Kate Moore (3 page)

Though she was insensible of anything so ordinary and rational as thought, Margaret felt she knew the stranger’s mind as she had when she first looked into his eyes. From his very proximity she seemed to catch his thoughts, his urgency and intensity, his reckless courage. Every feeling of the sort was absurd, for how could she have the least idea of his mind when they had not exchanged a word for miles? Yet her body could not help but move with his in the impatient, drumming rhythm of the canter.

When at last they left the road for the merest lane, she was embarrassed to discover how tightly she was pressed against him and would have pulled forward at once, but his arm held her. He halted Phantom and dismounted.

“Miss Somerley,” he said, holding up his arms to her. She hesitated only long, enough to think herself foolish, for she had already allowed greater intimacies between them. Again she felt the strength in his arms and shoulders. He took her by the hand and began walking at once. It was this unwavering advance of his, rather than their actual speed, that gave Margaret a sense of his haste.

The lane was nearly overgrown with trees and tangled vines so that the moonlight scarcely penetrated, but a turn or two brought a light in view and a fenced garden before a snug cottage. A path to their right led to a modest stable toward which Phantom moved eagerly, showing all the impatience of a horse who has done well and knows he deserves the rewards and comforts of the stall. The thief lifted the latch, allowing the heavy door to swing open. The stable was lit as if they were expected, and a horse in one of the stalls nickered at their entrance.

The thief turned to Margaret. “Whatever you think of me, Miss Somerley, you must agree that Phantom deserves my attentions for his efforts tonight. I must rely on you to remain where you are for a few minutes. Your adventure is nearly at an end. Can you be patient a while longer?”

Margaret shook her head. She did not trust herself to speak.

“I thought not,” he said. In an instant he stripped the linen from his neck and bound her hands. He set her up on a partition between the stalls and, his hands still on her waist, looked directly into her eyes. “You
will
wait for me.”

She looked away, but soon turned back to watch him. She could not help but admire the quickness and sureness of his motions, the care and skill of his attentions to the horse. He talked to the horse, praising and teasing, and she felt the calming influence of his voice. The thought occurred to her that she had not watched a man so closely before. When he spoke, assuring her that his tasks were nearly complete, she shifted her weight upon her narrow perch and looked down at her bound hands. The movement brought the papers in his jacket up against her ribs. Really she was behaving witlessly. She ought not to have been staring, ought not to have been admiring the appearance and strength of a thief. If she could not escape, perhaps she could at least hide the earl’s papers.

But the thief turned from his horse and reached to lift Margaret down. He pulled her after him, though her strides could hardly match his long, quick ones. At the cottage he called, “Humphrey, where are you, man?”

They entered a low-ceilinged parlor, the striking feature of which was stacks and stacks of books, like staircases about to topple, so many that Margaret and the thief had to pick their way with care. Before the fire, like an island in the chaos, was a conspicuously empty wing chair, with a table anchored to one side.

“Humphrey,” her companion called again, but received no answer. He led her through the maze of stacks to a door in the far wall of the parlor, and Margaret sent a pile crashing to the floor, taking two others with it so that in one corner there was now a heap of books.

“Don’t worry,” her captor assured her, “Humphrey will not notice for weeks.” A hall at the rear of the cottage led them to a room, black except for the patch of moonlight admitted by a window. The thief found a tinderbox in the dark and lit two candles, revealing a spare order in startling contrast to the main parlor. He led her to the bed, bade her be seated, and released her hands.

“It seems your adventure continues,” he said as he removed a watch from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. Margaret studied him further, this thief named Drew. She had kept herself from saying his name, for she meant not to be on terms of any familiarity with such a man. She was beginning to recognize the cold alteration in his voice and features whenever he spoke of the meeting toward which he was hurrying.

“There are a few changes I must make; let us hope Humphrey returns,” he concluded in the same brusque tone. He closed the door of the small room and began to unbutton his waistcoat before her startled eyes.

“My girl,” he warned, a sudden smile lighting his eyes, “if your sensibilities are at all delicate, you would do well to take a book from that shelf and peruse it earnestly for the next few minutes.” Margaret turned to a shelf above the bed and snatched the volume on the end. To her dismay it proved to be a work in Latin, but she held the slim volume before her burning face and worked at the lines.

