Almost a Princess (6 page)

He couldn’t count the number of times he’d stood in this spot, as a boy, and watched the comings and goings of the Deveres when he was supposed to be tending the poorhouse’s vegetable patch, or collecting fallen branches for kindling for the fires. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d been soundly thrashed and sent to bed without his supper because he’d neglected his work. No punishment was severe enough, though, to keep him away from the gap in the trees and his fascination with the Deveres.

Lord Caspar was obviously the apple of his father’s eye. In the school holidays, there would be boating parties with his friends—all the sons of wealthy men—and picnics with pigs roasting on spits, and horse riding and drives with his father in his curricle. There were two younger children, a girl and a boy, but Piers was not interested in them. Lord Caspar was the favored one, his father’s pride and joy, and that’s what counted.

The Thames was more than a river. It was an insurmountable barrier dividing two worlds, the blessed world of the privileged, and the unspeakable world of the poorhouse.

In the poorhouse, the older children were separated from their parents and rarely saw them. His mother had died there, and before she was cold, she’d been taken away for a pauper’s burial. His world was cold, dark, and dirty, with brutal punishments meted out for minor infractions of the rules. In his world, there were no tantalizing smells of roasted pigs turning on spits. There was black bread and soup, and porridge to fill their empty bellies.

Envy was too mild a word to describe what he felt. He hated the Deveres more than he hated anything.

He would curl up at night in his cold bed and pretend he had changed places with Lord Caspar. The Duke of Romsey was his father and he, Gideon, was the favorite son. He would have an army of servants at his beck and call and do whatever he pleased. But that wasn’t his favorite part of the fantasy. He saw Lord Caspar reduced to rags, as he was, and going to bed cold and hungry. He saw the bigger boys coming for him, as they always did with a new boy, and showing him how powerless he really was. There were no real friends in the poorhouse. There were gangs of boys who looked out for their own, and weaklings went to the wall. He was quite sure that Lord Caspar wouldn’t last the day, but would be reduced to a sniveling coward taking orders from everyone.

He’d left the poorhouse when he was twelve to go into service, but he hated it and eventually became a clerk. He’d never forgotten Lord Caspar, never stopped hating him. He might have let it go at that if their paths had not crossed again in Spain.

He’d been a prince among men then, a legend. Everyone looked up to him, or they feared him. He’d had a hundred men at his command, and even the partisans kept their distance. He could almost hear the guns, taste the gunpowder, smell the blood. In his war, there were no rules, except the ones he made.

And Lord Caspar had humiliated him.

He felt the rush of blood, just like the old days, when he contemplated how he would crush a hated adversary. Let him wait, let him wonder . . .

At the end, he wanted to look into the earl’s eyes. He wanted to tell him who he was and how he’d escaped from the carnage in the monastery, and how he’d prospered—not bad for a despised poorhouse boy who could rise no higher than a shipping clerk, eking out a living in London’s docks.

Lord Caspar had never had to strive for anything. Everything had been handed to him on a platter. Even his title was there for the asking. Lord Caspar had finally condescended to accept the courtesy title of the Earl of Castleton when he turned thirty. It could have been his long before if he’d wanted it. But what was a title to a man who already had everything?

He wondered what Castleton would think if he could see him now, if he could know how far he’d come since St. Michel. After escaping from the monastery, he’d spent two years in hiding, biding his time until he could collect the gold he’d hidden without fear of reprisal. He’d wanted everyone to think he was dead and they had. Then, when they’d retrieved the gold, he and Joseph had set sail for England where they’d established new identities.

This is where it would end, he thought fiercely, where it had all begun. Everything was falling into place. He had only to wait for the appointed hour.

In the interim, he would amuse himself by playing with the earl.

When he walked back to the Barracks, he was thinking of Mrs. Standhurst and Jane Mayberry.

Chapter 6

Jane stood on the front porch of her house, enveloped in a man’s greatcoat, with a wool cap pulled down to her eyes, staring intently at the stand of trees that lined the road to Highgate. She was watching for Ben, her stableboy, who had taken the buggy into Highgate to pick up Miss Drake. As each minute passed, her uneasiness grew. They should have been here by now. It would be dark soon, and now it had started to snow in earnest.

