Barbara Metzger (4 page)

St. Cloud tossed back another cup of punch and called Foley out of the taproom. At least he did not have to travel in state, cooped in a stuffy coach for endless hours. His bags and valet had gone on ahead yesterday, so he could have the pleasure of tooling the curricle and his priceless cattle through the cold, barren, winter-wrapped countryside. The dreary scenery matched his mood, and Foley knew better than to complain about the speed again, until the chestnuts showed off their high spirits by nearly wrapping the curricle around a signpost.

“I thought you meant the beasts to make it through the next stages an’ on to the Priory without a change,” Foley shouted over the wind. “They’ll be blown way ’fore that, at this rate.”

“I think the horses have more heart than you do, old man,” St. Cloud replied. “They’ll do. I intend to slow down before long to give them a rest anyway, but you want to get to a warm bed tonight, don’t you?”

“Aye, and I’m thinkin’ there’ll be some eggnog and spice cake waiting. So I’d as lief get there in one piece, if it’s all the same to you, my lord.”

Eggnog and spice cake and Christmas carolers. Marriageable women, skittish women, swooning women. Ghosts and ghouls and noises in the night. “Bloody hell.”

The expletive may have been for Foley’s impudence, or it may have been for St. Cloud’s black thoughts, or perhaps for the tree fallen across the roadway. Foley did not know. He got down to assess the situation as soon as the chestnuts came to a halt, and St. Cloud reached into his greatcoat pocket. Too late. Two men rode out of the screening bushes, and one of them already held his pistol on the defenseless groom.

“Stand and deliver.”

“
B
loody hell.”

“Nothing to get riled over, Yer Highness,” the man with the gun called out from Foley’s side. He was big and broad and had a scarf pulled up over his mouth and a slouch hat pulled down low over his eyes. “Just raise yer hands up slowlike, and everything will be aces.”

The other highwayman had dismounted and was holding the chestnuts’ bridles. He was also bundled past recognition, but he was smaller, slighter, and as nervous as the horses he was trying to calm. He did not have a weapon in sight, so St. Cloud weighed the odds.

“None of that, Yer Highness,” the first man said, catching the earl’s tentative movement. He used the butt end of his pistol on Foley’s head, then turned the barrel on St. Cloud.

The other robber jumped. “What’d you go and do that for, Charlie? You never said nothing about—”

“Shut your mouth, boy. Do you want to make him an introduction? Can’t you see the toff is a real out-and-outer? He was going to go for the gun sooner or later, and much help you’d ’a’ been. I couldn’t keep both of ’em covered, now, could I?”

“But you shouldn’t’ve hit him so hard. What if he’s dead?”

“If he is dead, Charlie,” the earl said in a voice that was like cold steel, “your life is not worth a ha’penny.”

“Fine words for a gent what’s got his arms up in the air,” Charlie blustered, but he dismounted and nudged Foley with his toe until the little man groaned. “There, now can we finish this argle-bargle and get to business? You toss the pistol out first, real slow so I don’t get twitch-fingered. And remember, I ain’t tenderhearted like my green friend here.”

St. Cloud’s wallet was next, then his gold fob, quizzing glass, silver flask, and emerald stickpin.

“And the ring, too, Yer Highness,” Charlie said, searching Foley’s pockets for the groom’s purse but never taking his eyes, or the gun, off the earl.

“It’s a signet ring with my family crest on it. No fence would give a brass farthing for the thing, for they could never resell it; if you’re ever found with it, it’s your death warrant for sure.”

“Let it be, Charlie,” the youngster begged. “We have enough.”

“Chicken gizzard,” Charlie grumbled, leading his horse closer to the curricle to pick up the booty from where St. Cloud had thrown it to the ground. A quick shake of the earl’s leather purse had him agreeing and getting back on his horse. “Reckon it’s a good day’s work, and it is the season for givin’, ain’t it? Stand back, boy.”

The youth let go of the horses, but before St. Cloud could lower his hands and find the ribbons, Charlie fired his pistol right over the chestnuts’ backs. “Merry Christmas, Yer Highness,” he shouted after the rocketing curricle.

 

The thieves were long gone by the time St. Cloud could catch up the reins and slow the frenzied animals, then turn them back to find Foley. The groom was limping toward him along the verge, holding a none-too-clean kerchief to a gash on the side of his head. St. Cloud jumped down and hurried to him, leaving the chestnuts standing with their heads lowered. There was no fear of their spooking anymore this day.

