The Major and the Pickpocket

by Lucy Ashford

  Marcus could stand no more. Feeling as if heaps of burning coal were being piled on his head, he jumped up and said abruptly, ‘I’ll go and see what’s happened to her.’

  He took the stairs two at a time and rapped hard at her door. ‘Tassie. Are you there? Look, Tassie, I’m sorry. I was an idiot and a brute to speak to you as I did. Come down to dinner, Tassie, please.’

  No reply. He knocked again, his heart sinking, for silence was the only response. Then he opened the door to her room, knowing he would find it empty. Her still-damp shirt and breeches lay forlornly across her little bed, reproaching him. Even her damned parrot was silent, gazing at him with beady, implacably hostile eyes. Of Tassie herself, there was no sign.

  And then, on the floor, he saw it. Hanks of curling golden hair lay scattered on the scrubbed floorboards, reproaching him with their brightness. Dear God.

  He went back downstairs quickly. ‘She’s gone,’ he said curtly to their expectant faces. ‘It’s my fault. I—I was harsh with her.’

  ‘Gone?’ Their faces were astonished; Sir Roderick looked the most upset of all. ‘You mean you think she might have run away? But wherever to, Marcus, at this time in the evening?’

  Jacob said suddenly, ‘Beg pardon, Major, but I wonder if she might have gone over to the Hall, to Lornings, I mean? She’s been with me several times when I do my rounds—likes looking at the pictures and things, she does.’

  ‘But the Hall will be locked, surely,’ said Sir Roderick. ‘And I have the only key.’

  Marcus said slowly, ‘Keys and locks have not hindered Tassie before. I’ll walk over to the Hall and take a look.’

  Hal said anxiously, ‘Do you want me to come with you, Marcus?’

  Marcus shook his head. ‘My thanks, Hal, but if she’s there, I want to speak to her alone. I have certain amends to make.’

  He took the key, and pulled on his greatcoat, and set off by himself up the lane that led to the Hall.

  How many memories this place brought back for him. The rain had stopped, but black clouds still drifted raggedly across the moon, and all around him the bare-branched beeches moaned softly in the night breeze. Lornings Hall stood before him, its stark turrets etched against the sky. He gazed at the big old house, recalling every door, every staircase, every room, like the back of his hand.

  By September, all this would belong to Sebastian Corbridge. ‘Not if I can help it,’ Marcus breathed aloud. ‘Not if I can damn well help it.’

  Here, in Lornings’ expansive grounds, he had learned to ride and to shoot under Farmer Daniels’s eagle eye. He remembered Peg, the housekeeper, up to her arms in flour in the kitchen; black-bearded Jacob, too, grumbling but loyal. There’d been an army of under-servants to look after the great Hall then; he remembered parties, at Christmas and in the summer, with carriage after carriage rolling up the long drive, and the house filling with laughing, glittering people, including Philippa and her parents, who came over often, from their nearby estate at Caytham. The house was a part of his life.

  And was all this justification for what he was doing to Tassie? a little voice suddenly asked him. He remembered the stark pain in her expressive eyes as he chided her so sharply. Yes! Yes, of course it was. They’d made a bargain, hadn’t they? She was getting exactly what she wanted—her fifty guineas. It was just that he, Marcus, hadn’t bargained for the surges of swift, almost violent emotion she stirred in him whenever he got too close to her…

  Don’t be deceived by her, he told himself grimly. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s travelled wild with her tinker friends for years, and you’re deceiving yourself if you think she’s been protected from the realities of that kind of life. Yet her kiss had been wild and sweet, her wide eyes full of innocent wonder—and she had aroused him more than he would have believed possible.

  He climbed the wide steps to the imposing front door—only to find it locked. There was no tell-tale flicker of light, no sign of life. If Tassie had got inside, then she was lying low. Carefully he undid the iron-studded door with the big key, swung it open, and stepped into the vast, stone-flagged hall. Lighting one of the candles that stood in a holder on a brass-bound oak table, he picked it up and slowly mounted the double-branching staircase to the long gallery, where the flickering light sent dancing shadows across the dark-panelled walls, the dusty coats of arms, the ancient tapestries depicting hunting scenes and battles of long ago.

