by Nancy Butler
* * *
It was nearing eleven when Quincy arrived at the White Hart. He strode past the nonplused ostler, right into the cavernous carriage shed. His uncle’s coach was there, a dark hulk in the shadows. He congratulated himself on this piece of luck—Alexa might still be here after all.
But those hopes were dashed after a short conversation with the ostler, who was waiting for him at the door of the shed.
“What time did that coach arrive here?”
“Just past nine, it were. The lady inside was crying something pitiful. The landlord had to send for the constable. Seems her charge, a young lady traveling down to Devon, was stolen right out of the coach.”
Quincy flinched slightly. “Stolen?”
“A highwayman, I reckon,” the man said as he swung the double doors closed. “The chief constable said there wasn’t nothing he could do until tomorrow.”
But Quincy was no longer attending him. He hurried into the inn and asked one of the maids where Mrs. Reginald could be found. As he’d suspected, Alexa’s companion was not asleep. She answered his knock, still dressed in her traveling costume, and fell at once into his arms.
“Oh, Mr. Quincy, it’s a blessing you are here. Her father is not well these days, you know. A blow like this could send him to his grave.”
“Steady on, Mrs. Reginald,” he said, coaxing her back into a chair. “I am only come here by chance, thinking I would visit the old gent in Cudbright for the holidays. Imagine my surprise when I discovered you were staying at this inn.”
“Then, you don’t know? About Alexa?” Tears trembled on her lashes. “We were waylaid by a man on the road. The fiend pretended to be wounded, and when Alexa climbed out to aid him, he carried her off.”
“The devil he did!” he cried in patent outrage. “But you’re sure it was just one man alone?”
She nodded. “There was no one else nearby ... I would have seen ... it is so flat there, out on the plain. William Coachman, bless his heart, took his pistol and rode after him on one of the horses, but he couldn’t catch him. Though he followed him far enough to know that the man was heading southwest, away from Reading.”
“Damn!” Quincy muttered under his breath. When she recoiled, he smiled at her grimly. “Dear lady, you see how overset I am.” He knelt down beside her chair. “But I will find this wretch, upon my honor I will.”
Mrs. Reginald clutched his hands. “You are a good man, Mr. Quincy. I know Alexa never liked you, but then she is so harsh in her opinions of most men. I’ve always thought you were the perfect gentleman.”
“I don’t wish to distress you further, but I need a description of this fellow. I know it was dark ....”
“Yes, I realize now he stayed well back from the carriage lamps and had his muffler pulled up over his chin. He was tall ... I could tell that much, even if he wasn’t sitting upright in the saddle. And strong—he lifted Alexa with one arm.”
“Which arm?”
Mrs. Reginald looked puzzled. “His right, I believe, though what that has to do with anything—”
“Which means he was holding the reins with his left hand,” Quincy murmured under his breath. It corroborated his suspicions regarding MacHeath. “And how was the fellow dressed?”
“A long black cloak, but no hat. His hair was darkish, definitely not fair. He had the voice of a gentleman, and indeed, you might mistake him for one with his top boots and fine leather gloves.”
He rose abruptly and laid a hand over his heart. “Now, please stop worrying, Mrs. Reginald. Stay here at the inn until I send word. I feel certain I can find her. And return her to her father’s loving arms.”
“You must know that Mr. Prescott will give you anything you ask, if you can bring Alexa home unharmed.”
“I know,” Quincy said softly. “I know.”
The woman began to twist her fingers. Her eyes entreated him. “I must alert her father, but I don’t know how to tell him that ... that—”
He covered her hands and squeezed them gently. “You don’t need to write anything, Mrs. Reginald. He won’t be expecting Alexa for days yet. There is no need to alarm him.” He mustered a quick smile. “I have every faith that she will be recovered. You can write to him after that.”
He had one hand on the door latch, when she sprang up from her chair. “Oh, my stars, Mr. Quincy! I just remembered ... the stranger called out to me before he rode off. I cannot believe I overlooked it. But I have been so very distressed.”
