The Duke's Messenger

by Vanessa Gray

  Tom was not so deeply affected. “If you will notice, my dear sister, your — you did say coachman, did you not? — is recovering. Rapidly.”

  So he was. His eyes were open, and the glint of amusement in them, while indicative of his probable survival, was nonetheless excessively provoking to her. “Reeves…”

  Tom interrupted. “Where is Stuston?”

  “In bed where he belongs,” she said shortly. “At that inn.”

  Tom gazed in exasperation at his sister. “I think,” he said firmly, “I should like a more detailed explanation.”

  “Why?” retorted Nell, battered beyond civility by anxiety over Reeves and irritation with her brother. “He is not your coachman, since our aunt employed him. And if you had our safety and comfort at heart, Tom, you would have been there at the time, and all this wouldn’t have happened!”

  Stung by the vague accusations, especially since they were unjust, he retorted in kind. “How was I to know you’d all lose your heads and take to the road like a Romany caravan? I vow I thought Aunt Phrynie had more sense, even if you don’t!”

  A voice, faint yet full of authority, broke in on them. “Children,” reproved Reeves. “Do stop behaving as though you were still in the nursery. I assume that those fellows of yours, Tom, were to take me somewhere?”

  “You’re not a grandfather yourself, you know.” It was the last arrow in his quiver. “I hired them,” he continued, “when I came upon your lifeless body. Is it possible you are recovered sufficiently to stand?”

  At his gesture, the two countrymen chased by Nell’s threats to a short distance away returned to the scene. Under Tom’s efficient direction — he was surprisingly competent, Nell thought, beginning to realize she was not sufficiently acquainted with her nearest relative — Nell’s wagon was turned to face back toward town and Reeves was carefully lifted and placed in the straw and covered with the blankets. The local helpers were paid off.

  The saddled horses were brought forward by Aston, Tom’s man, who touched his forehead to Nell and kept all emotion from his features.

  Tom slid onto the cart seat beside her, and took the reins. “You have not yet informed me,” he said after a minute, “how you came here. I agree that you are well armed and well able to disable anyone so misguided as to attack you. But traveling in this cart? With these cattle fit only for the abattoir? And in those monstrously unbecoming garments?”

  “I do hope I have sufficient decorum,” she informed him frostily, “not to behave in such a harum-scarum fashion. You did not truly think so?”

  In a kinder tone, he told her, “No, of course not; But you must admit your appearance out of nowhere, brandishing that cannon and calling for vengeance, is a bit dramatic. Can you indeed explain it?”

  “I have no need to explain myself to you, Tom. You are never at hand when I need you. And Aunt Phrynie is —” Her voice broke. “Oh, Tom!”

  Reeves was behind her in the straw, alive, and while far from well, not mortally wounded. And Tom, her dear brother, had come at last, and she could turn over the parcel to him and travel to Vienna with a light heart.

  The pathetic little cry moved him deeply. He transferred the reins to one hand and put his arm around Nell, drawing her close. “Go on, Nell, use my shoulder. Cry all you want. It’s not the first time, is it?”

  Her answer was strangled, but her tears were fresh and real — and abundant, as well they might be, having been held back since she had seen Stuston lying injured on the cobblestones at Calais.

  “It’s my fault,” she sobbed incoherently, “first Stuston and now Reeves. If I only —”

  Her brother interrupted. “The world is full of ifs,” he said stoutly. “If I hadn’t fallen into Charlie Puckett’s trap and bought that hard-mouthed hack, for one thing. If I’d been on hand in London — Nell, you haven’t yet told me what you are doing here?”

  But he was not destined to receive an answer to that question immediately. Nell was too overwrought to make sense, he considered — all he could decipher from her broken and strangled phrases was something about burglaries and deformed monsters in the night. Nothing to worry about, he thought, for the dear child had quite plainly garbled some nightmare ramblings and offered them up to him in lieu of excuses. He had really too long ignored his sister. He must make it up to her — but not right away.

