Edelston gently removed Cordelia’s hand from his arm. “No, you are wrong there,” he said slowly. “She would not spread her legs for a groom, Cordelia. She is not you.”
Cordelia’s palm flew up and cracked against his cheek. The sound echoed in the hallway.
“I am a duchess,” she hissed. “I have sacrificed much and worked longer and harder than you have at anything in your short and worthless life, Tony. I endured two years of marriage to a debauched aristocrat. I belong here, and I will not allow anyone to take this life away from me, and that means I will do anything necessary to get that locket back. You will treat me with respect, Tony. How dare you treat my life with such callous disregard? How dare you?”
Edelston cradled his face in his hands for a moment, as if to blot out the sight of Cordelia’s anger, then lowered them again with a deep sigh. “Please forgive me, Cordelia. I am a perfect ass. I know not what possessed me. You have always been a friend to me, and I will do what I can to help us both. It’s just . . . Cordelia, I know you find this amusing and difficult to believe, but I am in love.”
Cordelia stared at him, and her delicate brows dove in confusion.
“I am in love,” Edelston repeated despairingly.
“But why?” Cordelia found herself asking, her voice uncertain. “Why this girl?”
“Do you know when you visit Brighton, how you can smell the sea long before you see it? The salt in the breeze?” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “It’s like that. Rebecca is the salt in the breeze. She makes me aware that I am . . . somewhat less than I could be. She is so completely herself, she makes me want to become . . . someone else. Forgive me, I cannot explain it adequately.”
It was enough for Cordelia. She skillfully schooled her face, as usual, to hide what she felt, which this time was a penetrating and unexpected hurt. Cordelia had never been able to indulge in the luxury of being herself in her entire life.
“You are a few weeks shy of debtor’s prison, Tony. This is perhaps not the most appropriate time to grow a soul.”
Edelston’s head snapped up. He glared at her, and Cordelia found that she preferred anger to the blank misery that had been in his face all evening.
“Let us not quarrel.” She placed a conciliatory hand, tentatively, on his arm again. He did not shake it off. “All will be well, you will see. And only think: the season is upon us. A twirl about a ballroom or two in the ton will take your mind off your troubles a bit.”
Edelston nodded reluctantly. “Perhaps,” he said grandly. “But perhaps I will look for Rebecca instead. Good night, Cordelia.”
He left her standing in the hallway.
Chapter Seven
Out the coach window, soft, low green hills butted up against a brilliant blue sky. Rebecca, having been instructed to talk only when absolutely necessary, obliged Connor by remaining silent and feasting her eyes on the unfurling countryside. Her thoughts had been roiling since they had left Janet’s cottage.
On the seat across from her, Connor seemed to doze, his hat brim tipped nearly to his brow. Mr. Grunwald was not merely dozing but sleeping with an admirably reckless abandon, his chubby limbs outflung, his mouth moistly agape. Sounds roughly similar to a rusty saw being dragged across a boulder came from him at intervals.
Rebecca wanted to engrave every bit of her journey on her soul, but soon the scene outdoors began to swim before her avid eyes, the blue and the green of the colors outside blurring together, and the sounds of Mr. Grunwald grew more and more faint . . .
When she awoke from a deep and dreamless sleep, it was dark inside the carriage and Mr. Grunwald was conspicuously absent. Apparently Rebecca had slept through one entire coach stop. Connor was awake and gazing at her.
“Was Janet your lover?” Rebecca asked. She had been dying to ask this very question from the moment they left Janet’s house.
Connor sat bolt upright.
“Dear God, wee Becca, can ye not wake like a normal person? Take a little time to yawn and stretch and remember where ye are, that sort of thing?”
“You kissed her. I saw you.”
“Aye, that would be because I didna attempt to hide it.”
“Why will you not answer my question?” Rebecca persisted.
“Are you sure it is a doctor you want to be, wee Becca? Because I think perhaps you will make a fine lawyer.”
Rebecca fixed him with an intent gaze. “I am merely asking a question. You have never been afraid of answering my questions before.”
“Afraid?” Connor was indignant.
