As she would be glad to have Tom.
Even when the three had disappeared down the crowded street, Pamela lingered outside the inn, listening in fascination to a muttered conversation between two soberly garbed gentlemen nearby. Tomorrow’s assizes would be as bloody as the last, they gloomily predicted, with innocent and guilty alike being hustled to the gallows.
Well, Tom would not be hustled to the gallows! she thought hotly. Suddenly she could bear to hear no more. She turned and went into the inn’s dim low-ceilinged interior. Her scheme for freeing Tom was a wild one. She only hoped she could pull it off!
As they rode back to Axeleigh, Dev told the Captain how they had managed to switch Gibb’s body for his. He had been cautioned by Margaret not to mention her name and he did not. Constance had whispered some of Margaret’s story to him before he left and he gave them both a compassionate look. Even blinded as he was, Warburton cut a handsome figure, Dev thought, watching the Captain expertly guide his horse along beside them. Odd that Constance had not fancied him—instead of, as he had been told vivaciously by Pamela, some pallid lad from Lyme who had let his mother mouse-trap him out of his wedding night! Still, he told himself he was lucky that dead lad had been his adversary and not the dashing Captain, who stared about him dull-eyed as he rode—for soft-hearted Constance would never have left him now that he was blinded! Riding along, as Margaret led them down shady unused lanes and weed-grown back roads, circling towns and hamlets where any of them might be recognized, Dev thanked God that so many bullets had missed him and that his love—in her own tumultuous way—had proved true.
They saw no one except in the far distance as they rode and Margaret never spoke once. Dev supposed the Captain thought her to be Constance, and he too fell silent, dreaming about Constance, seeing her at Wingfield, planning for the future.
There were two reunions that night at Axeleigh Hall. In Constance’s large bedroom, she and Dev surveyed each other with a kind of wonderment—as if all this might suddenly be snatched away.
Then—“Oh, Dev!” Constance felt a sob rising in her throat as she clutched him to her, uncaring that his belt buckle was digging into her flesh.
“I had thought you might be dressed for bed, we got back so late,” he murmured, looking down at her riding clothes.
“I suppose I am still at heart a highwayman’s bride,” she murmured with a rueful laugh. “I felt I must be garbed for instant travel!”
“You’ll get over that at Wingfield,” he said, untying her big fashionable detachable sleeves as he spoke. “How women can wear these things, I can’t understand!” He managed to wrest one of them off.
She laughed. “You do it this way, Dev.” She didn’t ask him if there’d been other women since she’d left him—of course there had! The important thing was that none of them mattered!
“Have you missed me?” she asked, as the other sleeve left her.
“Every minute,” said Dev, leaning down to plant a kiss on her bare shoulder.
“And would you have come back if you hadn’t inherited an earldom?”
He pushed her away for a moment and looked deep into her eyes. “Only if I thought you needed me.”
“Oh, Dev, I’ll always need you—how could you ever have thought anything else?” She blushed as he eased down her bodice and her breasts suddenly sprang free and he fondled them lazily while her trembling hands undid the hooks.
They didn’t talk much after that. Their eyes were busy drinking in the glad sight of each other, their hands were busy touching, questing, their bodies were building up wild tensions that threatened to overcome them even as they moved in unison to the big square bed.
And then they were on that bed, locked together in joyous harmony, murmuring soft rash endearments and extravagant compliments—and not hearing them at all, or caring. They were together again, together!
Constance’s white arms crept round his neck in a hold that she never wanted to break and Dev’s long hard body was pressed against hers with such force that she gasped. They tossed and turned sinuously, driving each other’s passions ever onward until, with a surging thrill that seemed to permeate every inch of her, she gave a little cry as the climax of their passions was reached and they both swept over a bright precipice into a world of showering sparks.
It was a wild young highwayman and his waif of a bride who made love that night in the big bedroom at Axeleigh—but it was the Earl of Roxford and his beautiful countess who would wake and make ready for a journey.
Meanwhile in the green room that had once been Margaret’s, a dramatic scene was taking place.
Captain Warburton and Margaret had been ushered into that bedroom by a silent Constance—and left there. Alone. Margaret closed the door.
Captain Warburton turned toward the sound. “I know that you are a woman,” he said, “despite the fact that you have spoken not a word all the way from Taunton, for I can hear the silken rustle of your skirts. And every time you came close to me, the scent of lilies of the valley was wafted toward me. Constance wears the scent of violets—and Pamela roses. Who are you!"
For a long slow moment Margaret considered him—tall and dark and dangerous. And blind—he could not see her. Then she tossed her orange-plumed hat to a chair. “Haven’t you guessed, Tony?” she asked softly, and her voice had that remembered rustle of raw silk that had always set the blood in his temples to pounding.
“Meg?” he said wonderingly. Then with an abortive gesture, “No. Margaret is dead. I saw her buried."
“A casket filled with wood and stones, Tony. I was not in it.”
He shook his dark head as if to clear it. “It can’t be you—if I could see you ... my senses are playing a trick on me.”
“No trick, Tony.” Margaret’s green eyes were brilliant with tears. “I’m Meg and once you loved me.”
