Amanda Scott (47 page)

“I will restrain myself then,” he said quietly, holding her closer. “The sky is clearing, at least, so we won’t be drenched again. Are you warm enough?”

She nodded, snuggling more comfortably against him. Then, she gave an accurate but concise description of the day’s events. He interrupted twice, once to demand if his ears had deceived him when she said Andrew had intended to marry Mrs. Flowers, and the second time to describe in brief but graphic terms just what he meant to do to the boy for stirring up so much riot and rumpus.

“I hope you will do no such thing,” Anne said. “In fact, I think the best thing would be to send him to school. Surely you must know people who would help get him into Eton or Harrow.”

“Sweetheart, any school in the land would welcome the Duke of Upminster with open arms, but I should be flying in the face of tradition to send him away to school. Dukes of Upminster—”

“—are educated at home,” Anne finished for him in weary tones. “I have heard that, sir, and indeed, I have heard about tradition until I am sick to death of it. In my opinion, persons dredge up tradition as the best excuse when they wish to avoid doing things differently. In any event, tradition has proved unequal to the task of preparing Andrew for the great position he will someday hold. As his guardian, you owe it to him to find a more efficient method. I know I am being odiously impertinent—”

“No, sweetheart, you are just odiously right.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I told you once that you were wiser than I when it came to the children, but I have discounted your wisest advice. I hope I have learned my lesson. Had I listened to you from the outset, I might have seen much sooner what sort of villain Bagshaw was.”

“Not necessarily,” Anne said. “He was very careful, I think. I’ve a strong notion he enlisted the aid of at least some of the menservants, and terrorized the maidservants, so it was nearly impossible to understand what was going on until I began to be such a nuisance to him. Indeed, until I undermined his authority, particularly with Burdekin—”

“Undermined?”

“Oh, yes, he said as much, himself. I prevented her niece being badly burned, you see, and she grew much kinder after that and stopped citing tradition to me whenever I desired an alteration in the way things were done. Unfortunately, Bagshaw saw any action of mine as interference in his realm and decided I required punishment for my presumption. He has done the same before, so of course, I believed he meant every word.”

“When has he done the same before?”

She told him about Molly Carver, and had begun to explain about the duchess’s note, and the reason for her suicide, when she suddenly thought of something else. “The wager, Michael! Could the duchess have been the woman involved, the one Sir Jacob seduced? Could that be why mention of the wager amused Bagshaw so? If Edmund would have given her to his butler—”

“No, sweetheart, the woman involved in the wager is the same whose husband fought the duel with Edmund, and killed him. I can scarcely go around Derbyshire advertising such facts, however; and that, plus the fact that I’m having enough trouble untangling the mess Edmund made of the Upminster affairs without letting it be known that such a huge demand exists against the estate, is why I generally chose not to speak of the wager.”

They rode silently for the short time remaining until the Priory bridge loomed ahead of them, when Michael said abruptly, “When I think that devil had you in his clutches for as much as an hour, sweetheart, it makes me wild. Thank God, I encountered the others in time to get back here and find you.”

Anne chuckled. “You sound as if you think you rescued me. I would like to point out not only that you did nothing of the kind but that you warned me not long ago never to expect you to rescue me from harm.”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Michael snapped.

“But you did,” she reminded him. “You said I should never look for such favors from you since you are the sort who requires damsels to rescue themselves from the dragons who assault them.”

He drew in his mount so sharply—right in the center of the arched bridge—that the animal whinnied in protest. Taking Anne by the shoulders to make her look at him, he said, “Listen to me, and believe me when I say that I would have moved heaven and earth to find you if you
had
run away from me.”

“Heaven and earth?”

“That’s what I said, and before you quiz me further, I just remembered something I meant to ask you earlier. We got talking about Edmund’s partner in the
Folly,
and it went out of my head. Explain why, if you were writing to your brother in that journal of yours, you expressed yourself in such loving sentiments.”

