Miss Ryder's Memoirs (25 page)

I paid no heed to his teasing. It was so good to see Robert. I had forgotten how solid and handsome he was, with his shock of dark-brown hair and steady green eyes. He stood only a few inches taller than me, not nearly so tall as Sir John. “Mama will be so happy that you’re here,” I sighed. “She’s very much in need of your guidance, so long as it isn’t unbearably self righteous. She couldn’t bear that.”

“I understand. I believe you’ve done very well in my absence."

Whether this was true or not, I was so pleased to hear him say it that I almost missed Sir John’s next comments.

“We think it would be best if Robert waited to see her until the morning. That is, I suspect something is going to happen tonight that would best be handled by your brother and myself, with your mother and sister quite uninvolved.”

I wondered if Sir John had told Robert all about Mama being the highwayman, and I raised an inquiring gaze to his face.

“Yes, he knows. In fact, he knows a great deal, because you refused to trust me earlier.”

Something about the way he said this made me blush. Surely he hadn’t told Robert about our various interludes. They were, after all, a very private matter. But I couldn’t get him to look me directly in the eye, and Robert’s mind was already on the night ahead.

“What if Cousin Bret simply decides to take off with the spoils?”

I didn’t think that was very likely. “He has made the most determined effort to get Amanda to marry him, you see. The jewels and money could not amount to anything near as much as Hastings and all our family possessions."

“Which he was not likely to intimidate me into giving him, was he?”

“You weren’t here,” I reminded him.

“My emissary was,” he assured me, nodding to Sir John.

Something about the baronet’s smugness at this point made me feel saucy. “But Sir John has been a little distracted by certain elements of his visit. Perhaps he has not been thinking as clearly as you might have hoped.”

“I’ll have you know I have been thinking perfectly clearly,” Sir John said as he pulled me close to him and tucked my arm through his. “Little distractions cannot induce me to forget the call of duty.”

“Little? Ha.”

Robert shook his head with amusement. “We’ll discuss that further tomorrow. Right now we have to concentrate on ridding ourselves of Cousin Bret once and for all.”

* * * *

The best view of the dovecote was from Robert’s room. Robert had gone straight there as secretly as possible. Sir John and I joined him after we left Cousin Bret for the night. There was only a faint moonlight, but it was easy enough to see my cousin saunter to the dovecote and reach his hand up for the key. He pocketed it as casually as he might have his own handkerchief. What a dastardly fellow he is.

And then he headed directly into the house. He could not even have stopped at his room, he was so quickly near the attic door. From his years of visiting us, he knew where the strongbox was. It didn’t even occur to him that it might have been moved because it was now being used as a repository for stolen goods.

Hiding in the dark of Robert’s room with the door slightly ajar, we heard Cousin Bret move quickly down the hall toward the entrance to the attics. I peeked around the corner of the corridor and saw that he had a candle shedding a very small amount of light on the area before him. On tiptoe we moved down the hall toward the door. Above us we could hear the dragging of the old box away from its companions so that Cousin Bret could more easily get at the lock. Robert now motioned me behind him in preparation for the big act we had planned. Sir John waited downstairs in the corridor just in case my cousin should try to break and run.

As though he suspected only a friendly though misguided servant to be at fault for making noise in the middle of the night, Robert called, “Who’s up there? This is not the time of day for someone to be working in the attics; you’ll wake the entire household.”

I could hear Cousin Bret’s sharp intake of breath. Not in a million years would he have suspected that Robert might be home or that he would be in a position to discover him at his night’s work.

“I was just looking for something up here,” he called back, hastily slamming the top down on the strongbox.

Robert made his way quickly up the rest of the stairs and stood like a giant at the top of them, frowning down at my cousin, who was still trying to get the lock attached.

“I had no idea you were home,” Cousin Bret squeaked, his fingers working frantically. “Imagine your arriving without my being told! How very strange of your family.”

“No one,” Robert said, and then added, “except Catherine, knows that I’ve arrived. It was too late to wake them. What is it you’re doing, Cousin Bret?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. I was just looking for a costume for Public Day. Your family is thinking of having a costume ball, and when I found that I couldn’t sleep, I thought I would just take a look up here.”