“What did he say?” Quincy hissed.
“It was something quite puzzling. Let me think ....”
Quincy ground his teeth while Mrs. Reginald’s brows knit fretfully. “He said, ‘Go back to Reading if you value your skins.’ And then he added, ‘Look to the Lamb for the message.’ “ Her brows knit even more. “Some kind of religious raving, do you think? Oh, my … could it be that Alexa was carried off by a Methodist?”
Quincy shook his head slowly. “I have no idea what the blackguard meant. Perhaps it will come to me. But I must be off now.”
As he made his way down the darkened staircase, his fertile brain was already plotting how to regain his advantage. With Finch and Connor’s assistance, he should have little trouble tracking his cousin and her kidnapper. He’d been raised near Salisbury, so he was familiar with most of the small towns between Reading and Devon. He knew that a black-caped rogue with a well-dressed young lady in tow was bound to occasion remark from the villagers.
His major concern was that this MacHeath—and he refused to waste time with any scenario involving another, unknown, kidnapper—had seen him at the tavern. That was bad luck for MacHeath. It meant he’d have to be put out of the way before he could identify Quincy as the man who’d been plotting against Alexa.
Before he left the inn, he ordered the ostler to rouse Prescott’s coachmen. The two men came down from the grooms’ quarters over the stable, wrapped in horse blankets and in no fine mood.
He grilled them both about the rider who had stopped the coach, and got little more for his troubles than he’d obtained from Mrs. Reginald.
The junior coachman did add one bit of useful information, however, “The fellow was riding a prime goer,” he declared. “A strapping bay hunter with a white star. Though, where a common robber got such a fine beast—”
William Coachman jabbed him lightly in the ribs. “He robbed him off some gentleman, Henry, that’s where.” The man scratched his chin and looked keenly at Quincy. “You aim to go after Miss Alexa, then?”
“Certainly. It’s my duty as her cousin.”
“That fellow what carried her off ... he looked to be a man who could handle himself, if you take my meaning, sir.”
Quincy bristled noticeably. “Be assured, William, I am skilled in all the gentlemanly arts of self-defense.”
The coachman squinted. “Been practicing with your pistol, eh, Mr. Q? Last time you shot against Miss Alexa, you didn’t fare so—”
“That will be all,” Quincy interjected. “I have no further need of you. But I’d like you to remain here and look after Mrs. Reginald while I’m gone. She is understandably distraught.”
“Me and Henry had a mind to set out early this morning—see if we couldn’t find that fellow’s tracks. He might have gone to earth somewhere nearabouts. You never know.”
“That will not be necessary,” Quincy said emphatically. “I have a number of contacts here in Reading whom I can enlist. Men who are more suited for hunting down ruffians than you two.”
“As you like, sir.”
He touched his forelock to Quincy, and then both coachmen made their way up the wooden stairs. William stopped at the top and turned to his companion. “I’m not one to disobey an order from a gentleman, Henry my lad, but—”
Henry smiled wickedly and drawled, “But that’s assuming it was a gentleman giving the order in the first place. And since Mr. Quincy is, as you and me both know, not quite the gentleman he pretends to be—”
“A
nd since he is not our master, neither, I see no reason why we can’t go after Miss Alexa ourselves.”
“Besides which, that fribble couldn’t find his phiz in a mirror. Bloody lot of hope he has of finding our mistress, even with all his bloomin’ contacts. What say we start out now?”
“Done, Henry. We’ll go tell Mrs. Reginald what we’re about, and then we’ll be off.”
* * *
The landlord at the Lamb and Flag was not at all pleased to be roused from his sleep, especially since the blond gentleman shook him by the shoulders till his bones rattled.
“Dining parlor’s closed,” he grumbled up from his bench in the hallway, “Eh, what’s that you say? A message? No one’s left a message here.”
“Fetch your wife,” Quincy ordered. “Perhaps it was left with her.”
“The wife’s gone to Bath,” the landlord stated as he straightened his tartan waistcoat, which had ridden up over his substantial belly while he dozed. “Her sister has the influenza.”