With Lance at her heels, she started toward the stable, meaning to saddle Daisy for the ride to the village, when her eye was caught by something on the road. It wasn’t her buggy but a lone rider.

When the rider turned into her drive, her pulse began to race. Perhaps he’d lost his way, she thought, and wanted directions. Perhaps, but she had good reason to be cautious.

On that thought, she turned herself around, entered the house, and returned a moment or two later with an ancient blunderbuss cradled in her arms. The blunderbuss was used mainly for scaring off weasels and foxes that tried to rob her hen house, but it had also come in handy a time or two when tinkers and gypsies, thinking that a woman on her own was easy prey, had to be chased off. It wasn’t the only weapon Jane kept for her protection. In the dresser drawer in her bedchamber, there was a pistol, ready and primed, in case of housebreakers, and a smaller pistol that she kept in her reticule.

A housebreaker, to Jane, was anyone who entered her house uninvited.

With her blunderbuss at the ready and her dog at her heels, she advanced upon the rider. His garments were covered in a film of snow and ice, and it registered with Jane that he’d been riding for some time.

“Who are you?” she shouted above the wind, “and what do you want?”

“Castleton,” he replied, not bothering to hide his irritation.

It had taken Case three days to track her down, three days of being fobbed off by her friends’ evasions and downright lies before he’d twigged to what they were doing. No one wanted him to find Jane Mayberry, and he was determined to find out why.

“It is Miss Mayberry, I presume?” he said in the same clipped tone.

In spite of the question and her outlandish appearance, he knew it was she. He’d recognized her voice. Even when it was raised it held a pleasant trace of huskiness. But Case was in no mood to be pleased. He hadn’t had his dinner; he hadn’t dressed for the weather; and if she didn’t put that blunderbuss down, he would forcibly take it away from her.

There was a moment when she couldn’t believe what her brain was telling her, then she gasped out, “What are
you
doing here?”

Case smiled grimly. “At the moment, I’d be happy just to get in out of the storm and find shelter for my horse.”

She watched him dismount in a daze. The last person she’d expected to encounter on her own doorstep was Lord Castleton.

On that thought, her blunderbuss came up, but when Lance whined, she pointed it to the ground again.

“Thank you, Lance,” said Case, “for that vote of confidence.” Then less pleasantly, “Miss Mayberry, you can put that blunderbuss away. I’m really quite harmless.”

“Have you lost your way?” There were other houses in the area, grand houses, and she could only hope that he’d been on his way to one of those when he was caught in the storm.

He straightened. “Certainly not! I’m here on official business. There are some questions I want to put to you.”

“Questions? About what?”

He didn’t want to go into long explanations out in the freezing cold, so he said simply, “About the opera last Wednesday night.”

It took a moment for his words to register, then she said incredulously, “You came all the way out here, in the middle of a blizzard, just to talk to me about the opera?”

That’s how it had started out. He’d interviewed everyone who might have been a witness to the attack on Harper—Freddie Latham and Sally, the night watch, ushers—only Miss Mayberry was unavailable and that made him suspicious.

“It wasn’t snowing in town. Look, could we discuss this inside, before we all turn into ice sculptures?”

“How did you know where to find me?”

“I never reveal my sources.”

“Freddie!” she said bitterly. “It could only have been Freddie!”

“I don’t see what difference it makes. So you live near the village of Highgate, in a house called Hillcrest. Why the secrecy? What are you hiding, Miss Mayberry?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I am not hiding anything. I’m a spinster. I live alone. I’m careful who I give my direction to, that’s all. My friends know how I feel and respect my wishes.”

It was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He couldn’t have arrived at a worse time. She wanted to drive him off, tell him that he should have had more sense than to venture beyond Highgate in a snowstorm, but that was only her frustration goading her. Common decency demanded that she offer hospitality to any traveler who was caught in a storm.

From the porch, a voice said, “Is everything all right, Jane? Has something happened to Ben?”

