The Prodigal Hero

by Nancy Butler

  He’d made a bargain with himself. He would take the money Connor had given him and sit down to a card game at his favorite haunt, where the occasional lordling kept the stakes relatively high. If fate favored him, he would set out after Alexa. If not, she would be at her cousin’s mercy.

  The next night he’d come away from the table in the early hours of morning with more than twenty pounds in his pocket and the beginnings of a plan to not only thwart Darwin Quincy, but to thumb his nose at him, as well.

  The only thing he hadn’t counted on was how the sight of Alexa Prescott would affect him. She’d been only the faintest of memories, a gangling girl of fourteen the last time he’d seen her, one who showed no more promise of classical beauty than she had the first day he’d met her.

  But something had happened to her in the intervening ten years. For one thing, she had finally learned how to dress. The royal-blue pelisse she wore was the perfect complement to her blue eyes. The rich sable trim on her velvet bonnet set off the blue-black gleam of her hair in a delightful manner. It was a pity she now wore it up, as was the fashion. Even back in Cudbright, it had been her one real claim to beauty.

  But if she’d still been dressed in a wrinkled pinafore, with her petticoats all spattered with mud, this Alexa Prescott would have caught a man’s eye. Her father’s Roman nose, which had always seemed ridiculous on her otherwise gamine face, now gave her a profile that was distinguished and elegant. Her rosy mouth was still petulant, but he knew few men were proof against a woman who could exhibit a pretty pout.

  Furthermore, she was gloriously tall. And perhaps not so lacking in curves as he’d first thought. Their tussle beside the horse had given him a very gratifying sense of firm breasts and nicely rounded hips.

  He stifled these thoughts before they could take hold. No sense in assessing an object you could never afford to buy.

  He shook Alexa again until she stirred. When she finally sat up, she was cranky and disoriented. He squatted beside her and passed her his tin mug, which he had refilled with weak tea.

  “This tastes like ditch water,” she complained. “And it needs sugar.”

  “At least it’s hot ditchwater,” he said as he rose and began to kick apart the sputtering fire.

  “I can’t get very far on tea. Don’t you have any scones or honey buns?”

  “Fresh out,” he said. Then he recalled that she hadn’t eaten anything last night, that both the cheese and the pasties had ended up inside him. He went to his pack and took a strip of dried beef from a roll of butcher paper.

  He thought she would refuse his offering, but instead she took hold of it and began to chew it with vigor. “I am surprised you would have this,” she informed him. “It is what sailors eat at sea.”

  “Sailors and men too poor to buy fresh meat,” he said as he led the horse from the tree where he’d tethered it.

  “Are you poor, Mr. MacHeath?” she inquired between bites. “Is that why you carried me off? This farce would all make sense if that were the case. You needn’t continue this ludicrous pretense that other men are after me.”

  MacHeath slung the saddle forcefully over the hunter’s back. It landed with a loud thud, which made the horse dance in place.

  “It is not a pretense,” he bit out, not bothering to hide his irritation. “I don’t possess the imagination to have made up such a tangled tale. One that is worthy of Mrs. Edgeworth, I might add, since it is your odious cousin Darwin Quincy who is plotting against you.”

  “Darwin?” Her expression held only disbelief.

  “Precisely. He hired two men from the East End to abduct you.”

  “The ugly customers?”

  “Mmm. He was going to rescue you from them at a hedge tavern beyond Reading. Some nonsense about earning your gratitude. I overheard them in a London tavern planning it out, and I overheard the whole—Dash it all, stop that. This is nothing to laugh about.”

  She tried to school her face into sober lines. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But if you’d ever met Darwin, you would know why I find it amusing. He is the most idle creature on the planet. He is wearied by strolling across St. James Park, for heaven’s sake. Hardly a man of action.”

  “Which is why he hired my friend Connor and his mate, Finch. They don’t come cheaply, but if you want action without conscience, there are none better.”

