The Lonely Earl

by Vanessa Gray

  “We’ll just have the doctor,” Maddox said pleasantly, his small eyes lingering on Faustina. “For now. And we’ll see what his high-and-mighty lordship is ready to swap for you, missy.”

  Swiftly untying the bonds, Maddox sent Harper up the stairs. “Keep your hands up there, Bones, so I can see that you don’t slip any of those cutters to his lordship as you go by.”

  “You searched me,” said Harper bitterly.

  “And found nothing. But I take no chances. That’s why I’m still here, free as a bird, you might say.”

  Harper disappeared beyond the top of the stairs. If a murmured word passed between him and Hugh, it was not perceived by those waiting at the bottom.

  “Now then, your lordship, you might as well just come on down the stairs. We’ve got Miss Kennett. And you’re not going to let any harm come to her, now, are you?”

  “If I come down, you’ll kill us both,” came Hugh’s untroubled voice. “I see no reason for me to descend.”

  Vincent’s voice floated up the stairs. “I’ll stand surety for him, Hugh,” he said. “He won’t kill either of you, not while I’m here.”

  “Ah, Vincent?” said Hugh after a moment. “You surprise me. I had not quite wanted to believe that you are… what you are.”

  Hugh came down. It was dangerous to stall for more time, he felt. Capitulation by degrees must just bring them off safely.

  “Now I’m here,” said Hugh, carefully avoiding looking at Faustina after that first sweeping glance, which sent him aquiver with futile rage at her condition. Coldly he sought control of his surging emotions. Revenge would be the pleasanter for delay. “What do you want of me, Maddox?”

  “A small thing, my lord. Time.”

  His remark fit so neatly into Hugh’s own thoughts that he could not credit his wits for a moment. “Time?”

  “Well, as you might say, time. You see, I’m in the business of trading, don’t you know. Trade good money for ships’ cargoes. All just like is done on the exchange in London, so I understand, but you, being a man of education, would know more than I about that.”

  “ ‘Smuggling,’ ” offered Hugh. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”

  “A nasty word, my lord. I thought better of your wits.” Maddox could turn dangerous in a second, Hugh realized.

  “Time seems reasonable enough,” said Hugh. “How much?”

  “I’m expecting one last cargo, my lord,” explained Maddox. “And it’s on the way ashore right now. It is too bad that you and the other earl — whoever he might be — came to the inn just now. Another day, and all would be finished.”

  “But another day, he would not have been shot and brought here,” pointed out Hugh. “I don’t understand why you wanted to kill me yesterday, and today you’re willing to bargain for time.”

  “Well, you see, I thought we could get away all right and tight with the cargo, if we had a little insurance, so to speak. Insurance that you wouldn’t talk too much. You see, my lord, we didn’t rightly know how much you were on to.”

  “You still don’t.”

  “But it won’t make a ha’penny worth of difference now, you see. You ain’t going to tell anybody what you know, not until we get right away.” Maddox showed signs of impatience.

  Hugh dared not dawdle any longer. “If time is all you want,” he said, “and you promise to let Miss Kennett go free and unharmed, then I should agree.”

  “Fine, your lordship,” said Maddox. “Now, Vincent, my lad, just tie up the earl. Sorry we don’t have a fine silk cloth to tie with…”

  “Miss Kennett?”

  “When this is over, my lord. She might get hurt if she got in our way.”

  Hugh was tied and shoved to the floor next to Faustina. Like two dolls, he thought bitterly, dropped, forgotten by their owners.

  But Vincent, through faintheartedness or perhaps unrecognized affection, had not tied the gag tight enough. Hugh, feeling the bonds loosen, dared not move.

  Maddox had gone, leaving Vincent on guard. And Vincent, so Hugh judged, was frightened out of his wits. Maddox was clearly a man to be reckoned with.

  Vincent, left alone to guard them, could not keep silent. “Hungry, Hugh? I vow I am starved. Too bad you can’t eat, but that needn’t prevent me, need it?” He rummaged in a cupboard in the next room. “Here’s a nice slice of ham!”

  Left unobserved, Hugh sought Faustina’s eye. Her baleful glance softened until he could read apology in them. He had hoped for more.

  Vincent returned, brandishing a long thin slicing knife and talking over a mouthful of ham. “Faustina, what would old Lord Egmont say if he saw me now!”

  Hugh had worked his gag loose. “Probably that he could read your fate long ago,” said Hugh crisply, Vincent whirled in surprise, but he didn’t replace the gag.

  “You too,” snarled Vincent. “Nobody ever gave me a chance.”

  “Nobody,” goaded Hugh, “except a game warden.”

  “He’s done a lot for me!” said Vincent hotly.

