“Aye, me lor’?”
“Watch my back.”
“For very certain, me lor’.”
“If I don’t return . . .”
“Aye?”
“Keep an eye on that wench upstairs. She is doubtless up to a pother of mischief, but I find that I like her.”
“Aye, me lor’.”
Here Tessie nearly emitted a quite audible gasp, for the rogue was clearly speaking of her! At least, she hoped he was . . . impudent, rag mannered . . . but she could not stop feeling a distinctly unmaidenly glow of happiness. His impudence should be outraging her. She should call the watch on him and his head-coshing confederate. He should be taken up in irons. . . .
No time for irons; he was gone, with a grimmer look on his handsome countenance than Tessie would have liked. In fact, the shivers of apprehension she now felt bore no resemblance to the delicious shivers of a moment previous.
The villain prodded his victim urgently. There was no response save for a mutter.
“Murray ’Iggnis, you have got to wake up!” This in a hiss. It was sufficiently audible, however, for Tessie to hear. Her descent of the tree became more reckless. The leaves shook and the villain—or so Tessie regarded him—gasped as the branches parted and Miss Hampstead landed with perfect poise just two feet beside him. Instantly, his strong arms coiled around her like a snake.
But Tessie, still gripping her pistol, begged him sweetly “not to make such a cake of himself.”
The villain, shaken, released his grip a little, warily removing the pistol from her grasp.
“Careful. I think it might be primed. I heard a click as I dropped to the lower branch.”
“Beg pardon, miss, this is no place for young ladies.”
“Then it is fortunate that I have lost all claim to that title. My behavior has surely sunk me beneath all reproach. Now, wake that man up. . . . I don’t believe I know your name?”
“Joseph, miss.” This with a grin, for Joseph knew instinctively that this must be his lordship’s wench. Uncommonly pretty she was, though not in his lordship’s usual style.
“Very good, Joseph. Now do, I pray you, release me altogether, for though I am quite partial to reptiles, I have never yet relished the grip of a boa constrictor.”
Joseph, who knew nothing of foreign shores or the creatures thereon, and who might otherwise have missed Miss Hampstead’s irony, chuckled. Living with the earl had increased his knowledge of matters relating to the Peninsula and the colonies, and, of course, the far of Americas. . . .
He instinctively permitted Miss Hampstead her freedom, though he retained the weapon with raised brows and checked it himself. Miss Hampstead murmured her thanks, and knelt in the earth, feeling the victim’s pulses with interest.
“It’s a shakin’ ’e needs. . . .”
“Nonsense. He is awake. No, don’t kick at him, foolish man! It will make him feel queasy. If I had sal volatile I could revive him at once. Wait! There is cod liver oil in my chamber. Disgusting stuff. It will do, though he won’t thank me for my trouble.”
“Miss . . .”
“Oh, don’t miss me! Shin up, will you?”
She gently removed the gun from Joseph’s restless hands.
“The bottle is very close to my counterpane. I would do it myself, only there are some ruffians I should very much like to avoid running into, and they already have succeeded in breaking down the door. If they are still there, of course, don’t go in.”
This last a second thought as she smiled sweetly at the bemused Joseph. He, it might be said, was experiencing a gamut of emotions he later described to the second housekeeper as “quite haranguing,” for besides being ordered about by a little chit of a thing who was as cool as you please with a mightily unsuitable weapon, he was also hard pressed to watch his lord’s back, a matter of the most singular importance. So, what with one thing and another, he was shinning up blimey apple trees and muttering darkly, terrified that the cove would wake hisself up and stab the little mistress in the back, a thing he could not like, for me lor’ had said . . . well, never mind what his lor’ had said . . .
In the meanwhile, poor Joseph was doing precisely as he was bid, bewitched by Miss Tessie’s smile and her matter-of-fact handling of the pistol, which she now pointed quite merrily at the tree-bound Murray Higgins.
Five
It was a small matter to retrieve the cod liver oil, for besides an empty glass that had once contained the aromatic hot posset, there was nothing on the table save the blue-bottled decoction. The door had not been forced, though it had obviously been opened. Joseph could see the great key still in its lock, and the taper-lit hallway gaping beyond.
