Midnight Bride

by Marlene Suson

  “Are you not terrorized, Lady Rachel?” Westleigh asked, mockery tingeing his voice.

  Was his scorn directed at her for defending Gentleman Jack? Rachel looked at him defiantly. “No, I am not, Your Grace, and I hope that Gentleman Jack is never captured.”

  Sophia demanded loudly, “Have you taken leave of your senses, girl?”

  “No, I have seen the good that Gentleman Jack does.” Rachel turned back to the duke. For some reason she could not explain, it was important to her that he understand why she felt as she did. She did not expect that he would, but she had to try. “You see, Gentleman Jack is a modern-day Robin Hood who robs the rich to help the poor. The rabble, as Sir Waldo calls them, love the highwayman because he is the only one now who helps them when they are in dire need.”

  Aunt Sophia glared at Rachel. “I fear, Your Grace, that my niece doesn’t know what she is talking about.”

  “I know precisely what I am talking about! Any one of the so-called rabble will tell you that Gentleman Jack is far more generous than some people sitting at this table.” Rachel looked pointedly at Sophia, then at Sir Waldo, who was finishing off his fourth glass of wine.

  He gave her a murderous look. His hand holding his glass no longer shook, and his normal florid colour had returned to his face. Rachel remembered her father once dismissing him as a man who found his courage in a wine glass.

  Fletcher said in a boastful, slightly slurred voice, “I’ll tell you, Gentlemen Jack did not escape unscathed. Had a pistol hidden beneath my seat, and I managed to get off a shot at him as he fled. I know I wounded the miserable cur.”

  His statement brought snickers from Squire Archer, Mr. Paxton, and Toby, who knew as well as Rachel what a terrible shot Sir Waldo was. Rachel was not at all concerned that the braggart had hit Gentleman Jack.

  Beside her, the duke, sounding strangely alarmed, demanded, “Are you certain you hit him?”

  Sir Waldo gave Westleigh a dismissive glance.

  “Of course, I hit him, you young idiot,” he said in a tone laced with condescension, “I am an excellent shot.”

  Rachel could feel the sudden frost radiating from the duke. He said acidly, “I am Your Grace to you.”

  Sir Waldo visibly wilted at discovering the guest he had just called a young idiot was the duke he had so desperately wanted to impress and cultivate. He stammered profuse apologies.

  Westleigh gave him a look of such icy hauteur and contempt that the baronet’s voice faded away in mid-sentence, and he looked as though he wished he himself could do the same. His expression of dismay and chagrin was so comical that Rachel could not entirely bottle up the silent laughter that shook her and a strangled giggle escaped.

  The duke whirled and glared at her with a furious hostility that baffled her. His eyes were as stormy as the sky before a rain. In a voice so low that only Rachel could hear it, he said icily, “What do you find so hilarious about a man, even a highwayman, being shot?”

  She was aghast at his misinterpretation of her amusement. She whispered so only he could hear, “Sweet heaven, I was laughing because that odious Fletcher desperately wanted to impress the Duke of Westleigh and instead he insulted you. I do not for a moment think he wounded Gentleman Jack. Why the braggart is the worst shot in Yorkshire.”

  “Are you certain of that?” Westleigh inquired with an odd urgency in his voice.

  “Yes, Sir Waldo has been known to miss the broad side of a barn when he aimed at it.”

  Her reassurance brought a look of intense relief to the duke’s face. Even as she gave it, though, an icy finger of doubt suddenly touched her.

  What if she were wrong? What if Sir Waldo had managed to shoot Gentleman Jack?

  Chapter 6

  Jerome drew his wool riding coat more tightly around him, glad for its warmth. The weather had changed during the night. A storm had moved through, bringing rain, and now a raw wind was blowing out of the north.

  He had awakened early from dreams haunted by a pair of sparkling violet eyes and a dimpled smile that would drive a sane man crazy. To wipe it from his mind, he had taken to the saddle for an early-morning ride.