  Suddenly, he saw a taper burning at the far end of the gallery, where it opened out into the adjoining banqueting hall. Tassie was there, gazing up at the oil portraits that lined the walls; her dark green cloak was draped across the nearby balustrade. If she knew he was there, she pretended not to. She looked pale, but composed.

  Which was more than Marcus could say for himself; because as soon as he saw her he felt his body jar with shock. She’d changed into one of the dresses she’d purchased with Caro; and as if to highlight the enigma she was, the green velvet gown with its elegant tapered sleeves and sweeping skirts reminded him that she would pass anywhere as a lady of gentle birth.

  But her hair!

  Marcus felt a stab somewhere in the region of his heart when he saw how it clung to her head in ragged, rebellious golden curls. She must have hacked it off herself, savagely, in minutes. Yet she still, somehow, looked so vulnerably, achingly lovely that he felt his heart wrench dangerously within his breast.

  Marcus knew, in that moment, that if Lornings were ever to be removed from Sebastian’s clutches by using this girl as his weapon, then he must take care lest the weapon turn on himself.

  Tassie turned to gaze at him, outwardly composed, although in fact her heart was thudding against her chest, because something about Marcus’s harshly masculine figure, the gleam of the candlelight on his purposeful features as he strode up those wide stairs, unsettled her badly. He will not cancel our agreement, she told herself shakily. He will not send me away; I am too useful to him.

  She drew herself up and tilted her chin. ‘Well, Marcus?’ she enquired calmly. ‘What have you come to chide me about this time, pray?’

  Marcus put down the candle on a nearby oak chest. She spoke so well when she’d a mind to it! Where did she learn to talk like that? Not from her vagabond friends, that was for sure. ‘Well, minx,’ he answered with equal calmness, ‘you gave them all a fright, over at the Dower House. Roderick said you never, ever missed your dinner, which is something I can well believe. So, as they all blame me for your disappearance, I thought I’d better come and look for you.’ He kept his voice deliberately light, though there was a curious ache in his throat, because of her shorn hair.

  ‘How did you guess I was here?’ Her eyes were dark with wariness, her voice cool—but what else had he expected?

  ‘Jacob told us you sometimes came over here with him. Roderick was worried that you hadn’t a key, but I told him I didn’t think that would be a problem.’

  A flicker of guilt crossed her face, followed quickly by defiance, and he saw something of the old, vagabond Tassie re-emerging. He was astonished at how glad he felt.

  ‘Fie, it’s scarcely my fault if the catch on the pantry window needs fixing!’ she responded tartly. She added defensively, ‘Oh, I secured it again once I was in. I always do.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he responded with suitable gravity, though his mouth twitched a little at the thought of her scrambling, in that velvet gown, through a pantry window. ‘I’ve come to escort you back, Tassie. They’re keeping your dinner hot for you.’

  She hesitated, then said with an effort at nonchalance, ‘I rather thought you’d come to tell me our bargain was off, Marcus.’

  He shook his head. ‘Far from it. I’ve come to say I’m sorry, Tassie, for my behaviour earlier. It was stupid of me.’ He ran his hand over his thick dark hair. ‘A simple physical reaction, I fear, a mindless male response. That is no excuse, I know—but at least it’s an apology. And I assure you it won’t happen again.’

  Tassie
’s eyes flashed. ‘Then you’d better remind yourself, Marcus, the next time you’re overcome by your—your mindless male response—that really you much prefer your women to simper, and wear pink ruffles, and send you scented love notes with locks of their hair—’

  ‘God’s blood, woman!’ roared Marcus, ‘I came here to apologise, don’t you understand? Why do you always make everything so damned difficult?’

  She clenched her fists and blazed back. ‘An apology? You call this an apology, when all you do is hurl insults at me?’

  Marcus drew a deep, steadying breath. ‘Very well. I will say it again, as plainly as I can. I am sorry. For so misjudging you, for scolding you, for reacting in such a crudely masculine way.’

  She contemplated him coolly. ‘You must want Lornings very badly, to grovel so to someone like me.’

  ‘I don’t want to see my godfather ruined, and Sebastian getting his grasping hands on his estate. I am doing all this for Roderick.’

  ‘But of course,’ she murmured witheringly.

