by Amanda Scott
She cried out and stumbled backward just as the front door opened and Ramsbury stepped into the room as casually as though he had just entered his own home.
Fanny shrieked, “Ned!”
“At your service, Fanny,” he said affably. “I daresay you weren’t expecting me. Hello there, Syb,” he added. “I doubt that you were expecting me either, were you?”
Delighted though she was to see him, his manner steadied her and reminded her that she had disobeyed him. She bit her lip. “They said you would go to Bristol.”
“I didn’t, but the primary fact, my love, is that you chose to attend to matters on your own, yet again. ’Tis a subject that we will discuss later at some length. First, however, we must decide what to do with this little trio of miscreants.”
Fanny said hesitantly, “Ned, there is something you don’t know.” But before she could say more, a shadow appeared behind him, and to Sybilla’s amazement, Viscount Brentford said, “I’m afraid there are four of us miscreants, my lord. Just step into the sitting room, if you please. I’ve a pistol at your back.”
“I feel it,” Ramsbury said with a sigh as he obeyed. Inside, he turned to face the viscount. “Didn’t expect to find you in this farce, Brentford.”
Brentford shot a look of irritation at Fanny that made her grow pale. “Thought you said he was in London.”
“I thought he was. Oh, dear, what will you do now?”
“I’ve no wish to be caught out in this,” Brentford said. “The reason I chose to attend to the groom myself in the safety of the stable is that I didn’t want Lady Ramsbury to see me, but when I saw her husband ride into the yard, I had no choice but to interfere. Now, there is only one thing to be done.”
“What are you talking about?” Fanny demanded on a note of rising hysteria. “Surely, you cannot mean—”
“I cannot have my name connected to an abduction,” Brentford said harshly, “and, although you might keep quiet, I don’t think Ramsbury will agree to ignore today’s little happenings. If he would give me his parole, of course …” He waited.
Ramsbury was silent, and Sybilla nearly spoke up on his behalf, but he was looking at her, so she shut her lips tightly and was surprised to see, the moment she did so, that he smiled.
“I cannot agree to do that,” the earl said. “ ’Twas bad enough thinking your money came from fleecing naive young men, Brentford, but now I know there are other, even less palatable sources, I will gladly hand you over to the nearest magistrate.”
“You won’t,” the viscount said. But when he would have continued, Forrest, standing near the room’s only window, suddenly exclaimed, “Someone else is coming—a coach and four!”
“Get away from that window,” Brentford hissed. “No, leave the door open. We’ll see who it is and take care of them, too.”
Sybilla heard barking above the sound of hoofbeats and carriage wheels and her fear grew when she thought she recognized the sound. She did not think the newcomers would prove helpful, and she was sorry they had come. She saw the look on Ned’s face and knew he was thinking the same thing she was.
The carriage drew to a rattling halt in the yard, and a moment later a voice she had not expected to hear drawled lazily, “I daresay it was all a hoax, ma’am, for there ain’t a soul in sight. I’ll just go see if I can roust out the farmer. No doubt we’ve come to the wrong farm.” There came another bark, and then Sydney cried, “No, dash it, Henrietta!” and a small white shape flashed through the door and collided with a frightened yelp against Brentford’s right leg.
When the viscount, believing himself under attack, looked down, cursing, Ramsbury instantly flung himself forward, and the pair of them shot through the open doorway together in a tangle of arms and legs.
Forrest and Porter, as one, ran after them, and Sybilla, scooping up the whimpering Henrietta, followed, pushing Fanny out of her way without a second thought. Bursting into the yard, she saw the pistol fly off in one direction as Brentford staggered in another, propelled by Ramsbury’s fist. Sydney stood to one side, observing the earl’s skill with a look of appreciation and exhibiting his customary lack of action.