  But even after an exhilarating gallop, Rachel still haunted him. Jerome had intended to ignore her last night. When he had not been able to do so, he had tried to tell himself it was because he wanted to annoy Sophia and escape her company; but he knew that for the canard it was. He wanted to be with Rachel.

  He could not help smiling even now as he remembered her passionate response to his kiss in his bedchamber and the startled, innocent wonder her face had betrayed. Cod, but it was a sweet memory:

  The sky was clearing, its blanket of gray clouds giving way to scattered white puffs. Jerome glanced back toward Wingate Hall. A lone female was riding toward it across the moor.

  Jerome recognized Lady Rachel, apparently on her way home. He was surprised that she would be out riding so early instead of still abed. With no conscious thought of what he was doing, he turned Lightning in her direction.

  As he reached her, she pivoted her face toward him. She was the loveliest thing Jerome had seen in all his twenty-nine years. Desire, sudden and unwelcome, coursed through him.

  Although she slowed her mount to a walk as he rode up, she did not seem pleased to see him. Instead she looked rather like a little girl caught doing something naughty. He reined Lightning in alongside her mare, and the two horses moved forward at a sedate walk.

  Jerome noted the leather case that she carried. He could think of only one reason why a woman would be carrying a case at this early hour, but surely she could not be returning from an assignation. She was an innocent, was she not?

  He could not keep the suspicion from his voice. “You are up very early. Where have you been?”

  Rachel’s gaze skittered away from his and dropped to her case. “Nowhere,” she said, a faint blush rising on her cheeks, accentuating the pale delicacy of her alabaster skin.

  “Where is nowhere?” Even he was startled by the belligerence of his tone.

  Her gaze still avoided his. “I—I was enjoying a morning ride.”

  She was a terrible liar. What the hell was she hiding? Had it been a tryst after all? Had a beautiful woman once again duped him into thinking her an innocent?

  Jerome was furious. By God, he would learn why she was hiding the truth from him.

  Rachel wondered at the sudden flash of anger she saw in the duke’s fascinating eyes, as they seemed to change from rich blue to stormy gray in an instant. She hated lying to him, but she dared not tell him that she had gone to check on the condition of a tenant’s ill child. She could not chance his informing Sophia that she had been defying her aunt’s explicit order.

  Furthermore, Rachel liked the duke so much that she did not think she could bear it if he mocked her concern for the people of Wingate Hall as her brother Stephen’s male friends had done.

  “I am surprised, my lady, that you would go riding without a groom.”

  There was an innuendo in the duke’s voice that Rachel did not understand. Puzzled, she said, “You are more in need of a groom than I, Your Grace, for you do not know the countryside and I know every inch of it. I have been riding it alone for years.”

  The duke touched the leather case containing her herbal remedies. “What is in that?”

  He raised his gaze to hers, and she was nonplussed by the anger and suspicion in his eyes. “N—nothing.”

  “If that is so, why are you bothering to carry it?” Rachel could feel the colour in her cheeks deepening. For a moment, the only sound was the clopping of their horses’ hooves on the road. Then she said nervously, “Foolish of me, is it not?”

  Again that puzzling anger flared in his eyes. “Tell me what is in it,” he ordered.

  Why on earth were the case’s contents so important to him? “What it contains is none of your concern,” she retorted sharply. “I fear Stephen was right. You are insufferably overbearing.”

  “Is that what he
said about me?” The duke clearly did not care in the slightest what her missing brother thought of him.

  That piqued Rachel into saying, “Yes, he did not like you.”

  “Nor I him.”

  She stiffened angrily but then reminded herself that the duke was merely being as bluntly honest with her as she had been with him. “Why did you not like Stephen?”

  “Your brother cared far more about the cut of his coat than the cut of his fields. I have no patience with heedless, careless aristocrats like him who live only for their own pleasure and ignore the duties that rank and a great estate carry with them.”

  Rachel’s head snapped around, and she stared at the duke. Much as she loved Stephen, she had to admit sadly that the duke had summed him up all too accurately.

