But she mistook his thoughts, for he said, “I believe the authorities will be much more interested in you, Lord Lovett, when they hear not only that you have murdered two gentlemen, but that you are a spy.”
Hester felt a convulsive jerk from the arm round her waist.
“It appears that you are more informed than I thought. What a pity! Still, I suppose it was foolish of me to think that my sins would go undetected. That means that France will be our home from now on, my dear.”
It would have made Hester furious that he kept referring to her as a willing partner, if she had not been aware of his own anger underneath. Apparently he had convinced himself that he was going to be able to return to England someday with no one the wiser. Now, that portion of his plan had been ruined, and he was eager to punish the person who had done it. Better her than St. Mars or Tom.
He would not shoot them, for he would never be able to reload before the other attacked. This knowledge gave her courage, even though the thought of remaining his prisoner repulsed her. If only there were some way to strike the pistol from his hand!
But she couldn’t. Not with it pressed against her throat.
He gave her a shove with his chest, and walked behind her to St. Mars’s horse. Then, pointing the pistol at her back, he told her to mount.
Hester was not an experienced horsewoman. Her family had been too poor to keep a horse, and neither Mrs. Mayfield nor Isabella had seen fit to provide her with a mount. Her fumbling with the reins and stirrup was genuine, but Lord Lovett suspected her of trying to trick him. So, he put her aside, and keeping his aim straight at her breast, put his foot in the stirrup and hauled himself up.
He was reaching down to pull her up behind him, when the pistol slipped in his hand.
St. Mars took two running steps and lunged.
Catching her by the waist on his way down, he rolled her clear of the horse. As they tumbled, Hester saw Tom take a step towards his gun, but Lord Lovett stopped him by pointing his weapon his way, and calling out, “Stop right there or I’ll fire!”
St. Mars had landed on top of her. For a long moment, Hester felt the full burden of his weight. Then, he seemed to rouse himself, and, lifting his head, as if in pain, he started to his feet.
Lord Lovett shifted his pistol to aim it at St. Mars.
This time, he cocked it.
“No! Don’t shoot!”
As St. Mars struggled to rise, he wavered, seemed to lose consciousness, and collapsed, just as Hester threw herself in front of him.
She had expected to hear the explosion of gunpowder in the fraction of a moment before a bullet tore into her flesh, but Lord Lovett’s gun remained silent. She opened her eyes and saw him staring her with an expression that was somewhere between pain and relief.
It was a moment before he spoke, and when he did, his voice was trembling. “You should know that my being up on a horse changes the rules of the game. I can shoot your friend and no one is likely to catch me. If you do not wish for that to happen, I suggest you give me your hand.”
He reached towards her, as if to help her mount.
In the road behind her, St. Mars stirred.
“If you shoot him, you will have to shoot me first,” Hester said.
Lord Lovett kept looking down at her. For a moment, the mocking look was gone. Then it returned, and his lips gave a bitter twist.
“It would appear that your highwayman has spoiled more than one of my plans. When he wakes, pray make him my compliments. Goodbye, my dear.” And with that, he turned on St. Mars’s horse and galloped away.
Neither Hester nor Tom wasted a moment before hurrying to St. Mars’s side.
“It’s his head, ma’am,” Tom said. “He took a nasty blow.”
“I know.” The memory of the sound made Hester shiver again. “I saw him hit with the poker. How did he ever make it this far?”
Tom hesitated. “I don’t know, but he was powerful determined. We’ll have to get him out of here before that blackguard raises a hue and cry.”
Before Hester could ask how they would manage with only one horse, St. Mars’s opened his eyes. Seeing Hester, he started quickly up then gripped the back of his head. “Lord Lovett?” he asked, looking about him with squinting eyes.
“He left. And he took Looby with him. Do you want me to chase after him, my lord?” Tom asked anxiously, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“No, let him go. We’ve got what we wanted. And I’ll know where to find him later.” He turned to Hester and subjected her to a close scrutiny.
