Captain Rakehell (17 page)

The lash cracked, the carriage leaped ahead, and the hackney nudged closer. Aware now of the intent, the coachman flailed his whip at the box, but the other driver did not yield. He crowded even closer, bumping the carriage as the two coaches plunged in tandem over the crest of a low hill. The jolt caused the team to break stride, and sent Amanda tumbling backward on the banquette.

“Enough!” Charles shouted, springing from his seat to catch her. “Pull over!”

With his horses off stride, the coachmen had little choice but to pull back on the leads and ease them onto the verge. The driver of the hackney cut his own horses in front of the carriage, threw back his cape, and leaped from the box. He pulled a pistol from his waistband, the barrel gleaming a dull blue black in the flicker of the coachlamps.

“Be still and keep down,” Charles whispered to Amanda, and kicked the door open.

He jumped to the ground, drew himself straight and declared imperiously, “You, sir, are a madman!”

“And good evenin’ t’you, Yer Grace.” The hackney driver bowed, then wheeled on the coachman. “Git down ‘ere.”

I know that voice, Amanda realized, and sprang into the open doorway behind Charles. “Smythe!”

“Evenin’, yer little ladyship.” He nodded to her, then turned to the coachman as he climbed down from the box. “This is fer whippin’ me.” He brought the pistol down sharply on the side of his head, and the driver crumpled.

“You beast!” Amanda shrieked.

“You know this reprobate?” Charles muttered over his shoulder.

“Yes,” she whispered angrily. “His name is Smythe and he’s a thief. He usually has two accomplices—”

“Damnit, ‘Arry!” came Jack’s muffled voice from inside the hackney. “Git
off
me!”

“I’m—oompf! —tryin’, Jack!”

Swearing under his breath and aiming his pistol at Charles’s breastbone, Smythe backed to the hackney and fumbled behind him for the latch. He found it, tripped it, and flung open the door to reveal Jack and Harry in a tumble on the floor.

“What in bloody hell ‘er you doin’ down there?” Smythe yelled furiously. “Yer s’posed t’have the ropes out an’ be trussin’ these two up!”

“Might ‘elp if ye’d tell a cove you was gonna throw on the brake s’bloody quick!” Jack panted from beneath Harry. “Git this oaf offa me, will ya?”

Keeping one eye and the pistol on Charles,  Smythe held out his free hand. Jack grasped it and grunted, Smythe pulled and cursed, while Harry, turned on his back like a turtle on its shell, tried to roll himself over.

The barrel of the pistol wavered, and so did Smythe’s attention. Seizing the opportunity, Charles whispered to Amanda, “Get down,” then reached behind him to catch the edge of the door.

She ducked, and he gathered himself to spring, just as the pistol steadied, and Smythe’s gaze swung back to him.

“I wouldn’t, Yer Grace.” He drew back the hammer with a click. “I doubt yer ma ‘ud pay much to get y’back with a hole in yer chest.”

“So that’s your game,” Charles remarked derisively. “Kidnapping and ransom.”

“Aye.” Smythe gave a final tug and Jack tumbled onto the ground with a grunt. “Git up an’ git the ropes.” He gave him a kick, and as Jack scrambled to his feet, he smiled at Charles. “Clever, ain’t it?’’

“My father,” Amanda declared, popping up defiantly behind the duke, “won’t pay a single farthing for me!”

But he might, she thought, after hearing she’d not only run away but managed to get herself kidnapped in the process, pay any amount Smythe demanded if he promised not to return her.

“Never thought t’ransom you, m’lady,” Smythe told her. “It’s ‘Is Grace what’ll fetch the blunt. Yer just along to cook fer us.”

“I can’t cook!” Amanda retorted indignantly. “I’m a lady!’’

With a loop of stout rope over his arm, Jack was starting toward them. Harry, rubbing the back of his head, was lumbering out of the hackney. They bumped into each other, and then into Smythe.

“You damned loobies!” he shouted, grabbing Harry’s shoulder and pushing him forward. “Tie up the coachman first before he comes round!”

“A sad lot, aren’t they?” Amanda whispered to Charles.

“Mmmm,” he agreed, wondering how best to use Harry’s ineptness to their advantage. “Where do you mean to take us?”

“To yer old dad’s hunting box,” Smythe replied.

“How do you know our plans?” Amanda demanded.

“I was listenin’ through the door, m’lady. Got meself hired as footman this mornin’ by your Randall. Seemed the smart way t’find yer friend in the black mask, since ever’ time I see you, I end up seein’ ‘im, an’ ‘e ends up with my loot.”