Rebecca continued staring at him, a keen and stubborn stare, and Connor could feel the heat from her pale eyes from across the carriage. He knew that stare. She would not relent.
“Aye, she was my lover,” he sighed finally. “But mostly she was my friend, ye ken? I shall miss her.” Connor watched Rebecca carefully for a reaction.
Rebecca kept her eyes even with Connor’s a moment longer, then turned her head toward the window to watch the night fly by. “Mine!” she had wanted to scream, like a child, when Janet had placed her hands on Connor’s face. And in Rebecca’s mind, Connor had been hers, all her life, almost like a toy; she had never felt as though she had to share him with someone else. She had enjoyed his company whenever she wished it, had brought him little gifts of flowers and stones and once even a handkerchief with his initials stitched into it (perhaps her greatest needlework achievement) as a Christmas gift. She had shared her most controversial thoughts with him, and he had received them with wisdom and humor.
But it had never occurred to her to imagine that he led a life between her visits with him.
Rebecca knew the world as defined by the confines of Tremaine House, and she was familiar with a vast esoteric world of science and physiology as revealed by her father’s scientific journals, and she knew history and politics from the newspapers. But gazing out the coach window, she had the depressing sense that the vast blackness she looked out on represented the chasm between what she knew and what she did not yet understand, the extraordinary complexities presented by the ordinary. She felt very young, and very selfish, and suddenly ill equipped to be on the adventure to which she was now committed.
“I am sorry, Connor,” she said, finally, softly.
“Sorry?” he repeated, confused. He had been watching her face; even in the half-light of the carriage he could sense the tick of her mind. He had always enjoyed anticipating what she would eventually say. His favorite thing about Rebecca, however, was that she managed nearly every time to surprise him.
“I am sorry . . . if you are leaving her to help me. Do you . . . do you love her?” These last words were nearly inaudible.
“I care for her, Rebecca, but it is not love in the way you imagine love to be. We are two adults who are free to take solace in each other’s company, and we have done just that, and that is all. Janet is a strong woman, and will not pine long for me.”
Rebecca quietly mulled this over, head toward the window again.
“I have not thanked you for helping me leave,” she whispered at last. Beneath the ridiculous boy’s cap she wore, Rebecca’s face was stricken. She gazed down at her lap.
Impulsively, Connor moved across the coach to sit next to her. He hooked a finger under her chin to lift her eyes to his.
“I wouldna be here if I didna choose to be, wee Becca. In fact, I do very little that I do not choose to do. It has something to do with a vow I took long ago. I can think of no place I’d rather be at the moment. It’s an adventure, aye?”
She smiled weakly at him.
“Aye?” Connor asked again, and gripping her chin, moved her face in an affirmative nodding motion.
Rebecca laughed and swatted at his hand. He captured her swatting hand in his for a moment, and then, startled by an awareness of the softness of her skin, he slowly, reluctantly, let it go again. Rebecca smiled at him, and when a cloud momentarily moved away from the full moon, shadows made valleys of her cheekbones
and her dimples.
She will not thank me, Connor thought, when I leave her.
A gunshot exploded the stillness outside the coach.
The coach lurched to a halt, the horses whinnying and rearing in their harnesses in protest, and Rebecca and Connor were nearly thrown from their seats. Rebecca gasped; Connor threw an arm across her to prevent her from tumbling to the floor.
“Highwaymen. Do not move and do not make a sound,” Connor hissed. Rebecca stared at him, then nodded quickly, silently, in comprehension. He gave her a quick smile, rueful and tender, and released her shoulders. Brave wee Becca. Even though her eyes were wide with fear, he knew it would kill her not to comment on the proceedings.
Connor tossed his hat on to the coach seat, then reached into his boot. Rebecca reared back in astonishment when he pulled a darkly gleaming pistol out of it. He heard her draw in a sharp breath, as though to speak; he turned to her quickly and shook his head roughly, once, a finger over his lips, then crouched near the door of the carriage.
“No ’arm will come to ye, guv, if you do as ye’re told,” a voice was saying to the coachman. “Our business is with yer passengers, like. Jus’ set yer musket down and keep yer ’ands up where we can see ’em, there’s a good lad.”