Quincy paced along the hall, sending tiny plumes of dust up from the ancient carpet. “Is there another tavern in Reading called the Lamb? Or a shop of some sort?”
“Can’t say that I know it, if there is.”
“Was there a man in here earlier tonight … tall, dark haired, wearing a black cape and riding a fine bay horse?”
“Aye.” The landlord brightened. “Had his tea here. Can’t say as I recall his name. Had the look of a sailing man ... something about his eyes.”
“Yes,” Quincy said eagerly. “That’s sounds like my friend. He was to leave a message here for me. You’re sure he didn’t leave anything behind.”
The landlord pursed his mouth thoughtfully. “He did make a clever drawing for my daughter—of her cat. She left it here somewhere.”
He went to the Welsh dresser along the wall, which was strewn with an assortment of papers and handbills.
“Ah, here it is.” He took down a sheet of stationery that had been propped up against a hobnail pitcher. Quincy snatched it from him.
“It’s a fanciful bit of a thing,” said the landlord from over his shoulder. “See, there’s words written on the animals and a little poem under each of the pictures.”
Quincy’s face twisted as he observed the drawing. It was in two panels, the first showing a cat asleep on the hearth, while a long-snouted rat tiptoed toward a large wedge of cheese. The inscription read, “If the cat takes his ease, then the rat takes the cheese.” The second panel showed the cat with his paw on the tail of an enraged rat and under it the poem read, “If the cat stays awake, the rat shall he take.”
The drawings were skillfully rendered and humorous—if one had a mind to be amused by a rat with the name Quincy spelled out its back, or a cheese with the initials A. P. carved into it. Unfortunately for Quincy, there was no name obligingly written upon the sleek, predatory cat.
He cursed under his breath. Somehow this MacHeath fellow had figured out his identity and had left this message for Mrs. Reginald or the coachmen to find. Good thing that lady was too overset to think clearly and the two coachmen were not sharp-witted enough to figure out the rider’s message.
“I’ll take this,” he said, shoving the paper into his coat pocket. When the landlord protested this high-handed behavior, Quincy threw a few coins down onto the dresser. “Buy your daughter a hair ribbon to make up for the loss of it.”
He returned to the White Hart and ordered a fresh horse from the ostler—on his uncle’s tick—and headed out of the city. Upavon, where he was to rendezvous with his men, was on the main route to Exeter. He’d be there by early morning, and if luck was with him, his cousin and her rescuer would come riding right into his waiting arms.
He didn’t like it that his hand had been forced. But it was clear that this blasted MacHeath knew Alexa’s own cousin had been behind the plan to abduct her. And Quincy had no doubt the man would tell her that as soon as he had the chance.
He thought furiously while he rode across the barren plains. There didn’t seem to be a way he could remove himself from suspicion. Which meant he would have to force himself on the minx—there was no longer any question of earning her gratitude to soften the seduction. By carrying her off, that one-handed rascal had sealed her fate.
Chapter 4
MacHeath pulled his horse up at the edge of a ravine, assessing the landscape below him. Alexa Prescott now lay quiet in his arms, though for the first hour she had battled him almost nonstop. Twice she’d nearly succeeded in throwing herself from the horse’s back in her frenzy to get away. But during the past few miles, she’d stopped fighting. He guessed she was exhausted and afraid. One of those things he could remedy ... the other was up to her.
He sent his horse down the edge of the incline. The beast was a heavyweight hunter that he’d “borrowed” from his former employer’s stable in London. He’d left behind a note, explaining his need, and he hoped Roddy would forgive him. If there was one determined do-gooder in London, it was Roddy Kempthorne. Not the brightest fellow he’d ever met, but the one with the largest heart.
Who else would have hired a one-handed piece of human wreckage to be his valet? Who else would have sent that valet off to Scotland with the money to coax a brilliant young medical student to make him an artificial hand?
