A Highwayman Came Riding (11 page)

“I’ll leave the milk here, in case she awakens again before morning.”

She left the milk on the bedside table and they went to Marianne’s room, closing the door behind them. It no longer seemed strange being alone in her room with Macheath, but it was almost painfully exciting.

He took his glass of milk and clinked it against hers. “To—us?” he suggested playfully, peering down at her to see if she objected.

“To your reformation,” she parried. “Or is that hopelessly naive of me?”

“You could reform Old Nick himself. To my reformation.” They drank. “To prove it, I’ll leave the diamonds with you now. You can give them to the duchess when she awakens.”

“Why do you not wait and give them to her yourself?”

“I want to go home early tomorrow. I have a few things to attend to.”

“Where is home?” she asked eagerly—too eagerly. It was as if a shade had been drawn over his face at hearing the question, leaving it blank.

When he spoke, even his voice was different. “Not far away, but as you are to leave tomorrow, I shall give you the necklace tonight. If I were you, I would take it and run,” he said lightly.

It was a joke, of course. He just wanted to change the subject to conceal where he lived, who he was. She knew she would not learn anything he didn’t want to tell her and accepted it, though she was hurt that he didn’t trust her.

“Your home must be very close by, as I noticed you had changed your clothes for dinner.”

“I didn’t go home for that. I keep a spare set of duds in my room here. I keep a room—for emergencies. It’s better you not know where I live, Marianne. You are too innocent. If Officer Bruce should decide to question you ... I am worried about you ladies having the diamonds with you in this place. I want you to take my pistol.”

“I would rather not. I’d be afraid to shoot it.”

“Would you not have been glad to have it tonight, when Dirty Dick was at you?”

“Perhaps. But really I would rather not. I’d probably shoot myself.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want that to happen. I have it! A knife! No, no. Don’t look at me like that. It is not a carving knife, but a pretty little thing I picked up in Spain. Practically a fruit knife. It will fit in your reticule.” He reached under his jacket, behind his back, and pulled a dainty little bone-handled knife from his waistband.

“What other lethal weapons do you carry?” she asked, taking the knife and wincing at its razor-sharp edge.

“Just a garrote and a cannon—for emergencies,” he said, smiling.

She shook her head in wonder. “How on earth did I ever meet anyone like you?”

“You make me realize what a bloodthirsty monster I have become. I have been too long away from polite society.”

“It’s not too late to turn back, Jack.”

He set his glass aside and took her hand. “That is the first time you have called me by my name. Actually, I prefer John. Jack is my nom de guerre.”

“John. Yes, I prefer that, too. It’s more respectable. I always think of Jack Ketch when I hear Jack.”

“I have noticed your reluctance to use it. I feared it was my avocation that was keeping you at arm’s length.”

“It was.”

His eyes brightened with interest. “And is that the only thing—”

“I don’t know you very well—yet.”

Macheath gazed at her silently in the dimly flickering light of one lamp turned down low. His face was far from blank now. It glowed with pleasure and some suppressed excitement. “You wondered how you had met someone like me. The greater wonder is how I had the good fortune to meet you.”

He put his hand inside his jacket and drew out the necklace. “I wish it were mine to give you, Marianne,” he said, and dropped the puddle of diamonds into her hand. Dancing flames of purple and orange and green sparkled softly in the dim light.

“That you return them is gift enough, John. Thank you.”

She returned his gaze, then on an impulse, stood on her tiptoes and placed a chaste kiss on his cheek. His arms closed around her and held on to her as if he would never let her go. He didn’t kiss her, but she felt his cheek clinging to hers. Warm lips pressed on her hair and moved in a grazing motion to her forehead, her eyes. She held her breath, waiting for the coming assault on her lips.

He released her and said, in a businesslike voice, “I must go now. Be sure you lock the door behind me.”

She was aware of a sharp sense of disappointment. “Very well.”

“Don’t be angry with me, love. I would be quite as persistent as Dirty Dick if I got started.”

Marianne laughed and shook her head at the ludicrous comparison. She followed him to the door. He stopped and placed a fleeting kiss on her lips. “It is au revoir, not good-bye. I shall see you again soon, Marianne.”