The voice raised to make itself heard by the occupants of the coach.
“Step ou’ o’ the coach, ’ands up, now.” Deep and raspy, cockney, very sure of itself.
Connor could see them through the window, just barely, two mounted men, black kerchiefs tied across their faces just below their eyes, each holding a pistol. He gauged the distance between the coach and the first man at about six feet; the second man was slightly behind him to the left. He made his decision.
He could hear Rebecca’s swift breathing; he glanced back one more time at her, a silent attempt at reassurance. The whites of her eyes were bright in the darkness of the coach; her hands gripped the edge of the seat. She offered him a weak smile, and his heart gave a strange lurch. Good girl. He turned away from her and lifted the latch of the coach door achingly slowly, soundlessly. Then, tugging the sleeve of his coat over his hand to partially cover his pistol, Connor raised his arms over his head and tucked the fingers of both hands into the shallow ledge between the top of the door frame and the ceiling of the coach. Using his knee, he gave the coach door a nudge, and it creaked open cooperatively.
The highwaymen saw a gentleman, arms raised, knees bent, framed in the doorway of the coach.
“We’re lookin’ fer a bit of jewelry, guv. A locket. Jus’ ’and it over, and we’ll be on our way,” the closest highwayman said, his pistol pointed to a spot in the center of Connor’s chest. “Oh, an’ any other jewelry and blunt ye’ve got, we’ll take that, too. We could be in a shootin’ mood any second now, so step lively, guv. First yerself, then the lady.”
Connor swung out from the coach and with devastating speed and aim kicked the closest highwayman’s pistol from his hand, knocking him off balance in his saddle. The highwayman’s mount reared and shrieked and dumped its cursing cargo to the ground, then launched itself into a gallop and disappeared from view. The other highwayman, unable to steady his aim from the back of his own ner-vously dancing horse, got off a wild shot at Connor, and Connor, ready for him, took aim for the man’s gun hand. He missed the hand—boot pistols were damned capricious weapons, and he accounted himself lucky the bloody thing had fired at all—but the highwayman clapped a hand to his shoulder, wobbled in the saddle, then slid beneath his horse and lay still.
His horse, evidently affronted by all the noise and the highwayman’s graceless dismount, pranced delicately over him and fled at a dead run in the same general direction as the other horse.
Silence of a sort descended, and a cloud obligingly moved away from the full moon again.
The first highwayman began to stir from his supine position. Connor swiftly tossed aside his fired pistol and pulled its mate from his other boot, then strode over to the highwayman and placed his boot on the man’s wrist. He yanked away the black kerchief and pointed his pistol into his face.
“Now,” Connor drawled in a voice so glacially, glitteringly English and aristocratic it could have cut a pane of glass, “you will tell me who sent you.”
It was a question that had plagued Connor the moment the highwayman had stated the gender of his companion. First yerself, then the lady. A lucky guess perhaps, but Connor was not inclined to believe in luck. Highwaymen had become scarce on well-traveled coach roads, and the fact that these two had intercepted a pair of runaways seemed less a coincidence than an intent. He knew Sir Henry Tremaine would never send highwaymen in search of his daughter, and yet . . . someone else might have. Edelston? And what was this about a locket?
“No one sent us, guv. Now let me go, there’s a good lad, I’ll be on my way, like, and we can forget we met.”
Connor increased his weight on the man’s wrist, and the man groaned.
“I have heard it said that wrist bones make a very singular and delightful crunching noise when broken,” Connor said. “Shall we find out?”
“No no no no no . . .” the man moaned.
“Tell me who sent you,” Connor snapped.
“’Er Grace,” the man gasped. “It was ’Er Grace. Dinna know ’er name, like, jus’ we do a little business fer ’er now and again. She sends ’er man to us, ’Utchins, ’e’s called.”
“Her Grace,” Connor repeated. He was astounded, though his voice revealed nothing of the sort. A duchess had sent the highwaymen? Then again, the proprietress of the Velvet Glove, a brothel near the West Indian docks in London, was known as the Abbess. Lofty titles did not necessarily indicate lofty positions.
