“I must trust you, must I not?” he asked. “And I must also apologize for using you infamously. My only excuse is that I found the prospect of my own hanging a trifle unnerving. Damned if I know why you’re doing so much for a curst ill-tempered brute! But since you’re willing, I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
That pretty speech cost him dear, thought Sherry, as the man lay back on the pillows with which Tully—or more likely Daffodil—had softened the contours of the couch. The fear that she had experienced in the dining room had changed into exasperation with the discovery that her highwayman was safe. She had come to think of him as hers, the result of having put him in a book, although it was hardly an inspiration for which she was grateful, since the manuscript was going far from well.
Writing hair-raising adventures was one thing, living them quite another. That she was living an adventure, Sherry realized when the highwayman smiled at her again. “My apologies, ma’am, for ever mistaking you for a serving wench,” he said. “It’s clear you’re nothing of the sort.”
If the rogue had been handsome when unconscious, he was an Adonis when he smiled. “You are forgiven,” Sherry said ruefully. “I fear I looked the part.” How merrily those green eyes twinkled. She dropped her gaze.
Cursing her shyness, aware that the highwayman was watching her with amusement, Sherry sought for a diversion. “Here. I thought this might refresh you,” she said awkwardly, and shoved the claret toward him. His hand shook as he grasped the decanter, and he swore to find himself so weak. Sherry reached for the bottle as it slipped through his fingers. Her hand brushed his.
His skin was cool, almost too cool; a temperature that surely should not have caused heat to prickle up her arm, throughout her entire body, to flame in her cheeks. Sherry jerked away, almost dropping the decanter herself before setting it unsteadily on the table beside the sofa, where crumbs and dirty dishes testified to Aunt Tulliver’s feast. Her eyes fixed on the man’s face, she put the pistol down on the library table, out of his reach. The highwayman looked puzzled, she thought.
Micah was indeed perpexled. He wondered what had caused his benefactress suddenly to turn pink and then pale and back away. “Wait!” he called softly.
She did not heed his plea but instead sped out of the room as if the hounds of hell themselves were in hot pursuit. Micah heard the key turn in the lock. The huge dog remained sprawled vigilantly by the door; whether to guard him or to prevent his escape Micah could not say. Not that he could hobble far on this curst lame leg. He wished the pistol were not so far from his reach.
Micah sighed, reached for the decanter of claret, leaned back against the pillows. That simple exertion caused his leg to throb. A long convalescence seemed to be called for.
He raised the bottle and drank deeply from it, his benefactress having failed to bring him a glass. Then Micah settled back among the cushions and drifted off to sleep again, to dream not of the gallows but of a great white dog and himself astride its back, taking from the rich and giving to the poor.
Chapter Nine
The hour was late when Lady Sherry withdrew to her bedchamber. It was, in point of fact, the same hour when Lord Viccars was inquiring of his coachman how best to go about tracking down a criminal who’d gone to ground in London’s seething underworld and consequently causing Briscoe a very nasty few moments, as result of some of the extracurricular activities to which he’d put his lordship’s coach. The same hour, indeed, in which Marguerite was testing her luck once again at the gaming tables, smugly displaying her new diamond and emerald necklace to her envious intimates and announcing that she shouldn’t begin to groom a replacement for Lord Viccars just yet, there being many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip—or, in this case, between betrothal and wedlock, for Marguerite still had several aces up her sleeve. Since Marguerite was wearing no sleeves worth comment, and what precious little else she wore clung to her body most fetchingly by way of dampened petticoats, it was obvious that she spoke figuratively, so no one accused her of cheating at cards. Instead, her cronies wagered among themselves as to whether or not Marguerite would succeed.
Lady Sherry stepped into her bedchamber, unaware that she was being plotted against by other than an unkind fate. The room was welcoming with the soft and romantic glow of a brass lamp with a French-roughed glass globe. Exhausted by the events of this long day, Sherry gazed longingly at the canopied bed. Perhaps a sound night’s rest would enable her to contemplate her situation more clearly and to figure a way out of the predicament into which she’d been plunged.