When Porter suddenly attacked Ramsbury from behind, Sybilla cried out in alarm and immediately looked about for the pistol, but the earl turned like a cat, side-stepped a second blow, and sent a crashing left into Porter’s jaw. Porter fell, but Brentford sprang to his feet again, putting up his fists.
Seeing the pistol at the same time that she saw Forrest run to grab it, Sybilla leapt forward to stop him, but before she was anywhere near, Sydney stretched out a hand toward the man, and although he seemed to do nothing more than that, to Sybilla’s shock, Forrest sailed straight up into the air, then tail over top to the ground to lie stunned at Sydney’s feet. When he tried to move, Sydney sat upon him, pulled out his snuffbox, and took a pinch before turning to watch the earl, who just then succeeded in flattening Brentford.
Ramsbury bent and picked up the pistol, still lying on the ground where Sybilla had seen it, then waved it in the general direction of the two men at his feet and said, “I’d be doing the country a favor if I killed you here and now, but I daresay we’ll leave it to a magistrate to decide what to do with you.” Then, glancing at Sydney, he said, “I saw what you did. Where the devil did you learn that trick?”
Sydney’s lips curved in a gentle smile. “Another little hobby I began in China. What shall we do with this lot?”
“Edmond,” cried the marchioness from the carriage window, “are you hurt?”
“No, ma’am. ’Twas naught but a harmless little dust-up.” He handed the pistol to Sydney and looked at Sybilla. “You didn’t come here alone, I hope.”
She shook her head and found when she tried to talk that her mouth was dry. “Newton must be in the shed yonder,” she said hoarsely. “Porter told him to take the phaeton and his horse back there, and Brentford must have been waiting for him.”
“Go and let him out, Fanny,” the earl ordered.
Fanny had been standing in a shocked daze throughout the proceedings, but at these words, she collected herself and said hastily, “Ned, he forced me! He said he would make me earn all the money I owed him on my back if I did not get it myself, and right quickly. On my back, Ned! You cannot think I—”
“You do not want to hear what I think,” he retorted harshly. “I acquit you of attempted murder, but that is all. Now go and do as you are told, and pray that Newton has not been injured.”
Her eyes widened at being spoken to in such a manner, but she obeyed, and Ramsbury turned back to Sydney. “I think our best course will be for you to take the coach and the ladies, including Henrietta, back to Biddlestone, where you will roust out a magistrate and whatever minions he requires to deal with this lot. Newton and I will attend to them while you are gone.”
“At your service,” Sydney said amiably as he got to his feet. “Do you want me to come back?”
“Not if you can manage to take Fanny with you. I’ll drive Sybilla back in the phaeton, and Newton can see to my horse.” He stepped forward and held out his hand. “I misjudged you, Saint-Denis. I apologize.”
Sydney smiled, accepting the hand as he said, “No need. If I were looking to get leg-shackled, mind you, I don’t say she wouldn’t appeal. She’s something rather special, your countess.”
“I know,” Ramsbury said, glancing over his shoulder at Sybilla, “but one does so often want to strangle her.”
Sydney chuckled, but before he could say anything, their attention was diverted by the sight of Fanny crossing the yard with Newton at her heels. The groom said hastily, “Sorry, m’lord, the fellow took me by surprise. I brung the rope ’e tied me with, though, thinking I could return the favor.”
“Do so,” Ramsbury said at once. “Fanny, you will go in the carriage with the others. I will speak with you later.”
Sydney walked over to Sybilla, took Henrietta from her arms with a murmured hope that Ramsbury would not strangle her befo
re they met agin, and moved to accompany Fanny to the carriage. As they reached it, Lady Lucretia leaned across the marchioness and called out, “Sybilla, do you not wish to come with us?”
Sybilla shook her head but stepped closer to the carriage. “No, thank you, ma’am, you have no room. I’ll go with Ned. May I ask, though, how you and Lady Axbridge come to be here?”
