A Highwayman Came Riding (8 page)

“No indeed, Captain. I came to pick up a journal to read to the duchess. I am just waiting for word on how the carriage and team are doing.”

“You shouldn’t be alone in a place like this.”

“But it is a perfectly respectable inn—is it not?”

“It is not exactly the Clarendon,” he said, mentioning one of the finer London hotels. “I shall stay with you until the clerk returns. I daresay the duchess is eager to be on her way, eh?”

“She is. I would have thought you would be gone long since yourself, Captain. This cannot be a healthy place for you.”

“I came to have a word with Her Grace before leaving. Has she reported me to the constable yet?” He didn’t sound frightened, only curious.

“She plans to do it first thing in the morning, before we leave.”

“Why did she wait?”

“I believe she wanted to speak to you before doing it.”

“I’ll have a word with her now—as soon as the clerk returns.”

The clerk returned shortly to report that the carriage was not damaged and the horse’s leg had been poulticed. Beeton felt that it could continue on its way tomorrow, if he went at a slow pace.

“Shall we go upstairs now?” Macheath said and took Marianne’s arm to accompany her across the lobby.

A few heads turned to watch the young couple. For the thirty seconds it took to traverse the lobby, Marianne felt like one of the fortunate ladies she had been envying, with a handsome beau or husband on her arm.

“You didn’t tell me whether you enjoyed your tea, Miss Harkness,” Macheath said with a quizzing smile.

“Why did you change my order?”

“You are too young and innocent for the dissipation of brandy. That is a brew for scoundrels— and duchesses. I felt I might be the cause of it. I have enough regrets, without that,” he said rather wistfully.

His tone and the way he looked at her suggested he was sorry for the trouble he had caused her. She waited a moment, but when he didn’t say more, she tapped on the duchess’s door and stepped in. The duchess’s health had deteriorated further since Marianne had left. Her face, twisted into a grimace of pain, was a ghastly gray shade. The blankets were in a knot as she writhed on the bed.

“Oh my God! She’s
had an attack!”

Macheath took one searching look at her and said, “No, she’s sick to her stomach.”

He grabbed the tin wastebasket by the desk and rushed forward. He helped the duchess into a sitting position as she leaned over the basket and cast up her accounts. When she had emptied her stomach, she collapsed against the pillows to catch her breath.

“I have been poisoned,” she said a moment later in a feeble voice. “It must have been in the brandy. You aren’t feeling sick, Marianne?”

“No,
I’m fine.”

Macheath glanced at the nearly empty bottle. “How much did you drink?” he asked.

“Only a few sips,” she lied.

“About eight ounces, to judge by the bottle. You’re lucky you didn’t poison yourself.”

He rang for a servant and put the offending wastebasket in the hall. Marianne bathed the duchess’s face and tried to make her comfortable.

“Shall I call a doctor?” she asked her mistress.

“I believe I can sleep now. There was something I wanted to say to Macheath.”

“I wanted to speak to you as well, Duchess.”

“Tomorrow,” she said with a deep sigh. “Call on me tomorrow, Captain. I am too tired now.”

“We’ll leave you,” he replied, and taking Marianne’s elbow, he led her through the adjoining door to her room.

“Thank you again, Captain,” Marianne said. “How did you know what ailed her?”

“I’ve seen more than a few men in the same state.”

“I wonder what else you have seen,” she said, gazing at him bemusedly.

His dark eyes sparkled into hers. His fingers brushed up her arm from her elbow to settle on her shoulder with an engrossing intimacy. “Many sights of wonder—but I never before saw a girl like you, Marianne,” he said softly. Then he closed the door, and she was alone with him.

Chapter Nine

Marianne felt a wild fluttering in her breast. She told herself it was fear, perfectly natural fear at being alone with a criminal, but she didn’t fool herself. Those eyes glowing softly into hers held a different sort of danger.

She schooled her voice to calmness and said, “It would be best to leave the door open in case Her Grace wants me,” and opened the door.

She peeked across to the duchess’s canopied bed and saw by the flickering light of the lamp that her eyes were closed. The stertorous snorts were already beginning, indicating a peaceful sleep. It would be the effect of the brandy.

