The Viscount's Revenge (The Royal Ambition Series Book 4) (7 page)

“Anyway, she said she would tell me after I got the chocolate drops. Which I did.

“Do you know, Amanda, I thought every confectioner’s in Bellingham had conspired against me
not
to have chocolate drops?

“But at last I found them and hurried back, praying she’d still be waiting for me. At first I thought she had gone, but then she leapt out from behind a bush, crying, ‘Did you get them?’

“I handed over the sweets and asked her for the information. She said she would not give it to me unless I… er… gave her a kiss,” said Richard, turning a dull red. “I did, and she told me that they are to leave at eight o’clock, which means they will reach Fern Hill around nine. You had better wear that old suit of boy’s clothes of mine. Good thing we kept them. And we had better wear masks.”

“And what was it like?” asked Amanda.

“What like?”

“Kissing Miss Thing.”

“Oh,
girls
,” said Richard. But he blushed again.

“Did she tell you her name?”

“No,” said Richard. “I won’t see her again, so what’s the point? Do keep your mind on the job, Amanda. We must start getting ready now. Where’s Aunt Matilda?”

“I don’t know,” replied Amanda. “Has she not come back? ’Tis most strange. She has been absent all day.”

“Probably gone for her yearly outing,” said Richard callously. “Do not worry. She’ll come home and go into either strong hysterics or hibernation, one or t’other. Let’s hope she does not arrive just as we are leaving, all booted and masked.”

It took them quite a time to get ready. Richard insisted they wear the old wool wigs they had worn at Christmas when they were much younger and had staged a play to amuse Aunt Matilda. They were both bright red and made from dyed coarse wool. Richard donned a drab benjamin and lent Amanda his game coat, which came nearly down to her ankles. They put old-fashioned tricornes on their heads and their masks in their pockets and at last they were ready to take the road.

The night was cold and full of the sound of the wind. It had shifted from the south to the east and Amanda shivered with cold and excitement.

Fern Hill was only a short way from where they lived. Bluebell had put on one of his erratic bursts of speed and so they were there well before time, standing in the black shelter of the tossing trees. A little moon rushed high above, in and out of masses of ragged black cloud. Some wild animal crackled in the undergrowth and Amanda nearly fell off her donkey in fright. Her tension mounted as the minutes dragged past, her heart thudding against her ribs. Her mouth felt dry.

Would they never come?

Bluebell shifted restlessly under her. Amanda, near to tears, opened her mouth to say that she wanted to go home and forget about the whole thing, when all of a sudden the lights of the carriage bobbed like fireflies at the bottom of the long slope of Fern Hill.

“This is it!” whispered Richard.

They donned their masks and pulled out their pistols.

The noise of the wind rushing in the trees was so loud that at first they could not hear the sound of the approaching coach. All they could do was watch the twin carriage lights coming closer and closer.

They couldn’t… they mustn’t… Dear God…
No
! So rushed Amanda’s terrified thoughts like the wind rushing in the branches above her head.

And then the carriage was almost upon them.

Richard urged his mount forward. He made a huge, black, menacing figure.

“Stand and deliver!” he yelled in a great voice.

The coachman on the box pulled on the reins and slewed the coach around sideways so that it would not slide back down the steep incline. He reached under his box.

“Raise your hands,” yelled Richard, “or I’ll send you to your Maker!”

The coachman raised his hands. The groom next to him did the same.

“And you on the back,” shouted Richard. “Round in front with your hands above your heads.”

Two footmen emerged from the rumble at the back. Richard thanked God there were no outriders.

“Keep them covered,” he called to Amanda.

He dismounted and strode to the door of the coach and wrenched it open.

“Outside,” he barked.

Lord Hawksborough’s face was such a mask of cold fury that Richard’s pistol trembled for a moment in his hand. An elderly lady with Lord Hawksborough’s peculiar colorless eyes was helped down by a plain, severe-looking girl in a poke bonnet—Lord Hawksborough’s mother and sister. Richard held out a sack. He held the pistol straight at Lord Hawksborough’s mother and snarled, “Drop your jewels in there or I’ll shoot the old girl.”

“Do as he says,” said Lord Hawksborough bitterly.

He was cursing the fact that his mother had insisted they travel in her old cumbersome travelling coach with only her aged servants as guard.

“There’s someone else in there!” said Richard, hearing a sound from the carriage. “Out!”

A trembling maid appeared, tears rolling down her face. “I tried to guard your jewel box, ma’am,” she whimpered to Lord Hawksborough’s mother, Mrs. Fitzgerald.

“Now we
all
know about the jewels,” said Lord Hawksborough wearily. “You may as well hand them over.”

Sobbing, the maid put the jewel box in Richard’s capacious sack.

“I hope that satisfies your greed,” said his lordship acidly.

“You have forgotten something,” said Richard, keeping his voice gruff.

Amanda, watching and listening, prayed Richard would finish and get them away, as far away as possible.

“What is that?” she heard Lord Hawksborough’s icy voice asking.

“Your ring, my lord.”

Oh, no, thought Amanda, white to the lips.

Slowly Lord Hawksborough drew off the ring. His eyes were like diamond chips as he stared at Richard, and Richard felt a cold shiver of fear run through him.

“I will find you, if it takes my life and my fortune,” said his lordship in pleasant, even tones which were more terrifying than if he had ranted and raved. “I will find you,” he repeated, “and you will hang. You will not escape me.”

“Back in the coach,” growled Richard. “The old lady last.”

Lord Hawksborough gave Richard one long measuring look and helped his sister into the coach. Mrs. Fitzgerald turned and followed them and slammed the door behind her. Neither she nor her daughter had uttered a word.