  “Your coachman will be all right, I think,” he said seriously. “This one, that is. But what of Stuston? Why is he not driving you? You said he was in bed in the inn? What inn? And surely you are not wandering across the Continent in this farm cart? Truly, Nell…” He was edging closer to a state of complete exasperation, judging from the tone of his voice.

  Nell had caught hold of the comfort offered in Tom’s assessment of Reeves’s injuries. “Are you sure?”

  “I suppose you mean — that fellow in the straw behind us?” He looked over his shoulder at the unconscious figure of the coachman. “He’ll not put his spoon in the wall, if that’s what’s bothering you.” Relenting, he added, “You did say something about breaking into some place — but you don’t need to accuse yourself of murder as well!”

  “You don’t believe me,” she said in a forlorn voice.

  “I tell you it’s hard to keep a straight face when one’s sister speaks of felonies in such offhand ways! I hardly thought you would know the first way to go about it!”

  She sat thinking, chin in hand. If Reeves was not dying, then it would be only logical to think of the next step. Tom was here, ready to take over the parcel that Mr. Haveney intended in the first place to consign into his hands. But without the parcel, she would arrive in Vienna without any excuse except the indecorous one of following dear Rowland.

  She would have to think about that.

  The cart moved at a rate something less than a snail’s pace. The horses, far from being anxious to return to their barn, were more than resentful of the weight added by the victim and the new driver. There was plenty of time to make at least a start at explanations, and she could feel Tom’s growing impatience with the entire situation he had come upon.

  “Well, first I must tell you about Stuston,” she began.

  He broke in. “Admirable as that incident might appear as a beginning, my dear sister, I profess an anxiety to know exactly how this lunatic jaunt began. I wheedled Whitcomb until he told me his last sight of you — my aunt’s traveling chariot, coachman, groom, footman, maid, and my two nearest relations setting off down Mount Street.” He slapped the reins smartly on the haunches of the pair pulling the cart, entirely without” result. “Am I correct thus far?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now I find you alone but for a trembling groom, yourself dressed in what I consider to be mere rags, and journeying in a farm cart loaded with straw.”

  “I can quite see, Tom, that you are puzzled.”

  “Puzzled! My dear child, that is only the first step in the matter of how I feel!”

  “I’ll tell you about it.”

  “Without doubt you will,” said Tom heavily, “for I shall not submit to any degree of fobbing off, you know.”

  “No need to be insulting, Tom.”

  He had, he felt, every need to be insulting. But he was no fool, and he knew that to allow his feelings full vocal rein would not elicit satisfactory responses. He had been told certain things by Arthur Haveney, foremost among which was that the precious parcel destined to reach Castlereagh at the earliest possible moment had been placed by that fool of a messenger into the hands of a delicately nurtured female, far too bent on having her own way. There was much in all this that Tom did not understand. He found Nell’s explanations to be, as usual, a tangle of half-recognized phrases, all as though seen through a heavy fog. Nell was logical in her actions. It was only in her explanations, swooping and elliptical, that a masculine mind bogged down.

  He had recourse now to the only method of eliciting any kind of sense from her. “Nell, is the chariot lost?”

  “O
f course not.”

  “Then why are we not riding in it? Wait — I lost my head just then. Pray don’t answer that. I do not think I want to know why, just yet. Instead, tell me — Stuston. What happened to him?”

  She made a commendable effort to put the experiences of recent days into some kind of form that even her exasperating brother could understand. “He fell on the pavement at Calais. He is now, so I believe, recovering from his broken bones in an inn. The inn is called,” she said with scrupulous attention to detail, “the Blue Dolphin. Aunt Phrynie left the footman Samuel to tend him.”

  “That accounts for two of your party,” said Tom. “How does this man behind us fit in?”

  “He helped me get Stuston back to the inn. My aunt needed a temporary coachman, and Reeves offered. How fortunate it was that he was in Calais just then and without employment!”

