The Bluestocking and the Rake (The Regency Gentlemen Series) (9 page)

“Where did all those pretty dresses come from anyway?” asked Catherine.

“She had them before she came to live here when she was our age. She must have been a very fashionable young woman in her youth.”

“Have you seen them then?” asked Kitty.

“Oh, yes! Ivory silks and satins, pinks and blues and velvet and lace and petticoats. Feathers of every colour you can imagine. Muslin so fine that it clings to the body in a most indecent way―”

Elizabeth
rolled her eyes. “If you are to prate on of finery, then I’m off!”

“I’m just saying that a new dress is
not what she would want,” reasoned Marianne.

“What does she love more than anything?” asked Kitty.

“Us?” suggested Jack.

“Yes, we know that.”

“Sweetmeats,” he continued. “She loves sweetmeats. We will buy her a cartload of them.”

“Which will make her fat,” said Ned caustically. “Thank you for that winning suggestion.”

Jack poked his tongue out and it was all Lizzy could do to prevent a scuffle.

“Thorncote,” breathed Marianne.

“What’s that you say?”

“If we could find a way of keeping Thorncote, she would be grateful to us.”

“Marry, you little genius,” said Ned softly.

Marianne dazzled them with her smile and for a moment they all grinned at each other in their moment of triumph.

“But how?” asked Elizabeth.

“If Lord Marcham is not willing to help us then I don’t see how we can succeed. Unless Marianne marries a very rich husband.”

“
Me
? Why do I have to marry the rich husband?”

“Because you are by far the prettiest,” said Catherine, “and being three and twenty, you are the oldest.”

“But I haven’t found anyone I wish to marry,” she pointed out.

“Well you had best marry soon because you are fast becoming an old maid,” said Ned. “And then you will become old and fat and nobody will want you.”

Predictably this candidness caused another bout of tears.

“Oh, stow it, Marry,” recommended
Elizabeth, impatiently. “You are always blubbing.”

“I am not!”

“You are too. But you have the quickest brain of all of us and we need you to think. Think.”

“Do
―do we know anyone rich enough for me to marry?” asked Marianne, her tears drying quickly at the unexpected compliment.

They thought for a moment.

“Joshua Peabody,” Lizzy said.

That suggestion resulted in a burst of laughter.

“Can you imagine it?” cried Catherine. “He’d belch all through the ceremony.”

“And snore all through the wedding night,” said Ned, with one of his rare smiles.

“Ned Blakelow,” gasped Marianne. “How can you talk so? There are ladies present…besides, he is taken with our sister. The mourning garb and the spectacles do not seem to put him off. I could not steal her only beau away.”

“No indeed,” said Ned sobering. “But who would want such a beau? He farts like the very devil.”

This pronouncement produced such gales of laughter that they could not be sensible again for some minutes. And every suggestion after that could not be taken seriously. Several names were put forward only to be cast aside again and rejected as being too fat, too hideous, too prosy and too old.

“Mr. Thomas Edridge.”

“He’s in love with Lady Emily.”

“Mr. Samuel Bateman then.”

Marianne with a telling blush said airily, “He’s the very epitome of the perfect gentleman. but not nearly rich enough. Well, not to save the estate anyway.”

“Then it comes down to one man. Lord Marcham.”

A gloomy silence met this announcement.

“Marry the man who stole the estate from William?” demanded Marianne incredulously. “Marry the man who all but killed our father? Are you mad?”

“Well there is no-one else.”

“But he is so…so old.”

“Not so
very
old,” put in Ned. “And he is a good sportsman. Boxes well, so William tells me, and has a good seat on a horse.”

“Perfect,” murmured Marianne faintly.

“But he doesn’t want to wed Marianne, does he?” Jack pointed out.

“No, of course he doesn’t.”

“And even if he did, she could not make him rescue this place. It would be like throwing his blunt into the hull of a sinking ship,” the boy continued.

“Well thank you for cheering us up,” responded Ned caustically.

“Then what are we to do?” asked Kitty forlornly.

Marianne giggled. “Kidnap him,” she said.

Four pairs of blue eyes swivelled in her direction and stayed pinned to her face. “What?” she demanded. “I was
joking
.”

The carriage rolled along at a wicked pace, flicking mud up from behind the wheels and lathering the large gold crest upon the side panels in sticky mud. The coachman urged the horses onwards, narrowly missing a farm cart loaded with vegetables as they swung onto the main road to Loughton. He flicked the whip, smiling grimly as the farmer’s abuse rang in his ears.

Lord Marcham was late home from his best friend’s wedding. The service was accomplished without mishap, the rings exchanged and the happy couple waved off, but on the journey home, barely ten miles from
Harrogate, one of his lordship’s leaders had thrown a shoe and they had to walk to the nearest inn before a blacksmith could be found.

Mr. Thomas Edridge had married Lady Emily Holt by special licence in
Harrogate, the lady’s grandmother in attendance. The happiness on the face of his best friend was something to behold. He had never seen Tom look so satisfied with his lot.