“Our loot, y’mean.” Jack straightened beside the coachman’s prostrate form to glare at him.

“‘Course it’s our loot,” Smythe snapped at him, then grinned smugly at Amanda. “Pity your masked friend ain’t here now, ain’t it?”

“What masked friend?” Charles inquired of her incredulously, just as Harry, squatting beside Jack and the coachman, raised his head to ask, “Is it thunderin’?”

“No, y’great twit!” Jack cuffed him on the ear. “It ain’t thunder, it’s—”

He heard it then, a low, pounding rumble, and flung a wide-eyed look at the rise behind them. Smythe and Charles heard it, and so did Amanda, placing her hands on his shoulders to look up the hill. She’d no sooner leaned forward than Lucifer, his sweat-lathered hide gleaming in the moonlight, plunged over the crest at an all out gallop.

“Holy Jesus!” Jack howled. “It’s him!”

There was nowhere to run to in the open-ended triangle formed by the drawn together coaches but the hedgerow alongside the road. Jack made a leap for it just as Harry did. They crashed together and fell side by side, knocked senseless.

“Oh, it is him!” Amanda cried joyously. “My dearest darling!”

Over the pounding of Lucifer’s hooves, Lesley heard her voice, but couldn’t make out the words or see where she was. He had eyes only for the pistol in Smythe’s hand as it swung toward him.

“Good God! That’s Lucifer!” Charles gasped, and threw himself at the thief.

Behind him, Amanda screamed and threw her reticule. It sailed toward Smythe, hanging in the air for a moment along with the ring of her voice and the ring of steel as Lesley drew his rapier. The pistol fired, belching fire and smoke, a half second before her reticule and Charles both struck Smythe.

Recoiling at the shattering report, Amanda cringed and flung her hands over her eyes. She was too terrified to look until she heard Lucifer whinny, and Charles laugh, and slowly lowered her hands.

With the tip of Lesley’s rapier quivering in the hollow of his throat, Smythe was pinned, arms out flung, against the side of the hackney. Sweat glistened on his face in the glow of the carriage lamps, Lucifer’s hide shimmered a wet, dark blue, and Charles’s teeth gleamed white in his dirty face as he got up with Smythe’s pistol in his hand and brushed his soiled waistcoat.

“Nicely done,” he said, grinning up at his younger brother.

“I trust you know how to use a pistol?” Lesley asked him frostily.

“Of course I do,” Charles retorted indignantly. “Now look here—”

He broke off at the sound of horse’s hooves, and looked back at the medium-sized sorrel galloping toward them over the hill. Lesley glanced behind him, keeping the rapier taut against Smythe’s jugular, and cursed. He didn’t see Amanda, who’d gone limp with relief with one hand pressed to her throat in the shadowed door frame of the carriage.

“So you nabbed him after all, my lord!” Fisk said with a laugh, as he reined in his horse beside Lucifer.

“My lord?” Amanda gasped, her fingers sliding away from her throat.

Lesley saw her then, and felt his heart lurch between his ribs. Dirt smudged her nose, and her windblown hair tangled around her face much as it had the night he’d met her in his mother’s garden.

“He’s all yours, Fisk,” he said brusquely and withdrew his rapier from Smythe’s throat.

As the thief sagged to the ground with a moan of relief, and Fisk dismounted to take charge, Lesley wheeled Lucifer toward the carriage. A tremulous smile quivered on Amanda’s lips, and his heart lurched again as he touched the blade to the tip of his nose.

“I wish you happy, my lady.” He saluted her, then dug his heels into Lucifer’s flanks.

“No, wait!” Amanda cried, springing up in the doorway. “Oh, please, you don’t understand!”

But it was too late. Lucifer was already disappearing over the hill in a gray swirl of dust.

“I say, Lesley!” Charles strode into the middle of the road and shouted angrily after him, “How incredibly rude!”

“What did you say?” Thunderstruck, Amanda clutched the door frame to keep from falling.

“I said, how incredibly rude! But perhaps I  should have said how insufferably—”

“No, Charles, his name!” she shrieked. “Who is he?”

“Who is he?” The duke eyed her incredulously. “For God’s sake, Amanda! Don’t you know your own fiancé?”

“That was Lesley?” she squeaked, feeling suddenly faint.

“Yes, of course, it was Lesley! I admit I recognized Lucifer first, probably because he wasn’t wearing a mask, but—”

“Oh no,” Amanda moaned.

And then she swooned.