“Did he hurt you, Mrs. Kean? If he did, rest assured that I shall not sleep until he pays.” Then he winced, as if from a shooting pain, and his mouth twisted in a self-disparaging sneer. “That is, once I can be sure of staying awake. I can hardly recommend my services at the moment.”
“I am not at all hurt, my lord, just very glad to see you both. But we must get you to a place where you can rest.”
She looked to Tom for an idea, but he seemed as much at a loss as she. “We’ve got the post-chaise,” he said. “They’ll be searching for it before long, but we could get him nearer to Pigden in that. We’ll have to abandon it before they come after it, though.”
Then St. Mars took the decision out of their hands. He told Tom to unharness one of the post-horses and ride it, saying that he and Mrs. Kean would ride Beau.
“But where to, my lord?”
“Why, we escort Mrs. Kean to the Abbey, of course.”
He rallied long enough to stand to make it easier for Tom to boost him up behind Mrs. Kean.
Then he told her, “You will have to take the reins, I’m afraid. I am likely to faint again. And you must pardon me, if I lean on your back when I do.”
With his arms bound about her, Hester guided Beau after Tom, who rode the post-horse using the postillion’s saddle. She would not have wanted to manage such a big horse alone, but after coming such a long way, the big gelding behaved like a gentleman.
* * * *
It was dawn by the time they caught a glimpse of Hawkhurst House through the trees near the road. St. Mars had managed to stay awake through most of their ride, but the caution they had been forced to take had made the journey slow. Daylight was upon them.
“We’ll have to hide out here in the abbey ruins,” Tom said, when they stopped to let Hester down on the road to the gate. “If we don’t, I’m sure we’ll be spotted.”
She took one good look at the pallor in St. Mars’s cheek and made up her mind. “Your master will never make it unless he can rest, and I doubt that sleeping on the stone of those ruins will help him overmuch.”
She could see the frustrated protest forming on Tom’s lips, so she quickly added, “I shall have to go in and wait for the fuss over my sudden appearance to die down. While I tell my story and see that a messenger is sent up to London, please take my lord through the secret passageway to the house. He told me that you know the way, but perhaps you do not know that it opens into my chamber. I shall see that he rests and gets a meal. Then, you can take him home after dark.”
It was a moment before Tom saw the sense in her plan, but in the end, he agreed. The only change he made in it was to suggest that she take the post-horse with her. He would keep Beau, and sometime before midnight, he would bring his master another horse to ride.
They parted. Hester clucked to the weary horse and Tom gave it a slap on the rump to make it walk. Then, he led Beau, who carried a barely conscious St. Mars, to a place in the hedge where he knew of a passage and, under the cover of a wooded hill, brought him to the ruins which had given Rotherham Abbey its name.
* * * *
St. Mars came to his senses again, as Tom was helping him out of the saddle. He looked about him and knew where he was. “Mrs. Kean?” he said.
“Mrs. Kean has gone into the Abbey, my lord.” Tom told him about the plan they had devised, half-hoping that his master would refuse the young lady’s offer. Tom could not bear the thought of walking
through that tight, dark tunnel, not even for St. Mars. He had always hated small places, and he could think of no greater nightmare than an underground passageway.
It had been built by one of St. Mars’s ancestors in the last century, as an escape route for his family when the Roundheads were terrorizing the countryside. St. Mar’s father, the last Lord Hawkhurst, had entrusted him with its secret. And now, Tom and Mrs. Kean were privy to it, too.
But St. Mars made no complaint. Tom lent him his arm down into the undercroft where the entrance was hidden behind a pile of stones. He was not even aware that he had started to breathe in constricted gasps until St. Mars pulled away to examine his face in the pale morning light.
“I don’t think that I’ll need you in there, Tom.” St. Mars casually made this remark, as if he had not noticed Tom’s perspiring face.