“Do you have a taste for Horace, Miss Somerley?” he asked a few minutes later. She made the mistake then of dropping the book to her lap and looking at him as he tucked the tails of a fresh shirt into his inexpressibles.

“Perhaps I ought to wait for you in the other room,” she said, wishing her bright cheeks did not reveal her embarrassment so plainly.

“Alas, Miss Somerley, I cannot trust you to remain there, can I?” She shook her head, and he went on, “Then I recommend ‘Ode to a Debutante,’ page nineteen.”

Margaret turned to it. Without looking up again she said, “This is not your home, is it.” There was a pause in which she could hear the little indefinite rustle of clothes that meant he continued to move inexorably toward his objective.

“No, it is not,” he answered.

“But these are your books?” she persisted. The book had opened so readily to the page he recommended that she could not doubt his familiarity with the volume.

“Yes,” came the reply. “And that is my bed, Miss Somerley.”

She looked up then. “You say that merely to disconcert me,” she began, and stopped at the sight of him. He had brushed his hair forward in a style she had often seen in London and had somehow darkened the color, subdued the gold of it to a pale brown. The coat he now wore was bottle-green and cut differently, to exaggerate the contrast between the broad shoulders and narrow waist. He had added fobs and rings that made him look quite the exquisite. The transformation was surprisingly complete, her teasing companion as thoroughly obscured in the haughty figure before her as if he had donned a mask and domino.

She looked away. She had meant to tell him he was an uncommon thief, but now it appeared he would steal anything. She gazed at a case on the lowboy in which a tangle of jewels sparkled.

“I meant to leave you with Humphrey, who is as kind as he is old,” he said, and his words recalled her to her own awkward position. “But it seems Humphrey has been called away, or more likely wandered away, on business of his own; thus you must continue with me.” He pulled her to her feet and removed the book from her unresisting fingers.

“You could not trust me to wait here? We are far from the hall.” It-was reasonable and sensible to ask, and of course she wanted him to leave her behind so that she might escape and alert the earl. So she held herself perfectly still, allowing her fingertips to rest lightly on his, meeting his clear gaze steadily. She felt an unaccustomed tautness in her body as she waited for his decision.

He studied her for a long moment; then, as certainly as if he had spoken, Margaret knew he had decided to take her with him. The change was in his eyes, and Margaret, who had sided with Prudence and Reason and Conscience all her life, knew that he had discarded the advice of such wise companions, had decided to take her because he wanted to. She dropped her gaze from his lest he should discern the perfectly unreasonable thrill that knowledge gave her.

“You would not wish to miss the end of your adventure, would you?” he asked lightly. “But you must not appear as Margaret Somerley in my company tonight.”

She allowed him to remove the borrowed jacket, but when he again put the earl’s papers securely in an inner pocket and tossed the first jacket aside, a pang of conscience made her appeal to him once more.

“Must you do this thing?”

“I must.” He studied Margaret with a critical air. “No doubt your mother selected this gown,” he said softly. “And we’ve no modiste to turn to.” Margaret felt the briefest twinge of resentment at her mother’s taste. Then he reached for her. She retreated, and the backs of her knees collided with the hard edge of the bed. In one of his quick, startling moves, he slid the tiny sleeves off her shoulders so that her chest and neck were suddenly more exposed than her mother could have approved of.

“No,” she protested, hugging her shoulders, pushing against his hands, trying to restore the modesty of her neckline.

“These bows must go,” he said, ignoring her attempts to right the gown. “Too demure by half for the company we’ll be keeping.”

Ruthlessly he plucked a row of corded ivory bows from each sleeve. Margaret pulled the poor bare puffs of muslin back up over her shoulders, but his hands met hers and stilled them. His thumbs lightly traced the line of bone from her shoulders to the hollows of her throat. She stared at him, appalled and fascinated.

“You miss your finery?” he asked abruptly. “No matter. You need another sort of ornament for your disguise.”

From the sparkling array in the case on the lowboy, he drew a strand of sapphires and fastened it about her neck, his fingers tangling briefly in her curls.

“A reward for your courage,” he said. She thought: How carelessly he takes and gives.