He snatched the bottle, clamored back to the windowsill, then heroically disregarded several sundry scratches to his face as he wormed his way down. The little miss, who he’d decided to trust despite severe misgivings, held out her hand peremptorily.
“Well done!” Miss Tessie’s smile was warm but brief as she unstopped the cork. “Untie the gag.”
Bemused, Joseph obeyed and hoped to heaven he would not incur the wrath of his master.
“Good.” She grabbed the bottle, sniffed at its contents, then held poor Mr. Higgins’s nose as she poured a considerable quantity calmly down his throat. The result of this barbarous onslaught was that Mr. Higgins choked himself conscious. While he spluttered, Joseph kept guard, cocking the pistol a dozen or so times every time he heard the most trifling of noises.
There was a maid who walked through the avenue leading to the courtyard, but she was laden with several long platters from the tavern and did not cast her eyes around her. Then a mongrel stray growled, but it appeared Joseph had a way with dogs, for he very soon loped off, having sniffed—and found satisfactory—the valet’s elegant unmentionables.
Now, in the shadows of the moonlight, Tessie bent over Mr. Higgins and felt, not for his pulses, but for his fob. It was strangely elegant, wrought in silver and studded with tiny gems Tessie could not but think of as diamonds.
“It is close to fifteen minutes. I pray there is time.”
Joseph nodded, thankful that the shadows hid his blushes. While he could ably snuff out the life of any hardened criminal, he felt at a loss, somehow, in the company of a gentlewoman attired in naught else but her nightrail, no matter how modest that attire might be. (Tessie’s was disappointingly modest, for though she had longed for diaphanous silks, Miss Fincham’s views on such matters had always been made prodigiously plain to her.)
“What the—”
“Ah, you are awake. At last! What is the password, Mr. Higgins?”
“Password?”
Tessie was firm, her chin tiptalting dangerously.
“The password, Mr. Higgins.”
“What the devil . . . ? There is none.”
“But there is. And if you don’t care to tell me within the next three seconds, I shall put a bullet through your heart.”
“You are deranged.”
“Quite possibly. However, we stray from the point. The password . . . ?”
“Silks.”
“Understand that if you play May games with me, I shall not be pleased. The password once again, if you please?”
“Silks, I tell you!”
“Very good. Joseph?”
“I am goin’. Belike I shall meet up with me lor’ as he rides down. They are gathering already. I hear ’ooves upon the footpaths.”
“Hurry, then.”
“Aye.”
Joseph, caught between keeping an eye on the wench and serving his master, chose the latter course. The wench, he reckoned with reluctant respect, could look after herself.
The barn was hardly comfortable, but it sufficed. Hay bales had been stacked neatly into businesslike rows, and it was cold, so each man wore a warm coat against the chill. The windows were covered in woven cloth—dark navy, so the lanterns could not be detected from outside. There were several of these lit, heavy and scattered all about, from
front to back. The remaining gloom was alleviated somewhat by an open fire near the entrance. Wisps of smoke coiled toward the doorway, where a sentry, dressed grimly in the foggy gray of the Midlands, stood guard. Each Luddite entered and spoke his piece quietly.
Nicholas, looking nothing like himself, removed his hat and nodded curtly to the guard. The only chair in the place—a heavy oak confection that looked out of keeping with the barn—was occupied by a surly-looking character referred to throughout the night as Fagan.
Nicholas, being waved to one of the makeshift seats, selected an inconspicuous hay bale near the back and folded his arms.
“ ’Is majesty, bein’mad, is no ‘elp to us no more, savin’ ‘is grace. Would we could still ’ave the ear of ‘is majesty. Farmer George, for so we ’ave called ‘im and so ’e ’as become. But the reign of George the Third is over, me mates, for regency or no’ it is not flamin’ likely ’e is goin’ to recover ’is senses.”
“Long live George IV!”
“What bloody madman said that?”
There was a scuffle and an angry murmur, wherein Nicholas regarded the flames of the lantern steadily, and met no one‘s—least of all the miscreant’s—eye.”
“It is MacAlistair of Tottam, said that.”
