Lady in Green (3 page)

“Oh, no, miss. Sir Vernon said you were much too ill to go afield. Doctor’s orders, he said. Perhaps you’d like to see the latest fashion journals the master had sent from London for you?”

At least none of them objected when Annalise wanted to search the attics for old wigs and such. The entire staff knew the fate of her long blond locks and sympathized with poor miss, so gone off her looks that her handsome Mr. Coombes had ridden away in high dudgeon. Her maid and two footmen even helped carry down some ancient costume pieces, stuffing them in satchels and hatboxes, so miss could try them on later in the privacy of her room. Maybe that would raise her spirits.

Annalise raised the bandbox lid and stuffed in one more change of linen and another pair of sturdy shoes. Into the satchel she crammed her jewel box, miniatures of her parents, the jade horse, and her grandmother’s journal, all cushioned by two heavy flannel nightgowns. She pulled on one of her old mourning gowns, then another on top of that. She was so thin her new riding habit, a green velvet picked to match her eyes, still buttoned over the two black dresses. A heavy wool cloak went over everything, the pockets weighted with a small pistol, a silver flask of Sir Vernon’s finest contraband cognac, the contents of the household cash drawer, and as many lumps of sugar as she’d been able to pick up from the tea tray without drawing suspicion. Her own pin money was stashed in various inside pockets of the several layers of clothing, along with the thin stack of letters Sir Vernon must never find.

Annalise did leave him a note saying that she was running away to Bath to find Signor Maginelli, the music instructor who had begged her to elope with him last Christmas. She also left her entire trousseau, and Barny’s ring. Adjusting the wig on her head one last time, she gathered up her parcels and locked the bedroom door behind her. She placed two wig cases outside the door to be returned to the attics, indicating that she was not to be disturbed till morning, then she crept down the stairs while the servants were at supper.

The hard part was saddling her half-Arabian mare Seraphina before the stable lads came back for their nightly dice game. No amount of sugar was going to keep the spirited animal from cavorting around in welcome to her long-missing owner.

“Hush, you silly, hush! I missed you, too. Now stand still, and we’ll have a nice long run. Hush, beauty.”

At last Annalise was done, the mare daintily sidestepping at the unfamiliar packages tied to the saddle. She whickered softly when Annalise led another chestnut mare into the Arabian’s vacant stall. “No, she’s not as
pretty
as you, my darling, but in the dark she’ll do. Now come, Seraphina, just a few more minutes of quiet, then we can fly. No one will ever catch us.”

Especially not with all the loose bridles locked in a tack box, the key tossed into a pile of manure.

They rode through the home woods, picking their way cautiously around fallen trees and rabbit holes, then cross-country over fields and pastures. At last they were beyond Sir Vernon’s boundaries, with the main road just ahead. Annalise laughed out loud and Seraphina reared on her hind legs, then dashed forward, not south toward Bath, however, but north toward the market village of Upper Morden. Annalise laughed again, causing a weary farmer to cross himself and a goose girl to run down the lane, screaming about haunts in the woods. A poacher just setting out at dusk decided to return home. This was not a night to be testing one’s luck, not with any White Lady abroad, riding astride like all the hounds of hell were after her and her devil horse. Worse, she was yowling like a banshee, with bundles of souls flapping beside her and a great dark cape billowing behind. She and the horse and the cape were all shrouded in an eerie white fog.

The only wig Annalise had considered suitable for her purposes was a towering edifice
à la
Marie Antoinette. Well powdered, of course.

She discarded the wig behind a hedgerow outside Upper Morden and tied on a close-fitting dark bonnet. She walked Seraphina right through the main street and tied her to the rear of the Findleys’ Two Rose Tavern. Mrs. Findley herself bustled over to the back entry where Annalise stood, drawing the dark woolen cape more firmly over the green of her riding habit.

“’Ere now, we run a proper establishment. We don’t let none of your sort in this—criminy, Miss Avery, is it?” She looked behind Annalise as if the girl were hiding a maid and two footmen behind her skirts. “And out alone? I swann, that’s a rare to-do. What’s the world coming to, I want to know, when proper young females go racketing about the countryside after dark on their ownsomes?”

