The Duke's Messenger

by Vanessa Gray

  “Mullins?”

  “Aye, my lady, I seen him. A big hairy monster he was, with claws on his fingers!”

  “Nonsense, Mullins. Pray be silent, before we have him breathing fire. Reeves, you have not answered me. How came you so swiftly?”

  “I be too wakeful, my lady,” said Reeves in his broadest dialect. “So I cum over to get a bit of beer to settle me innards, like.”

  Nell was exasperated. What humbug! It was much more likely that the coachman was watchful for their safety. Why could he not say so?

  One reason struck her like a blow. He had eyes now only for her, eyes that held a devilish gleam as well as the baldest admiration. Confusion enveloped her. She had not troubled, feeling haste and silence were imperative, to find her robe. She stood revealed in the lantern light in her gauzy pink night-shift, her hair covered by a fetching cap with pink ribbons. Her aunt’s coachman was clearly riveted to the floor by the sight.

  “Oh!” she gasped, and leaped for the shelter of her bed.

  “I will deal with you, Reeves, in the morning!” said Phrynie icily. “You may leave us now.”

  “Very good, my lady.” His tone was wooden but he cast a wicked glance toward Nell, cowering under her blankets, and closed the door softly behind him.

  She listened carefully. She did not hear his steps retreating down the stairs. He was still near, she thought, and with a sigh of contentment closed her eyes and slept.

  By the time they were ready to leave in the morning, the dangers of the night just past had faded from her mind. Reeves had come to her rescue once more. Deliberately putting him in his proper place, she told herself, I must remember to ask Rowland to give him some kind of reward.

  But she knew she never would, for Reeves was not the sort of man to whom one tossed a few coins.

  *

  The small town where they had spent the night was soon behind them. She had essayed a small smile at the coachman, but he failed to return it. Lines appeared on his face that had not been there yesterday. She was positive now that he had stayed awake on the landing after their alarum for the rest of the night.

  She had managed to speak to him for a few moments before their departure. “Did you manage to sleep at all, Reeves?”

  “Enough, miss.”

  “I trust there was no further disturbance? I did not hear any.”

  “Quite right, miss. There was none.”

  “I wonder, Reeves — did you recognize the man?”

  He looked sharply at her. Instead of answering, he countered, “Did you?”

  Her voice was level. “I thought I did. But I could not make sure. He was gone so quickly.”

  Reeves rubbed his shoulder. “Aye. I was a bit in his way.”

  “I must think he was not after our jewels.”

  He stood, not moving. The parcel lay almost tangibly between them. “Not the jewels,” he agreed.

  She glanced behind her to where her aunt was engaged with Mullins and her bandboxes. “We have only Potter and you for protection, Reeves. Perhaps I should have brought a pistol.”

  “Good God!” breathed Reeves.

  “I am a very good shot, you know. But I left it at home, at Aspinall Hall. But I really cannot be to blame, for who would have imagined that I would find a use for it?”

  “Who, indeed?” agreed Reeves. Then, as usual much too late, he added, “Miss.”

  Recognizing that she would get no more conversation from him at least at this time, she picked up her skirts and joined her aunt in the carriage.

  Phrynie, her sleep broken for two nights in a row, was captious. “What was that man doing last night?”

  “I suppose he was after our valuables, Aunt.”

  “I do not refer to him. It was clear enough what he wanted. I mean that coachman you hired.”

  “Reeves?” Nell asked innocently.

  “Of course, if that is his real name. Which, I should like to point out, I doubt. The man is an enigma. He’s no coachman.”

  “He handles the cattle excessively well.”

  “And so do some of our notable whips,” Phrynie pointed out with acerbity. “He doesn’t act like a coachman.”

  Nell, caught up in rosy recollection, agreed. He surely didn’t!

  “I do not trust him,” pronounced Lady Sanford. “I cannot think what you were about in hiring him.”