“Stand up, MacAlistair.”
A thin gentleman with a bulbous nose and several red, spidery veins about his face rose from the hay bales. He chuckled, not at all put out by several sets of eyes glaring at him ominously.
“Lord love us, does none of you kens ‘ave a sense of ’umor?”
There was a whisper and a small sigh, then an answering gleam from two of the northern gentlemen.
“Sit down. This is not the time to be joking, Kenneth MacAlistair. That soddn’ bastard is squanderin’ all the freakin’ wealth of the kingdom! ’E needs to go, for else there will be looms and what have you all over the isles. The day will come when an honest man don’t ’ave no bread to eat nor no ale to drink, think you on that! We need to get rid of the machines, gentlemen! The workers need work!”
“Aye! Aye!” There was general assent in the room.
“There is a plan afoot, even now, to rid the realm of the Prince of Wales. Nothin’ but trouble, him! Now, if you look to France . . .”
“France is naught but a quagmire of Frenchies, and if you’ve taken a loikin’ to that new Bourbon chappie . . .”
“Indeed I ‘ave not, parding me language, but some among yer coves ’ave ’eard rumblins’ . . .”
“Wot sort of rumblins’?”
“Napoleon is free, that’s wot. Now, ’e is a fella to support the Luddite cause. . . .”
The voice rattled on, and no one listened more intently than a certain gentleman seated to the back, the scar at his temple seeming more livid than usual. That Napoleon and the Luddite cause were rather hard to reconcile on an intellectual level seemed irrelevant. Someone was manipulating these men, and someone, whoever he was, was good at it. Honest workers were red hot for action, drawn into this mood of conspiracy like ignorant moths to a lingering flame.
When the meeting drew to a close, each man was allotted a task, and the burden of carrying the message through to his own county and borough. Pens and ink were not permitted, for besides being unsafe, they were not the tools of workingmen. Every detail had therefore to be committed to memory, every man suffering the grueling task of reciting the names, the dates, the places that had been spoken of so secretly, so furtively, for the safety of the Luddite cause hung on each separate instance.
Finally, the speaker hushed the low voices and held out his hands for attention.
“Gentlemen, I ’ave saved this moment for last, for I thought it might amuse you. You see, we have a traitor in our midst.”
Nicholas’s face remained perfectly impassive.
“Be‘old before you Mr. Murray Iggins. ’Iggins, we have rumbled yer lay. Yer are a spy for the king. Leastawise, for ‘is right royal ’ighness. An if yer think yer can quibble, let me inform yer that our password changed last Saturday at ten from silks ter silence. You did not know, for you were, at that stage, canterin’ off to God knows where, bleatin’ of our plans.”
There was a tumultuous roar in the barn.
“Hush! Do yer want the watch down on us? Now, Mr. ’Iggins, what say you?”
“A mistake, gentlemen. And a ’orrible one at that.”
“No mistake! A certain Mr. Murray ‘Iggins was spotted by a palace guard—one of us—locked in earnest conversation with the Lord High Chancellor. That’s nuffin’ to snigger at!”
“Tommyrot!”
“It is not tommyrot that ‘is royal ’ighness’s cavalcade to Vauxhall was changed from Bruton Street to Upper Wimpole, nor that our sharpshooter is now moulderin’ in Newgate, charged with treason and such!”
“I know nothing of that.”
In this, Nicholas spoke the plain truth, for he had had no prior notion whatsoever that the Murray Higgins he was impersonating was actually in the service of his majesty’s government. The matter would normally have struck him as absurd, but, being within inches of his own probable demise, he quite refrained from laughing.
“Lawks alive! It will take a sod more convincin’ than that! And Mr. Grange, let me assure you, is not a slow-top!”
His lordship had heard of Mr. Grange. Indeed, it had been his particular mission to infiltrate the Luddites headed up by this person, for “Mr. Philip Grange,” as he preferred to be known, was as infamous across the Channel as he was in England.