Annalise was gently steering the portly landlady down the hall toward the private parlors, away from the public taproom. “Please,” she whispered, though not terribly softly, “I need your help. I am running away.”

Mrs. Findley’s mouth hung so wide, a swallow could have nested there. “I swann.”

Annalise tucked a coin in Mrs. Findley’s fat hand. “It’s not as improper as an elopement or anything. My grandfather is sending a coach to take me north. My grandfather, his grace the Duke of Arvenell, that is. I need to wait in your back parlor for just an hour or so. Will that be all right?” She held out another coin, which quickly followed the path of the first down a slide between mounding bosoms.

“What about Sir Vernon?” Mrs. Findley whispered so loudly that only the passed-out louts in the alehouse missed her words.

Annalise hid her smile by staring at her riding boots. “You mustn’t tell Sir Vernon. He…he wants to marry me against my will.” Which wasn’t a lie, just misleading. It was enough to send Mrs. Findley’s massive chest heaving.

“Lawkes a mercy! That bounder! That Coombes fellow was bad, always sniffing round the serving girls, but this is outside of enough, I swann! I get my hands on that makebait, he’ll wish his parents never met. You come this way, dearie, where no one’ll bother you till your granfer comes. A real dook, too? I swann.”

Annalise was right where she wanted to be, in the Findleys’ own parlor, with its own rear door. She ate the bread and cheese a wide-eyed serving girl brought, and waited for full darkness and a full taproom, judging from the noise. She left another coin, then she stepped outside, asking a passing ostler the way to the necessary.

This time Annalise kept the mare to a quiet walk through the back alleys of Upper Morden. Then she took every deserted lane and cowtrack she knew, keeping to the trees when she heard a carriage or another horseman, until she was nearly back to Thompson Hall. At the edge of exhaustion, she rode through the home woods and down a quiet path that skirted the home farm and the tenants’ houses. Annalise could barely keep her head from collapsing onto Seraphina’s neck when she finally saw the glow of candles from a cottage that stood all by itself in a clearing. She smiled. Sir Vernon was wrong; there
were
people who would help her.

*

In times of dismay, disillusionment, and dire peril, a body needed three things: love, loyalty, and larceny. Annalise’s old nanny, Mrs. Hennipicker, was sure to provide unquestioned love, unquestioning loyalty—and hot soup. Henny’s husband, Rob, was a retired highwayman. What better allies could a fugitive find?

“What are you, girl, dicked in the nob? Stealin’ a horse and the household money, tellin’ whiskers up and down the pike, gallopin’ like a goblin acrost the countryside. And for what? So’s you don’t have to marry your childhood sweetheart, ’cause he’s been gatherin’ his own bloomin’ rosebuds, and so’s your step-da can’t steal the money old man Bradshaw stole from the poor sods who worked his coal mines.” Rob spit tobacco juice into the hearth and went back to trimming his beard with a knife. “I thought you had more sense’n a duck. Guess I was wrong, chickie.”

“Whisht, Rob, leave the poor thing be. Can’t you see she’s plumb tuckered? You go on and hitch up the wagon. It’s too cold for missy to ride home in her weakened condition.”

So much for love and loyalty.

“I’ll have a little talk with your Barnaby afore the wedding if you want,” Rob offered, holding the shining blade to the fire’s light. “Convince him of the error of his ways for you. Worked fine on that nasty billy goat old Trant used to let roam loose. Of course old Trant’s nannies ain’t had no kids
since then.”

And minor illegalities.

Bribery wouldn’t work; Rob likely had three times her jewels and coins stashed away in the secret compartments of the cottage, from his days on the high toby. Threats would never do the trick, either; she hadn’t cried rope on Rob for thirteen years, and they all knew she’d never go to the authorities now, even if she weren’t a runaway herself. Nanny always said, “Crying don’t pay the piper,” so tears would be useless, should Annalise find the energy to produce them. That left only honor. It was a hard hand to play, and only one trump left.

Annalise put her high card on the table: “You owe me, Rob Hennipicker.”

Rob put the knife down and winked at his wife. “I told you she had bottom, Henny, didn’t I? You fatten our girl up whilst I go see about hidin’ that pretty little mare.”