The speaker was Jane’s housekeeper, and before that, housekeeper to Jane’s father when they lived in Scotland. Mrs. Trent was in her fifties, small and thin, with iron gray hair and a severe expression that was made more severe by anxiety.

Jane turned with a reassuring smile. “Everything is fine,” she said. “This gentleman got caught in the snowstorm, that’s all. Go back in the house, Mrs. Trent, and put on the kettle. I’ll send our visitor in as soon as we see to his horse.”

Case said graciously, “How do you do, Mrs. Trent. I’m Castleton by the way.”

Mrs. Trent looked at Case and slowly nodded. “I read about you in the papers,” then to Jane, “What about Ben?”

“I’m going after him just as soon as I saddle Daisy.”

When Mrs. Trent went into the house, Case said, “Who is Ben?”

Jane looked past him toward the road. “My stableboy. Mrs. Trent’s grandson. He went into Highgate to fetch my friend. They were to meet at the Gatehouse Inn.”

“Why are you worried about him?”

“He’s late home, that’s all.” She looked at him anxiously. “When you came through Highgate, you didn’t see a buggy on the road or outside the Gatehouse Inn? Or anything unusual, anything at all?”

“No.”

She looked past him again, scanning the road.

“Miss Mayberry,” he said.

“What?” she stared at him blankly for a moment, then said quickly, “I’m sorry. I’ll show you where to stable your horse.”

As she struck out toward the stable, a large wooden edifice that, to Case’s eye, must have once served as a barn, he followed. “You’re not thinking of going after him in this kind of weather?” he said, but the wind plucked the words from his mouth, so he held his peace until they entered the barn.

“I don’t understand your urgency. Obviously, Ben has the good sense to stay where he is warm and dry.”

Jane set her blunderbuss on a bench. “What’s all this about the opera?”

Now was not the time to ask her questions. She was too keyed up to pay attention. “It can wait,” he said.

“Oh.” She waved a hand, encompassing the stable in general. “Help yourself to whatever you need. I’ve got to go. He’s only a boy. Anything could have happened to him.”

One part of Case’s brain registered that the stable was spotless, with a fenced off area for animals at one end and a space at the other for a buggy and tackle. Another part registered that something was seriously wrong here.

“Miss Mayberry,” he began, then more forcefully when she turned away to haul a saddle from a post, “Jane!” That got her attention. “I’ll go,” he said quietly. “I’ll find him and bring him home.”

She looked at him searchingly. “Why would you do that?”

Her capacity to irritate him was boundless. “Because I want to!”

A smile flashed, then was quickly gone. She shook her head. “Ben doesn’t trust strangers, and then there’s my friend. Emily is very timid.” She stopped, realizing that her explanation was unconvincing. She drew in a breath, then said, “I’m not going to wait here not knowing what’s happened to them. If you want to come with me, I can’t stop you. You always do what you want anyway.”

“Thank you!”

He wrestled the saddle from her and strode to the pen where a piebald pony was eyeing him warily. Jane was right behind him.

“Daisy won’t allow anyone to handle her but me,” she said.

Of course, Daisy proved her wrong. A few soft-spoken words, a touch here, a caress there, and Daisy was simpering like a starry-eyed debutante.

When he had saddled the mare and led her out of the pen, he said, “You were saying?”

She took exception to his smirk. “So it’s true what they say about you,” she said. “You have a way with females.”

He stopped, turned slowly, and his gray, gray eyes locked with hers. “If that’s true,” he said, “then why are you always fighting me?”

A gust of wind rattled the window panes; one of the horses whinnied; Lance sat back on his haunches. Jane forgot to breathe. She could hardly sustain the intensity of his gaze.

It took every ounce of will to drag her eyes from his. She said as coolly as she could manage, “I don’t take kindly to people who order me about.”

“Is that what it is? I wonder . . .”

When his hand reached for her, she took a quick step back. “Time is wasting,” she said crossly. “Come with me or stay. It’s all the same to me.”

