Confessions of a Little Black Gown (28 page)

Then out of the shadows behind her came a sight that Larken’s heart leapt to see.

Tally. Alive.

But what the devil was she thinking?

For his impetuous, foolish minx held a shovel in her hands, most likely the same one he’d been hit with, and was making her way slowly and silently toward an unsuspecting Aurora.

Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, each one saying a prayer for her success, even as Aurora continued her mad rantings.

“Three hundred years. Three hundred years we’ve succeeded and we’ll continue for three hundred more,” she crowed. “See that we don’t.”

And just then, a sharp crack echoed through the stables. Tally looked down at the broken twig beneath her foot, and then up at Larken, a look of utter dismay and apology on her face.

Demmit
, he cursed,
when would she ever learn to keep a watch on her toes?

Aurora whirled around, a mad fury in her eyes and her pistol well aimed.

As the shot rang out, Larken’s heart tore in two.

T
ally looked down at her chest, fully expecting to see a crimson stain ruining her gown, but there was nothing there but black velvet.

When she looked up, she could see why. Aurora wavered on her feet. She no longer held Miss Browne, but still she stood, shock having widened her eyes into great, dark pools. The pistol trembled in her hand and she aimed it at Tally again, but before she could fire, she pitched face forward into the ground.

Miss Browne let out a piercing scream before she rushed to her mother’s arms.

In the driver’s seat, Felicity sat with a smoking pistol in her hand, a dangerous gleam in her eyes.

Hollindrake surged forward. “Are you harmed?”

Felicity shook her head. “Is she—”

“Dead?” Hollindrake glanced over his shoulder at the still form. “Yes.”

“She was going to…It was Tally’s life…I had no choice.”

“You saved your sister,” he said as he helped her down, held her close.

“I had the shot,” she said, taking a furtive glance at their fallen enemy. “I knew I was the only one.”

“And you did as you should have, Duchess,” Temple added. “Your father would be proud of you. Always said we should recruit you—”

“Not ever!” Hollindrake said with firm command. Then to his wife, “And don’t you ever consider it!”

Temple smiled as he glanced over at Aurora. “Remind me, Duchess, never to bring unwanted guests to one of your affairs.”

Felicity shook her head at her dear, old friend, and then let her husband draw her away from the scene.

Meanwhile, Tally had dropped her shovel and made her way to Larken, cupping his face in her hands, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered.

He nodded toward the shovel. “So was that to bury me with?”

She sat back and let out a disgruntled sigh. “I was coming to your rescue.”

“A most excellent job,” he said, as beside him, Temple was helping Dash to his feet. “But you could have gotten killed.”

“And you would have been killed if I hadn’t helped,” Tally scolded as she reached around to untie his bindings. “It seems to me, Lord Larken, you need someone sensible to keep an eye on you.”

“And who might that be?”

But before she could answer, Pippin came dashing into the stables, her gaze wild with fright. “I heard the shots—” she began, her shoulders sagging with relief at the sight of Dash, whole and unhurt. Behind her Gossett followed, and he caught her by the elbow and pulled her to a stop, holding her fast.

Once again, the entire assembly paused, for there was only one last piece of business left. Temple stepped forward and offered Larken a hand up. “Shall I?” he asked him.

Tally glanced at both men, momentarily confused by their somber expressions. Whatever was wrong?

Larken shook his head, and began to speak. “Thomas Dashwell, by the order of the King, I arrest you for having committed acts of piracy and”—Pippin’s anguished cry stilled Larken for only a moment, but he continued on, his voice unwavering—“murder, wherein you shall be hung—”

Tally stepped in front of him. “You cannot do this. He is your friend,” she said, pointing at Dash. “You promised you would not kill him.”

“Friend or not, Miss Langley, I must do this,” he told her, setting her aside. “I won’t be the one to end his life, but—” He paused. “Can you not see why I must do this?”

“No, I cannot,” she told him, and rushed over to Pippin, who was now being held back by Felicity.

