A Sister's Secret (28 page)

‘Heavens,’ murmured Captain Burnside.

Lady Caroline was superbly the vision. Enraptured
again, she had capitulated to the infectious nature of the dance. The rhythm, the music and the gaiety of laughing voices, all induced headiness. Again, the pleasure was of a kind she had not known since the devastating disillusionment had killed her zest for life. There was no degenerate husband to shame her. There was only Captain Burnside with his firm handclasp and his whimsical awareness of her limbs showing amid swirling clouds of froth. Oh, it was sickening that a man who might have been a true gentleman should own such disreputable traits.

Her breath escaped blissfully, and there was the brilliance of life in her eyes and delight on her face. It was a prolonged finale, and when the end eventually arrived a concerted sigh rose from all the ladies, followed immediately by tremendous applause throughout the ballroom. The orchestra rose and bowed. Caroline drew deep breaths. Captain Burnside smiled.

‘After that,’ he said, ‘perhaps I should apologize to Mr Wingrove for depriving him of so much pleasure. It was, I fancy, his entitlement.’

‘No, he will simply accept he was a laggard,’ said Caroline, ‘and I did not mind standing up with you.’ Slightly teasing, such was her animation, she added, ‘One could not say you are less accomplished than Mr Wingrove, even if you do lack an academy diploma.’

‘What one
can
say, Your Gifted Ladyship, is that you’ve few equals in the cotillion. If it’s agreeable to you, I’ll now bring round the carriage, while you and Annabelle prepare yourselves for departure.’

‘Thank you, Captain Burnside,’ said Caroline.

Lord and Lady Chesterfield said goodbye to every guest at the open front doors. A positive tangle of coaches and carriages filled the street, grooms at the reins, but when Caroline and Annabelle emerged from the handsome
house, their carriage, an elegant barouche, was immediately outside, Captain Burnside up on the box, Sammy beside him. Sammy jumped down to assist the ladies into their seats, gossamer shawls around their shoulders.

The barouche moved off, Captain Burnside at the reins. It was past three in the morning, and most of London was sleeping.

Captain Burnside drove at a smart trot through the quiet streets, the following traffic from the ball dispersing at intervals. The darkness of the night was touched by the crescent moon’s limited light. Caroline and Annabelle exchanged dreamy comments about the ball and its magnificence, and about guests who had made impressions on them. Annabelle vowed she would beseech their parents to accustom themselves to her preference for England. Then, to please her sister, she said Mr Wingrove’s sociability had been all of civilized. Such a pleasant and personable gentleman could not fail to be a far better husband than Lord Clarence.

‘I will surely hope, sister, that he will offer for you, since you are affectionately attached to him. Charles and I agreed he has a degree of culture that would make the two of you happily compatible.’

Caroline sat up. ‘How dare he!’

‘Caroline?’ Annabelle was at her most demure.

‘I don’t require Captain Burnside to advise me on marital compatibility,’ said Caroline. ‘What does
he
know of such things? Or you?’

‘Oh dear,’ said Annabelle.

‘As for Mr Wingrove, it is ridiculous to suppose I see him as a husband. I do not. He is merely an agreeable friend.’

‘Well, dearest sister, Charles and I both declared there is no gentleman more agreeable. Charles regretted that he himself did not own such pleasant characteristics, though I think he shouldn’t be as modest as that.’

‘Modest?’ Caroline was finely sceptical. ‘Modest? Captain Burnside?’

‘He is adorable, don’t you think so?’ murmured Annabelle.

‘Oh, fiddle-de-dee,’ said Caroline. She sat up again. ‘Annabelle, don’t you dare fall in love with him.’

‘Goodness me, I—’

‘He is penniless except for his officer’s pay.’

‘Mercy, poor Charles,’ said Annabelle. ‘Oh, I do confess that wouldn’t suit me at all. But how sweet and kind you surely are, putting him up until he finds an apartment he can afford.’

The carriage was slowing. They were only a hundred yards from home. Out from a side street, four horsemen had emerged, spurring to block Captain Burnside. They were dark figures, black-cloaked and black-masked. The handsome thoroughfare was quiet, and there was no sight or sound of any night watch. Captain Burnside glimpsed long-barrelled pistols.

Sammy glimpsed them too. ‘Blind me, it’s flash nightingales, guv’nor,’ he gasped, ‘highway coves in the middle of London, and the ladies wearing a mint of sparklers.’