“There,” he whispered, turning her so that she could look in the mirror, “Margaret Somerley becomes . . . Meg Summers.” For an astonished instant Margaret gaped at her own appearance, the tumbled chestnut curls, the wide eyes more black than gray in the dim light, the flash of jewels above the white swell of her breasts.

Then her gaze met his in the mirror. He grinned. “If anyone asks where you’ve come from, you may say that you just left my bed.”

3

O
NCE MORE THEY
hurried through the night. The cottage, which had seemed so remote, proved to be just steps from the main thoroughfare of a coastal village. As they emerged from a wooded path, the sea lay to their left with a stripe of moonlight on it like a glittering extension of the street. To their right shops lined the steep ascent to an inn that clearly served as a coaching stop, for even as they moved toward it Margaret heard the guard’s blast on his yard of tin and saw the stage pull in.

As they entered the inn yard, the ordinary and familiar bustle of stableboys attending horses and weary travelers descending from the coach had the effect of rousing Margaret as if from a daydream. The world of ordinary action, which had seemed so remote since the thief had carried her off, now appeared accessible. She did not doubt that the unknown Humphrey would restore her to her family as the thief said, but surely here
she
could find someone kind enough to help her. Her thief appeared to be intent on his own errand and for the moment unaware of her on his arm. She had only to approach some reasonable person and explain who she was. But no one seemed to remark them. Margaret caught no one’s eye.

When they entered the inn itself, her sense of familiar and comfortable surroundings was immediately dispelled. Her parents patronized only the most respectable posting houses on the Bath road, establishments that catered to the quality, to whose proprietors Margaret’s father was well-known. How easy to explain her situation in one of them, how impossible here. The main taproom was plainly visible as she and the thief stood in the entry, waiting for the host to serve them. The room was dim, and a haze of pipe smoke drifted sluggishly on currents stirred by the movement of the waiters. The sober faces at the ends of the pipes appeared as unalterable as the carvings in the heavy paneling. To Margaret the inhabitants seemed not precisely evil but peculiarly indifferent. She doubted they could be moved to anything stronger than idle curiosity. She could hardly appeal to one of these.

She turned to the innkeeper, whose professional cheer and white apron made him seem a more likely rescuer, but he had eyes only for her foppishly dressed companion. She did not receive the least deference from him, and suddenly she realized the effect of her altered appearance. The borrowed cloak did little to conceal her bedraggled state; her arrival unattended by an abigail hardly suggested that she was a lady of quality. To convince anyone that she was a lady, let alone a baron’s daughter, would be impossible. Her thief had not asked for any further promises from her, and now she understood why. She felt her cheeks burn, but she lifted her chin and looked disdainfully upon the innkeeper. She averted her gaze from the thief, but he stayed her in the hall some steps behind their host.

“Would you believe I did it to protect you?” he asked softly, as if he had read her discomfort and embarrassment. She refused to answer. “No one must ever know Margaret Somerley was here; no one must ever connect you with me.”

The smiling proprietor had stopped and with a flourish indicated a door near the end of the hall. When he moved to open it, the thief stopped him, offering a coin. The man’s hand closed over the gold, and he bowed and left them.

In another of his swift, unexpected moves the thief encircled Margaret’s waist with one arm and pulled her against his side. He tilted her chin up, compelling her to look at him. “Now, Meg Summers,” he whispered, giving her the name he had invented. “Croisset must never guess who you are, so keep silent and lean against me, and I warn you, lie if you must, for he is a dangerous man.” His gaze held hers, and she knew he waited for her to acknowledge that she understood. Harsh laughter burst from the taproom behind them, followed by the scrape of chairs against the floor, shouts, and jeers. In these surroundings who could she trust but her thief? Reluctantly she nodded her compliance, and they entered the parlor.

At a long table lit by a great branch of candles sat an enormous man before whom were several platters, empty except for streaks of sauce and piles of bones. Margaret’s first thought was of the prince, for the man’s girth was as great or greater than the regent’s, and the room was uncomfortably warm, like all the rooms in Carlton House. Yet this man had none of the prince’s amiability about him. His complexion was mottled, and the skin appeared like a sausage casing stretched taut over the folds of flesh. It was not a skin in which a man could be comfortable. His unblinking gaze suggested a snake’s readiness to strike. Croisset’s look told her he would never forget her face, and under that gaze she could not resent the thief’s arm about her waist.