  “I knew Darwin was angry with me,” she muttered, almost to herself. “I saw that look of rage in his eyes. But I never thought ... to hire such men to come after me.” Her head shot up. “Did you just say you are friends with them, with men who abduct people for a living?”

  “Among other things,” he drawled. “I don’t think you want to know what else they will do for money.”

  “You really do know such men? But you are ... I mean, you speak as though you were—”

  “A gentleman?” he finished for her. “I suppose I should be flattered. I’ve been many things in my life, Miss Prescott, but that was never one of them.”

  “I don’t mind that you’re not a gentleman,” she said as she crawled out from under the cloak and got to her feet with a groan. “My father’s father was a cockle monger.” She was bending forward, stretching her back, when she looked up at him and gave him a wide smile.

  It lanced through him like lightning. He’d been waiting thirteen years for Alexa Prescott to smile at him, and he still wasn’t prepared for the effect. Her pointed face softened, her blue eyes gleamed, and her mouth, so easily provoked to a scowl, took on a warmth that was astonishing.

  “You should do that more often,” he said gruffly as he tightened the horse’s girth. She cocked her head in uncertainty. “Smile,” he said. “You should smile.”

  “I could smile until my jaw cracked,” she said, swinging her arms in a wide circle at her sides. “And it still wouldn’t give me any claim to beauty.”

  “Well, you may not be a nonpareil, but you do have some—What the devil are you doing, Alexa?”

  She was now jumping up and down in place.

  “Trying to work out the stiffness,” she huffed breathlessly. “I am all cramped muscles and knotted joints this morning. And I did not give you leave to use my name.”

  “Sorry, Miss Prescott. I thought maybe this was some sort of morning ritual you performed. It wouldn’t have boded well for the husband hunt, I can tell you that.”

  She stopped jumping and folded her arms across her chest. “Well, good. I shall keep that in mind. If anyone attempts to court me, I will commence my exercises immediately.”

  “Totally unnatural,” he muttered as he packed up his saddlebag.

  * * *

  They set out several minutes later, Alexa perched behind the saddle, one arm set primly around MacHeath’s waist. She had argued with him over this arrangement and had prevailed. It was one thing to be carried off in the arms of a stranger, it was quite another to voluntarily place oneself in those arms. Especially since she now knew how extraordinarily good-looking he was, and tall and lean and graceful, to boot.

  The sun was shining over the Salisbury Plain, melting the hoarfrost that had settled in the night on both grass and gorse. Large, muddy puddles had accumulated from the runoff, and MacHeath was kept busy guiding his horse around them.

  “You ride very well for a sailor,” she remarked, after he’d managed to keep the horse from bolting when a flock of grouse exploded out of a gooseberry bush directly in front of them.

  “I told you, I am not a sailor.”

  “Maybe not now, but you were once. I’ve got an instinct about things like that.”

  “Too bad you didn’t have an instinct about your cousin Darwin. The wretch was planning to do more than merely keep you overnight in a hedge tavern.”

  “Darwin? You think he was going to force himself on me? That is ridiculous. He is most definitely not in the petticoat line.”

  MacHeath twisted around in the saddle to glare at her. “You are either hopelessly naive or incredibly stupid. I don’t
know which is worse. Maybe I should just set you free ... if you meet up with Connor and Finch, you will see firsthand what sort of rogues they are, and they in turn will deliver you to your cousin, who will ravish you in a seedy room in an equally seedy inn.”

  “I’d like to see him try,” she declared stoutly. “Maybe your two friends would be able to overpower me, but Darwin is a lily-livered whelp. I used to beat him at everything—archery, quoits, footraces—and he is eight years my senior.”

  “That is a pathetic record. I can see now why he needs to even the score with you. And I suppose you flaunted your victories?”

  She squirmed a little. “He was always so full of himself, with his superior airs and looking down his bony nose at everyone. But I knew the truth of it, that his parents had very little money, for all their good breeding, which is why he came to stay with us so often. My mother originally felt sorry for him, and then, after she died, my father kept inviting him out of respect for her wishes.”