Chapter Sixteen

“Listen to this, Mandy.” Andrew folded the morning
Times
in half and read, “It is rumored that His Highness plans to privately receive the Duke of Braxton and Lady Amanda Gilbertson to congratulate them on their daring capture of the thief Smythe and his cohorts. This is an honor most deserved by these two noble heroes.’” He gave a short laugh and grinned at his sister. “D’you suppose the pun was intentional?”

Amanda’s only reply was an indifferent shrug. Still abed in her night rail and wrapper, she sat propped on her pillows staring gloomily at the cup of morning chocolate turning cold on the tray placed over her lap.

“I don’t think I care much for lovesickness.” Andrew tossed the paper on the floor and pulled his chair closer to the bed. “You had more to say when last you had a putrid throat.”

“I should have known,” Amanda murmured, almost to herself. “I keep going over it in my mind and it seems so clear to me now I can’t think why I didn’t.”

“That’s hindsight for you,” Andrew replied philosophically, propping his nearly healed ankle on the foot of her bed.

“But it was right there for all the world and his wife to see! I suppose it’s understandable I didn’t connect him to the man in the black mask when he jumped Lucifer over the wall, but I should have at Lady Cottingham’s when he appeared within an hour of his own leave taking. Especially because—”

“Are you going to drink that chocolate?”

“Do you mind awfully?” Amanda snapped irritably. “I’m trying to make sense of this.”

“It’s a shame to let it waste.”

“Then by all means drink it.”

“Thank you.” Andrew helped himself to a healthy swallow. “It’s my opinion you aren’t trying to make sense of anything. You’re just wallowing in self-pity.”

“I am not!” Amanda declared, but a telltale flush crept up her throat.

“You are, too. It’s all you’ve done these last two days. When are you going to get on with it?”

“Get on with what? My life?” She made a derisive noise in her throat. “It’s over! I might as well don my caps!”

“You could do that.” Andrew nodded. “Or you could at least make an attempt to find your dearest darling.”

“What would you have me do?” Amanda folded her arms and glared at him. “No one’s seen him since he galloped off on Lucifer!”

“Well.” He paused to take another sip of the tepid chocolate. “Getting out of bed might be a good place to start the search.”

“I don’t want to get out of bed,” she replied petulantly. “I’ve nothing to get out of bed for.”

“You’ve got your costume to ready for the duchess’s masquerade tonight, don’t you?”

“I’m not going.”

“You have to go, Mandy, it’s in your honor. Yours and Charles’s.”

“Don’t even mention Charles!” Amanda pushed the tray aside and angrily punched her pillows. “I haven’t seen him, either, since he and Mr. Fisk brought me home and explained things to Papa!”

“And isn’t that a marvel?” Andrew said brightly, looking for ways to cheer her without tipping his hand. “He’s so proud, he hasn’t even thought to punish you. And Mama hasn’t swooned in two days!”

Amanda looked down her nose at him and glowered.

“Oh, come, Mandy. It’s hardly Charles’s fault Lesley thought you were eloping with him. I would have thought the same thing.”

“Then you’re just as totty-headed as he is!”

The flush had spread across her cheeks now, and there was a definite spark in her eyes. And she’d withdrawn one leg from under the covers.

“Perhaps,” he suggested carefully, “Charles has gone looking for him.”

“Or perhaps he’s just driving around the countryside testing his wind device!” Amanda waved one hand above her head, then demanded incredulously of her brother, “Do you know that’s all he talked about on our way back to London?”

“I thought you sobbed and cried the whole story to him. Isn’t that why he summoned Teddy home, to get to the bottom of things?”

“Ooh, that little jackanapes!” Flinging the bedclothes aside, she folded her legs beneath her and clenched her fists on her knees. “This is all his fault!”

“Hardly, Mandy,” Andrew replied reasonably. “Teddy certainly began it, but you and Lesley  had an equal hand in the finish.”

That should have launched her to her feet like a cannon shot, but instead she sighed heavily and sank back against the pillows.

“You’re right, of course,” she agreed dismally.

The spark faded from her eyes, and her toes inched toward the covers again. Oh, no you don’t, Andrew thought, but was saved from flinging the linens aside and throwing her over his shoulder by a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Amanda sighed again.

It was Marie, praise God, with the promised delivery from Charles.

“This just come from His Grace,” she said, cleverly carrying the box to the chair farthest from the bed.

Which left Amanda no choice but to get up and cross the room to see what it was. As she pulled off the note fixed to the lid and opened it, Marie placed herself between her mistress and the bed, prepared to prevent her, bodily if necessary, from climbing back into it.