The Viscount's Revenge (The Royal Ambition Series Book 4) (2 page)

Aunt Matilda fell asleep almost immediately once she had been put into a clean nightdress and tucked into bed.

Her face under the nightcap looked pinched and old. How old was Aunt Matilda? wondered Amanda. Fifty? Or had her timid life of genteel poverty made her look older than her years?

She picked up the candle and made her way downstairs again.

Amanda and Richard sat on either side of the fire and drank brandy and looked at each other gloomily.

They did not look alike, although they were twins.

Amanda Colby was small and wiry with a small bosom and a tiny waist. Her hair sprang out from her brow in a frizzy auburn cloud. Sometimes she tamed it into ringlets with the curling tongs, but it would soon start to spring out from its neat prison into a mass of frizz again. She had very large hazel eyes, gold flecked with green, and thick, curling sandy lashes tipped with gold. Her nose was short and straight and her mouth soft and vulnerable. But her thin face and quick intelligent expression gave her rather a foxy look and she turned her head sharply at each sound, putting it a little on one side like a wild animal wary of hunters.

With a different upbringing, with a schooling in how to flirt and how to charm to a nicety, she might perhaps have achieved a modicum of fashionable beauty, but she had led a boyish life, hunting and fishing with her brother, and so she had acquired only a very few social graces.

Richard, on the other hand, was large and broadshouldered. He had thick brown hair and hazel eyes set in a pleasant tanned face. His expression was usually open and cheerful.

The brandy coiled its way down the depths of Amanda’s empty stomach. The fire crackled cheerfully on the hearth. Amanda hitched a fire screen in front of her and slid the embroidered oval down the pole to shield her face from the blaze.

“You remember how we used to read the tales of Robin Hood?” she asked dreamily, leaning her head against one wing of the chair and resting the brandy glass on her small stomach.

“Yes,” said Richard. “Capital they were. Taking to a life of crime, Amanda?”

“It’s worth thinking about,” said Amanda, still in the same dreamy voice. “The landlord at the Feathers at Hember Cross told me one day that highwaymen do not just hold up a coach at random. They ferret out news about who is likely to be travelling and when. Some of the ostlers are in their pay.”

“
Not
the ostlers at the Feathers,” said Richard, leaning forward to pour himself another glass. He held out the bottle to Amanda, who lazily raised her glass to show that she still had some.

“There is this assembly on Friday at the Feathers. We are invited, of course. If we pawned something, Richard, and bought some finery, we could go.”

“Now, why should we go?” Richard grinned. “Do you hope to catch a rich beau? As I pointed out earlier, it’s not as if you were—”

“Yes, yes,
yes
,” said Amanda crossly. “I was thinking we might take to the High Toby.”

Richard sat up so abruptly that some of his brandy spilled on his breeches.

“Become highwaymen!” he gasped.

“Why not?” asked Amanda, being made calm and falsely reasonable by brandy on an empty stomach. “The thief-takers are only expert in finding people of the criminal class. No one will think of us. The Earl of Hardforshire’s house party is to attend the assembly, and there are a great deal of swells among them. All we have to do is find out discreetly when they plan to take the road.”

Richard shook his head as if to clear it. “But to take the first part of the plan,” he said. “What on earth have we got left that we could possibly take to the two-to-one shop?”

“The gold locket Mother left me.”

“I thought you swore never to part with that.”

“No, I did think that, but you see, I would rather eat than not, and one cannot eat a gold locket. Furthermore, the vicar says it is sinful to put too much store by worldly possessions, and a gold locket is a very worldly possession. Also, we shall be like Robin Hood. We are robbing the rich to give to the poor.”

“The poor?”

“Us,
stoopid
!”

“It’s mad,” sighed Richard, “but nonetheless.…”

He smiled across at his sister, who smiled back, and despite the dissimilarity of their features, in that brief second they looked amazingly alike.

“Nonetheless,” went on Richard slowly, “we do not need to actually
do
it. We could pawn the locket and get the clothes and go to the assembly and just… well…
see.
”

“My idea exactly,” said Amanda, putting her feet up on the fender. But in her mind’s eye, she and Richard were already out on the King’s Highway calling on some bloated lord with more money than was good for his soul to part with some of it.

The next day brought rain, fine drizzling rain, which turned to ice as soon as it hit the ground.

The glorious plans of the night before seemed like a childish fantasy, and without referring to it, Richard and Amanda had each privately decided the whole thing was madness induced by stress and brandy.

But their “uncle’s” heir, Mr. Brotherington, chose to pay them a visit. Aunt Matilda was mercifully still asleep.

He was a thick, brutish-looking man with a harsh red face and small black eyes. An expensive morning coat was stretched across his shoulders and his cravat was tied in a travesty of the Oriental, which meant his starched shirt points were cutting into his jowls. He wore an old-fashioned wig and smelled of sweat, imperfectly disguised by musk. His lower limbs dropped from the heights of fashion, being encased in moleskin breeches and square-toed boots caked with mud.

It transpired he had had a lecture from the lawyer, a lecture from the vicar, and a lecture from the local squire over his lack of concern for the destitute Colbys.

And so he had assumed that the Colbys had put these worthy gentlemen up to it and had come to give them a piece of his mind.

The Colby twins bristled with rage but were not in the way of contradicting their elders. At last, Mr. Brotherington, having had his say uninterrupted, allowed his coarse features to relax in the semblance of a smile and said he had found work for Amanda which would enable her to take up her rightful role in life.

“Which is?” demanded Amanda, her normally pale face flushed.

“As companion to my daughter, Priscilla.”

Amanda looked at Richard and shook her head in a disbelieving sort of way. Priscilla, although only two years older than Amanda, was spoiled and overbearing and had inherited the worst of her father’s bullying qualities.