The masked horsemen came at them, pistols levelled. One man issued an order: ‘Pull up. Keep quiet. Get down.’

Captain Burnside had slowed, but had no intention of pulling up, not now.

He heard another man fling hissing words: ‘Damnation, there’s two on the box!’

The captain, convinced it would be fatal to stop, whipped up the pair. Well trained, and owning a great deal of mettle when a gallop was called for, the coach horses sprang forward and raced away. The barouche shuddered and jerked at the sudden, forceful pull, and inside Annabelle and Caroline floundered and gasped protests. The vehicle swept the horsemen aside as Captain Burnside burst through. A flurry of oaths and curses desecrated the warm summer night. The captain, surmising those pistols would not be fired, gave the horses their heads and they ran with the vigour and power of their kind, exulting in the exercise. They reached a surging gallop in quick time. The four horsemen, recovering, elected for pursuit.

‘Set up a hullabaloo, Sammy,’ said Captain Burnside crisply.

‘That I will, sir,’ said Sammy, and began to shout and bellow.

The captain made for the wide Strand, off which lay Bow Street and the headquarters of the Runners. The barouche travelled at alarming speed, and Caroline and Annabelle hung on to the handstraps for dear life.

‘What is happening?’ gasped Annabelle.

Caroline pulled down the window and shouted, ‘Captain Burnside! What are you about? Halt this carriage, do you hear?’

‘Hang on, Your Ladyship!’ called the captain.

Caroline heard Sammy bellowing. ‘Thieves! Flash coves! Highway nobblers!’

The horsemen were up with them. Caroline caught sight of the shadowy figure of one galloping alongside the box before he reached out and dug the barrel of his
pistol in Captain Burnside’s ribs. The pair galloped on, their hoofbeats a drumming echo on the sanded road. The captain’s whip whistled and cracked, and the thong bit at the masked face of his assailant. He reeled in his saddle and dropped back.

‘Thieves!’ shouted Sammy. ‘Bow Street, we’re a’coming! Wake up, you Runners!’

The cursing horsemen pulled up. They turned and rode away, fast. Captain Burnside brought the barouche to a halt. He got down, leaving Sammy with the reins, and Sammy gentled the excited pair.

‘Lady Caroline?’ Captain Burnside appeared at the open window.

‘Sir,’ said Caroline, breathless but valiant, ‘why has it been necessary to drive like a madman and to wake up the whole of London?’

Faces and lighted candles at the windows of houses offered proof that her question, allowing for exaggeration, was quite justified.

‘We suffered a small alarm, no more,’ said the captain.

‘Small? Small?’ Annabelle found her voice. ‘I thought the carriage would overturn and break our bones. Charles, I’m in need of smelling salts for the first time in my life.’

‘So sorry, sweet girl,’ murmured the captain, and Caroline compressed her lips at the endearment.

‘Explain,’ she demanded.

‘We encountered a footpad or two. They’re now dispersed. Sammy has a capital pair of lungs. Are you badly shaken up?’

‘Captain Burnside,’ said Caroline, ‘I have been shaken up, I have been shaken about, and I have been shaken from head to foot. Sir, did you say footpads?’

‘Much to my regret.’ The captain shook his head in sorrow. ‘What is London coming to?’

‘They were riding horses, were they not?’ asked Caroline.

‘Damn me, so they were,’ said the captain, as if that fact had only just occurred to him. ‘There’s a devilish development for you, footpads on horseback in the Strand. But all is well now, Lady Caroline, and I’ll drive you home at a pace you’ll find gentle and soothing.’

He was being evasive, but as people in night attire were peering from open doors, Caroline let it go for the moment.

‘Yes, please take us home,’ she said.

A thickset man in a neckerchief and bulky coat, and carrying a stout stick, appeared at Captain Burnside’s elbow. ‘What’s to do, eh, what’s to do?’ he asked.

‘Ah, you’re a Bow Street officer?’ enquired Captain Burnside.

‘That I am, day and night I am, and werry conscientious, sir. So hearing what I did hear, I says to myself, hello and what’s a-goin’ on here? And what is a-goin’ on here?’

‘We’re on our way home from Lady Chesterfield’s ball,’ said the captain. ‘This is Lady Clarence Percival. Our pair suffered a fright, but they’ve quietened down now.’

