by Regina Darcy
Gemma rubbed her locket more insistently. She knew that she had to leave. He was too kind, and in a night when kindness had been sadly lacking, she knew herself to be vulnerable. “I must go,” she said. “My family will wonder where I am.”
“And your footman.”
“Sir?”
“I am wondering where your footman has gotten himself off to. He seems to have forgotten his duty to you.”
“I . . . Yes, he has been neglectful. It is most unlike him. I must find him or . . . I thank you, sir, for your kindness.”
“The paintings? How shall I pay you for them?”
“I . . . shall have the artist make arrangements, now that I know your name and that you are of Devon.”
“But I do not know who you are. Or the name of the artist.”
“I shall—I must consult the artist first, and then I shall contact you. Good night, sir, and thank you—”
The Earl suddenly saw Gemma cry out and fall to the ground. As he charged forward, he was unaware that he was due to suffer the same fate. A blow to the head sent him tumbling down, and then as the black night got even blacker, he was aware of nothing more.
FIVE
In an unknown residence
Outside London
“It has, at least, the advantage of being indoors, although I regret that our host’s lights are as ungenerous as those at the Westminster Bridge.”
Gemma blinked. The voice speaking was familiar, but she could not recall to whom it belonged. She ran her hands over her body, then let out a sigh. Her head ached terribly, but other than that, she did not seem to have suffered grievously from the blow to the head that had felled her.
“Where am I?”
“You and I are captives,” the Earl told her. “We have been here for some hours. A brief time ago, someone came into the room. I pretended to still be unconscious in the hopes of learning why we are here.”
“Were you successful?” Gemma asked, following his example and speaking in low tones.
“We are on the property of Baron Ainsworth. A rather disreputable gentleman, known to me and to others as well, although I did not know from our prior acquaintance that he had stooped to such a level.”
“What do you mean?” Gemma asked in bewilderment.
As the Earl looked at her pensively, it occurred to her that, on the night upon which she had become homeless, she had been sheltered in the most unorthodox locations. First, beneath the Westminster Bridge, and now in a dark room which appeared to be a repository for random pieces of furniture.
The Earl noted that they were not gagged, nor were their hands bound, which seemed to be a good thing. However he deduced that they were unbound because there was no fear that they would be able to free themselves and escape, even if they managed to flee from the room in which they were held captive. If they were on Ainsworth’s property, they were hostages. The fact seemed to confirm his suspicions about Ainsworth, but what was of concern was how much Ainsworth knew regarding Charles Fitzsimmons and the real reason why he had returned to England from his regiment.
It was not widely known that the Earl had not been sent from the battlefield because of a wound, but because the Prime Minister had solicited his assistance.
Those in government who tallied the dangerous secrets that threatened the monarchy knew that there was a plot afoot to overthrow King George III. There were many in the country who had tired of being ruled by a king, who when his madness was upon him conversed with trees.
Nor was the Prince Regent, with his dissolute, spendthrift ways, popular. With enemies foreign and at home, the Prime Minister had engaged the Earl to find out the source of the plot.
The Earl had been doing so with a group of his trusted comrades from the long-ago days at Eton, when they were boys. But of that group, only Percy Tennison remained. The others were missing and the Earl feared for their lives.
His voice low, his words carefully chosen, the Earl revealed to Gemma what he knew about the treasonous plot to overthrow the King. She stared at him in disbelief.
“Overthrow the King! In England” she repeated. “That is high treason.”
“In England,” the Earl confirmed grimly.
“But why have we been captured? I don’t understand . . . I must apologise. You were captured because you were with me.”
“Why did they want to capture you?”
“I am, that is, I have a family connection to the Royal household. Distant, of course, and not even to be considered as a viable claim. But I believe that Ainsworth feels that he can convince me to commit treason. A puppet of his own, to rule England you might say.”
“So you are the Earl of Hemsworth!” Gemma exclaimed. Surprise was written all over her face.
“Yes, I am. I am surprised you did not conclude this earlier.” Gemma blushed as she recalled her internal denial of the self-evident. Instead she decided to focus on the matter at hand.
“You do not appear to me to be the sort of man who would be amenable to serving as someone’s puppet,” she noted. The Earl found Gemma’s dubious stare gratifying.
“Men who are drunk with the elixir of power rarely consider the scruples of other men. I am guessing that Ainsworth feels that anyone would covet the crown.”
“But this is 1815 and not the Dark Ages.”
“It is not so long ago that Cromwell took over the government and beheaded a king.”
“It’s well over a century,” Gemma protested. “Nearly two centuries.”
“And have you forgotten how William of Orange came to be King William of England?”
“No, of course not, but even that was a long time ago. We do not commit such terrible acts now, surely.”
“There are those who would do so.”
“What shall we do? If they intend to persuade you to become their puppet king, they will not allow you to leave until you accede to their wishes. We are helpless.”
The Earl grinned. “Not entirely.” Saying this, he extended his hand and reached into his boot to pull out a pistol. Gemma’s eyes widened.