Before she could achieve that sound night’s sleep, she must divest herself of this pretty dress. Sherry peered into the room’s farthest shadows, but Daffodil was not there. Yet again she must deal unaided with hooks and tapes and myriad other fastenings. Did she ring for assistance, word would get to Lavinia that Daffodil had been remiss in her duties and the result would be yet another lecture regarding the proper care and discipline of her servants. Sherry thought she must spare both Daffodil and herself that aggravation. She also thought that she would have a few choice comments to make to her abigail when next they met.
It was all of a piece with the rest of this accursed day. Sherry stood sideways in front of her circular, convex dressing mirror, and amid various contortions attempted to unhook her gown. This morning her only problem had been with her fictional highwayman. Now she had the real highwayman above-stairs and must look forward at any moment to her own incarceration in Newgate. She gloomily supposed that there was some consolation in that things couldn’t be much worse. No sooner had Sherry made this most foolish assumption than the door burst open and Tully stalked into the room with a tearful Daffodil in tow.
Lady Sherry paused in her efforts to disrobe herself, then turned away from the mirror and frowned at her abigail. “Where have you been? I was about to instigate a hue and cry on your behalf. We had an agreement, Daffodil. You were to fulfill your duties as a lady’s maid and refrain from helping yourself to things that weren’t yours by right, and no mention would be made of the past. But— Oh, good heavens, child! There’s no reason to take on like that. I’m not going to turn you off. Indeed, I’m grateful to you for tidying up the gardener’s shed!” Prolonged pondering had led Sherry to the conclusion that only Daffodil could have performed this task.
Daffodil sobbed all the harder. “I didn’t!” she wailed. “I would’ve if I’d thought of it, but I didn’t! Oh!” Her further utterances were quite unintelligible.
“If you did not, Daffodil, then who did clean it?” persevered Sherry, the puzzle quite taking possession of her mind. “Aunt Tulliver?”
“Not I!” responded that venerable lady, whose wig was askew, giving her a distinctly raffish air. “Plague on’t, mayhap you should turn off the plaguey chit. She’s been like this ever since I found her hiding under my bed. Do stop tuning your pipes, gel, or I’ll box your ears for you! I can’t get any sense out of her, milady. Perhaps if you was to try, we might discover what she’s making such a piece of work about!”
Lady Sherry wasn’t sure she wished to know what had thrown her abigail into such a pucker. She could not imagine that Daffodil’s nerve storm boded good. However, Sherry was fond of the girland could not bear to see her in such distress. Therefore, she suggested that Aunt Tulliver release Daffodil’s ear. With obvious reluctance, Tully obeyed. Daffodil sank down onto an upholstered chair. “He mustn’t find me!” she gasped and broke into renewed sobs.
Lady Sherry and Aunt Tulliver exchanged glances. Sherry’s was bewildered, and Tully’s irate. “Who mustn’t find her?” Sherry asked.
“Demned if I know!” the old woman responded. “Or care!”
Since Daffodil took exception to this hardness of heart and sobbed all the harder in response, it was some time before any sense could be made of her remarks. “Is it the highwayman you’re afraid of?” Lady Sherry was at a loss. “If this is the way he has chosen to repay us for our help, by frightening you h
alf out of your wits—”
“Wits?” interjected Aunt Tulliver scornfully. “Hah!”
This lack of sympathy had its desired effect. Daffodil left off weeping to glare at the old woman, who was seated at Lady Sherry’s dressing table, adjusting her sadly abused wig. “If you’d had the fright I’ve had, you might be a mite overset yourself! And it wasn’t Captain Toby as scared me half to death.” Tears welled anew in her dark eyes. “It was Ned!”
“Ned?” Most often, Lady Sherry’s groom went out of his way to try to please Daffodil. “I don’t understand. Has his, er, ardor cooled?”
“If so, no one could hardly blame him,” muttered Aunt Tulliver as she gave her wig a last jerk and pat. “Not with Miss Saucebox here playing the flirt with every well-breeched footman who comes into her view!”
Daffodil’s tears ceased as if by magic. Her woebegone expression changed into a scowl. “I never!” she said indignantly.
“Oh, no?” Tully turned on the bench. “I suppose you wasn’t mooning about over that accursed highwayman, either, eh?”