Annalise had to use the corner of her cloak to wipe her eyes. With all the miscellany in her pockets she could not find a handkerchief. “You and Rob were going to help me get away the whole time, weren’t you?”

“Of course we were, poppet, we just had to make sure that was what you really wanted.” Henny put a steaming bowl of stew in front of Annalise, clucking her tongue about how those fools at Thompson Hall were letting her baby waste away to nothing. She brought over a thick slice of bread and began buttering it. “You wouldn’t have called in that old debt if you hadn’t been desperate. We all know that.”

*

Many years ago, when Annalise’s father was still alive, he rented a place in Brighton to be near the
ton
’s wealthy gamesters for the summer. The viscount and Lady Avery went ahead, with the baggage and their personal servants in a second carriage. Eight-year-old Annalise was prone to travel sickness, so she and her nursemaid, Mrs. Hennipicker, traveled at a slower speed in a hired chaise. Henny was deathly afraid of being set upon by the highwaymen plaguing the Brighton road, but the hired driver and his arrogant young footman made light of her fears.

“G’wan with you,” the old coachman wheezed, “most of the ladies is pleased to give their baubles to a gentleman of the road.”

“Especially that brazen Robin fellow,” the footman added, taking another swig from the jug he refilled at every rest stop. “The one what kisses the ladies’ ’ands an’ calls ’em ‘chickie.’ Cock Robin is what they’re callin’ ’im, on account a’ that an’ ’ow cocky ’e is, but you don’t ’ave to worry none. ’E’s only interested in women what got jewels or looks. All you got’s an ivory-tuner’s brat an’ a sour puss.”

Annalise stuck her tongue out at the rudesby; Henny let her get away with it.

They were not set upon by highwaymen after all. Instead, the ancient driver wheezed his last right there on the box of their carriage. The footman sitting beside him was so castaway by then, he never even attempted to catch the ribbons as they fell from the coachman’s lifeless fingers. He just jumped off the box. What was a bad situation was going downhill quickly. And literally. The horses were panicky, the road was steep with a sharp curve at the bottom of the incline. The horses might make the turn; the coach never would, not without someone’s hands on the brake.

Now Robin Tuthill never made it his business to hold up drab and dusty hired chaises. Not worth the risk. And he surely never made it a habit to stop runaway coaches. No money in that at all. But there was something about the screams of a woman and child, coming to him as he sat his horse at the top of the hill, that just ripped away at his heart. Before he could wonder if there’d be a reward, he was digging his heels into his stallion’s sides and taking off after the careening coach. With her head out the window, Annalise could see everything, how the caped rider pulled even with the frantic horses and strained to reach the reins. How he stood in the saddle of his own galloping mount, then leapt up to the box of the coach and pulled with all his strength. How the foaming horses made the turn as sweet as pie, and the carriage barely rocked going around the comer.

“You saved us, sir!” Henny was crying as their rescuer opened the coach door. “How can I ever thank you?”

“Don’t fatch yourself, chickie, the pleasure was mine.”

Chickie? Henny collapsed in a dead faint, right into Robin’s arms. Oh, Lud, that’s what a fellow got for not
minding
his own business. Then he looked up, and it was love at first sight—between his fierce black stallion and a tiny golden-curled moppet who was feeding the unruly beast a peppermint candy from her pocket. Now, what was an honest bridle cull to do? He couldn’t go off and leave an unconscious nanny and her little charge out there with a dead coachman and, unless he missed his guess, a broken-necked groom. On the other hand, someone would be coming, there was no cover on this stretch of the road, and his own horse was winded.

At this point the debt was entirely Miss Avery’s, until she led his horse back to Robin, looked up at
him
with innocent green eyes, and sweetly inquired, “Do you really like being a highwayman? If not, I have an idea…”

So Robin Tuthill, wearing the footman’s livery, drove the ladies into the next village to report that the notorious Cock Robin lay dead on the road a few miles back, having fallen from his horse during an attempt to waylay their carriage. Their poor driver had had a seizure during the holdup. A new driver and groom were hired. Two months later Robin became Rob Hennipicker, Henny’s long-lost husband, home from the sea with a comfortable nest egg from prize money, and a fine, full beard. After they’d all moved to Worcester, Rob built Henny a little cottage and set up pig farming.