“Oh, ’tis quite simple,” the marchioness told her. “Edmond had told your Medlicott to let him know the moment anything untoward occurred, so of course, as soon as you left this morning, she rushed to Camden Place with the letter you had received, as well as the one you had addressed to me. Edmond was not pleased by what you had done, I’m afraid, and quite rightly came after you, but I could not think he should go alone, so when he had gone, Lucretia and I sent for Mr. Saint-Denis. We refused to tell him where Edmond had gone until he agreed to let us accompany him, however, for we did not want to miss the fun, but we never thought there might be danger.”
“Nor did I,” Sydney said, following Fanny into the carriage, “or I would never have agreed to allow it.”
“But it was Henrietta who saved the day,” Sybilla told him. “You would have walked straight into Brentford’s pistol if she had not diverted him and allowed Ned to knock him down.”
He chuckled. “Little bitch began to express her displeasure at our wicked pace two minutes out of Camden Place and leapt out of the carriage at the first opportunity. Pure luck she careened into Brentwood. ’Tis a pity though,” he added, looking beyond Sybilla, “that I must take her away now, for it looks as if you might like her to create another timely diversion before long.”
Sybilla turned to see that Newton had the men in charge and Ned was bearing down on her with a look of purpose in his eyes.
“Get moving, Saint-Denis,” he said. “We’ll keep all tidy here till the magistrate arrives.”
A moment later the coach was gone, and the yard seemed unnaturally silent. Ramsbury took Sybilla gently by the arm and turned her toward the house. “I’d like a word with you, my girl,” he said quietly. “Inside.”
“Oh, but Ned—”
“Inside, Sybilla.”
“But Brentford and the others—”
“Newton’s got the pistol, and they are tied up. He’ll look after them.” He swept his arm out in a gesture of mock gallantry. “After you, my lady.”
She couldn’t tell if he was angry, but she rather feared that he might be, and for once she truly did not want to fight with him. Silently, she preceded him into the shabby little room. When he shut the door, she turned to face him and said quickly, “To think Fanny was in thrall to Brentford! He was much more dangerous man we thought, was he not?”
“He was.” His tone was uncompromising, but she persevered.
“What will become of them?”
“They can hang for all I care.”
“Not Fanny!”
“Fanny will look after herself. I intend to force her to confess her sins to Mandeville, and then I’ll point out to him that he is legally responsible for her debt to Mama. She won’t like that. Nor will he, of course, but once the word gets around about Brentford, as it will, they will have all they can do to keep Fanny’s part in it quiet. Whether they succeed in that endeavor or not is all the same to me. I’ve made my decision.”
“We were going to talk over such decisions,” she reminded him. “We were going to make them together.”
“The time for talking is done, Sybilla. You rushed—”
“You set Medlicott to spy upon me!”
He looked at her for a long moment without speaking, and she was not at all sure what he meant to do.
“Ned, I—”
“Come here,” he said gently.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you,” she blurted. “I knew you would come. Even when Fanny told me you would go to Bristol, I still knew you would come. As for not telling you before, that was more because I knew you were waiting for the letter—”
“Not because you feared I would be angry with your idiot brother?” His eyebrows rose in gentle query.
She could not meet his gaze and looked at the floor instead. “You would have been furious if you’d learned Brandon had fought a duel,” she said. “And even though I thought the letter might be a ruse, I couldn’t be certain.”
“But since Brandon could not hit Carlton House from twenty paces,” he said, chuckling, “let alone anything so small as a man, you ought to have been as astonished as I would be to be told he’d been fool enough to fight one.”
She looked up at him in amazement. “You are not angry with me for not sending for you?”
He shook his head. “Not if you can forgive me for asking Medlicott to keep an eye on you.” And when he held out his arms, she walked straight into them, sighing when they closed around her. Over her head, he said quietly, “I have begun to understand that I cannot insist upon your attending to my needs if I am not willing at least to understand yours. Instead of resenting your attention to your family, I ought to have been helping you deal with them. I never had any siblings of my own, so I could not understand how they depended upon you. I knew only that they were grown and ought to look to themselves. I never thought about your need to protect them, or to be needed yourself.”