  He controlled himself with an effort. ‘I have told you, Tassie. I will release you from our bargain whenever you wish.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ she replied softly, with a challenging gleam that threw him completely. ‘Because I don’t want to be released. I want the fifty guineas you promised me. After all, I’m nothing but a greedy, rough vagabond—ain’t I? Fifty guineas, Marcus. That’s the only reason I’m here.’

  ‘Well,’ said Marcus, his eyes the colour of rainwashed slate, ‘well, at least we know where we stand.’

  ‘Yes, we do, don’t we?’ Tassie answered brightly. ‘And now, do you think you had better escort me back to the Dower House? Before your friends begin to think that perhaps I am—in the brazen way of a temptress—trying to seduce you?’

  He gritted his teeth. ‘By God, minx, you’re enough to try the patience of a saint! I wish I had taken my hand to you back there!’

  She laughed, but her emerald eyes flashed warningly. ‘Now, now, Marcus. Control yourself. In case you succumb to—what was it?—your mindless male urges again.’

  He was momentarily speechless. Then he picked up the candlestick and said, ‘It’s time to go back. Perhaps you would deign to accompany me in the conventional fashion this time, Tassie. Through the front door, that is.’

  ‘I will, and gladly,’ she replied tartly, picking up her cloak and slipping it on. ‘Though I would suggest you move rather quickly, Marcus, because that dripping candle wax is about to burn your fingers.’

  ‘Damnation—’ Quickly he put down the dying taper and lit another from its dwindling flame. Then, still grim-faced, he gave her a formal little bow and escorted her downstairs, and out through the front door. After locking it, he left her briefly to go round the back. ‘Just to check everything’s secure,’ he said pointedly.

  ‘I told you, I locked the pantry window once I was inside,’ she retorted. ‘But check if you must.’ And, perching herself on the low stone wall that bordered the courtyard, she pulled her cloak more tightly round herself and began to whistle ‘The Bold Ploughboy’ as loudly as she could, just to annoy him.

  But as soon as he was out of sight and out of hearing, she stopped, and gazed up at the cold moon as the clouds danced across its pale, pure light. Her heart ached so badly it felt as though someone had taken it out, and bruised it, and given it back to her with ‘Marcus’ etched scornfully all over it. Darling Marcus.

  She stared with wide, unseeing eyes into the darkness. He had dismissed the kiss that had shaken her to her very core as nothing. And yet she had never in her life dreamed that she could feel as she did when Marcus took her in his arms, when he pressed his lips to hers…

  She realised, with a stabbing pain at her heart, that she was in love with a man who, if he felt any emotion for her at all, despised her for the way she had lived. For being what she was.

  Then she jumped to her feet, because she could hear footsteps coming back around the side of the house. ‘Saints and fiddlesticks, Marcus, what took you such an age? I am almost freezing to death out here…’

  But the words died in her throat, because the man she was looking at was not Marcus at all, but—Lemuel!

  She blinked. ‘Lem—what on earth—?’

  He put his fingers to his lips. ‘Hush, Tass,’ he breathed. ‘Thank God you’re safe!’ He pressed a scrap of paper in her hand, and then he scuttled off on his long legs into the blackness of the overgrown shrubbery. Tassie, startled beyond measure, gazed after him. In the name of Methuselah, what was he doing here? Were Georgie Jay and the others with him? How on earth had they found her here at—Lornings?

  She jumped again as she saw Marcus approaching, with that slightly uneven stride that was the only vulnerable part of him. She crumpled the note quickly and thrust it beneath her cloak.

  He looked at her, frowning. ‘Are you all right, Tassie? You look very pale.’

  She shrugged. ‘No wonder. I’ve probably caught my death of cold, waiting for you. And that wouldn’t fit in with your plans at all, would it, Marcus?’

  He suppressed an exclamation of annoyance; then he set off towards the Dower House, and she sauntered along behind him. But inwardly she was badly shaken by this new complication. She dreaded to think how Marcus would react if he knew her London friends were close by. Her fingers tightened round the note in her pocket; she longed to read it, yet feared what it might say. What were they doing here?

  Such was her consternation that she quite forgot to tell Marcus what she’d been meaning to tell him. That since her last visit to the Hall a few days ago, some of the paintings from the banqueting hall had disappeared.