  Apparently misinterpreting the reason for her surprise, he asked, “Did you not see your brother for what he was?”

  “Aye.” Rachel swallowed hard. Careless Stephen might be, but he was at heart a good man. She was convinced of that. “I—I wish you could have known my brother when we were children.”

  She blinked back tears at the memory of the wonderful, charming Stephen of her childhood. A little sister could not have asked for a more protective or better-hearted brother, and Rachel had adored him. “After he went away to school, Stephen changed, and he changed even more when he began living in London. He fell in with the wrong companions who encouraged his irresponsibility.”

  Papa had particularly blamed Anthony Denton, a sophisticated rake a few years older than Stephen, for leading him astray. That was one of the reasons Rachel had never liked Denton, even though he was always most charming to her.

  The duke said in a softer tone, “To give Stephen his due, he was a charming, intelligent man.”

  “Aye, he is.”

  Rachel looked around at the duke. He was so handsome with that jutting, determined jaw and his blond hair ruffled by the wind that Rachel’s pulse accelerated. The odd sensations that had plagued her yesterday returned now stronger than ever.

  “Your brother’s intelligence and charm were part of my problem with him,” he said with a frown. “Arlington had the potential to be so much more than he was. It was his wasted ability that irritated me the most.”

  It was what had most irritated Rachel, too. She had not given up hope, though, that in time Stephen would mature and become more responsible. She stared up at a merlin circling in the clearing sky, searching for prey, and confessed. “I love my brother dearly, but I am sorry to say that you are right about him.” She dropped her gaze from the merlin to her companion. “I confess I am startled, though, that you do not share his faults. All his men friends were worse than he.”

  The duke looked at her as though she surprised him. “Unlike them, I appreciate both my great good fortune in having been born rich and titled and the responsibilities it carries with it. I once tried to talk some sense into your brother, but he took great umbrage at my presumption and I think hated me for it.”

  Rachel wondered whether that was the reason for Stephen’s animosity toward him. She studied the man riding beside her with growing appreciation. Never would she have dreamed that she and the “haughty, condescending” duke would think so much alike. He was the kind of man she had longed to meet.

  Her heart soared like the merlin above them at this realization, and she suddenly was eager to confide in him. “Papa often tried to instil a sense of duty in Stephen, too, but with no more success. The country bored Stephen. He loved what Papa called ‘the frivolous life’ in London.” Rachel could not disguise the troubled note that crept into her voice. “Papa feared that Stephen took after our grandfather.”

  “I collect your father did not intend that as a compliment,” the duke said dryly.

  “No, Papa’s father was a wastrel and a rake who cared nothing for his lands or his family. He left Papa to run the estate from the time he was very young. Not that Papa minded, but he never forgave his father for the way he treated my grandmother. He lived openly with his mistresses in London while exiling his wife and children to Wingate Hall.”

  The duke made a disgusted face. “I cannot conceive how a man could act like that toward his family.”

  Nor could Rachel. What had angered Papa most was the lodge that her grandfather had built on the estate to house his current convenient on the rare occasions when he came to Yorkshire. That had humiliated. Rachel’s grandmother—and left her granddaughter with a determination never to marry a man like her grandfather. She gave the duke a worried glance. “Are you a rake?”

  He looked amused. “If I were, I would not answer that question honestly. Rakes are notorious for lying to lovely young ladies.”

  Rachel frowned. “Does that mean you are one?”

  His deep, rich laughter sent a shiver of pleasure through her.

  “No, I am not, and I am telling you the truth.” It was Jerome’s brother who was the rake of the family. Not that Jerome had been a monk. He had had a few discreet liaisons, but he was no womanizer. And he had his principles. He never slept with another man’s wife. He wanted nothing to do with a woman who would cuckold her husband. Nor had he ever taken an innocent’s virtue.

  The approving smile his answer brought to Rachel’s delectable mouth made Jerome’s breath catch. He remembered their kiss, and a hot wave of desire surged through him. He longed to sweep her off her sidesaddle and into his arms. Then his gaze fell again on the case she carried, and his eyes narrowed. “Why are you so secretive about what is in your case?”