“How bad does it hurt, Foley?” he asked, pulling off his own neck cloth to make a bandage. “Can you hold on to the next inn or should I come back for you with a wagon?”

“Don’t fatch so, m’lord. I’ll do. ’Tain’t my head what’s botherin’ me as much as my pride anyways. The chestnuts could’ve been hurt in that panic run. And you, too,” he added as an afterthought, seeing the twitch in the earl’s lips. “To think I was taken in by that old trick like a regular Johnny Raw, why, I’m slumguzzled for sure.”

St. Cloud helped the older man back up to the curricle, wishing he had his flask, at least. “Whatever that is, don’t blame yourself. I shouldn’t have been woolgathering either, but who would have thought there’d be bridle culls on this side road in Berkshire?”

“Amateurs, they was, you could tell.”

“Yes, I was able to convince them to leave my ring, when any flat knows the thing can be melted down for the gold.”

The groom spit through his teeth in disgust. “An’ only one gun between them.”

“It was enough,” the earl answered, trying to keep the chestnuts to the least bumpy portion of the road. “And now they have mine.” He was trying to recall how soon they could expect to come upon the next inn. He’d lost track of their position in the headlong rush and in truth hadn’t been paying proper attention before then. There had to be something closer ahead than the Rose and the Crown was behind, even a hedge tavern. He didn’t like Foley’s color.

The groom was barely conscious when St. Cloud turned into the yard of a place whose weathered signboard proclaimed it the Fighting Cock. Dilapidated, in need of paint, and with one sullen stable hand to come to their assistance, this inn was a far cry from the Rose and the Crown. There was a vast difference in their style of arrival, too. Now the horses were lathered and plodding, the curricle was scraped and spattered, the earl was disheveled, and his groom was bloody and sagging on the seat. And there was no pocketful of coins to grease the wheels of hospitality.

Their reception was commensurate with their appearance. The earl had to rub down the horses himself while waiting for the doctor. He had to leave his signet ring as pledge for the surgeon’s bill and the laudanum he prescribed as well as for Foley’s bed and baiting the horses. The innkeeper offered to throw in some stew as part of the bargain, but St. Cloud was too furious to eat. There were no horses to be hired, not on tick, and no room for the earl, not on Christmas Eve.

“You can’t mean to set out so late,” Foley complained from his rude palette behind the kitchen stairs. “And without me.” He tried to sit up.

The earl pushed him back down. “Stubble it, you old hen. I’m not your only chick. There are a few hours of daylight left, and we’re not that far from St. Cloud. Anyway, it looks to be a clear night ahead. I’ll send a carriage back for you at first light.”

“But the chestnuts, m’lord, they’re tired.”

“They’ve had their rest, and I’ll travel slowly. Besides, I wouldn’t leave my cattle in this cesspit.”

Foley grinned as the laudanum pushed his eyes closed. “Aye, but you’d leave me.”

St. Cloud tucked the thin blanket around his man. “No choice,” he told him. “Lady St. Cloud is frantic enough as is. If my bags arrive and I don’t appear as promised, she’ll send out the militia. Blast all females and families.”

“And footpads and fools.”

“And clutch-fisted innkeepers.”

 

St. Cloud was still furious an hour later. Two hours later, when he got down again to lighten the load as the chestnuts strained up yet another hill, he was furious, footsore, and hungry.

Some other traveler must have had trouble with the incline, he observed, spotting a small pile of books by the side of the road. The books were neatly stacked on a rock, off the damp ground and in full view, as though waiting to be picked up. St. Cloud did not think they were left for anyone in particular, for night was coming on, this country byway was practically deserted, and the books were neither wrapped nor tied. No, the chap must simply have grown weary of carrying the heavy volumes. The earl picked them up, thinking that if he came upon his fellow traveler, he could offer a ride and restore his belongings.

Oddly enough, the books were all religious in nature. Who would bother to carry a hymnal, a Bible, and a book of sermons, only to discard them on Christmas Eve? A heretic making a quiet statement? A distraught mourner abandoning his faith? With nothing better to occupy his mind but his own sour thoughts as he paced beside the horses, St. Cloud idly thumbed through the pages. More curious yet, the Bible was written in French, with no inscriptions or dedications. What, then? A spy shedding excess baggage as he fled the authorities? No, a fugitive would have hidden his trail, not left the evidence for the next passerby to find. Furthermore, the French pedestrian could not be a spy; St. Cloud had had his fill of adventure for the day.

