,” Louise said blithely. “She’s a great heiress.”

  Hazel’s mouth dropped open. Sir Joe turned his head toward Bart, who blushed furiously.

  “Her money doesn’t matter to me!” Bart exclaimed. “In fact, I wish she didn’t have it, for then no one would be making such a dashed fuss about us marrying!”

  “But you can see why her family might regard you as a fortune hunter,” Sir Joe observed.

  “Of course I see that,” Bart muttered, “and I find it very insulting. Even though Agatha’s money would be a good thing for all of us. And since she has so much, I really don’t need any, do I?”

  Sir Joseph pronged his last piece of beef. “Sadly, the world does not work that way, though perhaps it should. But we have wandered from the matter in hand, which is, my compliments to the cook.”

  Wreathed in smiles, Irene jumped up to bring in the fruit tart.

  Only later did Hazel get the chance to discuss Bart’s situation in private with Sir Joseph. Bart had gone up to bed early since he had slept ill in his jail cell the night before. His siblings had gone at the same time.

  “We’ll decide on a
plan tomorrow,” Sir Joseph promised, “after we’ve all slept on our ideas.”

  “A plan for Bart?” Hazel asked doubtfully.

  Sir Joseph rose from his armchair and walked across to the vicar’s brandy decanter. “Among other things. Would you care for a glass of brandy? I’m already resigned to replacing the bottle.” He sniffed the other decanter. “Or there is sherry.”

  “Perhaps a little sherry,” she said boldly. Well, for the young lady who was already reputed to have attended an unchaperoned orgy with the worst rakehells in London, taking a glass of wine alone with a gentleman not of her family seemed a trivial infringement of the rules.

  He walked back toward her and offered her one of the glasses before sitting on the sofa beside her. “What do you think of Bart’s affair of the heart?”

  “Oh, I acquit him of fortune-hunting. I believe he is quite genuinely in the throes of first love. Whether that lasts, of course, is another matter.”

  “What a cynic you are.”

  “Not cynical,” she argued. “Realistic. My first love was my father’s steward, whom he brought home with him on one leave of absence. He was the most handsome seaman you have ever seen. He was polite and pleasant, and we never exchanged more than a good morning or a thank you. It lasted ten agonizing days, until I saw him pinch the maid’s bottom and had my father send him back to the ship.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Twelve,” she admitted. “But my point stands. Bart hasn’t known this girl more than a couple of months. Moreover, even he agrees she is suggestible to the point of spineless, and it worries me that she has merely agreed she loves him just to please him. What if someone else declares undying love to her?”

  “What indeed?”

  “Are you laughing at me?” she demanded, then flushed. “I suppose I should not have said the word bottom.”

  “No, no, I have no objection whatsoever to bottoms. I am merely surprised by your insight.”

  “You disagree?”