“It is the oddest thing,” she said softly, “but of late I keep forgetting that it is James to whom I write. Indeed, though I was so sleepy, I do not recall doing it, Bagshaw told me that the entry I began tonight was addressed to you. He intended to tell you that although he had been mistaken about my first flight, I had got upset when I learned that you had so distrusted me, and ran away then in earnest. He was going to use my last journal entry to prove it, and I have no doubt, Michael, that it, too, was couched in loving terms.”

“Was it, sweetheart?” His voice was low in his throat, the purring voice, and she wondered how she could ever have mistaken that lovely warm sound for the fiendish rasp that Fiona Flowers had described.

“Michael, by Jove, that you, lad? We’ve been on tenterhooks ever since we returned and found you were still amongst the missing, and then we saw the flames. What the devil’s burning?”

“The
Folly,”
Michael said, gathering his reins and urging his horse forward to meet Lord Ashby and the two men with him. “I’m sorry you were put into a fidget, sir, but I’ve got her safe now, and I daresay the sooner we get up to the house, the better she will like it. She’s a bit damp around the edges, you see.”

“Is she, by Jove? What happened, Anne? Where have you seen? Do you know Michael thought you had run away from him? We soon put him right on that score, I can tell you, but I don’t understand why you should have left the Priory, damme if I do. I thought you were actually looking forward to speaking with Michael. And what’s more, I can tell you that Andrew thought the same thing, and he tells us that he dined with you, too, so what Bagshaw can have been thinking to have told Michael you’d gone away earlier, I can’t think. Fellow must be queer in his attic!”

Feeling unable to respond to his pelting comments and questions, Anne leaned more heavily against her husband’s broad chest, and gratefully heard him recommend that they return to the house before indulging in lengthy explanations. But if she hoped for time to recover her energy before she faced the inquisition, she soon learned her error, for no sooner did they walk into the front hall than the others burst forth from the library.

“There they are,” Andrew exclaimed. “I told you Uncle Michael would find her all right and tight!”

“I knew he would,” Sylvia said, running from behind her brother to fling herself at them.

“Well, of course, he did,” Lady Hermione said, looking on in satisfaction.

“And about time, too,” Cressbrook said in an irritated voice. “Perhaps now, Hermione, you will have the goodness to accompany me home where you belong. Look at that clock, will you? You ought to have been home hours ago! I never knew such goings-on in all my days. Damme, when I was younger, women behaved a deal more circumspectly, that I can tell you.”

“Poppycock,” she said. “Why, in our younger days, women were forever doing things that would be frowned upon now. Come now, Wilfred, you must own that I’m right, for our own mother—”

“That will do, Hermione,” her brother said gruffly.

Only too well aware that her sole garment was the cloak she clutched around her, Anne looked appealingly at her husband, who smiled at her and said firmly to the others, “Go back into the library, all of you. I am going to take Anne upstairs, and then I promise I will come back down to explain it all to you.”

When the others took vocal exception to Anne’s leaving without answering their questions, she gathered her dignity as well as she could under the circumstances, and said, “If you will all just give me a few moments to make myself presentable, I will come back, too. Oh, Mrs. Burdekin, how glad I am to see you!”

“And I, to see you, my lady. I do not know where Elbert or Bagshaw are, but what with all the kick-up there’s been tonight, I thought I should hold myself in readiness in the event that you wished for some refreshment.”

“Bagshaw will not be back, I’m afraid,” Anne said.

“Well, that Elbert’s gone, too, ma’am, but Jane will help me serve, and John.”

“Excellent,” Anne said, “and perhaps—”

“Enough,” Michael said firmly. “Mrs. Burdekin knows what to do, my dear. You are going to bed.”

“If you think you are going to pack me away in cotton wool while you and the others determine the truth of all this, you are very much mistaken, sir.”

“Am I, indeed?” His eyes were twinkling. “You are becoming very imperious in your habits, sweetheart. Whatever happened to my Lady Serenity?”

“She learned the error of her ways,” Anne said with a look challenging him to contradict her.

Michael nodded to the others, and said with laughter in his voice, “You heard my lady, everyone. Go back into the library and possess your souls in patience until we return. I promise we will not keep you kicking your heels long.”

Anne sighed, and leaned back against him again, content in having added yet one more small victory to a most successful day.