“No, I was not!” cried Daffodil, with that degree of indignation that is possible only when a nerve is struck. In truth, Daffodil was a little bit in love with the highwayman. It was of no great consequence. Daffodil was always a little bit in love with one person or another. It was in her nature, as it was in Aunt Tulliver’s nature to be crotchety and in Lady Sherry’s to have her head in the clouds.
“I was not mooning after him!” Daffodil repeated, in case her earlier protest had gone unheard. “I felt for him, that’s all. I know what it’s like to be in jail!”
This claim of fellow felling did not impress Aunt Tulliver. “So both of you was in jail. ‘Tis nothing to brag on, gel. No, nor to try to rouse our sympathy with, since both of you belonged there!”
Daffodil thought this remark very poor-spirited. She swelled with indignation. “Well, I never!” she cried again.
“Oh, yes, you did!” responded Tully. “And you got caught! As you wouldn’t have, if you weren’t such a jingle-brain!”
Sherry cleared her throat. “Please, the both of you, be still! I don’t understand, Daffodil, why you were hiding in Tully’s room. Surely you cannot be afraid of Ned.”
“Oh, can’t I just?” said Daffodil bitterly. “He’s gone off his hinges, milady, and that’s a fact! And no, he hasn’t cooled toward me. Although he’s acting so queer I wish he had. I went to his room to fetch these.” She held up the bundle that she’d been clutching to her chest. “Clothes, milady, for himself upstairs, because he can’t keep on those dirty, bloody rags without anyone who sees him suspicioning who and what he is.”
Sherry suspected that anyone who saw the highwayman would have little difficulty in determining his identity no matter what he wore. “Go on,” she said, tactfully refraining from inquiring into how Daffodil came to be so familiar with Ned’s room. “Ned caught you making free with his belongings, I take it. I suppose he asked you for an explanation. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing.” A fresh tear trickled down Daffodil’s cheek. “He told me! He lost sight of you a while this morning, milady. But then he saw you riding off with Captain Toby. And he saw you and me come out of the gardener’s shed! Neddy’s wasn’t fooled for a minute that it was Tully we was helping along. So after we was out of sight he went into the shed to take a quick look-see himself. What he found confirmed what he was thinking. It was him as cleaned the place up.”
“Why didn’t you say so sooner!” Relieved, Lady Sherry perched on the edge of her bed. Ned was her servant, not Lavinia’s. He’d been in Sherry’s service for several years, had accompanied them to London from the country. Ned was loyal and posed no threat. But why, then, had Daffodil burst into renewed sobs?
The abigail was a picture of misery. Sherry could only think that she had suffered a disappointment of the heart. Though Daffodil might fall in love with someone new every couple of weeks, she expected her swains to remain eternally devoted to her and took it very hard when they did not. Lady Sherry thought of Lord Viccars and sympathized.
Sympathetic as Sherry felt, Daffodil’s sobs were wearing on her nerves. “Think in what a worse case we would be if anybody other than Ned had seen us or found the shed in that condition. As for what may have passed between the two of you—”
“Begging your pardon, milady, it ain’t all right!” The time had clearly come to make a clean breast of things. Daffodil sat up straight and wiped her damp nose on her sleeve. “Ned wants to marry me.”
“Ned wants to marry you,” Sherry repeated slowly. “I don’t understand what there is in that to make you take on like this.”
Daffodil took a deep breath, then looked around to make sure there were no inkpots within Lady Sherry’s reach. “He wants to leave service, milady, and set up in business on his own. He thinks it would be nice to buy a tavern. There’s one as has caught his eye. He thinks I should go with him. He says he can see me clear as anything serving up tankards of ale. He says it would suit me to a cow’s thumb.”
Sherry was trying very hard to follow these disclosures. Try as she might, she could find nothing in Daffodil’s confession to cause her spirits to plummet so low. “I should miss you,” she said, “but if that’s what you wish—”
“It ain’t what I wish!” protested Daffodil. “Leastways, I don’t wish it that way. Ned don’t have the wherewithal to buy that tavern, milady. And so—” She paused, gathering her courage. “He thinks you should buy it for us!”
This announcement awakened Aunt Tulliver, who’d been enjoying a short nap. She put forth the opinion that Daffodil had been into the port again because no one who wasn’t a trifle bosky would make a suggestion that was so addle-brained.
Sherry was inclined to agree. “He thinks I should buy it?” she echoed, stunned. “But why?”