But Tom was not fooled, and he flushed. The first time he had begged not to be taken into the passageway, it had been dark, and St. Mars had thought he was afraid of ghosts. Now it was day, and the unnamed source of his fears still had the strength to make him shake.
“I can’t let you go in there alone. What if you fall into a fainting fit?”
“I won’t. The cool air will revive me. And the prospect of a bed at the end should be enough incentive to keep me awake.”
Tom would have argued longer, if St. Mars had not admonished him to take care of Beau. The horse would need water, and must be hidden, though it would need to graze.
Tom glanced to make sure that Beau had not wandered within sight of the house, and when he turned back, St. Mars was gone.
Chapter Twenty-three
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason’s comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that, no action could attend,
And but for this, were active to no end:
Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroyed.
II. ii.
Hester was greeted at the door by Lord Hawkhurst’s servants with open astonishment. The footman ran immediately to fetch the steward, Robert Shaw. After telling Mr. Shaw enough about her abduction to convince him that a message should be sent to Hawkhurst House at once, Hester begged to be served some breakfast in her chamber and to be left alone to sleep until she recovered from her ordeal. She begged them not to send for Mr. Henry until she asked.
She made certain that St. Mars was not in her room before she allowed the footman to enter to fill her ewer and basin with water. Then she waited nervously for the food and chocolate to arrive, locked the door after the servant who brought them, and hastened to look behind the secret door.
St. Mars had shown her where to find the mechanism, a particular piece of carving in the elaborate paneling, which operated a spring in the wall. She turned the piece, which resembled a pineapple from the Indies, and the door in the wall sprang open.
St. Mars looked up from where he was sitting on the top step, but not before Hester caught a glimpse of the angry spot on the back of his head. The sight of his injury chased every self-conscious thought from her mind.
She hurried to help him. “Oh, your poor head! You must permit to me wash the blood off, so I can see how serious it is underneath.”
In the ensuing bustle, while she washed the tender knot, examined his cut, helped him off with his shirt and boots, and tucked him into bed, she had no leisure to think of the impropriety of his being in her chamber or to wonder what he thought of it, himself. She suspected that he thought nothing of it at all, for it was clear that St. Mars needed rest. His head still hurt, though she was hopeful that he would mend enough to ride that night, and that a week or so would render him as good as new.
He was so exhausted that he never spoke. She wondered if he was even aware that it was she who had ministered to him. She would have sent for Philippe, but he was in London with Harrowby, his new master. Then, we she moved near the bolster to draw the bed curtains, St. Mars surprised her by taking hold of her hand. With his eyes closed, and still not saying a word, he drew it to his lips and pressed a kiss on the back of it, before yielding to the swoon that he had fought all night.
*
When Hester woke from a deep sleep in the window seat, she found St. Mars sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed to go, with his blue cloak thrown over his shoulders, his heels propped on the side of the bed frame, and his elbows resting on his thighs. He smiled teasingly at her, and the intimacies they had shared that morning rushed back to warm her cheeks.
“I would have wakened you and offered to give up your bed, if you had not been sleeping so peacefully.”
Righting herself, and wondering just how long he’d been observing her in her disordered state—and how bad it was—Hester replied, as calmly as she could, “I was perfectly comfortable, my lord.” Making an effort to tidy her hair, she asked him how his head felt, and he assured her that it would do for now.
“I still don’t know what prompted Lord Lovett to abduct you.” His tone was serious. “I assume you discovered some kind of proof and confronted him with it.”
Hester grimaced. “I did not confront him on purpose, my lord.”
She explained about finding the bloodstain on her gown, and told how Lord Lovett had walked in upon her when she was writing a letter to Mr. Brown.
This last piece of information seemed to shake him. Looking grim, he said, “We can be thankful that he did not decide to kill you right then, what with the danger you posed. Especially when he had already disposed of two of his friends. I suppose he wanted to be certain of his escape from England before he giving up his hostage. But he must have done it sometime, for you would be equally dangerous to him in France.”