  “So where does he get his blunt from now? He looks prosperous enough.”

  “One of his aunts died and left him some money a few years ago,” she said, pleased that she’d known what blunt meant. “But I doubt there is very much of it left.”

  “Which is why,” MacHeath said patiently, “he needs to marry you. He is in debt up to his patrician eyebrows. With London moneylenders, who are not known for their excessive charity. And since you’ve refused his suit in the past, he’s taking extreme measures to make sure you won’t refuse him again.”

  She thumped him softly on the back. “You needn’t speak to me as though I am a lackwit, Mr. MacHeath. I am neither naive nor stupid. Only totally incredulous that Darwin has finally found something worth striving for. A pity it’s turned out to be me.”

  * * *

  They rode for hours, well past noon, until the growling in Alexa’s stomach grew louder than the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves. They stopped at a farm, where the farmwife was happy to sell them a basket of honey buns and a portion of ham hock. They sat side by side in the shelter of a wide oak that was canted over a small brook, and MacHeath watched Alexa toss crumbs to the minnows that skittered below the bank.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said, licking the honey from her fingers before drawing on her gloves, “are you planning to take me all the way back to Exeter?”

  “That is my intent,” he said evenly just before he bit into his portion of ham. “As I’ve said, I have business with your father.”

  She squirmed restlessly beside him. “If I travel with you all that way, I will be as surely compromised as I would have been with my cousin. I wish you had just stopped my coach and warned me what was afoot.”

  He stopped chewing. “Oh, and you would have believed me?”

  “If you’d been reasonable I might have. You could have said there was trouble in the road ahead, and insisted we go back to Reading to spend the night.”

  He sighed. “And do you think Quincy would have given up so easily? No, he’d have carried out his plan the next day—sent his bullies on ahead to waylay you once it was dark. You don’t seem to understand the caliber of men we are talking bout. They are ruthless, dogged, and without conscience. Hell, for all I know, they might have dragged you from your bed in Reading and carried you off.”

  Alexa shivered. “I knew Darwin was in a bad way ... but I still can’t credit he would go to such lengths to get his hands on my money.”

  “But you do believe me?”

  “It seems I have no choice. Unless you are a consummate liar and intend to ransom me yourself, I can think of no other reason why you would trouble to take me from my coach. It must be as you say.” With a tight smile she turned to him. “I suppose I should thank you.”

  He got to his feet abruptly. “Stow that,” he muttered. “I’m not doing this for you. As I told you last night, I am only after one thing ... a fine, fat purse when we get to your father’s home.”

  She tipped her head back to gaze up at him. “He will have to believe you, before he will pay you. I’m sure my cousin will deny everything.”

  “I’m sure he will ... that’s his usual style. But I saw him with my friends—”

  “I thought you didn’t know him ... I don’t understand. You said last night that you’d never met him.”

  “No, I just sidestepped answering you, if you will recall.”

  An expression of awareness spread across her face. “You also said you were a connection of my family’s—you’re connected to Darwin somehow, aren’t you?”

  “Inextricably linked,” he said darkly.

  “You’re not one of his friends from London—”

  “Friendship hardly enters into it, Miss Prescott.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” she pronounced, “I don’t much care for any of my cousin’s friends. They are a rackety bunch.”

  “Especially the ones he hires in the East End. And I don’t think we’re shed of those fellows, either. Which is why I’m keeping you with me and not just putting you on a coach to Exeter.”

  “My reputation will be in ruins,” she said as she got to her feet.

  “Not if you keep this little episode to yourself. I doubt your companion will be eager to spread the word that her charge was carried off by a stranger.”

  “Oh, dear,” she cried softly. “I’d forgotten all about Mrs. Reginald. She will be beside herself with worry. And I know she will write to my father, and then he will be frantic. He might just shoot you for your trouble, you know.”

  “Hmm, I suppose there is that possibility. Tell you what, if it will ease your mind, you can write to them tonight. I intend to find us lodgings in Dagshott.”