  “Whereas your father didn’t? He gave you a home, some kind of breeding, every opportunity for education — but you have no gratitude for fine clothes and a good home. Only a misplaced gratitude to an illiterate criminal.”

  “I’m going to gag you again!” snarled Vincent, starting toward him.

  Maddox appeared in the doorway. “The fishing vessel is in sight. The yacht from Teignmouth is going out to meet it. Yes, my lord, your father’s yacht. Which I bought secretly, all right and tight. It won’t be long now.”

  “Before you kill us,” said Hugh.

  “Oho, the gag is out. Well, Vincent, I can’t expect you to do anything right. It doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re not going to kill Faustina?” cried Vincent

  “It sounds like it, doesn’t it, Vincent?” drawled the earl. “I daresay your father would not approve of you now.” He could not keep the bitterness from tinging his words. His father had approved of everything Vincent had done, Hugh thought, and in his blindness had dragged them all down. But it was not entirely his father’s fault.

  “Even in the old days, my lord,” said Maddox, jovial now that the culmination of his plans was in sight, “your young half-brother was no angel. You thought all the time that I had saved young Vincent’s life, didn’t you? After an accident! Well, no matter. It got me a fine berth and a good living for many a year. But the truth of it was something else again. I suppose you never told your brother, Vincent?”

  “Keep your mouth shut!” snarled Vincent viciously.

  Hugh lifted an eyebrow. Faustina sat hushed, breathless with interest. She had got used to the taste of old grease in her mouth, and hardly heeded her gag anymore.

  “Vincent, the bright young lad, shot me,” said Maddox. “But like everything else, he couldn’t do it right. So you see, I’ve lived my life with a gimp leg and an ugly face that the wenches shy away from.”

  “Why did he shoot you?” asked Hugh, dreading the answer.

  “I found him out,” said Maddox. “Crippling your horse, he was, the big black that your father had given you for your birthday. And he shot me to keep me from telling you.”

  “Beauty!” cried Hugh in sudden fury. “You did that, Vincent?”

  “Father always loved you the most,” said Vincent sullenly, “no matter what you thought. I always knew that. But it wasn’t me shot at you the other night. It was Maddox.”

  Faustina murmured at the sudden look of pain that shot across Hugh’s tight face. How terrible it must be to learn the truth, too late. The lost years of traveling, of marrying to spite his father, believing that his father hated him — useless, and forever irretrievable. Hugh had made some of his own troubles, she knew, but… not the most of them.

  “Just a warning shot,” said Maddox deprecatingly. “But you wasn’t about to take a hint.”

  An explosion sounded. “A shot!” cried Vincent.

  “The yacht’s arrived!” exclaimed Maddox, rushing fro
m the room, Vincent directly behind him.

  It occurred to Hugh that a shot was an odd way to announce the arrival of a contraband cargo. Suddenly he was seized with a consuming interest in the events occurring outside.

  “My dear, can you possibly reach that knife that Vincent so conveniently left on the table after slicing the ham? You are closer than I. Perhaps your ankles are not tied?”

  They were, but Faustina, thus encouraged, inched sideways to the table. She could not rise to her feet. The knife, handle invitingly extended over the edge, was out of reach. Tears of vexation blurred its outline. In her anger, crouched on the floor, she vented her temper by striking the table leg with her shoulder.

  To her amazement, the knife moved, teetered tantalizingly on the edge of the table, and then, as she deliberately struck the leg again, fell to the floor.

  “Good God, girl, it could have sliced you in half!” said the ashen earl.

  Feeling satisfied, both with her feat and with a quality she thought warming in the earl’s unvarnished remark, she nudged the knife toward him with her knees. Following his directions, she turned her back to him and with shuddering haste sawed through his bindings.

  He quickly freed her. More shots fired outside. Surely something had gone wrong?

  He had almost reached the door, Faustina’s wrist firmly encircled by his fingers, when Vincent bolted in, followed by Maddox. Both men had lost their satisfied expressions.

  “What is it?” demanded Hugh.

  “This idiot,” said Maddox between his teeth. “Left a trail wide as a high road. Riding officers tracked him, that’s what’s amiss!”

  “Well, then,” said Hugh with an appearance of calm, “the game is up.”

  “Not… quite… yet,” gritted Maddox. Suddenly he had a gun in his hand. “If we don’t make it, neither will you! Nobody’s going to gloat over my bones in the gallows chains!”

  The gun in his hand leveled, aimed at Hugh. “You’re the first one,” snarled Maddox. “Vincent can’t do a job right. But I can!”