  In an odd tone, Tom said, “Fortunate, indeed!” He threaded his way carefully. He had more than a suspicion that when his young sister had mentioned burglary in an offhand manner she was dealing with no more than the truth. He suppressed a shudder. “All right, Nell. Now I must assume that — you call him Reeves? — drove you to Paris. After Paris? And I must assume as well that our aunt is still with you?”

  “Of course? You surely don’t think I’m capable of continuing this long way without her? Unchaperoned? Tom, you cannot!”

  Capable of anything, he thought, but did not say. The understanding of his sister’s adventures that was beginning to come to Tom was cut short. The village at last loomed ahead of them, and the horses at last trusted in their instinct for shelter and provender and picked up their pace.

  Nell, relieved that she was not for the moment required to continue her narrative of perils overcome and felonies committed, thought it well to attack in her turn. “If you had been in London, Tom, when you should have been, all this would not have happened.”

  “I can see that you need some kind of tight rein,” he countered. “One might have thought that our aunt —”

  “Not that, Tom. What I wished you to come to London for in the first place was to speak to dear Rowland.”

  “Rowland? Good God, I hope you are not referring to that idiot Foxhall?”

  “Idiot?” she screamed. “You haven’t the slightest sensibility if you think that, Tom, and I’m sorry you came along now, however late.”

  “Don’t ruffle your feathers, chick. Since we are agreed that we are not speaking of Rowland Fiennes, we can take up the subject of your Rowland, whoever he might be, at our leisure. I believe this is the proper inn, especially since it seems to be the only inn, and we shall see to our friend the coachman.”

  Nell subsided. Tom had mistaken her meaning just now. But dear Rowland must be put on the shelf for the moment. She was most anxious that Reeves be tended to at once. Tom, the harum-scarum brother she had romped with — although not, as Reeves had suggested, in the nursery, since he was five years older — was proving to be other than her recollection told her he was.

  For one thing, his German, though hardly fluent, was sufficient to accomplish his wishes at once. Reeves was placed gently in an airy bedroom and a surgeon summoned. Tom received the doctor’s conclusions with a grave expression and arranged for a nurse who met his standards.

  Nell went to her aunt in the sitting room. “You’ll never guess, Aunt, what happened.”

  “You were gone so long,” said Phrynie, waspish with worry, “I feared you had been carried off to some count’s schloss.”

  “Aunt,” Nell cried sincerely, “never, if he could but see you!”

  ‘Well, I must assume no count. But I have the gravest suspicion that I have just seen Tom go past the door. I could not be right, of course, for he would have stopped to speak to me.”

  “Oh, Aunt, that’s just it! I must tell you —” She proceeded to relate the events of the hours just past. She had barely finished when her brother joined them. She half rose from her chair. “How is —”

  “Fine,” reported Tom with relief. “Only two or three days in bed will be required before he can resume his duties with you. Aston is staying with him now.” He turned to Phrynie. “Aunt! I am delighted to see you. Has my sister imposed so much upon you that you left that delightful house in Mount Street for a pleasure jaunt?”

  “Coxcomb! I do not know where you learned such very nice manners, but they do not suit you.”

  “Very well, Aunt. I was hoping, you know, to win your approval, which I prize most highly.”

  “My approval would have been given gladly,” she told him, “had you made yourself available in London a fortnight since.”

  “I do not quite understand, Aunt? I know that Arthur Haveney wanted me, and indeed that is why I did not listen to Whitcomb. Can you believe he told me at first that you had gone into Essex for the holidays?”

  “He was to tell anyone so who inquired. I did expect him to have sufficient wit to know you were to hear the truth.”

  “At any rate,” he said genially, “I am here now. What did you need me for? I am persuaded that you are far better able to deal socially with the ton than ever I could.”

  “Nell did not tell you?”

  “She did say something about an offer, but I could not make sense of it.”

  “Pray do not speak of me as though I were not here,” Nell interrupted with spirit. “I have indeed had an offer. The gentleman in question was forced to leave London — don’t raise your eyebrow, Tom. He left on business.”

  “A Cit? I cannot credit this!”