The three of them turned in unison toward the house, with Mrs. Browne and her daughter in their wake.

The men watched them leave, and only Dash spoke.

“I don’t envy any of you bastards,” he said. “I might be headed for the hangman’s noose, but I dare
say it is a better fate than what awaits any of you from those three.”

The next morning, Hollindrake house was quiet with an uneasy air.

The arrest of Dash and the death of Aurora and Tarleton had sent a giddy tide of gossip through the crowd and then emptied the ballroom faster than a house fire—especially the news that one of the guests had been murdered.

Pippin sat alone in the parlor of their suite, Tally having hied herself off to who-knows-where and Aunt Minty having gone some time ago in search of the housekeeper for some more red wool, her knitting having assumed a furious pace.

The door behind her opened and closed, and she assumed it was Aunt Minty, but the firm steps on the floor told a different story.

Her gaze swung around, half expecting to find Dash standing there. But it wasn’t.

There in the middle of the room stood Viscount Gossett.

And much to her shock, she realized she was glad to see him. She rose to her feet, looked into the sincere depth of his blue eyes and felt a shiver run down her spine.

“I know it is entirely improper of me to intrude,” he said, raking his fingers nervously through his golden brown hair, “but I have something I would like to say to you.”

She opened her mouth—to say what, she never did know—but he stopped her with two simple words.

“Marry me.” It wasn’t an order. It wasn’t an honorable statement, made out of duty.

It was a man’s heartfelt plea.

Marry me.

Pippin wavered, reaching out and catching hold of the back of a chair to steady herself. “I—I—I—” she stammered, before she took a deep breath and found the wherewithal to speak coherently. “You shouldn’t have come here. And more to the point, I shouldn’t have encouraged you.”

“I thought perhaps—”

Pippin didn’t know what nudged her to rush in and make the following confession, “My lord, had I never met Dash, and we had come here to this house party, I could imagine—”

“Imagine what?” he said quickly, crossing the room and standing before her. He put his hand atop hers and the warmth of his fingers was intoxicating.

She’d been in a deathly chill since Dash’s arrest, and here was Lord Gossett offering her a warm, steady haven. And in his eyes, she saw a depth of regard that tugged at her.

“It isn’t possible,” she told him, pulling her hand away. “Not now.”

“I know, I know, this is utterly the wrong time and place,” he said. “But if not now, what of later?”

She shook her head. “No. I have too much regard for you.” More than she should. She loved Dash. She had since she was sixteen and her heart was his.

But there was so much at stake right now. And if Dash were to hang?

Pippin turned away and swiped at the tears rising in her eyes.

“Too much regard?” Lord Gossett persisted, coming around her and handing her, without any ceremony, a simple linen square. “That’s promising. Too much regard is more than many people begin with. Marry me, Lady Philippa.
Pippin
.”

She almost looked up at him when he said her name thusly. His earnest tone teased her, spoke of something so pure and honest, it wrenched at her. All she could do was shake her head again. “I cannot.”

“Whyever not?” he asked. “You’ll save your name, your family’s good name, from disgrace.”

That was a stretch. Her father had been a drunk and a gambler, and her younger brother stood to follow in his father’s footsteps.

But Gossett didn’t seem to care. “Marriage to me would stop any investigation as to your involvement in his escape from Marshalsea. You’ll save your neck.”

“And what of yours, my lord?” she asked. “What of your good name?”

Gossett stepped back from her. “My name?”

“It would be ruined.” Now it was Pippin’s turn to press the point. She must. She had to.
If only I didn’t…

“I don’t see how my name would be ruined,” he said, with all the confidence born of centuries of aristocratic breeding and confidence. It wasn’t arrogance with Gossett, but a sense of knowing who he was. An honorable man. “Marriage to me would only—”

She cut him off. “Stop. Please, I beg of you, stop. You are making this so terribly difficult.”

“But it isn’t difficult,” he told her. “It doesn’t have to be. I cannot think of what will happen to you if you are not—” he paused. “Married and protected.”