  “You must vow not to tell anyone, especially Aunt Sophia. Will you promise?”

  Rachel’s question only added to his puzzlement and curiosity about its contents. When he assured her that he would keep her secret, she said, “It contains my herbal remedies. I have been to check on one of our tenants’ children who is sick with the ague.”

  Jerome could not have been more surprised if she had confessed the case held the crown jewels that she had stolen. His lurid imaginings about her case were so far from the truth that he felt as though he owed her an apology He knew that he was gaping at her, but he could not help it. It confounded him that a woman as exquisite as Lady Rachel was so willing to help others.

  She shifted nervously in her saddle under his silent stare. “You promised you would not tell Aunt Sophia,” she reminded him.

  “I keep my word, but why do you not want her to know?”

  “She has forbidden me to treat the tenants as I used to do.”

  “Hellsfire, why? She should be grateful that you would do so.”

  “She says that no lady would lower herself like that. She called me a disgrace to the Wingate name.”

  “Sophia is the disgrace,” Jerome snapped.

  Rachel’s expression mirrored surprise and intense relief at his reaction. “You mean I have not shocked you?”

  Actually, she had, but not in the way she meant. He could scarcely believe that such a beauty would be willing to expose herself to disease to help the ill. His estimation of her rose sharply. “How did you learn about herbal healing?”

  “From my mother who was taught it by an old woman in the fen country where she was born. I have all Mama’s recipes. The one for reducing fever is particularly effective.”

  Rachel’s remarkable violet eyes mirrored her enthusiasm for her work. Hellsfire, but she was more temptation than Jerome could withstand. It was a good thing he would be leaving Wingate Hall after he saw Morgan. Jerome started as he recalled his scheduled meeting with the highwayman. Rachel had so bewitched him that he had forgotten all about it. He said abruptly, “I am going to ride some more.”

  As he turned Lightning away from Wingate Hall, she asked, “Would you like company?”

  “No!” It came out more emphatically than he had intended. The truth was he did want her company— much too much. “I prefer to ride alone,” he lied.

  Her bright smile faded, and Jerome knew that his sharp answer had hurt her feelings, but he could har
dly take her along to meet the highwayman.

  Jerome walked among the thick weeds and tumbled stones of the Wingate ruins as he waited for Morgan to appear. He stifled the impulse to check his pocket watch again, reminding himself that he had done so no more than five minutes earlier. The time then had been twenty-seven past noon.

  Gentleman Jack had not wanted this meeting, but he had promised that he would be here an hour and a half ago. As he had pointed out, he had never broken his word to Jerome. So why had he not come?

  Jerome forced himself to sit down on a large stone to wait. He was within the crumpled remains of what had once been the walls of a large medieval abbey. Beyond them, behind a pile of fallen stones, Lightning munched placidly on the wild grass.

  His ride across the Wingate estate to the ruins had been instructive, He had passed fields that were no longer tended as they should have been and cottages that were falling into disrepair. Their occupants had watched him with sullen faces. A careful landlord himself, Jerome recognized the signs of festering discontent when he saw them. Had it been his land, he would have learned the reasons for it and remedied them.

  He could see why Morgan had picked this ruin for their meeting. Located in a remote section of the estate, it was surrounded by woods that screened it from view if someone happened to pass by. He suspected that Gentleman Jack had used this site before for rendezvous.

  Jerome’s mouth curled ruefully. Morgan was such a paradox. Although he had embraced a dishonourable occupation, he had done so for an honourable reason. Incensed by the mistreatment and exploitation of the poor and downtrodden, Morgan had taken it upon himself to right some of society’s legal wrongs in his own unorthodox way.

  That was why he picked as his victims rich, stone-hearted men like Lord Creevy or Sir Waldo Fletcher who were notorious for their heartless treatment of those within their power. Then the highwayman would distribute his booty among those who had suffered most at his quarry’s hands.

  Morgan called it justice.

  The law called it criminal.