Enchanted Rendezvous: A Tangled Hearts Romance (18 page)

The colonel showed his teeth in a grin. “My riders will be glad of your company. And your friend Lord Brandon—perhaps he would also like to join us?”

Cecily’s heart sank, but Lady Marcham said, “You are joking, of course. Trevor hates to ride at night. The rogue has gone inside the house, and I strongly suspect that he is taking a nap.”

The colonel looked even more pleased with himself. “He is not in the house, Lady Marcham. I have
been standing here ever since we left the military museum, and I did not see him.” He turned to the Rider who had brought him the news and ordered, “Alert the others, Farmington. And see if you can unearth Lord Brandon.”

As the Rider hurried off, Lady Marcham exclaimed, “It is useless to try and persuade Trevor to go with you. He has no interest in smugglers.”

“You are far afield, ma’am, far afield. I would say that he is very much interested,” the colonel purred. “If I do not mistake, he is leading his band of smugglers from Robin’s Cove to the western downs.”

Lady Marcham began to laugh. “You are joking me.”

“Lady Marcham, I never joke.”

“Then you are foxed,” she retorted. “Or mad,” she added as an afterthought.

Just then Montworthy came striding up the walk. There was a suspicious red mark on his cheek, and he avoided looking at Cecily as he announced, “Brandon’s nowhere to be found. Nobody’s seen him, neither. Looks like he did a bunk.”

“Mount up,” the colonel ordered.

Helplessly Cecily watched as the colonel’s Riders called for their horses and arms. Her brain had apparently gone numb, for she could not think what she should do. She could only look on helplessly as the colonel buckled on his sword and added a brace of pistols.

James Montworthy was also settling a sword around his waist. “Always thought that fribble Brandon was up to no good,” he commented.

“Hold your tongue, sir!” Lady Marcham exclaimed. “Be careful what you say. Pershing will not stand idly by and let his son be slandered.” Then turning from the abashed James to the colo
nel, she added coldly, “I collect that you are accusing my godson of being a common smuggler.”

“Not at all common, ma’am,” Howard fairly crowed. “He is a prince amongst smugglers. He has brains, but he could not gull
me.
I knew all along that he was gallow’s bait.”

The insult loosened Cecily’s frozen tongue. “If Lord Brandon were here,” she cried, “he would shoot you for that insult.”

The colonel smiled indulgently. “It is a good thing you are a woman,” he said. “If you were a man—”

“If I were a man, you would not dare to take that tone with me,” Cecily retorted. “How dare you blacken a gentleman’s name when he is not here to defend himself? Besides, you have not one shred of proof.”

“I’ll have all the proof I need as soon as we see what’s in those carts.” The colonel strode down the stairs to his waiting horse and swung into the saddle. Then, followed by a score of Riders and a small army of his hastily mustered tenants, he cantered away.

Lady Marcham turned to Delinda. “Be so good as to summon my carriage,” she said haughtily. “I will not remain in this house another moment.”

Delinda looked ready to burst into tears. “Oh, Lady Marcham, I am so sorry.”

“Well, well, I suppose that it is not your fault that your father is a jackass,” Lady Marcham said in a milder tone. “Do not cry, Delinda; I am not angry at you.”

Just then Captain Jermayne cantered by on his horse. Cecily glared after him. “I thought,” she said bitterly, “that he was Trev—Lord Brandon’s friend.”

“There are friends and friends,” Lady Marcham replied cryptically.

“I hope he may fall off his horse,” Cecily cried.

Of all the events of the night, the captain’s defection bothered Cecily the most, for it illustrated a point most clearly: now that he stood accused of wrongdoing, Lord Brandon had no friends.

Cecily tried to believe that Trevor was miles away and safe, but she could not make the picture. As she followed Lady Marcham into the carriage, her mind conjured up details of the chase, of the colonel’s catching up to the smugglers, the flash of swords and the bark of pistols.

“Stop worrying,” commanded Lady Marcham. “There is nothing to fear.”

Cecily rounded on her. “Nothing to fear! Aunt Emerald, the colonel’s riders are armed with swords and pistols. If he resists, they will kill him.”

“It is all part of the plan.”

Lady Marcham looked about the closed carriage and lowered her voice. “You may be sure that Trevor has no dealings with smugglers. Hush, now. These matters cannot be discussed on the open road.”