“So we meet at last. You are more than prompt, my lord,” the enormous man said to her companion in a thin nasal voice which was at odds with his size. “It is well—” He paused. “—but you bring a woman.”

“A necessary convenience, merely,” the thief replied in a voice Margaret hardly recognized as his. She wondered at the title with which he had been addressed, but the pressure of his hand at her side warned her to show no surprise.

“Perhaps she could wait for you elsewhere while we talk,” suggested the other with a careless wave of his hand.

“In this neighborhood there is no suitable location where a prize of her delicacy might be left alone, Croisset. I do not share what is mine.” He led Margaret to a bench built into an alcove. Then he removed their cloaks and settled Margaret next to him as if he were making the most ordinary of visits.

“You are not as I imagined, my lord,” said Croisset when they were seated. Again Margaret wondered at the title. Who was the man at her side? Was he lying to her or to Croisset?

“I did not think you fanciful, Croisset,” he replied.

“You are more handsome, more the ladies’ man than you are reported to be, I think,” continued the other, looking pointedly at Margaret.

“As I said, a necessary convenience.”

“But such an innocent one.” Margaret could not look away from the man’s stare until she felt her thief’s hand once more under her chin, tilting her face toward his.

“Innocence is a charming quality, don’t you think, Croisset?” he said, looking at Margaret. “Usually overpriced, but with this one, no.” He stroked Margaret’s cheek with his thumb. Her skin tingled and she felt the heat of the blush his touch evoked. “Did you wish to discuss her charms—I assure you she has many—or must we turn at once to the more pressing business of the evening?” He shifted his gaze back to Croisset, and there was a pause. Margaret willed her cheeks to cool, knowing the big man was deciding whether to accept her presence or not.

At last he said, “So you have brought the information we wished?”

“Of course,” her companion replied, with a languid calm that Margaret could see was maddening to the other man.

“You have the numbers, dates, objectives?”

“You doubt me, Croisset? My lord Haddon is the most trusted of Wellington’s supporters. While others receive only fragments of plans, Haddon has the key to the whole, that he might influence those in our government who are reluctant to supply the army’s needs.”

“Indeed, the information from your source has always been reliable.”

“More than reliable, Croisset—and perhaps, at this time, it is invaluable as well.”

“Invaluable, my lord? I thought we had agreed on a generous price.” With that Margaret stiffened in the circle of her companion’s arm. She understood at last and too well her thief’s aim. She should have realized at the hall that the earl’s papers would contain information about Wellington’s plans, and she should have acted to see that the papers never left the library. Words had been far too weak to stop the thief.

“After Moscow your emperor’s fortunes are not what they were; this spring’s campaign is perhaps critical,” her companion suggested, his hold on her as firm as ever.

Again Croisset’s black eyes glittered menacingly. “The emperor will prevail,” he asserted.

“Then no price will seem too much, I think, to the men who mean to rule Europe.” At this Margaret felt her throat tighten.

“Alas, my lord, I am merely the emperor’s courier and cannot pay more than the agreed-upon sum.”

“Then our dealings are at an end, Croisset,” said the thief. “You will excuse us.” He stood, drawing Margaret up after him.

“My lord,” said the other quickly, “if it were a simple matter, I could perhaps accommodate you. Perhaps an additional five thousand pounds?” he added.

“Really, Croisset, you underestimate the value of my information.” In the pause that followed this remark the thief put Margaret’s cloak gently about her shoulders.

“My lord, perhaps it was unwise of you to keep this engagement. In this neighborhood a man of your lordship’s wealth presents an irresistible temptation to thieves. One could, perhaps, arrange to have your information for nothing.”

“I think one will not, however, for one has spent months cultivating me as a source. One would have to begin the process again, a delay the emperor would not tolerate. And, if I believed one might try such a thing,” he said, moving slowly toward the long table, “it would be easy to destroy the information here and now.” With a sudden quickness and grace, the thief drew the papers from his pocket and held them over the flame of a candle so that the edges began to blacken. Croisset’s protest was an inarticulate cry at which the thief removed the papers from the flame without apparent haste.