‘Ah, hosses is nervous critturs,’ said the Bow Street Runner, ‘and werry like to shy at the flutter of a pigeon’s ving.’ Through the window, he regarded Caroline in the dim interior of the coach. It was not so dark that he was not at once aware of magnificence. ‘Vell, them critturs of yours be standin’ quiet enough now, as this gentleman and officer has pointed out, m’lady. So seeing there’s no trouble requiring of my assistance, I’ll see you safe on your way, then noses and fingers von’t have anything to point at and can go back indoors.’

‘Thank you, Officer,’ said Caroline. ‘Goodnight.’

Captain Burnside returned to the box, took the reins from Sammy and set the pair in motion. He chose an alternative route back to the house. Sammy kept alert watch, but there were no signs of the aggressive highwaymen. The captain doubted they
were
highwaymen. Being the professional he was, he felt the intended hold-up was of a highly suspect kind. No gentlemen of the road would venture into a salubrious quarter of London flourishing their pistols between three and four in the morning. They might be found haggling with greasy fences in the dim taverns of the riverside stewpots, but they did not carry on their trade in the residential areas inhabited by the quality. Their pickings came from travellers on the post-chaise highways.

The captain could only surmise that the four masked men had been engaged on a venture of a different kind. Something clicked in his active mind. Cumberland. Now why had Britain’s dark prince offered to drive Lady Caroline and her party home? He would know she would be using her own carriage. Annabelle had confirmed this, and had also told Cumberland that he, Captain Burnside, would be driving. She had not mentioned Sammy would be in attendance. Something else clicked, something relating to an involuntary hiss of words.

Damnation, there’s two on the box!

That related, quite clearly, to information that had been wrong. That, in turn, pointed to a prearranged ambush. The masked men had expected to see only himself on the box. Which fact led directly back to Cumberland and the information innocently given him by Annabelle. And what could be further surmised from that? The possibility, for some reason, that Cumberland was darkly interested not only in himself, but in Caroline and Annabelle too. He himself, of course, might certainly
have been found suspect by Cumberland, but Caroline and Annabelle? Absurd.

A quiet word with Annabelle was required.

The house having been safely reached, it was left to Sammy to stable the barouche and the horses. Caroline disappeared only moments after entering the house, and that left Captain Burnside with Annabelle in the drawing room. Annabelle was already over the alarm and whatever fright she may have suffered, and sank in tranquil languor into a chair.

‘Charles, such a beautiful ball,’ she murmured. ‘I have had an excess of delicious activity, and do declare I could have gone on until dawn. And never, since arriving in London, have I seen Caroline so happily engaged and so vivacious. Isn’t it a little mournful that a ball has to come to an end?’

‘It’s extremely mournful to young ladies, for whom ballrooms are designed, and in which I’ve no doubt you could all happily live.’ Captain Burnside mused. ‘Let me see, Annabelle, on the afternoon when you came flying and flushed from Cumberland’s house, had he upset you in any other way than trying to attempt kisses?’

‘Why do you ask that? You aren’t going to be in uncharitable consideration of the duke, are you?’

The captain, remarking that Annabelle had elected to make a study of her fingertips, said in his pleasantest fashion, ‘Not if it will distress you, although I realize you were upset. Did he perhaps say something hurtful?’

‘Charles, such a conversation is very dull after a ball.’ Annabelle plucked at her gown. She was suddenly uneasy. ‘Oh, I must tell you, I think,’ she said, and in the little rushing fashion of one eager to confide, she recounted the conversation she had overheard between Cumberland
and his secretary, Mr Erzburger. ‘I vow it worried me,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘that some hot tea would be welcome.’

‘There are no servants up,’ said Annabelle, ‘and I cannot think myself how tea came to be relevant: I surely do feel the duke is mysterious in some of his ways, and much more of a concern than tea.’

‘But not as refreshing. I’ll go to the kitchen and prepare a pot.’

‘But I don’t need refreshing, I need to go to bed,’ protested Annabelle, ‘and you are being very cool about the duke, you surely are. Nor have you said a word about those footpads and the dreadful alarm they put us in.’

‘Oh, everything outside the ball and your enjoyment of it, Annabelle, is all of insignificant.’

‘Oh, yes, who could deny it?’ breathed Annabelle. ‘Where is Caroline? Has she gone up?’

‘I have no idea,’ said the captain, ‘but should she appear, tell her I’ve taken the liberty of using the kitchen to make some tea.’

‘Tea at this time?’ Annabelle laughed softly. Having confided her worry to Charles, she was free of it. ‘How funny you are.’