“Where? How? Oh, John, can’t you tell me who you are?”

“You’ll have to marry me to find that out, Miss Harkness.”

“I couldn’t marry a perfect stranger.”

“In that case, I shall pay my respects to the duchess in the morning.”

“You’re not going out to rob another carriage?”

“Oh, ye of little faith! This is my night to return stolen goods.” He withdrew the bag of jingling gold he had taken from McGinty. Then he was gone. She carefully locked the door and looked at the diamonds, wondering where she should put them for safekeeping. She decided to put them on the duchess’s night table. If she awoke in the night, she would see them, along with the milk. And if, as was more likely, she slept until morning, they would be waiting for her as soon as she opened her eyes.

Marianne placed the diamonds on the night table and went to bed, smiling to think how happy her mistress would be and how that would improve her opinion of John. Her thoughts were all pleasant as she lay in bed, thinking of the future. John was coming in the morning. He would tell them who he was then. Who could he be? Fatigued from her busy night, she was soon sleeping soundly.

The duchess slept until eight-thirty that morning. Marianne awoke at eight and lay waiting for the shriek of joy. When she heard the duchess stirring, she crept quietly out of bed and went to peek in at her. She was sipping the milk and scowling at a bruise on her wrist, acquired during her rescue from the river.

“Oh, there you are, awake at last,” the duchess said in her usual brusque way. “You took so long last night I fell asleep without my milk. It is stone cold now, with a scum on top of it. Come and help me up, Marianne. I ache in every joint after that mauling I suffered yesterday being hauled out of my rig.”

Marianne looked at the duchess. She looked at the table, at the floor, the counterpane, and went dashing to the bedside.

“Where are they?” she asked.

“Where are what? What are you talking about, child?”

“The diamonds! I put them on your bedside table last night.”

“My diamonds? Nonsense. You were dreaming. I had a vivid dream myself. I dreamed someone was trying to drown me in a vat of sour milk.”

“No, no! I put the diamonds on your table last night to surprise you when you awoke this morning.”

“Where are they, then?”

They both began scrabbling about the blankets, looking on the floor and under the bed.

“They’re gone!” Marianne said in a voice of disbelief.

“How did you come by them?”

Marianne told the tale of her night’s adventure. The duchess clamped her lips into a grim line and said, “I see how it is now. Macheath conned you, my girl. And he thinks to con me, but he has another think coming. And after I perjured myself to save his worthless neck from the gallows. He came creeping back and stole them again last night, trying to place the blame on someone else. And I, like a very greenhead, have told Bow Street he is my nephew. He counts on that to keep me quiet, you see, to protect the family name.”

“No, it wasn’t Macheath. He didn’t know I would leave them on your table.”

“He would have a pretty good idea where to look when he didn’t find them in your room.”

“He wasn’t in my room. I locked my door.”

“Has the lock been tampered with?”

“I don’t know.”

She ran back to her room but could find no sign of a forced entry. While she was gone, the duchess hauled herself out of bed and examined her own door. She saw a fresh scratch around the lock. Even more damning, the door was slightly ajar. Not actually open, but not properly closed, either. When she tried to close it, it would not stay shut. The mechanism had been broken.

“That proves nothing,” she said, when Marianne joined her and saw the broken lock. “It only proves the bounder came in by my door rather than yours. The diamonds are the first thing he would see, sitting right there beneath the lamp. Foolish place to leave them. But then what can you expect from a simple girl like you? The lamp was burning low, you recall, though the oil has all been used up now. It must have been Macheath. Who else could it have been? I trust there is not more than one highwayman using this inn.”

“All the highwaymen hereabouts use it,” Marianne said in a dull, defeated voice. “And I even told Dirty Dick you are a duchess.”

“Dirty Dick? What sort of name is that? What are you doing with such creatures?”

“That is the man who attacked me in the kitchen.”

“Really, Marianne. You must be more discriminating in the choice of men who attack you. Dirty Dick! What will folks say? At least Macheath is clean.”