“There goes that excuse,” Macheath said with a devilish grin.

“I shall get the journal. I might as well read it until bedtime.” She took a step forward. Macheath put his hand on her arm to detain her. His fingers felt like a branding iron.

“I have a different idea,” he suggested. “It is not yet nine o’clock. Let us go below and have dinner.”

“I have already had dinner, Captain,” she replied in a prim voice that tried to conceal her interest. But the flush on her cheeks and the gleam in her eyes betrayed it. The fingers on her arm loosened and she drew her arm away.

“You call a chicken leg and a crust of bread dinner, after your strenuous day? I saw your tray in the other room.”

“You don’t miss much!”

“I missed my dinner. I had planned to invite you and the duchess to join me in my parlor, but by the time I arrived, the duchess was already in bed. You could keep me company, have a glass of wine while I eat. Come now, you are all dressed up. Confess you would like to go belowstairs and show off that charming gown.” He spoke of the gown, but it was her face, with its halo of shining curls, that he gazed at—with a long, lingering perusal of her eyes and lips—until she felt warm and unaccountably nervous.

“I shouldn’t leave Her Grace.”

“She’s sound asleep!”

“She might awaken.”

“Not for several hours yet. There’s a bell cord by her bed. She has only to give it a pull and a servant will come running.”

Marianne wavered under the force of temptation. Familiar with her Bible, she knew how Eve must have felt in the Garden of Eden. The duchess would sleep until morning. It was not quite nine o’clock. She did not usually retire before eleven. She could sit alone, reading the journal and listening to the duchess snore, or she could go below and spend an hour with an extremely handsome, dashing highwayman who made her feel beautiful and desirable for the first time in her life. She would not dare to do such a thing in Bath, where all the old cats knew her and would gossip, but no one knew her here. Being on holiday seemed to relax the rules of acceptable behavior.

He saw she was wavering, and to convince her he said, “I have something I would like to discuss with you, Marianne. Something important.”

The “Marianne” seemed to lend a new familiarity, almost an intimacy, to their acquaintance. She remembered the duchess’s words, that Macheath might want to return the diamonds. “Something important” sounded as if she could be right. If this was the case, Marianne had something important she wished to say to him as well. She might be able to talk him out of this sinful life he led. It seemed wrong to refuse such a possibility of reforming a criminal.

“Very well,” she said, “but I should leave Her Grace a note, in case she awakens and I am not here. She will be worried, you know.”

“By all means, leave her a note.” He reached in his pocket and handed her a pencil, drew out a notebook, and tore off a sheet.

Marianne wrote in perfect copperplate, “Your Grace: I have gone belowstairs to have a word with Captain Macheath. I shan’t be long. Marianne.” She tiptoed into the next room and put the note on the bedside table under the lamp, turned the wick down low, and tiptoed back to her room.

“Aren’t you going to lock your door?” he asked as they left.

“Oh, should I? I don’t have anything worth stealing. I never stayed at an inn before. Since I’ve been grown-up, I mean.”

“There are folks who would steal the buttons off your nightgown.”

She gave him a pert grin. “True, but as you will be with me, where is the danger?”

He clamped his hand to his heart and cried, “Touched to the quick!” in melodramatic accents. “Still, best to be sure. I am not the only highwayman on the prowl. We’ll lock the duchess’s room as well.”

She returned and got the keys from the duchess’s toilet table. Macheath locked both doors and they went belowstairs. He led her through the lobby to a snug little private parlor with a cozy fire blazing in the grate and a table laid for three. This reassured her that he had intended to include the duchess in the invitation, and made her more comfortable. The lamps were turned down low. She glanced around at the hunting prints on the wall, the indifferent carpet on the floor, and the miniature sideboard holding pewter plates and some dishes.

A bottle of red wine was open on the table. Macheath showed her to a seat and poured two glasses. A waiter came to the parlor to take their orders.

“They do an excellent beefsteak here,” he tempted. “Why don’t you try a little?”

“I’ll have dessert with you later,” she said.

“A sweet tooth, eh? I suspected as much. My sister is the same.”

“You have a sister!” she exclaimed.

“Two, along with a mama and, once upon a time, a papa, though I don’t remember him well. Did you think I was hatched from an egg in a cuckoo’s nest?”