“I have been expecting something like this,” he told her. “I have not gone out without being prepared for it.” His hand slipped inside his waistcoat to withdraw a sheathed knife.
“So I see,” she replied, impressed by his resourcefulness. “Obviously your enemies did not expect you to be ready for their attack. They failed to search your person to find whether you were armed.”
“Regrettably for them, but fortunately for us,” he agreed.
“But how shall we create the opportunity for you to use those weapons?”
Even in the darkness, his smile was visible. It was confident and merry, as if he relished the opportunity to use the weapons he had hidden to strike a blow in defence of his country and his king. She supposed it was simply an extension of what he accomplished on the field of battle.
“That, dear lady, is where I need your assistance.”
“My assistance? I have never fired a pistol in my entire life.”
“I do not need you to shoot. I am well able to do that. No, what I need from you is the reputed helplessness of your sex. It is generally assumed by those of my sex that women are frail and defenceless creatures, prone to vapours and fits of swooning.”
“I may not have fired a pistol in my life,” Gemma declared with a frown, “but neither have I fainted.”
The Earl smiled at the ire in her voice. She was truly an incomparable beauty when peeved. “I am not prone to believing as those of my sex do. I am quite aware that women are stout-hearted and valiant. But we must needs play a part.”
Gemma bit her lower lip, and then replied, “What should I do?”
“You must begin to cry and utter lamentations and declare that you are ill, so that someone will come in to see what the fuss is about. Once we have our unwitting visitor within our clutches, I shall employ whatever means are necessary in order for us to make our escape.”
“I am not sure that I will be a
t all convincing,” she warned. “I am not very good at play-acting.”
“My dear lady of mystery, our lives depend upon your skill at playacting. Pretend that you are Mrs Sarah Siddons and you are performing the role of a lifetime.”
She was not certain that she could do what he asked, but she did not wish to remain in an unfamiliar room with the threat of violence hanging over her. Nothing that had happened tonight made any sense, and it was not even tonight anymore. It was tomorrow, albeit early in the morning before dawn broke. She had no idea what the day would bring. But she had survived her first night after being expelled from Lord Benton’s home, and such a triumph certainly indicated that she could accomplish the unexpected.
“Where am I?” she cried out, making her way toward the door of the room. “I must have my tonic, what have you done with it, where am I—” she began to scream and, to her surprise, she was quite convincing.
She heard the clatter of running feet, and then the door opened.
“Be silent, you stupid girl,” ordered one of the men.
“I am ill, you have left me quite ill, I am about to faint—” Gemma allowed herself to teeter as if she were swooning.
One of the men stepped forward to catch her. The other followed him in, leaving the door wide open. Quickly regaining her balance after her feigned faint, Gemma pulled away and darted through the opening. Behind her, she could hear the sounds of violence as the Earl used his weapons with efficient brutality. She heard the sound of a shot being fired and then a body falling to the floor. Within minutes, the Earl was at her side.
“Keep moving,” he said. “There were three men all together and we’ve just taken care of two of them. The third might be somewhere on the grounds, standing guard.”
“What if he’s in the house?”
“Then I should expect to see him forthwith, as a pistol has just gone off,” the Earl replied drily. “As no one has yet appeared, I suspect that we are alone in the house. I recommend, however, that we waste no time in getting out of this house and off Ainsworth’s property. I trust that you are in accord?”
Despite the grim circumstances, his words made Gemma giggle.
In response to her unbidden mirth, the Earl grinned. “That’s the spirit,” he said approvingly, privately noticing that, when she smiled, her beguiling eyes lit up and transformed her features. She was a beauty, but he realised, through the innocence of her comportment that she did not know it. He was accustomed to females who were well aware of their attributes. To come upon one who was not, was an intriguing novelty. The desire to taste her cherry lips rode him hard, despite their circumstances.
SIX
The Earl was of the opinion that they would do better to rest during the day and travel at night in order to avoid capture by Ainsworth who, once he learned that his prey had escaped, would likely redouble his efforts to find them. This time, he would not be likely to leave them unbound.
As she had no other plans, and philosophically reasoned that her reputation was already in tatters, Gemma acceded to his suggestion. The Earl proved to be a resourceful guide and one who, perhaps because of his military background, knew how to forage for food with an expertise that inspired Gemma to query him on his methods.
“Armies are not always virtuous in the manner in which they feed their troops,” he explained when he returned from one foraging trip with a chicken, a generous wedge of cheese, and a bottle of ale. “I regret the need to turn to thievery, but we must eat and keep up our strength if we are to make our way back to London.”
Gemma watched as the chicken roasted over the fire that he had built. They had taken refuge deep in the woods where they would not be detected by stray passers-by. The Earl had created a shelter by bending low-hanging tree branches overhead so that they could hide within. There was some protection from the wind and when it rained, the mighty branches of the tree created a canopy to shield them. A nearby creek provided water for drinking and for keeping clean.
“Besides,” the Earl went on as he sliced the cheese with his knife and handed pieces to her, “now that Boney has made his way back to Paris, all the talk is of war. A housewife may notice that she’s minus a chicken or a cheese, but her menfolk are going to be too occupied with fears of invasion to give her complaints much thought.”