“I would rather
starve
,” she said passionately.

“Then starve,” said Mr. Brotherington viciously. “You Colbys were always too top-lofty in your ways. Nothing like a few hunger pangs to bring the pair of you down a peg. You’ve done nothing but set yourself apart and look down your noses at my Priscilla. Well, you’ll get your comeuppance. I’ll tell Squire how you sneered at the very idea of genteel work, Amanda Colby.”

“
Miss
Amanda to you, Mr. Brotherington,” said Amanda sweetly. She went and held open the door. “
And
may I remind you, sir, since you so clumsily aspire to rise in the ranks of the beau-monde, that a
gentleman
making a call never stays above ten minutes, and you have been prosing on for quite twenty.”

“Pah!” shouted Mr. Brotherington, cramming his hat down on his wig.

Richard took a step forward and loomed over him.

Mr. Brotherington cast him a fulminating look and strode from the room.

Amanda whirled about and ran upstairs, her old-fashioned chintz skirts flying about her slippers. In two minutes she was back, the gold locket clutched in one hand.

“Take it to the pawn,” she said to Richard.

Richard slowly held out his hand, a troubled look on his face.

“What ails you, Richard?” demanded Amanda sharply. “I would rather die of hempen fever than die of poverty.”

“Don’t talk cant,” said Richard automatically. “If you mean you would rather hang, then say so.”

“Then what is the matter?” asked Amanda. “You are not worrying about your own neck, I trust?”

“Not I,” said Richard. “It is just… I am afraid—”

“A Colby
afraid
!”

“Let me finish. I am afraid I cannot dance, so how can I escort you to the assembly?”

“Oh, Richard,” laughed Amanda. “The vicar’s wife, you know, Mrs. Jolly, taught me
all
the steps. I shall teach you. Now,
go
before Aunt wakes up. She must not know our plans.”

But rage, like Dutch courage induced by brandy, did not fuel the Colbys for very long. Again, each privately put aside their rosy dreams of highwaymen. But they had taken a large step in deciding to attend the assembly. Even Richard confessed to a feeling of excitement. Aunt Matilda was roused from her stupor and firmly told that she must act as chaperone to Amanda, Richard succeeding in almost convincing his dithering, trembling aunt that a refurbished Amanda might catch the eye of some wealthy gentleman. Aunt Matilda eagerly seized the fantasy as a way of escaping from the very real problems of incipient poverty and agreed to make Amanda’s gown. She was an expert dressmaker and a very quick worker, provided her interest could be kept on the task long enough.

The news of the Colbys’ poverty had spread like wildfire throughout the county. The pawnbroker, Mr. Benjamin, gave Richard a handsome sum for the gold locket.

Mr. Johnston, who ran the haberdashery and grocery shop combined, insisted that a bale of sea-green silk was damaged in one corner and would accept only a trifling sum for it. The tailor, Mr. Easterman, presented Richard with a fine suit of evening clothes, explaining they had been ordered by a gentleman of Richard’s size some months ago who had failed to collect them. He refused immediate payment, suggesting Richard should supply him with a small monthly sum instead.

The difficulty of getting to the assembly was solved by the vicar, Mr. Jolly, and his wife, who explained they could not attend, as their children were all suffering from a bout of chickenpox, but that they would send their John on the important night with the vicarage carriage to convey the Colbys to the ball.

“It was all very successful,” explained Richard as he returned on foot from Hember Cross with his purchases piled up on a handcart. “We should have done this before, Amanda. People are amazingly kind.”

He spread out the bale of silk. “See what Mr. Johnston gave me? You will look very fine, Amanda.”

“She cannot wear that!” exclaimed Aunt Matilda, holding up her mittened hands in terror. “Young girls must wear white, or at least a pastel color.”

“Well, that’s dashed ungrateful of you,” said Richard hotly. Then he recalled that Aunt Matilda thought the finery was to be paid out of the monthly allowance, and added quickly, “If I had paid a regular price, Aunt, then we could not have
lived
for another month. And Easterman, the tailor, has given me a fine suit of clothes and says I need to pay him only a little a month, and by next month anyway I will have found work.”

“A Colby
work
!” Aunt Matilda burst into tears while the twins looked at her in exasperation.

How hard it was, thought Amanda, to feel sympathy for someone in tears who always seemed to
be
in tears. But she put a coaxing arm about her aunt’s waist and said, “You forget, Aunt Matilda, that if you manage to make me look very fine, then I might catch the attention of some kind gentleman, and then all your troubles will be over. And with my unfortunate color of hair, I would look quite terrible in pastels. There is no need to nod your head
quite
so vigorously, Richard! You might make a push to pretend I am attractive to the opposite sex instead of making me feel Friday-faced every time you look at me.”

More coaxing, more pleading, and several rallying cups of tea were needed to remove the specter of work from Aunt Matilda’s mind.

“She really is an amazingly dim-witted woman,” said Amanda with all the intolerance of youth, once Aunt Matilda was at last safely engaged in cutting out material. “Do you think, Richard, that if one cries and cries, one’s brain cells become damp and do not function as well as they ought?”

“Never mind that,” said Richard, walking through the door at the back of the hall and out onto the shaggy grass of the lawn. “I’ve been thinking. There is nothing up with work, Amanda. It seems downright immoral to take someone’s money away from him by robbery.”

And Amanda, who had been thinking that very same thought, suddenly felt cross and argumentative.

“I don’t see anything so very bad in taking a few jewels and trinkets away from people who would not miss them,” she protested.

“Just imagine if everyone felt like that,” replied Richard. “There would be a terrible revolution, like the one in France.”

“But we are only thinking of doing it
once.
…”

“Have you thought how I am to get
rid
of these baubles? I don’t know any fencing kens.”