He wasn’t done with her yet. When they were outside, he bent down and cupped his hands to hoist her into the saddle. It was only a step or two to the mounting block, as he must have known. She looked at him, then quickly looked away. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt so self-conscious. Dressed as she was, he must think she looked a fright.

What did it matter what he thought?

Once mounted, she called for Lance and set off at a canter. Not once did she look back to see if Case was following her.

It would have surprised her to know what he was thinking. He wasn’t thinking about her appearance. He was thinking that this maddening woman was in sore need of protection, whether she knew it or not, and since no other likely candidate was in the vicinity, the job fell to him.

Mounting up, he rode after her.

The two-mile ride to the village turned into an interminable test of endurance as dusk thickened and the temperature dropped. Though it had stopped snowing, a thick blanket of snow covered the road and hedgerows, making it difficult to get one’s bearings. If it had not been for Lance, Case would have insisted that they turn back. But the dog ran back and forth, herding them as a sheepdog would, keeping them from straying into the ditch.

There was no opportunity to talk, but Case didn’t mind. Any conversation he’d had with Jane Mayberry always ended in a stalemate. His curiosity, however, was as keen as ever. Her anxiety for the boy and her friend seemed out of proportion, and he wanted to know why.

When the lights of Highgate appeared ahead of them, they quickened their pace. Not long after, they entered the village’s main thoroughfare. The Gatehouse Inn was the first hostelry they came to. So far, Case had been content to let Jane take the lead, but now, he touched his heels to his mount’s flanks and passed her as they cantered through the archway into the stable yard.

He dismounted first, and after throwing the reins to a stableboy, went to assist Jane. He expected an argument, but she slipped from the saddle and into his arms without murmur. She was shivering; her face was pale and pinched with cold.

“I’m an idiot for allowing you to come here,” he said roughly.

Stripping off his coat, he draped it around her shoulders. Still no response from her. She was glancing this way and that around the stable yard. It was almost deserted.

Her eyes, uncertain and full of anxiety, met his. “The buggy isn’t here.”

“Perhaps Ben has gone off to visit a friend. There could be any number of reasons why he’s not here. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

“Ben wouldn’t do that. And he would have come here first, not necessarily to the stable yard, but to the inn. He would have waited for Emily outside the front doors. Somebody must have seen him.”

She questioned the stableboy, but he was no help. He knew Ben, but said he hadn’t seen him since he last came into town for supplies, and that was several days ago.

They left the horses in the boy’s care, told Lance to stay, then entered the inn. “You seem more worried about Ben than you do about your friend,” said Case as he held the door for Jane.

“Emily, that is, Miss Drake, may have changed her mind. Perhaps she could not get away. I had my doubts—”

Suddenly, she stopped, as though she’d said too much.

“You had your doubts?” he prompted. Her friend’s name sounded familiar. Then he had it. She was the young woman he’d seen her talking to at the opera. Freddie had given him the girl’s name

“I wasn’t sure that she would come. She said it might be difficult to get away.”

Yes,
he thought,
but there’s more to it than that,
and was surprised to find that he was disappointed because she would not confide in him.

Though there were no coaches in the stable yard, the inn’s taproom was doing a brisk business. They could hear sounds of merriment every time the door swung open to admit another customer.

“Locals,” the landlord answered to Case’s question. “It’s always like this on a Saturday night.” His eyes narrowed on Jane, studying her critically.

That look brought Jane’s scattered thoughts into focus again. She slipped out of Case’s coat, handed it to him, and squared her shoulders.

“I sent my servant here to meet my friend, Miss Drake, Miss Emily Drake,” she said. “Perhaps you saw him? He’s only a boy. His name is Ben. Or perhaps you saw my friend?”

“I didn’t see any boy.”

“But you saw my friend?” Jane asked quickly.

“Who wants to know?” The landlord’s tone was almost insulting.

Jane stiffened. “Have you seen Miss Drake or not?” Case propped one elbow against the counter. “I’d advise you to answer the lady’s question. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she has a ferocious temper.”

The landlord, a big, corpulent fellow with a florid face, almost smiled. “Wait here,” he said. “There’s someone as wants to speak to anyone who is asking for Miss Drake.”