  She went on as though he had not spoken. “If you had been where you were supposed to be, he would have gained your permission, and our betrothal would by now have been reported in the Gazette. But no — you had to buy a horse from Charlie Puckett —” She broke off. She heard her voice echoing in her ears and realized how right Reeves had been — they were indeed squabbling like children in the nursery. She sank back in her chair and swallowed. It was never easy for her to admit she was wrong. Nonetheless, when such apology was required, she managed handsomely. “I’m sorry, Tom. I had no right to ring a peal over you.”

  “Yes, you did,” retorted Phrynie, in her forthright manner. “If you have lost him because of Tom’s dereliction, I shall never forgive him.” She reflected a moment. “Forgive Tom, that is.”

  “Lost him? What kind of buffoon would not come up to the mark simply because I was out of town? Nell, who is this idiot?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She favored her brother with a glance of dark warning. “Promise me you will not speak with foolish impulse, and call him an idiot.”

  “Very well, I promise. But that will not signify, if he really is an idiot.”

  “He is not. He is the most handsome man on earth, and he is so civil, so graceful, so devoted to his government duty — “

  Tom gave vent to a smothered oath. “I was right! I cannot believe I am right. Nell, you couldn’t — you’re speaking of Foxhall! Is she, Aunt? Could she possibly be attracted to him? A posturing nonentity?”

  He found his answer in Lady Sanford’s expression. “I was right. He is an — I promised, however, didn’t I? And that word, so apt in description, shall not pass my lips. Nell, I cannot agree that you and Foxhall would suit.”

  “Your sister,” Phrynie pointed out, “has a strong affection for him. And she could do worse, you know.”

  Tom had leaped to his feet and begun to pace the small sitting room. “Of course she could,” he agreed handsomely, but loudly. “If she looked hard enough for a witless wonder, perhaps, like Abercrombie, or fortune hunter like Soames!”

  “If you did not trust me, Tom, I wonder you did not come yourself to Town and winnow out all those undesirables,” suggested Phrynie acidly.

  Nell rose from her chair. Had she come this far on the pretext of the parcel, to be with dear Rowland — had she been by mischance forced to burgle a nobleman’s residence, threatened to shoot any manner of villains, disguised herself and hired a
wagon and horses, been attacked even by her own brother, only to have him tell her he would not approve her betrothal? Not Nell Aspinall, she thought, and advanced on her brother.

  “Tom, give me one good reason…”

  Lady Sanford abstracted herself from what bade fair to develop into a pointless but noisy argy-bargy and gave herself over to reflection. She had noted before, without real alarm, that Nell’s constant preoccupation with Foxhall seemed to have waned. She believed now that Nell’s indignation with her brother was due at least in part to her failure to get her own way.

  But it was, of course, entirely possible that Foxhall still held undisputed sway in the girl’s affections, and in the most practical aspect, Nell could do much worse than to wed the handsome and wealthy Lord Foxhall. Phrynie’s lips twisted wryly. Not every marriage was happy, and not every match was impeccable. Nell’s choice seemed at least well above the average.

  An exclamation from Nell brought Phrynie abruptly back to the present. “Dear Rowland will insist upon your approval!”

  “And rightly so,” countered Tom. “But you seem to have all but given him your answer without my permission. What if I had not appeared now?”

  “I would have thought of something!”

  “One might think you would already have thought of something better than Foxhall!”

  “I am devoted to him,” Nell told him loftily.

  Phrynie watched the exchange closely. It would not be the first time she was called on to play referee.

  “I have not kept close enough watch on you,” confessed Tom.

  “What good would that have done? Do you have another suitor in mind? One of Rowland’s position, perhaps, or a more prestigious title, a greater income? I think not.”

  He stared at her until she looked away, flushing. “I did not know these mattered to you.”

  “Of course they matter,” Nell flung at him. “Do you think I would be happy to cast off all my friends? Would I be content to live in a two-room cottage in a village, the wife of a blacksmith perhaps? No need then for me to cut my former acquaintance, for they would be the first to ignore my existence. Is that what you wish for me?”