W
HEN MICHAEL AND ANNE
reached her bedchamber, she realized at once that he had formed the intention of keeping her there by one devious means or another. To thwart that objective, she rang at once for Maisie, who arrived with such speed that it was obvious she had been awaiting the summons.

“Oh, my dear Miss Anne,” she exclaimed as she hurried into the room, “Such an uproar as there has been, and the whole house awake, I’m sure! Where on earth have you been? It is long after midnight, you know, and I prepared you for bed myself, hours and hours ago.”

“Well, it is no use to fuss at me,” Anne said, “for I am not going to bed yet, in any case, so please just find me a gown I can put on at once without a lot of bother.”

“Not going to bed!” Maisie looked instantly at Lord Michael. “If it please you, sir, she cannot know what she is saying, for I can see just by looking at her that she’s had a hard time of it, and how she can expect me to make her presentable with her hair all in a wet tangle like that, and needing to be dried proper before a good fire, is more than I can say. Surely, she ought to be popped into bed as soon as may be.”

Anne said with an edge to her voice, “You heard me, Maisie. If you don’t fetch a gown for me at once, I will find one myself. I am quite capable of determining what I ought to do.”

Maisie folded her lips together with the air of one who has encountered such recalcitrance before, and continued to look at Lord Michael. He smiled understandingly at her but said, “Pray, do not look to me to interfere with your mistress, Maisie. She has taken a firm stand, and we must all of us leap to her bidding. Must I leave the room and stay outside, kicking my heels, whilst you are made presentable, Lady Imperious?”

The meekness of his tone did not fool Anne for a moment, but as if she took him at his word, she looked right at him and said, “If you will not play the fool, sir, you may remain, for dressing will not take me above ten minutes. Maisie, you will have to make do for the moment with combing out the worst tangles and plaiting my hair. I have no wish to keep everyone waiting whilst we dry it.” As she talked, she reached to unfasten the cloak she wore, and when she let it fall to the floor, Maisie gasped.

“By all that’s holy, Miss Anne, you’ve not got a stitch on! What became of your nightdress, may I ask?”

“I … I lost it,” Anne said, avoiding Michael’s eye. Letting Maisie help her into a shift, she said, “The gray wool, Maisie. It’s high to the throat and warm, and that is what I care most about at the moment.”

“I’ll be bound you do, for you’re beginning to shiver,” Maisie said, clicking her tongue, “but what happened to you?”

“I was abducted by Bagshaw, or some of his henchmen.”

“Bagshaw? Mercy me!”

“Yes, Bagshaw. I don’t know who the others were, but Mrs. Burdekin said Elbert is also amongst the missing, so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he was one of them.”

“Bagshaw? Elbert?” Maisie clasped a hand to her bosom and stared in shock. “Whatever next?”

Michael said grimly, “I had hoped her mention of Elbert had escaped you, for I did not want to increase your alarms by discussing the likelihood of his involvement until you were somewhat recovered from your ordeal.”

“Well, sir, if you mean to continue with such past habits, I warn you, we shall fall out again, because I’ve had a surfeit of being protected and treated as if I had no brain whatsoever. If you had been more forthcoming about your problems earlier, as I requested, I might have been more on my guard, you know, and between us, we should have known twice as much as each one knew alone. And, too, you ought to have talked things over more with Lord Ashby, because I daresay he would have soon led you into asking questions at the mine that would much sooner have uncovered the mischief there. Moreover—”

“Enough,” Michael said in quite his old way. “I understand you, I think, but this is neither the time nor the place for this discussion. The others are waiting for us.”

Looking from Maisie’s shocked face to Michael’s stern one, Anne realized she had overstepped the mark by going on as she had in her tirewoman’s presence. Leaving her to tidy up the room, with orders to go to bed as soon as she had finished, Anne walked silently with Michael until they were well away from their own rooms before she said ruefully, “I must apologize, sir. I ought not to have spoken to you as I did just then.”

“Possibly not,” he said, turning his head to smile at her with more warmth than she had expected to see just then, “but I have a strong notion that I deserved to hear every word.”