With difficulty Cecily restrained the questions that crowded her tongue. The short journey to Marcham Place had not seemed so long before. When they were climbing the steps to the house, she could no longer keep from crying, “Tell me this, at least—do you know about the Americans?”

Before Lady Marcham could reply, Grigg opened the front door. Though he was much too well trained to show any emotion, Cecily could swear that there was a glint of annoyance in the butler’s eyes.

“M’lady,” he announced, “There has been a—an occurrence during your absence.”

He lowered his voice and murmured something that Cecily could not catch. Lady Marcham ex
claimed, “On this night of all nights? Could you not have prevented—but of course, you could not. We must deal with things as they come, Grigg.”

“Yes, m’lady. Also, I regret to say that Mary Tierney has gone mad.”

“Mary?” Cecily gasped. “But when I last saw her, she was perfectly sane.”

Lady Marcham rolled her eyes. “Send her into the marigold room, and I will see what can be done,” she said with a sigh.

“It must be some mistake,” Cecily protested as, temporarily diverted from Lord Brandon’s troubles, she followed her grandaunt. But when Mary stumbled into the room, she had to admit that the girl definitely had a wild look. She was ghost-pale, and her linen cap was set askew on her red head.

“What on earth ails you?” Lady Marcham exclaimed.

“Sure, and they’re
not
of this earth,” the girl moaned. “My lady, the little people have landed at the Widow’s Rock.”

Lady Marcham pushed an impatient breath through her nose. “You were dreaming.”

Mary shook her head so hard that her red curls bounced. “Holy saints, wasn’t I awake entirely, and standing by the Widow’s Rock when I saw the little people coming in from the sea?”

“I suppose you were meeting Dickinson at Widow’s Rock?” Lady Marcham asked.

Mary burst into tears. “I didn’t go to do so, m’lady. Cook had sent me to get some eggs from the henhouse, and I saw Mr. Dickinson slipping out the gate and down the road that leads ter the sea. An’ I thought that if I met him by chance—” She broke off whimpering, “Sure and I ran so hard home, I broke all the eggs, and Mr. Grigg said as I was a wicked girl for trying to meet with Mr. Dick
inson, and that you’d turn me off without no character.”

“I will do no such thing,” Lady Marcham soothed. “Stop crying, you goose. You must have seen fireflies or Saint Elmo’s fire on the water.”

Mary fell on her knees and called on the blessings of all the saints to fall on Lady Marcham. Then she added, “But it wasn’t fireflies, m’lady. Fireflies don’t talk amongst themselves, do they? I heard them say they were going to meet in the Haunted Woods.” She began to sniffle loudly. “Oh, musha, musha, it’s like me mam told me onct—the little people have come to dance about their queen, and me that saw them will be taken away to Fairyland.”

Cecily glanced at Lady Marcham and saw an odd expression flicker in her eyes. For a moment she seemed to hesitate. Then she glided forward and placed a hand on the girl’s forehead. “As I thought, gadding about after dark has brought on a fever. You have been hallucinating, my girl. Not another word from you, or you will end in a madhouse, not Fairyland. Come to the stillroom with me now, and I will give you a soothing draft.”

Subdued by these words, Mary followed Lady Marcham out of the room, but Cecily remained where she was. She was sure that the ‘little people’ Mary had seen were Americans landing on English soil, and she strongly suspected that Lady Marcham knew of their arrival.

Once more the thought of treason rose blackly in Cecily’s mind, and she was now doubly afraid. There were only two people she cared for in the world, and both of them were most probably traitors to the crown. “What do I do now?” she said with a sigh.

A gruff meow at her feet made her look down.
Archimedes was sitting there. Needing to hold something, she bent down and picked him up, and for once he allowed her to stroke him. “What shall I do?” Cecily asked the cat.

Archimedes purred and rubbed his battle-scarred head against her chin, and Cecily pressed her cheek against his rough fur. She envied her cat. His loyalties, like his life, were simple. Because he loved her, he would defend Cecily to the death. The rest of the world, except for a carefully chosen few, could go hang for all Archimedes cared.

Suddenly the cat stiffened in Cecily’s arms. His head rose, his whiskers cocked into an alert position, and he glared into the dark. Following the direction of that stare, Cecily saw that a man was walking past the window and into the garden. His back was to her, but she recognized that swift, commanding walk.

“I thought he was riding for the western downs,” she gasped.