“What does she want?”
“She wants the locket. And to know which way the girl is ’eaded in the coach.”
The girl? The tiny hairs on the back of Connor’s neck rose.
“Well, now. It is a shame you will be disappointing Her Grace this evening. I haven’t a locket, and I haven’t a girl. Why did you stop our coach?”
“Jus’ lucky, I guess,” the highwayman said cheekily. Connor ground his boot a little more emphatically into the man’s wrist. “Ow ow ow ow ow. All right, guv! We stopped yer coach because we was told to stop all coaches going north.”
Connor eased off his wrist. “Do you have any more weapons?”
“Wha—huh?” The change in topic seemed to bewilder the highwayman.
“Do I need to force you to strip naked here at pistol point so I can ascertain whether you have any more weapons, or will you tell me where to find them on your person?”
“Belt,” the highwayman muttered. Connor kept his pistol to the man’s ear and parted the man’s coat to find a long knife sheathed in his belt. Connor pulled it and dropped it a few feet away.
“Thank you. Where can I find Her Grace?”
“She finds us. Or ’Utchins does, that is. She’s a fancy London sort, is me guess. We, me and Edgar, we likes it ’ere in the country, though. Less competition, you sees.”
The unfortunate Edgar began to stir and mutter.
“Don’t worry, guv, I’ve got ’im,” Chester Sharp said cheerily from atop the coach. He had taken a flask from his coat pocket and had been swigging at it while watching the proceedings with fascinated glee. By way of assistance, he was pointing his musket at Edgar.
“My thanks,” Connor acknowledged the coachman. To the highwayman he said, “I do not believe you have given me your name, sir.”
The highwayman scowled. Connor applied a little more weight to his wrist.
“Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow,” the highwayman said. “Me name’s John.”
“Of course it is,” Connor mocked. “The two of you, John, best move on to London, because I will make very certain you will not work these roads again. But before you go, I will just take this”—he picked up the man’s knife and pistol—“and this, and your friend’s pistol, as well.” He walked over to where Edgar’s pistol had been flun
g. Edgar had regained his breath and was attempting to sit upright, his hand still pressed to his shoulder. Connor hesitated a moment, struggling with his conscience.
“Did the ball go in?” he asked Edgar finally.
“Just a graze, guv. Ye’re not that good a shot.”
Connor nodded and knelt next to him and tugged Edgar’s kerchief from his face and took a quizzical look. The pale pinched visage rang no bells of recognition. “I’ll need your other weapons, too.”
“Left boot,” Edgar muttered. Pistol pointed at Edgar’s temple, Connor gingerly dipped a hand into the man’s boot and retrieved a small pistol.
“See to your friend,” Connor said to John. “Oh, and London is in that direction.” He waved his hand vaguely off to the southeast. “Enjoy your walk. You may start now.”
John the highwayman gave Connor one last glare, then hauled himself to his feet. Silently he helped Edgar stand, and the two limped off into the night.
Connor exhaled deeply. He noticed then that he was trembling slightly.
“Would you like a pistol?” Connor asked the coachman. “I seem to have several.”
“I should like a pistol,” came a voice from inside the coach.
Rebecca’s face appeared in the doorway. Even from where he stood, Connor could tell her eyes were dancing with excitement.
“That was certainly a sight!” Sharp piped up enthusiastically. “Never seen anythin’ to match! Right useful for a lord, ye are.”
“What did you say?” Connor asked sharply.
“About ye bein’ useful, milord? I meant no offense —”
“Why did you call me a lord?” Connor demanded.
“Because for the past half hour or so you have sounded just like the bloody Duke of Marlborough.” Rebecca was nearly bubbling with excitement. “Not a single ‘wee’ to be heard. Where on earth did you learn to speak like that?”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, yer lordship, er, sir, I mean, but you could be the bloody King of England with a voice like that,” the coachman agreed.
“Our king is a bloated sot. Kindly do not compare me to him. Ned, get back in the coach, now. Don’t say ‘bloody.’ And ye shall not have a pistol.”
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