She perched on the edge of her bed and sat thinking, a scheming expression on her raddled old face. She looked up and said, “Yes, it might very well have been this Dirty Dick person, as you foolishly told him I was staying here. He would expect a duchess to be traveling with a chest of jewelry. It is all Macheath’s fault for bringing us here, and he must rescue us. There is the villain who will get my diamonds back for me. Set a thief to catch a thief. Send for Macheath at once.”

“He left last night, but he planned to return this morning to see you.”

“Excellent! Ring for water. I must make a fresh toilette. And have breakfast. I am ravenous. Gammon and eggs—boiled, mind, not fried. And tell them to put a new lock on my door.”

As she spoke, she gave the bell cord a yank herself and hobbled to her trunk to select a gown to entertain Macheath. She had not so enjoyed herself in years. She would have young Macheath leaping through hoops for her. What she really required was an escort to London, and if Macheath knew what was good for him, he would oblige her. How the old quizzes would stare to see her drive up with a handsome young flirt by her side.

Marianne, having convinced the duchess that Macheath had not stolen her diamonds, had now to convince herself. She had only his word for it that the other men here at the inn were highwaymen. He might have told her that to spread the blame when the diamonds disappeared. He might even have slipped a sleeping draft into her milk. It was odd she had slept through the robbery, for she was not a particularly heavy sleeper. And now that Bow Street thought he was the duchess’s nephew, they would not suspect him.

But then there was Dirty Dick. He hadn’t believed she was traveling with a duchess, but the clerk might have told him it was true. Macheath had taken the blunt Dirty Dick had stolen from some traveler. If Dick were in need of funds, he might have decided to try his hand at robbing the duchess. Yes, it might very well be Dirty Dick.

Her hopes were on Macheath’s visit to see the duchess that morning, as he had promised. It might have been a ruse to get away without raising suspicion. He could be in London by now with the diamonds in his pocket, vanished forever in that city of over a million souls. Bow Street would never find him. But then why did he give back the diamonds if he only planned to run away? He would come. He must come.

Chapter Thirteen

The two hours until Macheath arrived seemed like two years. A dozen times the flame of Marianne’s faith wavered. He had intended to reform but found it beyond him—he was too deeply sunk in vice. He had changed his mind, stolen the necklace again, and left for good. No, John would not do that to her. She remembered that eager, innocent, boyish smile at the doorway when he told her he would speak to the duchess that very minute. She remembered his lips pressing on her forehead and the soft words he had spoken about his good fortune in finding her. Surely that had not been mere playacting?

But then there was that pistol he had pointed at Dirty Dick. He would have shot the man, had she not stopped him. He was a trained killer. The sort of brutish ferocity he had seen in Spain would be enough to degrade a saint. Her mood was in its dark mode when the long-awaited knock came at the duchess’s door.

“Let him in,” Her Grace said, arranging her best shawl about her shoulders.

Macheath came in smiling. “Your Grace, and Miss Harkness,” he said, making an exquisite bow. He looked extremely elegant in an impeccably tailored jacket of blue superfine, a striped waistcoat, and fawn buckskins.

“I have come to beg your forgiveness, ma’am, and promise to mend my ways.”

“I might forgive you yet, if you return my diamonds,” she said with a glinting smile.

Macheath blinked, turned to Marianne, and said, “Ah, you have decided to allow me the pleasure of returning the necklace.”

“It’s gone, Macheath,” Marianne said, and watched him like a spy, to read by his expression whether he was involved. He certainly looked thunderstruck by her words.

“‘Gone? What do you mean? What did you do with it?”

“I put it on the duchess’s bedside table last night. It was gone when she awoke this morning. Her door had been pried open.”

“What does Rooney say?”

“Who is Rooney?” the duchess asked.

“Why, the proprietor. Did you not tell him?”

“We were afraid it might be you,” Marianne said.

A deep scowl seized his face. “Why would I have given it back if I meant to steal it again?”

“That is for you to tell us, Master Jackanapes,” the duchess declared. She didn’t really believe he had taken it, but she hoped that by casting doubts on him, he would feel obliged to prove his innocence by recovering the necklace.

“There scarcely seems any advantage to reforming, if my reputation is to follow me in this way,” he said. “You didn’t consider that the place is overrun with thieves? Any one of them might have pocketed the necklace. And you didn’t even bother reporting it to Rooney or the constable.”