“How so, my lord?” Hester did not want to tell him about Lord Lovett’s proposition, for it could have been a lie. She somehow believed that he had been speaking the truth for once, at least as it had appeared to him, then. But she would never be certain, and she could not think of any reason that St. Mars should believe it.
“I still cannot comprehend why he killed Sir Humphrey,” she continued. “And he refused to tell me.”
St. Mars looked abashed. “Forgive me, Mrs. Kean. If I had not been in such a miserable condition last night, I should have told you immediately. I discovered it quite by accident when I came across Colonel Potter’s body. I knew, then, that Lord Lovett must have killed both men, but I could not believe that he would have murdered Sir Humphrey simply for being indiscreet. Not when he always had been, and no one confided anything incriminating to him.
“No, the secret Lord Lovett wanted to hide had to be something of a much more dangerous nature. I was musing over what that might be, when someone in the street made a remark about the mob that had menaced Mr. Walpole at his house in Arlington Street. Then, I recalled that Sir Humphrey had mentioned seeing Lord Lovett in Arlington Street on the evening that your cousin expected to meet him at Lady Oglethorpe’s house. And that his excuse for not coming there had been very different.”
“Yes!” Hester said, excitedly. “He told Sir Humphrey that he would be on a relative’s business in Kensington. I remember that he was not very happy to have Sir Humphrey blurt it out, but at the time, I thought that he had been visiting a paramour. That was the impression he gave us.”
Hester recalled how he had noticed her watching him, immediately after Sir Humphrey’s revelation. She could not doubt that it was at that very moment that Lord Lovett had decided that his friend must be killed, and that he had spotted her as the one person present who might stumble upon the true significance of Arlington Street. That night, too, had marked the first instance of his using flattery to win her trust.
She related most of this to St. Mars, leaving out the personal details. She did not think she would ever get over the shame of her willingness to receive Lord Lovett’s comp
liments.
Since I woke a while ago,” St. Mars said, “I have been thinking more about his motives If we are correct, and he did offer information about the Jacobites to Mr. Walpole and the Committee of Secrecy, he must have done it after Walpole’s announcement that arrests would follow their report. He must have believed that the Pretender’s cause was lost, and that, if he wanted to advance himself, he would have to change to the other side.”
“Before the announcement, he had become almost dangerously outspoken against King George, so the change was very sudden. I suspect, you are correct, my lord. Mr. Walpole’s speech certainly sent many people into a fright—perfectly innocent people, like your cousin Harrowby, for instance. His reaction would not have been precisely the same as Lord Lovett’s, but I can see how the threats and the secrecy, the locking of the White Chamber’s doors, and the announcement that some Jacobites had already been taken might have persuaded him to change sides before it was too late.”
“Especially if he had been involved with the cause very long,” St. Mars said wryly. “He must have known how poorly organized it is—or was. And, being clever, he would have been aware of its lack of leadership.”
“Oh, Lord Lovett is very clever.” Hester could not stop herself from uttering this bitter outburst. “He is very proud of his intelligence. He values it above everything, even other people’s lives.”
She saw that St. Mars was regarding her with a mixture of concern and another unpleasant emotion. She could not tell, but it seemed almost like anger.
An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Hester wished that she had bit her tongue before allowing her sense of injury to show. She could only imagine what St. Mars must be thinking, especially since earlier in their investigation she had refused even to consider Lord Lovett as a suspect. And, since St. Mars’s thoughts were likely to be worse than the truth, and she knew that his courtesy would never permit him to ask, she decided to offer a partial explanation.
“When Lord Lovett abducted me,” she said, at last, “he told me that he had always feared I should be the one to discover the truth. And, because of this, he took great pains to gain my friendship by flattering my intellect. I am only annoyed with myself for letting vanity—for I was very flattered—for letting my vanity deceive me.”
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