“I don’t need—”

“But you do, Lady Philippa. You do. You and your child.”

Her hands went to the bulge of her belly that would soon press past the careful folds of her gown, which had thus far hid her growing pregnancy. “How did you—”

“Because of that,” he said, nodding at her hands folded over her womb. “You did that the other night when you were distressed and I knew right then you were carrying his child.” He paused before he continued, “But he is lost to you, and I am not. And, Pippin, my dearest, Pippin, I want to marry you, for your sake and for the babe’s sake as well.”

She shook her head again. “As long as he is in that cell, sentenced to hang, I cannot—”

Gossett caught her in his arms and held her. His grasp was gentle and reassuring, but his words shocked her as nothing else could have.

“What if I were to see him freed and safely out of England?”

Larken spent the better part of the day closeted away with Hollindrake and Temple, writing reports and comparing notes to ensure that Tally and Lady Philippa’s names were well out of the final, official version. There were also the arrangements for Dash
well’s safe return to London, as well as unburdening his heart with the truth to both.

Of what Pymm had ordered him to do. How he wouldn’t do it now, even if it meant being a failure.

Yet in the light of day, failure seemed a brighter start to his new life than the “honor” and “duty” King and Country had demanded of him.

And now, as the afternoon waned and supper approached, he had one last task. To find Tally. And when he did, then he’d…

What the hell
are
you going to say to her, Larken, when you do find her?

There were so many reasons to go to her and beg her forgiveness, plead with her to spend the rest of her life with him, but there were also some very big obstacles that arose between them, as dense and thorny as the hawthorn hedge that made up the maze.

Like the fact that she had committed treason in freeing Dash.

As
you
would have, had you not been so blindly stubborn
, she would argue back.

He shook off that thought. What else had Tally said? Oh, yes. How could he forget?

“How is it that you have come to kill a friend? Is that how you regard those you love? Easily expendable and forgettable in your unending quest for honor? I ask you, sir, where is the honor in murder?”

His father had understood what true honor was—placing one’s family and heart first, no matter the cost. Larken knew now that his father hadn’t gone to Paris to restore his honor, but to retrieve his daugh
ter, lured by Aurora’s promise that she’d surrender their child to his care.

And his love for his natural daughter had cost him his life.

Larken shook his head. Honor. Duty. They were all he’d known for so long, and those ideals had nearly cost him his soul. Now it was time to redeem it. To seek the love that was his escape from the prison he’d cast himself into for far too long.

He glanced up at the old stables, where Dash had been locked in a stall and placed under guard—but the guards were nowhere to be seen. Gone. Leaving Dash free to…

Bloody hell!

Larken dashed across the lawn, but the whinny of a horse from inside had him pull up short, just before the doors.

He glanced inside and to his amazement spied Lord Gossett guiding his prized stallion toward Dash’s cell. It was said the beast was the fleetest animal in England, and one the viscount had refused all offers to sell.

The horse was all that, but the magnificent animal wasn’t what stopped Larken. The sight of the sleek saddlebags it wore, as if it and its rider were about to make a fast, hard trip, told all.

Gossett stood before Dash’s cell. “Wake up, sir,” the viscount said. “I’ve come with an offer.”

Larken slipped inside and hid in one of the stalls. He thought Dash had seen him, but when he looked again his friend paid him no heed.

“Get up,” Gossett said. “We haven’t much time.”

Dashwell stirred and rose from his stool, coming to stand in front of where the viscount stood. “What do you want?”

“That you take this horse, the gold in the saddlebags, this map and ride straight for the coast.”

Laughing, Dash sat back down on his stool. “And what? Be shot as I cross the first meadow? I think not, my lord.”

“Dashwell, I’ve risked everything I have to do this,” Gossett told him, a deep, emotional note to his words rang with a truth that stilled Larken’s heart. The viscount was in earnest.

“I will free you and see that you have safe passage from England on one condition.”

Larken edged forward. What the devil was Gossett doing?