His lordship smiled with grim satisfaction.

The world and the Holts were in blissful ignorance of the momentous events of the day. Lady Holt no doubt still believed that her eldest daughter would turn up at the church at Holme Park the next morning to wed the Earl of Marcham. She believed that her daughter was at that moment returning from a day out shopping with her friend.

But no invitations had been sent, no flowers decorated the church at Holme, there was to be no wedding breakfast. Lord Marcham was en-route to give Lady Holt the news that the wedding of her daughter had already taken place and a piece of his mind along with it
―

A shot rang out, breaking into his reverie. The earl was suddenly catapulted back to the present. The horses bolted and were checked and the carriage came to a shuddering halt.

He could hardly believe his ears.

Someone was having the temerity, the utter
gall, to hold him up on the road that led up to his house.

He frowned, focusing his bleary eyes on the slim youth who had appeared at the window. The door was wrenched open and the wide snout of a blunderbuss nuzzled through and levelled ominously at his head. His lordship possessed a particularly fine pair of duelling pistols, which were unfortunately under the opposite seat, and he was debating how he was going to get to them without having his head blown off when the youth gestured that he leave the carriage and get down onto the road. He reflected grimly that if he had not spent the past half hour fantasising about telling Lady Holt
exactly
what he thought of her, he might have been more alert at the first shout of the brigands to halt and he might have stood a chance of escaping this situation without loss of his purse.

All these reflections passed through his head in a matter of moments and he grimaced as the highwayman cried, “Stand and deliver!” from behind a red neckerchief, it seemed to his lordship, merely to set the bells ringing in his ears.

He winced visibly. “I’m not deaf.”

“Get out of the carriage, my good man.”

The earl glared at his young attacker. If this was a youth barely old enough to use a razor he would be very much surprised. The voice, deliberately lowered to disguise his age, was well spoken. Not your usual class of highway robber. “How old are you?” his lordship demanded.

“Out!” said the highwayman, gesturing with the blunderbuss and adjusting the neckerchief over his nose.

“Don’t wave that thing around, they have a tendency to go off.”

“Get out of the carriage or I’ll spray your brains all over the road! Truly I will!”

“Bloodthirsty brat,” his lordship remarked, climbing down from the carriage and jumping lightly down onto the road. “Does your mother know you have escaped the nursery? Shouldn’t you be at home playing with your dolls?”

The gun came to rest against his sternum. “Got a mouth on you, ain’t you?”

Lord Marcham’s lips twitched. “Remembered your accent at last?”

“Move!” said the youth gesturing to a cart hidden behind some bushes.

“Shouldn’t you ask me to hand over the pretties or some such thing?” asked his lordship, looking around him at the group of five unlikely looking highwayman.

“We don’t want your money.”

“What sort of highwayman doesn’t want money?” he enquired.

“Shut your mouth!”

“Look, I have a purse, you may take it,” said the earl, reaching for his pocket.

“Stop!” cried the youth. “Keep your fives where I can see them! I knows you to be ‘andy with your fists.”

The earl bowed slightly. “Thank you for the compliment. But if you don’t want my purse, then why in God’s name are you risking your neck to hold me up? Don’t you know that they hang people for less?”

“Jack!” cried another of the brigands over his shoulder at the youth. “Stop the pleasantries and get him in the cart.”

The youth called Jack cast a resentful look at his fellow robber, a look which was not lost upon the earl. The older brother perhaps?

“I
ain’t
doing pleasantries,” retorted Jack. “But he’s a mouthy one.”

“Just be quiet and get him in the cart!”

Jack glared hard at the leader of the gang and the earl took advantage of his momentary lack of concentration. In a lightening move, he grabbed the end of the blunderbuss and yanked it down and towards him and it went off, firing harmlessly into the trees. The gun went flying and before Jack knew what was happening, the earl had one of his powerful arms around his neck in a crushing headlock. His lordship spun himself and the boy around so that the willowy figure was between him and the muzzle of the other boy’s gun.

“Now,” said his lordship, hardly out of breath. “Will someone please tell me what the devil is going on here?”

“Oh, Jack, you’ve spoiled it!” cried a third highwayman.

The voice was so unmistakably female that his lordship was momentarily taken aback. His frown deepened.

“You are such an idiot!” agreed the fourth, also a girl.

The earl tightened his arm. “You have five seconds to tell me what is going on here before I crush this boy’s neck.”

“Oh, no!” cried one of the girls.

“Marianne, quiet!”

“Can’t breathe…” croaked the boy in his lordship’s arms.

Lord Marcham adjusted his crushing grip on the boy’s windpipe. “Let my coachman go, if you please. Or your brother—I take it he is your brother?—is not long for this world.”

“Don’t hurt him,” pleaded the girl called Marianne. “Please, my lord.”

He frowned at her. “You know who I am?”

She nodded.

“Were you attempting to kidnap me?” he demanded. He heard a twig snap behind him and whirled around to face the new attack. He let the boy go and put up his fists to defend himself as a man rushed him. He did not get the opportunity to let fly the left jab he was famous for because he felt a skull splitting blow to the back of his head. He wavered a moment and collapsed to the ground like a felled tree.