  Faustina screamed. The gun exploded deafeningly in the small room. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air. And when the smoke had eddied, Hugh was on the floor. The sounds of shooting outside came closer, and with a muttered curse Maddox flung Vincent out of his way and fled. Vincent hesitated, looking oddly at Hugh. “I spoiled his aim,” he said sourly, “but I couldn’t even do that right.” He vanished through the door after his leader.

  Faustina knelt beside Hugh. IBs face held the pallor of death, she thought. She could not bear it. She sat, gently inching his head onto her lap, and cradled it. She uttered broken little phrases, hardly heeding what she said. “My dearest, please wake up! Darling, don’t die! You can’t die! I won’t let you! Oh, it’s all my fault!”

  Not original, thought Hugh, as consciousness crept back to him, but satisfactory. Oh, yes indeed, highly satisfactory. He did not open his eyes.

  Suddenly Harper was there. “Commotion,” he said sourly. “Disturbed my patient. Came down to see what was wrong.”

  With swift and sure fingers he touched Hugh here and prodded there. Finally he gave his verdict. “Nothing wrong but faint graze on the side of his head. Too bad wigs are out of fashion. Too hard a head on these Crales for any damage. By the way, the real patient is out of danger.”

  And, just as swiftly as he had come, Harper vanished up the stairs again.

  There were sounds of breaking, crashing of wooden window frames, and shouting. Faustina remained where she was, overwhelmed with relief at Hugh’s escape from injury. Knowing with a part of her mind that they were both safe now, and that Aubrey would live.

  She heard, and hardly noticed, a familiar voice in the outer room. Ned Waverly, directing his men after the fleeing smugglers, searching out the landlord and his hirelings.

  But if Hugh were all right, shouldn’t he wake up? She glared suspiciously at him, noticing a trace of a smile on his lips. She lifted his head unceremoniously from her lap and let it fall ungently upon the floor.

  “You tricked me!” she cried. “You’re not hurt!”

  “Oh, but I was,” he said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. “And if the bullet hadn’t hurt me, then my nurse must have done so! I must say, Aubrey is fortunate in having Miss Bucknell at his side. I hold no brief for your arts in a sickroom!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  He eyed her. She seemed to be greatly interested in a crack in the floor. “Did you mean what you said just now?”

  “What did I say?” she said innocently, and then added quickly, “Don’t tell me! I was distraught, that is all.”

  “Did you mean it?” he insisted, with a note she could not ignore. Nothing but the truth would serve her now.

  She answered in a tiny voice. “Yes.”

  “How could you,” suggested Hugh, enjoying the sight of Faustina Kennett overcome by shyness, “when you said Pendarvis was a monster?”

  She gasped. “Oh, no!”

  “And,” he continued inexorably, “an odious, self-satisfied, callous tyrant!”

  “How did you know?” she queried, so faintly he had to lean very close to hear her.

  “You really should not speak so close to an open window.”

  “You heard me?”

  “As you see.” He got to his feet. “We really cannot sit on the floor forever. Come, let me help you up.”

  When she stood before him, shaking out the folds of her skirt, she seemed to come to a decision. “I was… wrong. You are not an odious monster. How could I have thought so?”

  “The blame is not yours.”

  “Hugh, couldn’t we start all over again? As though we had just met? Please?”

  “No.”

  She paled, as though he had slapped her.

  “No,” he repeated, “we can’t. I tell you frankly, I do not wish to go over the past few days again. We’ve come too far together now, Faustina, to go back. We can’t start over. We will simply have to go on, won’t we? Together, Faustina?”

  The sudden glad light in her eyes answered him. He kissed her, gently at first, and then, as she responded eagerly, with great thoroughness. At length she drew away.

  “On one condition, Hugh.”

  “What is that, love?”

  “That you forget what I said that time. Words spoken in intemperate anger, or in ignorance, should be forgotten.”

  She searched his face anxiously, and found what she was looking for. She sighed happily and laid her head on his shoulder.

  “I’ll remember only those words I heard just now,” he assured her, adding with mock severity, “provided that I hear many more of the same kind in the future.”

  “All right, Hugh,” she said docilely.

  He was kissing her again when Ned strode into the room. “Got the spy, Hugo. Thanks to your note. We wouldn’t have known the yacht. Vincent’s spilling everything he knows. Maddox was the ringleader, you know…”

  He broke off as the tumult in his mind, which demanded expression, eased, and he perceived for the first time that his cousin was clasped unyieldingly in Hugh’s arms. Hugh in fact was bending a forbidding scowl upon the intruder. Enough was outside of enough, thought Hugh, and exploded, “Hang Maddox!”

  With surprising aplomb, Ned grinned and said, “We will! Never fear, we will!” before closing the door behind him softly.

  Copyright © Vanessa Gray 1978

  The right of Vanessa Gray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United States of America in 1978 by Nal Penguin Inc.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

 

 

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