Archimedes growled, deep in his throat, and with that sound everything came clear to Cecily. She, too, cared less than a rush for the world. She had the greatest affection for Lady Marcham. She loved Trevor. He had told her that when she doubted the most, she must trust, and if ever there was a time for trust, it was now.

“I must warn him,” she said aloud. “He may not know that the colonel is on his trail. He
cannot
know that even Captain Jermayne has joined the enemy.”

Setting the cat down, she went into the hall. No one was there, and no one saw her open the door and slip outside. There was no sign of Lord Brandon, and in the faint starlight the woods at the edge of Lady Marcham’s property looked dark and menacing.

Moving as swiftly as she dared to in the starlit dark, Cecily traversed the herb garden, passed the statue of Ceres, and entered the woods. There the faint starlight did not penetrate, and the darkness was almost absolute. Cecily was groping her way along the path when a dark figure barred her way.

It was not Lord Brandon. This man was taller, heavier, and much more menacing. As Cecily retreated a step, he threw out a hand and caught her by the wrist. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he demanded.

His was not an American voice. It was also the coldest, most inflexible voice she had ever heard, and his grip on her wrist was iron-hard. Cecily had never felt so afraid in her life, and it took all the courage she had to command, “Let go of me at once.”

“Not until I am satisfied that—blast and confound you, woman, you will
not
faint.”

Cecily had pretended to go limp in her captor’s grip. When she felt that clasp slacken, she jerked herself free and, picking up her skirts, started to run. He lunged after her and caught her arm, but she kicked back at him with all her strength. Apparently her kick connected, for he gave a muted roar of pain and let her go.

Where was Trevor? Cecily’s heart hammered like a kettledrum. Though her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, it was impossible to see the path over which she ran. Suddenly another figure stepped out of the trees before her. “Stay where you are,” the newcomer hissed.

Mindlessly Cecily turned to run back the way she had come. Her assailant was too fast. The scream that had been forming on her lips died into a little whimper as he caught her around the neck. “Don’t
you make a sound, or you’ll be sorry,” Dickinson snarled.

Acting instinctively, Cecily dug her elbows backward. The underfootman had not expected fight and was caught off guard. He gave a grunt of pain and released her, but a moment later he had recovered and was after her, catching up to her at the edge of the woods. “No bloody fear you’ll get away.”

The vicious tug he gave her hair nearly snapped her neck. With no strength or breath to cry out, Cecily found her arm gripped and cruelly twisted. Then, letting go of her hair, Dickinson clamped that hand over her mouth.

“Come to warn Lord Brandon, ’ave you?” he sneered. “The colonel’s got ’is nibs dead to rights. A common smuggler ’e is, and both you and ’er ladyship is in on it. The colonel’s going to be pleased with me.”

Dickinson was the colonel’s creature. He had been spying for Howard all along. Cecily felt the white-hot fury that had risen in her when Giles Netherby accosted her in her room.

She bit down on Dickinson’s palm, so that he bellowed with pain and loosened his hold on her arm, then eeled out of his grip. When he grabbed for her, she knocked away his hands so hard that his hat flew off.

“You unspeakable swine!” she exclaimed.

With an oath, he leapt at her, and she saw the dull glint of steel in his hand. “When I get me ’ands on you, you’ll regret it, me lady,” he threatened.

Cecily snatched up a dead branch and parried the footman’s knife blows. She knew that Dickinson was much stronger than she and was wondering if she could make a run for the house, when, to her horror, her foot slipped from under her. “Now, me beauty, what’ll you do?” Dickinson sneered.

There was a rustle in the underbrush, a movement of shadow, and a click of bone meeting bone, and Dickinson fell like a stone. He lay on the ground and did not move.

“Trevor!” Cecily cried.

He dropped down on one knee and gathered her into his arms. She clung to him stammering, “Thank God I found you, oh, thank God. The colonel is riding for the western downs—”

“I know all about Howard.” Swiftly he rose, lifting her with him. “You have no business being out here,” he told her. “Go back to the house at once.”

Before she could protest, there were halting footsteps, and a tall, shadowy figure came limping up the path toward them. “Ah, good,” a cold voice said, “you have stopped the woman.”

“She has nothing to do with this business.” Though Lord Brandon spoke calmly, Cecily could feel the heightened tension in him. “She is leaving now.”