“You killed him!” Marianne screamed at her brother, running over.

“Don’t be such a goose, Marianne,” said Ned. “Tie his hands and feet, John.”

“Yes, Master Edward,” replied the man, crouching to do his bidding.

“Oh, you’ve killed him! You have! You have!”

“Take a damper Marry, for Lord’s sake,” said Lizzy impatiently.

“Georgie will kill us,” breathed Marianne.

“You should have thought of that before you came up with this daft idea,” said the boy.

“Yes, but I didn’t expect
you
would go through with it,” she complained. “I meant it as a joke.”

“Look, let’s get him off the road. We could be found at any moment.”

“If we end up hanging at Twyburn, it will be your fault, Ned Blakelow!”

* * *

His lordship awoke to find that quarrymen were trying to batter their way through his skull; or at least that’s what it felt like. The pounding in his head made him wish he could take that part of his anatomy off and set it apart from the rest of his body.

Slowly he opened his eyes and was momentarily confused when he could not see anything. It took him a moment to realise that a blindfold had been tied over his eyes and he had been gagged extremely roughly. He was sitting in a hard, uncomfortable chair with his ankles bound together and his wrists lashed so tightly to the back of the chair that he was losing the feeling in his fingers. A fine film of sweat was on his brow and the back of his head felt tight with congealed blood.

“Is he awake?” asked a voice, a very soft female voice.

“I don’t know,” said another.

“What do you think Ned is going to do with him?”

“Keep him here, silly.”

“But we can’t keep him in here forever. George is bound to find out.”

“Then we’ll just have to keep him quiet.”

“That gag does look terribly tight. I did warn Ned not to make it so but he wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Well we don’t want him shouting for help, do we?”

A pause, and then, “Do you think he’s handsome?” asked the girl, wistfully.

“Marianne!”

“Well, do you?”

“No, ughh! He’s so old! He could be your father.”

“
I
think he’s handsome.”

“Stop mooning over him and get some water. We don’t want him dying on us up here.”

“His head has stopped bleeding at last,” said the first voice again. “But I still say we should get George to look at it.”

“And spend the rest of the year in the doghouse,” said a lad’s voice, Jack, if his lordship wasn’t much mistaken. “You girls do say the stupidest things.”

Footsteps approached and the earl gathered that he was in a room with bare floorboards and the faint musty smell of disuse. It was hot and airless and dark. An attic perhaps?

“How is he?” said an older voice.

Was this one Ned?

“Coming around, we think.”

“Do you think we should give him some food?” asked Marianne.

“And have those fists loose again? No, I thank you… I say there, Marcham, can you hear me?”

His lordship was determined that if he ever got his hands on this young whelp, he would beat him so hard that he wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week. He raised his head, indicating that he was awake.

“I’m going to take the gag off you to give you some water. If you make a sound it will be very much the worse for you, do you understand?”

As this was said into his ear as if the boy was talking into an ear trumpet, his lordship was hard pressed to keep his temper but he nodded his acceptance.

“Well, here we go then. And remember, no noise.”

Fingers fumbled at the back of his head and then the gag fell loose. His lordship felt the blood rush into his numbed lips and worked his mouth to ease the pain. A cup was pushed against his mouth before the circulation had returned to his lips and he spilled most of the water down his chin. Slowly he found the right angle and drank deeply.

“Where am I?” he rasped when the cup was cruelly taken away.

“Never you mind,” replied Ned. “Somewhere no-one knows.”

“What do you want from me?” snapped his lordship. “Money?”

The lad pulled up a nearby chair and the earl heard it scrape against the floorboards. “Amongst other things.”

“What other things? What am I to you?”

“You are the man who killed our father.”

There was a silence.

“Who was your father?” asked Lord Marcham.

“Sir William Blakelow.”

The earl paused. “I think there must be some mistake.”

“I think not, Marcham. You killed him.”

“Oh, Ned, don’t say so!” cried Marianne.

“It’s true! He did, I tell you! Papa would never have killed himself but for him.”

“What are you going to do with me?” asked his lordship.

“We want your signature on some papers,” replied the youth.

“Is that so? And do you imagine that any signature of mine without a witness is legal?”

There was a pause.

“Didn’t think of that, did you?” taunted the earl softly.

“You will sign those papers.”

“Or what?”

The boy stood up and untied the blindfold around Marcham’s eyes. The earl winced at the sudden glare of candlelight right in his face.

“Or,” continued the boy. “You will be kept here until you do.”

“And do you imagine such a fearsome prospect will have me breaking into a sweat?”

The youth stepped forward until his face was inches away. He smiled down into the older man’s face. “You are due to be married tomorrow,” Edward breathed, hugely enjoying himself. “Breach of promise if you don’t turn up, isn’t it? Now who’s the one who didn’t think things through?”

“You had better hope and pray that I don’t ever get my hands on you, boy.”