She considered his words. “I daresay I do want them to need me,” she said at last. “It is hard to accept that Charlie and Mally, at least, can take care of themselves now. But, as to Brandon, I do not think he will ever change, Ned. I do see him more clearly now. I understand that he … well, that he’s just Brandon. He will always be getting into scrapes and expecting me to get him out of them. And I am not altogether sure that I can stop rushing to his rescue when he asks me to.”
“Do you want to stop?” he asked, and she heard a new note in his voice, a note of strain, almost as though he were afraid to ask the question.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “If my helping him is going to make it harder for us to fix things between us, then I do wish I could stop, but wishing won’t make it so, Ned.”
He hugged her, holding her tight. “Wishing is enough. I meant it when I said I’d done a lot of thinking about all this. Our troubles have not all been of my creating, but I have done little before now to ease the situation. I can help with Brandon, and with your father. We’ll look after them together.”
“What about your own father, Ned? One day soon you will have to deal with him, you know.”
“I know, but just as I will help you, you will help me, my love. He approves of you, you know.”
“Because of Papa’s money,” she reminded him.
“True, but approval is approval, for all that. God knows, I haven’t had a lot of it from him.”
“He is old, Ned, and older every day. If I can help—”
“You can. Our first attempt at a partnership was not an unequivocal success, Syb, but we tried, and with patience, I think we can do better. Shall we try?”
“Perhaps. What will you do about Papa?”
He chuckled. “I will have a little talk with him before I take you back to London, and I will tell him flatly that he must run his own household or I will engage my Aunt Lucretia to run it for him. Now, what do you suppose he will reply to that?”
Sybilla burst into laughter at the vision that leapt to mind, laughing until she could laugh no more. And when Ned kissed her afterward, the glow of love that surged through her assured her that their future together would be a bright one.
The Bath Charade
The Bath Trilogy
Amanda Scott
To Jim
Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
I
“IF YOU VALUE YOUR safety
,” Sir Bartholomew told Miss Laura sternly, “do not leave the shelter of these walls, lest your life fall victim to such imprudence.”
“She’ll leave,” muttered the reader, turning the page and continuing to read.
Laura nodded submissively. Sadly however, though appearing to be the mildest and softest of her sex, wholly devoted to Sir Bartholomew’s will, and looking up to him as a superior being (Here the reader made a sound perilously akin to an unladylike snort) not half an hour had elapsed before the beguiling child descended into the castle garden and from thence through the outer gate into the mysterious forest beyond.
With a light step, she hastened toward the blackberry patch, but scarce had she picked a dozen of the luscious fruit before darkness descended all about her in the form of a voluminous cloak. Two iron-muscled arms clamped fast around her from behind, and she heard the dreaded but unmistakable sound of Count Rodolfo’s evil laughter.
“So, sweet beauty, you are mine again!”
Carolyn Hardy glared up in disgust at the ornate ceiling of Bathwick Hill House library. “I knew it,” she muttered. “What an idiotish female Laura Lovelace is!”
To be sure, Miss Hardy, with her glossy black curls, rosy cheeks, and sparkling aquamarine eyes, had felt an instant empathy with a heroine possessing soft ringlets the color of a raven’s wing and eyes of sapphire-blue, but Miss Laura’s insistence upon behaving at every turn in the stupidest manner possible had soon put empathy to flight. It was all very well to be desired for one’s beauty, Carolyn thought; nonetheless, it would have been gratifying had the author allotted Miss Laura at least a modicum of intelligence as well.
Miss Hardy had small opinion of comeliness in and of itself. After all, she was the acknowledged beauty of her own family but thought it no great distinction, since most of the other younger members of the Hardy family were male and since only two of them (and her godmama’s son, who didn’t count) might have given her any competition.