“But why the old strongbox? We’ve never kept clothing in it.”

“No? Well, I didn’t know.”

“And the key. Where did you come by the key?” Robert’s brow had puckered with concern. “It’s not really something one of our visitors should have hold of, you know.”

“I just happened to come upon it. Actually, I was walking with Amanda when she noticed it in a very strange place.”

“Where was that?”

I could scarcely keep from laughing by this point, watching my cousin wriggle and twist to get out of this jam.

“In the old dovecote. Where you apparently kept a key to get into the house when you were out late at night.”

“I certainly never had the strongbox key out there.” Robert sounded astonishingly disbelieving. “Perhaps you would give me the key, Cousin Bret.”

Oh, the reluctance he showed. I thought for a moment that he was going to toss the key somewhere deep in the bowels of the attic where we would have the devil of a time finding it. But no, he slowly handed it to Robert, though he protested the whole while, “I hadn’t even a chance to open the box,” he insisted. “I had just gotten up here when you came.”

“Surely that can’t be true,” Robert demurred. “I heard the sound of someone dragging a heavy object across the floor. That is what first called my attention to you.” He stooped down in front of the box and inserted the key. I felt that my cousin had begun to hold his breath.

With a small scraping sound, Robert turned the key and the lock sprung open. He lifted the lid and simply sat there for a long moment. Inside were all the valuables, the purses, and rings, and gold and silver and all sorts of coins that Mama had collected. Robert whistled. Then he leaned back on his haunches and glared up at Cousin Bret.

“What is this doing here? These are without doubt ill-gotten gains. How did you come by them, cousin?”

“They aren’t mine,” Cousin Bret protested. “They’re your mother’s.”

Robert laughed. I’ve never heard him laugh so gleefully and so apparently freely. He laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes, and he seemed almost unable to stop. “My mother’s,” he finally repeated, before going off into gales of laughter again. “Oh, that’s a good one.”

I shifted farther back into the shadows. No need for Cousin Bret to notice me at a time like this and demand that I side with him. Robert had the situation well under control.

* * * *

“But you can’t send him off accused of stealing from the neighbors,” Mama protested when Robert told her that Cousin Bret had left and would not be returning. “He had nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, but he did,” Robert assured her. “He had every intention of using his knowledge as a way of forcing Amanda to marry him and getting as much benefit out of Hastings as possible. You needn’t think he’s an honorable man, my dear Mama. He would use whatever subterfuge he could to get his way. This will give us all the added satisfaction of never having to tolerate him at Hastings again. A very nice reward indeed.”

“Well, I must say I didn’t expect him to cave in so easily to your demand,” I remarked. “We’d have had the devil of a time trying to prove he had anything to do with highway robbery.”

“Not such a very difficult time,” Robert argued. “There was the stable lad who saw him several times take Thunder out in the middle of the night. And nights when there was a visit from the highwayman, at that.”

“We didn’t have any intention of trying to prove it,” Sir John interposed. “Just to make sure there were various other elements working to convince him of the necessity of departing for his dear home at the soonest moment. But we could have managed, all of us, to cast the gravest suspicion on him. As it is, the constable has by now stumbled over the box of spoils left outside his door like a foundling.”

Robert nodded. “He’ll manage to return them to their proper owners.” He gave Mama a stern look and she waved nervous fingers at him.

“I shan’t do it again, I promise. There will be plenty of other things to see to, especially with a wedding in the offing.”

“Whose wedding is in the offing?” I demanded.

“Yours, for one,” Sir John informed me. “I’m sure you will wish to protest and I’ll be glad to hear every word of it, but not at this particular moment, my love. Assure yourself that both your mother and your brother have given me their permission to address you, which I intend to do at any moment now, if I can pull you away from this intriguing scene.”

Mama smiled benignly on us and Robert waved a hand to indicate that we had his full cooperation in our endeavor to withdraw from the family. So I gave in to Sir John’s insistent tug on my hand and allowed myself to be drawn away from the two of them. Amanda was not a party to all of this. It would have been too much for her nerves—or so she said when Robert tried to include her.