“Once?” He reached out, feeling for her hand, and she gave it to him willingly. “No, always, Meg. Always.”
She flinched. “Don’t say that, Tony. You cannot see me as I am today. If you had, you’d be grateful I left.”
“Never that! But what has come upon you, Meg? Why would you run away like that?”
“You fell in love with a beautiful girl, Tony,” she told him in a choked voice.
“Ah, so I did.” His own voice was rich-timbred and caressing. “And love her yet.”
He had drawn her to him now, this woman in bronze silks, and she was shivering slightly against his travel-stained coat. “And when my face was— disfigured”—she was caressing his cheek with gentle fingers as she spoke and her face beneath its velvet mask was full of yearning—“I chose to let you believe me dead rather than stay and watch you flinch from me.”
“I’d never have flinched from you, Meg!”
Ah, but you would, Tony, in your heart! You would!
“What manner of man you must have thought me!” he muttered. “To think I’d desert you!”
“I know you’d have married me, Tony,” she said sadly. “And then you’d have found yourself stuck with me—as I am, not as the girl you fell in love with. I couldn’t let you do it.”
“But where have you been, Meg? How have you lived?”
“I found me a place on Dartmoor—’tis called Tattersall. Of late I’ve only wintered there. Summers have found me riding down the highroads as masked as any highwayman. You’ll have heard of me, Tony—I’m known throughout England as The Masked Lady.”
“Then it was you I danced with that night at Huntlands when the chandelier fell and you vanished? My heart told me it was you but my head refused to let me believe it!”
“I was bringing Constance home and I—I could not bear to leave without seeing you once again.”
“And all this time you’ve lived on the moors and ridden the highways alone?”
“All this time, yes.”
His arms had gone round her protectively and now they tightened. “I would to God I had known before,” he said hoarsely. “For now a bulle
t has winged too close—and blinded me.”
“It’s because of that I can let you find me again, Tony,” she whispered, laying her head on his shoulder so that the heavy skein of her bright hair brushed his cheek and burned fierily against his strong jawline. “Because you can’t see me—as I am now.”
“Yet I’ve yearned to see you,” he murmured, and his exploratory fingers roved over her hair, caressing its gleam. “Nights I’ve been riding, ’twas the glow of your red hair carried me home, Meg—it lit the way for me, it did, just remembering it.”
She wished she’d had time to comb it, for his fingers seemed to revel in it, brushing it gently as if it were fine silk. “You mean you’d accept me—blinded?” he asked softly. “If you’ll accept me—scarred,” she said steadily.
He held her the tighter and then his questing fingers—as she had dreaded they would—lifted her mask and roved beneath it. Lightly his fingers touched her damaged cheeks—and moved on. “The same straight little nose,” he exclaimed. “The same proud chin, the same long lashes and high arching brows, the same big eyes—and, I don’t doubt, the same level expression, half disapproving of my wild ways.”
“No—approving always, Tony.”
His fingers moved on, down her throat. “The same lovely skin,” he murmured, “pulsing under my fingers, the same sweet flesh.” She stirred as his fingers toyed with, then managed to unloose her bronze silk bodice, pushed aside her lacy chemise and eagerly roved over the straining breasts beneath. “As lovely as ever,” she heard him breathe—and then without warning he swept her up in his arms. “You even weigh the same!” he cried jubilantly. “Ah, it’s my girl I’ve got back—my Meg!”
She was weeping now, but she did not want him to know it. She clung to him with all her strength. He is blind, he cannot see me, she told herself. And for the first time in a man’s presence, flung her mask away.
“You’ll have to guide me, Meg. There should be a soft bed in this place, fit for my princess.”
His princess... yes, he had called her that. “Behind you,” she whispered huskily. “Just step backward one step, Tony, and you’ll find it.”
He stepped back with confidence, felt the bed behind his knees and thighs and went over backward, pulling her with him. They were laughing as they fell, almost smothered by the soft goose-down feather bed that closed up around them.
They never knew later how their clothing was removed. Their garments seemed to fall away from them as if they’d never have need for those clothes again. The years had fallen away and it was young Tony Warburton and lovely Margaret Archer who embraced in the big bedroom at Axeleigh. For them this night held a kind of magic, a sense of enchantment, of time forgotten and lost. They moved together with a grace and beauty that had in it strength and courage and no regrets. They were together again, these two star-crossed lovers, and all the past was swept away in an instant. For them it might have been another summer, years ago.
On that bed of ecstasy, they never even bothered to throw back the silken coverlet. In the hot August weather the breezes wafted in bringing with them the scent of flowers, and chirping whirring sounds from a leafy world.
The soft breezes ruffled Margaret’s bright hair as it fell shawl-like over Tony Warburton’s deep chest and broad shoulders. And her strong voluptuous figure fitted close to every cranny of his long naked body. She filled his arms as never before, and with her came all the sweetness of love, all the bittersweet pain of loss, all the triumph and rapture of being together again.