  The time Nell had dreaded had clearly arrived. She knew she could keep the events of the night at Château Pernoud secret no longer. With one exception, of course! “Aunt, I must tell you —”

  Phrynie listened with all the attention Nell could wish for. She reminded her aunt of the tale she had told about the recovery of the parcel. Getting through the window, retrieving the parcel from the drawer, and hurrying back through the night and up the dark stairs…

  “I’ve heard this, Nell. And I must say I find my credulity strained at the seams to think that you managed all this entirely by yourself.”

  “You did not tell me you didn’t believe me.”

  “Was I justified?”

  “I fear you were. But I shall tell you all.”

  “Pray do.”

  “When I was trying to open the window, you know, I did not hear him coming and —” The person of Reeves now entered the narrative. Nell left out nothing — except for keeping private the memory of the scalding incident on the stairs. She included the alarum when the servant Emile entered the library and closed the window, and the inestimable help that the coachman had provided.

  At the end of the narrative, Nell waited for the explosion she considered inevitable. When it did not come, she ventured to glance at her aunt. To her great surprise, Phrynie was overcome with silent laughter.

  “Aunt! Then — you’re not angry?”

  “Yes, indeed I am,” insisted Phrynie between fits of laughter. “I vastly wish to have been with you. It sounds like quite the most entertaining event since — well, since Darnford and I had to —” She stopped short. “Never mind what Darnford and I had to do, Nell. But I should be much more in charity with you had you invited me along. Of course, I do not blame you. Indeed, I vow I did not think you had it in you!”

  In great good humor with each other, they traveled on. Phrynie speculated about Reeves’s antecedents, and Nell pointed out that no matter who his parents could have been, he was certainly on their side as far as this expedition went.

  “But now he knows about the parcel, Aunt, and that is why he kept watch last night.”

  “His father was undoubtedly a familiar at Newgate,” suggested Phrynie, “but I think it exceedingly tactless to mention it.

  Nell remembered later that she had not mentioned the fact that she had recognized the intruder in the night. If Emile had come this far after them, it was most likely that they would hear again from the count’s emissary. Next time he might not be so easily routed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They traveled for days. It seemed to Nell that the road was endless, but paradoxically she was loath to arrive at their destination.

  She had discovered it was less trying to consider that the journey was a venture unto itself, without beginning and without end. Indeed, she had no need to deceive herself, for the start back in London, the parcel in her jewel case, and the expectation of Tom’s following upon their heels seemed so long ago as to have taken place in another century.

  Equally remote in time was their journey’s end. She thought about Vienna, when she considered it at all, as though in a dream. Nothing existed but the jolting of the carriage, the rhythmic sound of the horses steadily covering leagues, and a succession of inns hardly worthy of the name. Her world narrowed to her aunt and Mullins, Potter the footman — and Reeves.

  She dared not think of how Reeves marked her days. She exchanged a few innocent words with him in the mornings, just before they took to the road, and a few more of similar inconsequence in the evenings.

  She did not even know whether he continued to keep watch nearby at night. He
had become remote and non-communicative again, and she felt keenly the loss of his amused glances and dry comments. But they had covered a surprising distance. Leaving France behind, they had moved into an area of Germany where the people and even the landscape seemed hostile and unforgiving.

  “This is interesting country, is it not, Nell?” said Phrynie after one of her infrequent glances through the chariot window. “I do not say attractive in the least, but one does not expect the entire world to be as comfortable as one’s own country. However, one advantage to traveling particularly in such uncivilized regions exists. I believe I have lost at least a stone in weight. I vow even my slippers no longer fit well.”

  “You may indulge without guilt, then, in the whipped cream and chocolate you expect in Vienna.

  “I had thought of that,” responded Phrynie drily. “I shall never in my entire life eat pompernickel again.”

  The road narrowed, and now they were traversing a forest road so straitened that from time to time they could hear the tree branches brushing the sides of the vehicle.

  Nell peered out. “Do you think there are wolves in these woods?”

  “Without doubt. We shall trust that we can outrun them. I confess I shall resist strongly any attempt to persuade me to take this road again.”