  Marcus was not the most popular of people at the Dower House that night, whereas Tassie was warmly welcomed to the table to eat her own belated meal. She merrily pretended to everyone that she’d cut her hair on a whim. But Peg kept glancing at her cropped curls as she cleared away the dishes, clucking under her breath, ‘Like a shorn lamb, she be. A shorn lamb…’

  After dinner, the four of them played whist. Apart from Tassie’s brittle gaiety, the atmosphere was forced; and Marcus knew, when everyone but he and Hal had retired for the night that he was in for a rough ride.

  ‘Ye gods, Marcus,’ exploded Hal as he paced the room, ‘what did you say to her? What did you do, to make the girl hack off all her lovely hair?’

  Marcus spread out his hands. ‘All right, it’s my fault. I accept it. I scolded her for riding around in unseemly attire, and she took it ill, and cut it off in a fit of pique.’

  ‘You—scolded her. Is that all?’ queried Hal suspiciously.

  Marcus stopped and faced his friend. ‘I was harsh with her, Hal. I told her she looked like a strumpet, and could expect to be treated like one if she went around galloping pillion to a farm hand.’

  ‘A strumpet…’ Hal shook his fair head. ‘All right, so she was in breeches, and clinging on to that farm lad to stop herself falling off—but she looked so genuinely pleased to see us, Marcus! Until you started to go on at her, that is! I’d swear she didn’t realise that—that…’

  ‘That she was revealing her feminine charms in a rather obvious manner?’ intervened Marcus harshly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Hal, perplexed. ‘You’re the expert on the fairer sex, Marcus. Does she seem to you like a woman of experience?’

  Marcus ran his hand tiredly through his hair. No. No, she didn’t in the slightest. And that was just the trouble. She’d lived in the company of travelling rogues for years, with no such thing as a guardian or chaperon to protect her blossoming beauty. And yet—when he’d kissed her, when he’d drawn her close against him and moulded her soft curves to his own hard frame, she’d trembled at his every caress, as if he was revealing dark and delectable secrets to her for the very first time…Dear God, she was a mixture of innocent and temptress that haunted his senses! Normally, Marcus was well able to control his passions. He wasn’t some ardent green lad, wildly excited by a fumbling kiss.
Yet if it hadn’t been for a supreme effort of will on his part, he’d have been tumbling her to the bed, all caution thrown to the winds. He had a sudden vision of her clouds of golden hair shimmering around her naked, lissom body; of her slender arms clinging to him as he pleasured her; of her tender breasts peaking in his mouth, and her soft lips murmuring his name…He groaned inwardly.

  ‘Look,’ he sighed at last. ‘She’s either totally naïve, or possessed of a cunning that makes fools of both of us. Either way, it’s no use getting sentimental over the girl. I need to get on with this business as soon as possible, and prepare her for her encounter with Corbridge.’

  Hal frowned. ‘Your damned card game. What if she doesn’t beat him?’

  ‘Of course she will. Do you remember how easily she duped you, at the Angel?’

  ‘Must say I’d prefer not to,’ acknowledged Hal ruefully. ‘But I still don’t like it, Marcus! Even someone with her skills is subject to the vagaries of fate; some day her luck will run out for certain.’

  Marcus, suddenly exasperated, lifted his head up at that. ‘Luck, you call it? Did you notice, Hal, how thoroughly Tassie and Roderick trounced us at whist this evening?’

  ‘I did, but of course that was because you and I constantly had the worst of the cards!’

  ‘Not a bit of it, my friend. The girl you feel so sorry for was using the Kingston Bridge trick in as polished a fashion as I’ve ever seen—bending all the trumps very lightly each time they passed through her extremely nimble and not so innocent hands.’ Marcus’s face suddenly broke into a grin. ‘I didn’t mention it, partly because her partner—Roderick—was enjoying winning hugely, and partly because I’d no desire to add further to my reputation as a persecuting monster of innocent females.’

  Hal’s blue eyes danced with amusement. ‘Maybe you’re right about her twisting us all round her little finger.’

  ‘I am right about her, believe me. She’s completely charming, I know, but the scheming little minx knows exactly what she’s doing. Even the cutting of her hair was done to make me appear a black-hearted oaf. She’s enjoying all this, Hal, enjoying sharpening her wits on us.’