Known by certain circles as “the chameleon,” he was said to hold high office. Not in England, of course, but in its erstwhile enemy, France. A Parisian born and bred, Mr. Grange was actually Monsieur le Duc du Marie—a new title, born of an equally new emperor—Napoleon. Sadly, Napoleon was even now languishing—or Nicholas hoped he was—in St. Helena, and the title seemed to be worth as much as the paper it had been written on. Nothing, in point of fact.
So, Monsieur le Duc, not content with inciting revolution in his native country, now sought to sow its seeds in England instead. Apparently, he had a burning hatred of the English, though he was related in blood to one of the noble houses of the land. This made him doubly villainous, for he could switch from English to French like his namesake, the chameleon.
Where there were whispers, so was there Monsieur le Duc, stoking at those whispers, igniting small fires of discontent. The Luddites, the free traders, the vassals oppressed by corn laws, all of these were cultivated by Mr. Philip Grange, who understood their desires and pandered to their vanities. Nicholas had been charged with observing his methods, with reporting on dangers. He now stood in grave danger himself.
“Kill ’im!”
“Lordy, no! That is a ’angin’ offense!”
“So is burning looms, and we do it!”
“For England we do! This is murder!”
“An example, an example!”
A lantern overturned in the excitement. There was a scuffle, in which Nicholas saw his chance, his reflexes as swift as his intelligence. He threw a punishing left at the man called Tallows, beside him. Then, with no one immediately at hand to restrain him, he dived past the open fire and for the door. Too bad Fagan, less concerned with the lanterns than with pleasing his master, rushed upon him and pinked him with a cunning device concealed up his sleeve. Nicholas saw the flash of steel just before he ducked, averting more immediate harm to himself, though blood flowed freely from his shirt. He divined it was a flesh wound, however, for though the graze stung, he could still breathe freely.
“Blackguard!”
“Tie ’im up, gentlemen.”
“What will you do with him? ’E looks naught but trouble.”
“Trouble? ’E is naught but a coward.”
“You’ll not be killin’ ’im!”
“Snaffle it, Millwardshire! ‘Is blood will not be on your lilywhites! ’E will live to tell us all ‘e knows. After that . . . It is not up to the common likes of you an’ me.
Now go, all of yer! And one at a time, mind. We don’ want to draw no attention to ourselves. Trouble it is when folks start reportin’ on ‘avey-cavey behaviors. Stubble the lanterns, will yer? The moon is ’igh enough for our needs.”
So saying, Fagan turned to his prisoner with a rare smile illuminated by the flames. He had a large mouth, quite handsome really, were the effect not spoiled by one cracked tooth and two gaping holes where his molars should have been. Nicholas, seeing the smile, was not inclined to return the gesture.
It did not take the resourceful Miss Hampstead long to make her prisoner talk. Indeed, she felt rather amiable toward him as she eased his bonds a little.
“I am dreadfully sorry you are being treated like this. It is not my habit, you know, to threaten violence.”
“Is it not? I would have thought you a veritable old hand at it!” The man’s clipped tone was wry as he looked into the barrel of pretty Miss Tessie’s rather businesslike gun.
“No, Grandfather would not have a bar of it, you see. My temper is too vile.”
“I shall endeavor to remember that. May I sit up, Miss . . .”
“Evans. Miss Charity Evans.” The lie slipped easily off her tongue. Tessie thought it was only fair to be consistent.
Unlike her teasing gentlemen, he seemed to notice nothing amiss in the extraordinary name but merely nodded as he shifted his weight a little.
“Ah, Miss Evans, then. May I sit up? This tree stump is beginning to pall on me, and I have the most diverting notion that I might just cast up my accounts.”
Rather than recoil in horror, Miss Tessie looked stricken. “Oh! If you do, it will be all my fault. It is the cod liver oil. Nasty stuff, alas, but that password was urgent.”
At mention of the password, the man’s eyes focused and he stopped fidgeting with the bark of the tree. Apparently, his dinner was safe, for he did not cast up his accounts as threatened.
“Miss Evans, answer me truly, if you please.”
His voice held a pleasant lilt that seemed surprising in a man of his origin. Tessie made no comment, though she eyed the man speculatively. His low tones held both urgency and authority, which was really most diverting considering the circumstances.
A Rag-mannered Rogue Page 6