Richard rode back to Amanda.

“Move on!” he yelled to the coachman.

The coachman picked up the reins and cracked his whip. The coach surged forward.

“
Move
,” hissed Richard to Amanda.

He spurred his mount and was off through the trees. Amanda drove her heels into Bluebell’s fat sides, but the animal refused to budge.

Suddenly a bullet whistled through Amanda’s hat and Bluebell jumped violently and set off headlong through the trees. Lord Hawksborough had climbed through the carriage window opposite from the side of the road Richard had been on, had climbed on the box and seized the coachman’s horse pistol and had fired straight at Amanda. The terrified coachman, trying to help, had only succeeding in hindering, and had jostled his lordship’s arm at the last moment, which was why Amanda Colby was alive with a hole in her hat instead of dead with a hole in her brain.

Bluebell blundered headlong through the woods. Trees rushed past and a small moon lurched and weaved about the stormy sky above.

Amanda all but ran into Richard, who had come riding back hell for leather, after he had heard the shot.

“I’m all right,” shouted Amanda. “Home! Let’s get home.”

Bluebell did not slow until the tall chimneys of Fox End came in sight. Then he dug in all four hooves and began cropping some plants by the side of the road.

“Leave him!” hissed Richard.

“I can’t,” wailed Amanda. “There are a lot of donkeys around here, but one who has recently been ridden and standing at a place so near Fern Hill would bring suspicion down on our heads. Get some sugar.”

“I have some in my pocket,” said Richard. He held it out and Bluebell immediately started trotting obediently after Richard’s horse.

They did not speak until they had unsaddled the animals, rubbed them down, and put them in their respective stalls for the night.

Then they sat down in the harness room, and, by the light of one candle, prised open the lid of the jewel box. Diamonds, pearls, rubies, and emeralds sparkled and blazed up into their wide, shocked eyes. Richard silently drew out Lord Hawksborough’s large ruby ring and handed it to Amanda. It looked like a great drop of glistening blood.

“I feel sick and dirty,” said Richard, his voice seeming to come from far away. “I meant to revenge you by taking his ring.”

White-faced, Amanda nodded and handed him back the ring, which he dropped into the box with the other jewels.

“We should never have done it,” said Richard slowly. “It was exciting at first, but frightening old men and women is a terrible thing to do. Those servants were too old to protect anybody. What was that shot?”

Amanda took off her tricorne and handed it to him. There was a hole through the crown. “Lord Hawksborough,” she said. “Bluebell would not move. He climbed on the roof of the carriage. The coachman jogged his arm or I should not be alive.”

“What will we do?” said Richard, his voice hoarse with the effort of holding back tears. “I don’t want the jewels. I don’t want any of it.”

He looked very young and vulnerable. Amanda took his hand in hers. “We’ll bury them in the earth of the stable floor,” she said. “And if we ever get a chance to go to London, we’ll dig them up and leave them at Lord Hawksborough’s house. Oh, I wish I were dead.”

Richard shivered. “If you could have seen the look on his face, Amanda. He would have killed me with his bare hands if he had not been concerned over the welfare of his mother and sister. Vengeance, that’s what he wants. And he won’t rest till he gets it.”

“Any minute now the search will be on,” said Amanda urgently. “Fetch a pick and spade, Richard, and let us get finished with this terrible evening.”

Richard worked like a man possessed, hacking and digging at the hard-packed earth of the stable floor until there was a sizable hole.

They wrapped the jewel box carefully in the sack, threw the tricornes, wigs, and masks on top of it, and piled the earth back in, stamped it down, and covered it with straw. Richard dusted his hands and gave a sigh of relief. “I feel a little better, but not much. Oh, Amanda, you and your crazy ideas.”

“At least I have some ideas, crazy or not…” began Amanda hotly, and then she looked at her brother, her eyes glittering with unshed tears, and said, “Don’t let’s quarrel, Richard. We are
both
fools. I feel so terribly guilty.”

“Aunt Matilda!” exclaimed Richard. “I think I hear her calling.” He buttoned up his coat, saying urgently, “She must not find you in boy’s clothes. I will go and talk to her while you go in by the kitchen door and change.”

Amanda did as she was bid, tearing off the clothes in her bedroom and stuffing them into the back of a closet.

When she pushed open the door of the morning room it was to find Richard waiting impatiently by the fire while Aunt Matilda sat in one of the wing chairs, very upright, very excited.

“Now you are here, Amanda,” she cried. “I would not tell my news until we were all together. You will never guess where I have been today. I have been at Hember Cross for a meeting with my old school friend, Maria Pitts!”

“Well, that was very pleasant, I’m sure,” said Amanda, wondering if she dared send Richard to fetch the rest of the brandy.

“But it is better than that!” cried Aunt Matilda. “You see, I heard she would be staying at the Feathers, although she did not attend the ball. I called on her and told her of our plight. I would not have found the courage to be so pushing for myself, but I consider you both my children, and you shall not starve as long as there is breath in this body,” said Aunt Matilda, striking her scrawny bosom.

Richard and Amanda looked away with all the customary embarrassment the young feel when confronted by the old making a cake of themselves.

“Maria was vastly fond of me when we were at school and she immediately offered us
all
a home in London. She said Amanda would be a very good friend for her daughter, who is to make her come-out next Season, and she was sure something could be found for Richard.

“We are to advertise Fox End and let it to some suitable party, and then we are to go to London, and… Oh, it is the first and only really sensible thing I have done in my life.”

Amanda and Richard forced themselves to congratulate their aunt and make a fuss over her, but each was thinking that this terrible evening need never have happened and Aunt Matilda’s good news was only burying them under a greater weight of guilt.