  “And what should I tell them? That a strange man spouting nonsense about my cousin has carried me off, but means me no harm?”

  “That’ll do in a pinch,” he said with a swift grin as he untied the horse from the farm’s rail fence.

  “I meant to be home by Christmas,” she said forlornly. “I don’t suppose we can manage that riding doubled up.”

  “I’m sorry, but my finances didn’t allow me the use of two horses.”

  Alexa hung her head. She was feeling a bit more charitable toward her abductor, though she still had trouble crediting his charges against her cousin. But she was sorely disappointed that she would miss the one special day she and her father had always shared.

  “Does it mean that much to you?” he asked gently.

  “I only ever get to visit him at Christmas, you see.” She reminded MacHeath of her father’s nonsensical notion that he was bad for her matrimonial chances, which had led to her being kept away from his home during the year. “He’s always been stubborn,” she added.

  “Good thing you didn’t inherit that trait,” he said with a straight face.

  She put up her chin. “I know my own shortcomings, Mr. MacHeath. But I’ve been a dutiful daughter these seven years, stubborn or not. This year, however, I am determined not to go back to London. I belong with him, but I will need every minute I can get to convince him of it.”

  He looked into the distance, where the plain rolled away to the west. “I estimated it would take us at least five days to reach Exeter on horseback.”

  Her face fell. “Christmas Eve is but three days off. Isn’t there a quicker way?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said.

  * * *

  Dagshott was a middle-sized village, proud of its Norman Abbey and less proud of the fact that it had been reduced to an empty hulk in the sixteenth century by the soldiers of Henry VIII. It now lay in picturesque ruin, just beyond the village.

  Alexa made several admiring comments as they passed the monolith in the dusky light, but then protested vehemently when MacHeath drew up his horse in front of a rundown inn just past the abbey. “There has to be a better place than this.”

  “If there is, we can’t afford it. I must remind you, Miss Prescott, that we are on a strict budget.”

  “I won’t s
tay here,” she declared. “It is ... disgusting.”

  “It is this place, or spending the night under the stars.”

  Sleeping out-of-doors again was unthinkable. She still had a crick in her neck from last night. And she was sure she was developing a sniffle worthy of Mrs. Reginald’s.

  “I have jewelry you could pawn,” she suggested. “Then we could stay in a decent place, and you could hire me a horse to ride.”

  “I will not take money from a woman,” he said emphatically. “It’s out of the question.”

  She nearly bucked off the horse’s rump in frustration. “Ooh, that is exactly the kind of vexing thing men always say. What matter where the money comes from? You will be spending it on me, after all.” She plucked off her ear bobs and her two rings and reached around him. “Take them,” she ordered, thrusting her fist against his ribs. “Or I will pitch them into the road.”

  She heard his sigh as his left hand closed over hers.

  “You should get a good sum for the ruby ring—it’s Elizabethan. That should hold us for a time, though I still can’t believe you carried me off with your pockets to let.”

  “That is precisely why I did it. For the reward. And when I get the money from your father—”

  “If you get the money.”

  “When I get the money, I will make sure these items are redeemed.”

  “My father can see to that.”

  He spun to her and his eyes were bright with anger. “Unlike your cousin, I take care of my own debts, Miss Prescott.”

  They continued on through the town until they came to a prosperous-looking inn called the Crusader, which was situated in a commercial row on the town’s high street. He set her down at the doorway, and she watched him ride off in search of a pawnshop.

  It was rising seven o’clock, and quite dark out, and she felt a creeping sensation of fear now that she was alone. He might have been a very wicked man, this MacHeath, with his unsavory ruffian friends, but she had quickly gotten used to being under his protection. In truth, he’d not done her any harm, and had actually behaved toward her in a relatively gentlemanly manner. Well, except for spending the night sleeping beside her. Tonight he would sleep in the stables, he’d assured her. And a good thing, too. One did not want to get used to having such a robust, attractive man in close proximity.