“My lord,” said Croisset, regaining his calm, “if you wish to haggle like a shopkeeper over the price of your wares, you must see the Viper. Only he has the authority to pay you a larger sum.”

“Very well, Croisset, then I shall see him,” the thief replied, returning the papers to an inner pocket.

“Ah, but he is in Portugal, my lord,” came the smug reply.

The thief did not answer, but Margaret felt him give the slightest start.

“Perhaps you shall accept what I have to offer after all,” Croisset concluded.

“If I do, you mean to take the information to the Viper yourself? You have a ship waiting?” His tone was merely curious, but Margaret felt the tension gathering in him.

“I do.”

“Then I have a mind to take your place, Croisset. May not one courier deliver a message as well as another?”

“You are unprepared for such a journey, my lord.”

“One may make purchases.”

“And the young woman? It is hardly a journey on which to take such a delicate morsel.”

“Some men, Croisset, travel with their own sheets, not trusting every innkeeper along the way to be as fastidious as they themselves are. Should I take less care about what I put between my sheets? My taste in such matters is particular.”

There was a pause as the two men regarded each other. “Very well, my lord,” said Croisset with an unpleasant agreeableness.

***

The proprietor was summoned, and hastened to do his large guest’s bidding. Margaret was stunned. Her thief could not mean to take her to Portugal to deliver the army’s plans into the hands of the French. He was going to return her to Humphrey’s cottage. Surely.

She considered running to the taproom, but the denizens of that place would hardly believe that two such gentlemen as these appeared to be—the London dandy and the fat merchant—meant to betray their country. She could perhaps make use of some womanly excuse to leave the room, but her thief would not be deceived by such a ruse. She could kick and scream, but if she aroused Croisset’s suspicions would he not kill them both? He had already threatened her companion’s life. The man at her side was not Tom True, but if ever a man needed prudent counsel, he did.

“My lord,” she ventured, using the title Croisset had, “is it prudent to undertake such a journey in haste?”

He turned her toward him so that they stood face-to-face, a little in the shadows, beyond the light of Croisset’s candles. She felt the impatience in him, the restrained force, and willed herself to remain steady in the face of it.

“Readiness to seize the prize is not haste,” he replied. He put a finger to her lips as if to silence her, but she pushed it aside.

“Is it readiness to go so unprovided into danger?” she whispered.

“Is readiness in things or in the will?” he asked. Tom True had never spoken so; the hero had always listened to Prudence, altered his course, avoided danger. This man, quick and bright as a flame, meant to plunge them headlong into danger.

Their talk had come to just this unprofitable point when the proprietor returned, announcing that Mr. Crossey’s carriage was waiting. Their party moved at once down the hall toward the entrance to the inn. When they came in view of the taproom, its stolid inhabitants, who had appeared so cold to Margaret earlier, cheered and toasted Croisset, inviting him to tip a cup with them. Outside, a great black traveling chaise waited with two stableboys at the horses’ heads and two men on the box, apparently servants of Croisset though not in livery. Croisset was assisted into his carriage by another man at the chaise door and the innkeeper himself. The carriage tipped precariously as he put his weight upon the first step, and righted itself as he settled inside. Then Margaret was handed up by the proprietor, and the thief climbed in after her, all in a minute’s time.

Though the carriage was clearly designed for Croisset, there was no room to spare and Margaret could not move without touching the man across from her or the man at her side. Escape now seemed to call for some action on a scale quite out of her experience. Her throat ached with sobs she must not release, and in the close confines of the carriage she seemed to choke on the odors of sweat and onions and wine.

The driver did not spare the whip, and after but a short interval of swaying and bouncing, the chaise turned from the main road down a lane toward the sea. Suddenly Croisset pounded the roof with his hand, and they stopped. When the clop and rattle of their mode of travel faded in her ears, Margaret could hear the hiss of waves upon the shore, and the sound of pebbles tumbling over one another as the breakers rolled them. The thief opened the chaise door, let down the steps, and handed Margaret out, keeping a grip on her arm. Margaret breathed deeply of the damp, fresh air. They had halted before a wood, which was revealed by the moon, more than halfway toward setting. Croisset’s quick orders to the two servants on the box brought one of them to his assistance and sent the other scurrying ahead with a lantern.