It soon became clear that Sir John had no intention of doing things in the proper way. Well, every girl expects the man to get down on his knees and protest his undying love, doesn’t she? Sir John was satisfied with circling me in his arms, out in the orchard, and kissing me most thoroughly. This, I supposed, was all the pleading I was going to get from him. I protested.

“Don’t you think you could at least squat down just the tiniest bit?” I asked.

“Whatever for?”

“Well, I thought that was how it was done, Sir John. I thought the gentleman was supposed to indicate that he would be putting his lady on a pedestal, you know.”

“Rest assured I would never do anything of the sort. And, Catherine, I think it is high time you learned to call me John. There’s a formality about Sir John that doesn’t sit well with me when I think of holding you in my arms.”

“Hmmm. Already he is making demands on me. I wonder where it will end.”

“Oh, I’m sure you have a good idea of where it will end. And I don’t think you’re altogether worried about that.”

I smiled beatifically. “No, not about that. But, John, what of the other commands you are likely to impose on me? Look what that sort of thing did to my mother. She was so unstrung by the lack of commands and guidance after my father died that she went a little dotty.”

“I don’t think that’s something we’re going to have to worry about: For one thing, I’m not the same kind of man your father was, am I? He was very proper and strict, and I assure you I’m not the least bit that way, myself. And as for you, wild as the streak that runs through you is, there’s a sensible woman who inhabits that body, too, and one who doesn’t need any outside strictures to make her behave in a reasonably acceptable way.”

“Ha!” I snorted. “Little do you know.”

“I know enough. You’re not the same woman your mother is, sweetings.”

“Sweetings! How positively mushy. Is that what you consider romantic?"

“No, it’s just something I’ve wanted a chance to call you. So, Catherine, what is your answer to my proposal? Will you have me?”

I cocked my head at him, trying hard to delay my response so that he would have to worry for a few minutes. “It seems to me that you have some explaining to do first. Why did you try to make up to Amanda when you came?”

Oh, I shan’t ever forget the wicked sparkle that appeared in his eyes then. “Couldn’t you guess? Catherine, seeing you in the pond and sparring verbally with you very nearly set me on my ear. But I absolutely refused to accept that I’d been struck a blow from which I had no chance of recovering. Instead, I threw up as much obstruction and denial as I could. You know perfectly well that Amanda never held the least interest for me. It was all a ruse to keep myself from recognizing that I had fallen madly in love with you.”

Now this was the kind of romantic talk I’d wanted to hear. My efforts to prolong it, however, were all in vain. I was so in love with him that I pressed my cheek against his and whispered in his ear, “Yes, I’ll have you, you dreadful man. How could I be satisfied with less now that I’ve found you?”

He pulled me closer to him and whispered back, “I love you to distraction, you irrepressible woman. What a marriage we shall have! Can you picture how it will be? Wild and free and quite the most comfortable union you can imagine, because we are like to like, and yet we’re not in just the ordinary mold. Do you suppose people will think us eccentric one of these days?”

“Certainly by the time we’re grown old,” I replied. “Oh, John, what a time we’ll have. I can hardly wait to be off with you. Do you think we will have to wait and see if Mama is to be trusted with her new resolve?”

“I haven’t the slightest doubt that she can be trusted, with Robert’s capable guidance. He’ll not be too restricting. And your mother will be too busy getting ready for our wedding and planning for Amanda’s Season to need any other distraction. Besides, her Cavalier ghost has abandoned her, thank heaven. We can post the banns now and be married within a fortnight. My mother won’t mind the rush, since it will mean someone has finally managed to settle me down.”

“I promise not to tell her that I haven’t,” I said happily as I leaned against his strong frame. His arms went instantly around me and my heartbeat quickened. I waited, as always, for the wondrous touch of his lips.

* * * *

And that is how it all happened, more or less. Except for the tale of how Robert and John managed to spike the earl’s guns the next time he sent a letter to the newspaper. I don’t consider that nearly as interesting as the rest of the story.
He
says I might as well have included it. But I shan’t.