Daffodil frowned at this lack of perspicacity on her mistress’s part. “Why? Because he thinks I’m all the crack! He says that if he can’t stop me making sheep’s eyes at other gents, he can at least make sure that’s as far as I go. Milady, I don’t know what to do! I don’t want to be leg-shackled or go live in a tavern, but he vows he’ll peach on us if I refuse!”
“He’ll peach on us.” Sherry experienced a very unpleasant sinking sensation. “Daffodil, are you saying what I think you are?”
“Yes’m.” Daffodil looked even more mournful. “Ned vows that if you don’t buy him off, he’ll go straight to Sir Christopher and tell him everything!”
“Buy him off?” Sherry felt faint. “How much does he want?”
Daffodil licked dry lips. This horrid fix wasn’t any of her doing—she’d hardly made Ned fall in love with her—but she felt guilty all the same. She whispered, “Five hundred pounds.”
“Five hundred—” Sherry stood up abruptly. Was there to be no end to the troubles gathering around her head? Lacking a handy inkwell, she came perilously close to alleviating her anger by hurling a pretty porcelain bibelot into the fireplace. “Oh, bother!“ she cried, and began to pace.
It had taken Aunt Tulliver some moments to digest this startling information. “I always said he was a bad lot!” she remarked. “As for you, gel, that’s what you get for playing off airs! Well, milady, what’s to do?”
Sherry wished she had an answer for that question. She paused in her perambulations and turned to Daffodil. “Perhaps you might, give him a disgust of you,” she suggested.
Daffodil looked even more depressed. “It ain’t likely,” she said. “He’s proper smitten, milady. No one else will do for him.”
Sherry thought it must be very pleasant to be so certain of a gentleman’s devotion. “You were going to run away, weren’t you?” she asked. Daffodil nodded. “It won’t serve. Ned would hold me responsible and probably go to Christopher, anyway. To think I trusted that—that sneak!”
Daffodil, too, had risen to her feet, the better to follow her mistress as she paced, and catch at her sleeve. “He’s not a sneak, not
really!” she protested. Secretly, Daffodil couldn’t help but feel a teeny bit flattered that someone had gone off his hinges for love of her. “It’s just midsummer moon with him, that’s all.”
This display of compassion earned Daffodil no similar tolerance from her companions. Lady Sherry merely yanked her sleeve away. Aunt Tulliver, however, was considerably less reticent. She made a number of unflattering comments on Daffodil’s lack of character, judgment, and common sense.
To be called a clunch and to have a peal rung in her ears when her spirits were already sorely oppressed— After she had fetched and run errands all day, even sat on the highwayman’s chest when the bullet was being dug out, although the sight of all that blood had made her think she might lose her breakfast— And had she protested at such mistreatment? No, she had not, even though she was no mere serving wench but a grand lady’s abigail. Well, perhaps Lady Sherry wasn’t all that grand, but the principle remained. Daffodil had done service far beyond the bounds of duty. And now, in addition to all that, to have to endure a trimming —
It was more than flesh and blood could bear. “Adone-do!” cried Daffodil, and hurled herself, weeping, on Sherry’s bed.
Aunt Tulliver followed, and flung a pillow over the girl’s face to muffle her sobs. “Plague take it!” the old woman muttered as she valiantly resisted an impulse to bear down on the pillow and stifle the silly chit permanently. She moved away from the bed, sat down again at the dressing table, and poked unhappily at her wig. “Demned if I’ve ever seen such a watering pot. Looks to me, milady, like you’ve landed yourself in the suds.”
Sherry gazed upon her elderly companion with a singular lack of appreciation. “How nice to have the support of one’s friends! Apparently, I must point out that your lot will hardly be enviable if I’m taken off to jail, because the first thing Lavinia will do is turn the both of you out into the streets!”
An unhappy silence greeted this announcement. What Sherry said was all too true. Daffodil and Aunt Tulliver would be no part of this household or any other if not for her efforts on their behalf. Daffodil’s dark eyes would not have so merry a sparkle or her cheeks the rosy glow of such good health, if she were brought again before the magistrate. And Aunt Tulliver would hardly wax so stout in the workhouse.
Lady Sherry and the Highwayman Page 7