The earl chided himself for his flights of fancy, using some poor émigré bastard to take his mind off his own empty pockets and empty stomach.

That poor émigré bastard had food. Midway up the next hill St. Cloud discovered an earthenware jug on an upturned log, with crumbs beneath it that the forest creatures hadn’t discovered yet. “Damn,” he cursed. The jug was empty, naturally. All that was left was a whiff of cider, just enough to make St. Cloud’s mouth water. He stowed the jug under the floorboard, next to the books.

So the Frenchman was too poor for wine, and he was not far ahead. He could read, bilingually, and he was countryman enough not to leave an empty bottle where it could injure a horse and rider. St. Cloud hoped to catch up with him soon and hoped the fellow had something more to eat, to trade for a ride.

The earl stayed afoot, looking for signs of his would-be companion. If he had been mounted or traveling faster, he would have missed the next bundle, a paper-wrapped parcel carefully placed in the crook of a tree.

The earl looked around then, feeling foolish. He shrugged his broad shoulders and untied the string holding the soft package closed. Then he felt even more foolish for the previous observations he’d considered astute. Either the Frenchman was going to have a cold and lonely holiday after abandoning his
chère amie
’s Christmas gift, or the Frenchman was a female. She would come just about to his chin, St. Cloud estimated, shaking out the white velvet, with a delicately rounded figure indeed, he knowledgeably extrapolated. The gown was not up to London standards, though an obviously expensive piece of goods, in good taste and the latest fashion.

Not even St. Cloud’s fertile imagination could figure a scenario for a young woman—the gown was white, after all—strewing her possessions about the countryside on Christmas Eve. If this was some local ritual, it was a dashed dangerous one, with shadows lengthening and highwaymen on the prowl.

He rewrapped the parcel and took it to the curricle, where the chestnuts were cropping grass. This time he climbed up and set the pair to a faster pace. The sooner he had some answers, the better—for his own peace of mind and for the woman’s sake.

Nothing prepared him for the answers he found around the next bend. Hell, the answers only led to more questions.

The woman trudging ahead was covered head to toe in a gray hooded cape. She carried a tapestry carpetbag over one elbow and an infant slung over her shoulder! What in the world would a mother and child be doing out alone miles from nowhere?

Then she turned to face the approaching carriage as he pulled rein alongside of her, and all rational thought fled from his mind. She was exquisite, with a soft, gentle look to her. Thick eyebrows were furrowed to mix a touch of uncertainty with innocence in her big brown eyes. The babe’s head was covered by a blue blanket, reminding him of nothing so much as a Raphael masterpiece. He expected a donkey to trot out of the bushes at any moment to complete the tableau.

Instead the woman noticed her dress parcel on the seat beside him and smiled. “Oh, you found my gown. I was hoping someone would, who could use it.” She was well-spoken and her voice was low, with no French accent or country inflection.

“Had you tired of it, then, ma’am?” He lifted the books from beneath his feet. “Or these?”

She smiled again, a quicksilver thing, like sun peeking from behind clouds. “You must know it was no such thing, sir. I simply had not realized when I set out how few wagons I would meet along the road, nor how heavy Pansy would seem after a few miles.”

“You have been out on the road by yourself for more than a few miles? I would say that is remarkably poor planning indeed,” he said in an angry tone. “Almost criminally cork-brained, in fact, considering, ah, Pansy.”

Juneclaire took a step back, wondering at this stranger’s hostility and wondering what else he thought she could have done about Pansy. As her heavy brows lowered in displeasure, she informed him, “We are not so far from Bramley now, sir, so I shall be on my way.”

Bramley was at least two hours away, by carriage, and in the opposite direction from the Priory. St. Cloud cursed under his breath at the idiocy of what he saw before him and at what he was about to do. There was no decision, really. Not even the most stone-hearted care-for-naught could leave a fragile, gently bred mother and her baby on the road alone, afoot, in the dark, on Christmas Eve. Not if he was any kind of gentleman. “I am headed to Bramley myself, ma’am. May I offer you a ride?”