“Are we in danger of invasion?”
The Earl shook his head. “I’ll grant you that as military geniuses go, Bonaparte has a place on the list. But not this time. There are too many things stacked against him. The powers of Europe will not allow him to resume his reign. There will be a battle of course, but he’ll be defeated. I am confident of that.”
“Do you wish you were there, taking part in the battle?” Gemma asked, her curiosity aroused.
The Earl offered her the bottle of ale. She accepted it and drank, then handed it back to him.
“Part of me does,” he confessed. “I liked soldiering. But when the Prime Minister contacted me to tell me that the King was in danger, and asked me to do my part, I recognised that my duty is here. Regardless of his malady, George III is the King of England. Government takes precautions against the perils of a monarch who is regrettably not in his right mind. It is not ideal, I grant you, but . . .” his voice trailed off. “I would wish that our government were more responsive to the needs of the poor and the desperate, like those poor fellows living under Westminster Bridge, but it is not the king who prevents our ministers from acting with compassion.”
“You do not hold that they are fiends and cutthroats who deserve the hangman’s noose?”
“They did not begin as fiends and cutthroats, I’ll wager,” he said quietly. The fire crackled as the chicken continued to cook.
They would eat and drink, and then the Earl would remove all traces of their habitation as they continued to travel by night. The moon was full and that would help them as they made their way from the country back to London.
“Desperate circumstances make men turn desperate,” he said.
Was that what would happen to her, Gemma wondered as she chewed on a chicken leg that tasted surprisingly delicious despite the rustic dining. Would she become desperate in time, until she no longer feared the assembly living under the bridge because she had become one of them? She was not without funds now that her reticule had been restored to her, which she patted now to be sure of its presence.
The offer to buy her paintings that the Earl had made would not be transacted. The paintings had been left under the bridge when they were captured. Without a patron, she could not paint, and his earlier offer was a tantalising one, but she knew that she dared not accept it. Patrons did not seek to take women painters under their wings. No they sought them for other matters. At the thought of engaging in such matters with the Earl, Gemma blushed. Never had she had such a bold thought.
She bit her lower lip. She was an orphan with no means of support and no family to care what happened to her. That was the sort of woman who entertained a man for a night or two, nothing more.
During their time together, sharing danger and the unexpected, she had come to see the Earl in an entirely different light. He was no longer a stranger. Instead, he was a charming, witty, kind, and handsome man; whom she desperately wished, saw more in her than her destitute circumstance.
It was easy enough to rebuff the unwanted advances of a man like Lord Benton. It might not be so easy to refuse the Earl. To be fair, he had done nothing to make her fearful or suspicious of his intentions. It was her own response that she feared.
For that reason, she knew that, before they reached London, she would once again have to vanish so that he could not find her. Not only was he far too grand for the likes of her, but the intrigue and purpose of his role in this plot alarmed her.
She was a simple girl from Devon. What had she to do with subterfuge that threatened the rule of the king? She did not know who Baron Ainsworth was. She knew nothing of the royal court. That she was in the company of a man who had been engaged in s
ervice to the King by the King’s government was baffling, but so was everything that had transpired since her uncle had ordered her out of his home.
“Together, we can defeat Ainsworth.”
With a start, Gemma realised that the Earl had been speaking while she stared into the fire, intent upon her own thoughts.
“I hardly think that I have anything to offer in such a mission,” she whispered. “I should prefer to return to Devon.”
“Will your family not be wondering where you are?” the Earl asked.
She could tell that he doubted her story about her family. He was right to do so, but as he was too much the gentleman to call her a liar, she felt safe in her charade.
“I had made plans to return to Devon before they planned to depart,” she replied glibly. “They must assume that I am on my way.”
“And the footman?”
“Sad to say, he was not the most reliable of footmen. No doubt he has decided to join the army and fight Napoleon.”
“I see. And leave you to your own defence?”
“I am not without means of defending myself,” Gemma said quickly.
“I don’t doubt it. But I think poorly of a man who would abandon his mistress in such a cavalier fashion.”
“Yes, well, he must follow his calling and if it is to be a soldier, then so be it.”
“Is your footman a Devon man or a Londoner?”
“He . . . is a Londoner. He would not like Devon. He would think it too dull.”
“You do not?”
“No. Devon is dear to me.”
“To me as well. Perhaps I shall call upon you when this escapade has ended. You will have quite a tale to tell your family. Perhaps it would help if I showed up to corroborate your tale.”
“I do not think that would be wise,” she said quickly. “If my family suspected that I have spent time alone with a gentleman, I fear that they would send me off to a convent in Italy where I could repent of my behaviour.”
“You have behaved throughout with nothing but virtue and grace,” the Earl replied. “Not many would have dealt with the circumstances and displayed the amount of fortitude that you have shown.” He paused, then settled his intense eyes on her. “How shall I contact you after we have brought Ainsworth to justice? You have not even told me your name.”