  “How will you return to England then?”

  “As yet I am not thoroughly conversant with alternate routes, you know, but that is a lack easily mended.”

  “Perhaps,” ventured Nell, moved by some obscure reason, “we might even stay in Vienna.”

  Her aunt was startled. Then, easily, she suggested, “I suppose that if Foxhall were assigned to the embassy there, you might as well marry at once.”

  “Oh,” said Nell, as though the thought had not occurred to her, “of course. Dear Rowland.” She fell silent again.

  Phrynie realized that she was much troubled about her niece. In London, Nell’s bubbling conversation had centered obsessively on the great love of her life. There was hardly a sentence that she uttered that did not include an allusion to dear Rowland, his sayings, his manly beauty, his impeccable manners.

  To give Nell credit, she had not mentioned his title, his expectation of inheriting an earldom, nor his substantial income. But for the last few days, “dear Rowland” had unaccountably vanished from her conversation, and Phrynie longed to know what subject had routed from Nell’s thoughts the constant paean directed toward Foxhall. She would never learn from Nell, she was sure, for the girl had withdrawn into long periods of silence.

  But Phrynie recognized a duty when she saw it, and she turned her full attention to her niece. “Nell, have you noticed how free we have been of intruders in the night?”

  “I do not regret such a lack, believe me.”

  “Why do you think that creature tried to enter our room, Nell?”

  “Your jewels would be sufficient attraction, I should think.”

  Phrynie was silent for a few moments. Mullins had been most obliging to those who wished to carry on private conversation, falling heavily asleep as soon as the carriage left the inn yard and only rousing sufficiently to eat, perform a few simple duties, and fall asleep at night, no matter how uncomfortable her cot.

  Phrynie looked at her maid without favor. “I shall have to consider what to do with — that.” She nodded toward the sleeping woman. “She has been of absolutely no help to me at all.”

  “In addition,” Nell pointed out, “she obliges us with unearthly screams at the most inopportune moments.”

  Phrynie made up her mind to speak directly about a vague uneasiness she had entertained for some time. “Nell, did you recognize that man the other night?”

  Nell smiled. “You mean the hairy monster with long claws?” “That woman!” When Nell did not answer the question at once, her aunt insisted. “Did you?”

  Nell had learned at least one lesson along the way. It was not the thing to try to deceive her aunt, at least in some things. Full confession was much easier on the mind, for one did not have to guard one’s tongue against an inadvertent slip. However, she did not intend to tell her aunt quite everything.

  “I — I’m not sure, Aunt.”

  “Aha! I thought you did.” Phrynie swooped directly to the point. “Was it someone from the count?”

  “I thought it was Emile.”

  “Emile? Oh, yes, Squint-Eye. But —” Phrynie’s speculations held her silent for a moment. She lowered her voice, even though Mullins had begun to snore. “Nell, what is in that package?”

  Nell felt near tears. “I don’t know, Aunt. Truly, I don’t. You mentioned love letters, but I cannot think that is right. Whose letters would be worth stealing?”

  “Only an idiot writes that kind of letter,” pronounced Phrynie. “Without a doubt, there is something more. It’s not heavy. Ah well, I suppose we shall never know its contents.”

  “Nor do I want to,” insisted Nell.

  “I do suppose, my dear, that we still have it safe?”

  “Yes, for now at least. But one cannot but expect some further incident.”

  “I expect no such thing, Nell. It’s been days, and we are half a continent away from the count. If he needed the parcel, for whatever purpose one cannot conceive, he would have appeared long since.”

  Nell did not speak for some time. When she did, she had not moved far away from the subject. “One might think,” she said without logic, “that if the parcel were indeed as valuable as Mr. Haveney seemed to think, he would have arranged for better safeguards for it.”

  “Such as your brother? Who has not yet, I hesitate to point out, appeared.” Phrynie’s voice reflected skepticism.

  “At least, Tom wouldn’t have traveled weaponless.”

  Phrynie conceded the point. “Nor would he have spent the night at the Chateau Pernoud.”