Macheath’s having sisters seemed to normalize him in some manner Marianne couldn’t quite comprehend. “I’m an only child,” she said vaguely.

As soon as the servant left, she said, “What are your sisters like, Captain?”

“The younger, Meggie, is rather like you. The older, Eleanor, is more like me. The black ewe of the family,” he added. “As both are still in the schoolroom, however, there may be time to reform Eleanor yet.”

The word “reform” reminded Marianne of why she was here. “You said you wanted to discuss something important, Captain.”

“I did. I do, but let us enjoy dinner first, become a little acquainted. All I know about you is that you are an orphan and act as the duchess’s companion and dogsbody. It cannot be a pleasant life for such a young lady.”

“Young! Why thank you, sir. I am one-and-twenty.”

“That old?” he said, chewing back a smile. “I would not have taken you for a day over eighteen.”

“Well, thank you. As to your comment, my life is not precisely pleasant, but it is not unpleasant, either. It could be worse. I used to live with my parents in Somerset. Papa raised cattle. Mama died when I was sixteen. My father took to drink and gambling. When he drank himself to death a year later, there was no money. The estate, heavily mortgaged, was sold to pay his debts. The duchess is not actually kin, just a connection by marriage. She offered me the position I now hold. I feel fortunate to have it. I believe you have a more exciting story, Captain?”

“As my pockets were to let, I decided to make my career in the army. My uncle bought me a cornet, and I went to Spain to fight with Wellington.”

“Was it Spanish you and your servant were speaking the night you held us up? I know it was not French.”

“Yes, it allows us to talk in front of our victims without being understood.”

“Surely Miguel is not Spanish, though? He has a hint of brogue in his speech.”

“There was a woman in Spain who used to call him that. The other soldiers took up the name in fun, and it has stuck. He was my batman and is now my factotum—and friend.”

“That scar on his cheek—”

“Badajos,”
he said briefly. “Unlike many of my men, Miguel and I escaped with not only our lives but with all our limbs.”

The servant returned with dinner. While he arranged it, Macheath said a few words to him. When they were alone again, Marianne frowned and said, “I daresay shooting and killing begin to seem natural after a few years in the army.”

“It is kind of you to look for an excuse for me, but the shooting and killing never seemed natural or normal or anything but barbaric to me. Even in my work now, I only shoot above the head to frighten folks, unless they shoot first, as Beeton did. Miguel is an excellent shot. He could have killed or maimed Tom. He only winged his arm, to stop him from shooting at us. There was not that much shooting in the Peninsula, actually. For weeks on end we would march through the dust or sit waiting in the broiling sun, then a few hours or days of killing and burying the dead, and it would be another long wait. To pass the time, we had the pleasure of writing to wives and mothers and fathers to tell them their loved ones were dead. I was a foolish, romantic boy when I joined up. I didn’t see beyond the scarlet regimentals and travel to an exotic land to stop Boney from taking over the world.”

“I see why you did not wish to discuss this during dinner,” she said, and immediately changed the subject. “Before you joined the army, where did you live?”

“In Kent.”

While he ate, he spoke a little of his youth there, urged on by leading questions. It sounded a happy, carefree sort of life. Riding, hunting, shooting, fishing, lessons of course, and as he grew older dancing and social visits were added to his entertainments. An occasional detail suggested to Marianne that he came from a wealthier background than she did. He mentioned a horse his uncle was training for Ascot. Another time, he spoke of a ball his mama held for one hundred and fifty guests, half of them staying overnight. It would take a large house and a great number of servants to manage such a crowd.

His table manners were good. His speech, too, was that of a well-born, well-educated gentleman. What could account for his descent into the criminal class?

When he had finished his beefsteak, the servant returned and they ordered dessert. Apple tart and cheese for Macheath, a cream bun for Marianne.

Over coffee, she tried to revert to his experiences in the war, but Macheath had no more to say on the subject.

“It is best forgotten,” he said, “I am home, alive, in one piece, unlike many friends.”

“Very well, then let us proceed to the really interesting part. Why did you turn highwayman? What you have told me suggests your family is not without means and influence. Could they not have found you a suitable position?”