Wild pair they were and wild they would remain. But tonight they met on common ground—the wild sweet homeland of the heart. For them it was a night of sighs and caresses—and no explanations, not a one. They could accept the past, these two, accept it as tranquilly as they would meet the future.
It was enough that God had given them back each other. They would never have need for more.
“I’ve made arrangements, Tony,” Margaret told him, even as—in their third bout of lovemaking—his kisses dragged across her trembling naked stomach, causing her body to lurch deliciously beneath his sweet assault. “With a sea captain in Bristol. We’ll away to Holland, Tony, where none can touch us. Will you like that?”
Captain Warburton would have professed to like hell at that moment, if Margaret had demanded it. He mumbled something unintelligible and fitted her smooth hips more comfortably to his own, stretched a long muscular leg between her long legs and rolled her over atop him. “I never thought to hold you again, save in my dreams,” he marveled. “Though I saw your face in the fire’s light every night when it burned low on the hearth.”
“I’ve seen you, Tony,” she admitted. “And not in the firelight!” But she refused, even though tickled and coerced, to say where. For this was no night to be talking about other brides, or tears she’d shed—this was a joyous night for them alone.
“We can be married on shipboard,” he suggested.
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “I had already thought of that.”
“But we won’t have Warwood, you know. It will be confiscated by the Crown.”
“I’ve arranged for that too. You’ve deeded it to Clifford—you’ve only to sign it to make it so. And he’s already signed the deed back to you.”
Captain Warburton laughed, a contented laugh, deep in his throat. She was a managing woman, his Margaret—but such a woman!
And under the thrall of love, he took her again.
The stars outside did not shine more brightly than the glow of the lovers inside the sturdy walls of Axeleigh.
The Bloody Assizes,
Taunton, Somerset,
August 1685
Chapter 36
At Taunton the Bloody Assizes were in full swing in the ancient castle built by William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester. The great hall had been commandeered for the occasion as being large enough and suitably impressive. But, for the moment, the mind of George Jeffreys, Baron of Wem, who had brought to this West Country market town his legal expertise and his infamous reputation as a “hanging judge,” was not on either the town or the frightened people it was his duty to try—and then to hang. For Judge Jeffreys was under no illusions: his royal master, James II, wanted the West Country punished, and punished bloodily. Especially here in Taunton where the Duke of Monmouth had dared to assume the title of “king” last June 20.
He’d made inquiries on his arrival here yesterday—surreptitious inquiries for none were to know that he’d known a West Country woman once. Virginia Archer had been a lightskirt and their single evening together had been brief and pulsing. He’d left under startling circumstances best forgotten and never heard from her again, of course, but the silken brush of her hip against his thigh had left a memory that was never quite erased and he’d wondered countless times what had become of her.
Now he inclined his handsomely periwigged head as the man he’d sent to make the inquiries whispered into his ear. Dead these many years, he was told. Survived by her husband, the Squire of Axeleigh, and by a daughter—age, oh, sixteen, seventeen.
Judge Jeffreys frowned down his long nose. A daughter born seventeen years ago? That could make the child his. For a moment it frightened him, the thought that he might have sired one of these sulky rebels who sat before him waiting to be judged. Then his harsh nature reasserted itself. If she were brought before him, he’d give her an even shorter shrift than the others! But of course there were few women among the accused who stood silently before him and at the moment none of the crucial age.
He heard a case and disposed of two unfortunates—sentencing them both to the rope, and then his head came up almost in disbelief.
Pamela Archer! Had he heard aright? Could the witness just now being sworn be Virginia Archer’s daughter?
Airily Pamela took the oath. She would settle up with God later—today there was Tom to be saved.
“Who are you?” demanded Judge Jeffreys, interrupting the prosecutor.
“I am Pamela Archer, Yo
ur Honor.”
“No, I do not mean that. Who is your father?”
For a moment fear gathered in Pamela’s heart, fear that her father might be dragged into this. “He is Clifford Archer, sir.”
“The Squire of Axeleigh?”
She nodded, amazed that this notorious “hanging judge” could have heard of her father.
Judge Jeffreys paused and moistened his lips. He had a cruel mouth, she thought, and his snake-bright eyes were fixed on her with a malevolence that made her squirm.
“How old are you?” he demanded.
“Seventeen,” flashed Pamela, for was she not going on seventeen? And would not every year of age carry more weight with this fierce periwigged fellow on the bench?
Jeffreys, who had been unconsciously straining forward, sank back with a sigh. Seventeen... she could be his, then. He remembered the lightskirt well, and this girl, though she did not have Virginia’s coloring, had her flavor, the same winsome smile, the same regular features, the same reckless toss of the head, the same—charm that had won him then.
Was she perhaps his daughter? he speculated. He looked on her with morbid interest, there in her scarlet riding habit with her cheeks flushed and her crystal blue eyes shining—perhaps with guile. In the back of his glance glowed a dull hatred, for he’d have naught to do, he told himself violently, with any of this treacherous scum who had dared to challenge his royal master.
But what she had to say was to set him back on his heels.
“I have ridden all this way to tell you how Tom Thornton came by his wounds—they were not wounds gained at Sedgemoor.”
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