But he’d taken enough of Roddy’s charity, and once he’d finished up in Scotland, MacHeath had returned to the place where he felt most at home—the shadowed lanes and alleys of the East End. Somehow his new hand shamed him ... with all its implications of allowing him a normal life. The only life he craved was the sea, and since that was forever denied him, it didn’t matter where he lived or how he earned his bread.
Once he reached the bottom of the ravine, he let the horse pick its way through the rocky debris, until they came to a copse of fir trees. The trees would furnish enough of a windbreak to let him light a fire. He slid off the horse, still cradling the girl in his arms. She was a limp, dead weight. He laid her down beneath the trees, then tugged his cape off and spread it over her.
It took him only a minute or two to pile some fallen branches a little distance from the trees, and to strike a fire with his tinderbox. The resinous pine boughs caught quickly, licking up into a pleasing blaze. Then he took the two blankets that were rolled up behind his saddle and laid them over the hard ground. Not much of a bed, he knew, and certainly not what the lady was used to, but he dared not go near an inn until he’d put more miles between himself and Quincy’s men.
He returned to the girl and knelt beside her. The poor creature had tugged his cape up over her face to keep out the cold. He pulled away the edge of the cape, and then sat back on his heels in disbelief. There was nothing under the spill of wool but a pile of pine needles. The little demon had shaped them into a long mound that resembled a body.
With a muffled curse, he rose and gazed along the deep black ravine. She couldn’t have gotten far.
He moved away from the soft crackling of the fire and listened intently. Off to his right he heard her, scrabbling along the flinty ground. He went after her swiftly, stopping every twenty feet or so to listen, marking her position before he moved forward again.
She was trying to scale the ice-slicked slope of the ravine when he finally caught up with her. As he loomed out of the darkness below her, she cast a harried look over her shoulder. “Get away from me!” she cried and scrambled a few more feet up the slope.
He continued doggedly in her wake, and when she stood up and turned on him abruptly, he didn’t think to duck. Fortunately, the rock she hurled at him went spinning past his head. The next one careened off his shoulder. He lunged toward her before she could pick up another missile. She turned to flee just as his left hand clutched at her skirts. Snarling a stream of curses, she kicked out at him.
“They never did make a lady out of you,” he said with relish as he caught her ankle and twisted it upward. She lost her balance and tumbled onto her bottom.
“Back ther
e,” he ordered, pointing to the distant fire. “You walk or I carry you.”
“Damn your black heart,” she groaned hoarsely, as she hugged the nearest boulder, locking her arms tight around it.
He sighed as he pried her fingers away from the half-ton anchor. It was hard work with only one good hand.
Once he’d pulled her off the boulder, he marched her down the slope and along the ravine, a hand on each shoulder. She’d grown up tall, he realized. Tall and slender. Not much in the way of a rounded bosom or curved bottom, just a mass of black hair and two eyes full of simmering rage.
He forced her to sit on the blanket beside the fire, keeping one eye on her while he dug their provisions—a wedge of cheese and two crumbling meat pasties—out of his saddlebag. He offered some to her, but she turned her head away.
“Fine,” he said, after taking a bite of his own pasty. “You can starve. I’ll cart your carcass home and get the same reward as for returning you alive. Someone there might actually be relieved to be rid of you, you’re that much trouble.”
“I don’t eat pig slop,” she said without looking up.
He nearly laughed. She was still the petulant child, sullen and willful. It was a pity her father, who loved her so much, had taken so little care to mold her character. He’d been a good master to his men, guiding them in their work with patience and wisdom. But he’d clearly left his daughter to her own devices, and she’d turned out sour and spiteful.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” he said softly.
She shook her head vehemently in denial. She was too angry to detect the bemused relief in his face. “No, and I don’t give a fig who you are. I only care that someone takes the trouble to hang you for this infamy.”
“What? For rescuing you?” he asked as he started on her pasty.
Her eyes raised instantly to his. “You’re lying. I was in no danger.”
“I happen to know differently. But it doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. Frankly, I don’t care anything about you, except for what I can gain by getting you safely home.”