  Or hinted so broadly at secrets, Nell thought, but being essentially kind, she refrained from saying so.

  “Well,” she said finally, “with Reeves to protect us, we will be safe enough from thieves in the night, or even footpads on the road.”

  She spoke too soon.

  The coach began to slow, and came to a halt. They had now left the forest behind and emerged upon what seemed to be a vast field without more than a cart track to serve as road.

  “I can’t see why we have stopped, Aunt. I did think that the forest furnished a prime opportunity for ambush, but that’s all behind us.”

  That something was amiss was certain. Shouts came from the front, and Nell could discern Potter’s shrill protests. “No! I won’t do it. I’m always doing your dirty work! You do it!”

  “All right,” came the coachman’s deep rumble. “It’s naught but a bush the wind’s brought. Here, hold the reins. Think you can do that much?”

  Potter’s remark was lost to the passengers in the coach.

  “Only a bush in the road,” Nell relayed the information to her aunt.

  Phrynie frowned. “Bush, in this wide expanse, caught in the ruts? And the wind blowing up to a gale?”

  They looked at each other in surmise. “I don’t believe it either,” said Nell at last.

  They could hear Reeve’s voice speaking reassuringly to the team. As long as the horses knew he was at hand, they would not bolt in spite of the quivering hands holding their reins. Suddenly, something went wrong. Reeves’s voice rose in sharp protest. There were other voices, unrecognizable.

  “I’m going to see what’s going on.”

  “Nell!”

  “Do you stay here, Aunt. It’s safer!”

  “With Potter on the box? Don’t be a fool!”

  Nell dropped to the ground beside the coach. She knew that Phrynie was right behind her, but she could not waste time in protest. The scene before her was, to say the least, heart-stopping. It took a moment to assimilate the details.

  A knot of men gathered in the middle of the road, the man in the middle of the knot struggling in a melee of arms and legs and shouts and curses. Reeves
, suddenly, fell to his knees under the battering blows.

  Reeves! Nell thought she screamed, but if she did, it had no effect on the struggle ahead. She did not stop to think. As from a distance, she heard Phrynie exclaim in an agonized whisper, “An ambush! Nell, they’re going to kill us!”

  Nell’s whirling thoughts settled on the instant. With grim determination, she said, “I have no intention of dying in a Bavarian ditch! There’s a gun in the pouch on the box.”

  “Nell, you can’t! Leave it to Potter!”

  “I am more apt to shoot him,” said Nell fiercely. “He’s no use at all!”

  Nell seemed to be thinking with uncanny speed. It was as though she were guided by a force outside herself. She took note of the struggle on the road, the horses beginning to plunge, frightened by the uproar, and Potter, useless on the box, the reins slack in his fingers.

  She climbed to the box. “Give over, Potter. If you can’t help, at least get out of the way.” Her push was not gentle. She rummaged in the box and found the gun. So automatically that later she did not remember doing it, she checked the load and aimed at the villains.

  There were three of them. Two were holding the fallen coachman by the arms, and the third was methodically slamming his fists into the victim’s face. Even from here she could hear the sickening thumping sounds.

  “Stop that!” she screeched. At the same moment, Mullins unfortunately awakened and thrust her head out of the open carriage door. Her screams could have been heard in the next province. As one, the three attackers turned in their direction. They saw a determined young lady climbing down from the box, holding an enormous weapon in her hands.

  They dropped Reeves. His head struck on the frozen ground, and he lost interest in the proceedings for a moment. He did not see the young lady taking careful aim and, as coolly as though she were aiming at targets on the range at Aspinall Hall, pulling the trigger.

  The resulting thunderclap provided sufficient incentive to the attackers to increase their speed by half. She had no wish to kill anything, even such brutes as these. But she was satisfied that they would not return in the immediate future and ran to Reeves, kneeling beside him in the road. She beseeched him to open his eyes, and he obeyed. What he saw stirred him to groan desperately, “Good God, woman, don’t shoot me!”