Carola Dunn (24 page)

Miranda could not help smiling a little. Mudge had, after all, put a stop to Mr. Daviot’s kiss, and he was not going to tell any tales. Danny might inform his Mary of the embrace he had witnessed, but Mrs. Potts was no gossip and Miranda doubted he would reveal her shocking conduct to anyone else.

 “I do not consider you compromised,” Lady Wiston continued firmly, “and, though I do not wish to appear immodest, my opinion is surely the only one that matters. The inn people are irrelevant. In any case we have provided them with more interesting and far more unusual subjects of conversation.”

At that, Miranda had to laugh, but she said, “What about Mrs. Redpath?”

“James would be a chucklehead to permit Marjory to breathe a word about anything so closely connected with his own perfidious conduct! Oh dear, I do hope Peter has thought of a way to prevent Godfrey from carrying me off again.”

“I’m sure he has, my dear ma’am. Mr. Daviot is not at all wanting in sense or resolution, still less in imagination, only in....” She bit her lip.

“In gallantry,” said Lady Wiston, patting her hand with a more perceptive sympathy than Miranda quite liked. “Well, I am ready for my breakfast. Let us go and see whether Peter has come up with a sensible, resolute, imaginative counterplot.”

As they went through to the parlour, Mudge scuttled up to Lady Wiston, planted himself in front of her, and glared at her with beady eyes, slavering. The hero of the hour was an unattractive sight. Provided with a comfit, he permitted the ladies to advance into the room.

The men were already seated at the table. Mr. Daviot, Daylight Danny, and Ted Coachman rose to say good morning; so did Charlie after Danny elbowed him in the ribs. They had started on their breakfasts. The smell of bacon and new bread reminded Miranda she had been too tired to eat much dinner and too anxious for the preceding four-and-twenty hours to have much appetite.

Mr. Daviot had made considerable inroads into a large beefsteak, Miranda observed. The only sign of the damage to his face was a slight discoloration.

“Your jaw is less painful, I take it?” she said. Somehow it was impossible to feel embarrassed when she was with him, in spite of the emotions aroused by talking of him with Lady Wiston.

“Almost as good as new, thanks to your care.” He smiled at her, holding a chair for his aunt while Danny did the same for Miranda. “Your pardon, ladies, for beginning without you, but, though I don’t want to rush you, the sooner we depart the better. I took the liberty of ordering eggs, bacon, and muffins for you, and chocolate and fresh tea.” He removed the covers from a pair of dishes.

“Thank you, dear. I own I shall feel safer once we are on the road.”

“My stratagem is more complex than that, Aunt Artemis. I don’t want you to return to London yet.”

“Lady Wiston cannot remain here, meekly waiting for Lord Snell to find her,” Miranda said heatedly. “Not even with Danny and Charlie on guard. He may bring a cohort of minions with him.”

Mr. Daviot took the wind out of her sails. “Exactly. And we cannot tell how soon he set out from Northwaite Hall. He may be searching the road south already.”

Lady Wiston paled, and she set down her cup of chocolate with a clink as her hand shook.

The old lady was much more frightened by her abominable adventure than she had let anyone see, Miranda realized. With a minatory glance at Mr. Daviot, she pressed Lady Wiston’s hand and said, “We shall not let him take you again, you may be quite certain of that.”

“That we won’t!” Danny confirmed fiercely. “My Mary’d skin me was I to let any harm come to my lady.”

“I’ll be damned if a soul lays a finger on your la’ship,” swore Charlie, earning another elbow in the ribs from Danny. “Begging your pardon, m’lady, I’m sure.”

“If so be it do come to a dust-up, I’m wi’ you,” said Ted with a worried look, “but it’d be best not to get catched and the landau’s mighty easy to spot, being that diff’rent.”

“Snell shan’t find it on the road to London,” said Mr. Daviot, “because it will not be there. You must go somewhere else, Aunt Artemis, anywhere else, while I go on to Town and sort things out.”

“Oh yes!” Lady Wiston clapped her hands. “Miranda assured me you were bound to come up with a clever plan.”

“It is a good notion,” Miranda said, “but I fear we have too little ready money to go far or stay away for long.”

“I have plenty, dear. Godfrey paid Charlie very well and I won every penny. Of course, having cheated, I shall reimburse him to the last farthing, but we agreed that I should keep it for the present to pay our way.” She smiled at Charlie, who grinned and nodded. “Miranda, do you recall the name of the asylum Mrs. Fry told us about, near York?”

“The York Retreat, ma’am? Founded by a Quaker for the humane treatment of the insane? Tuke was the name, William Tuke, and now his grandson Samuel, I believe.”

“That is it. We shall go there. If it is as humanely run as Mrs. Fry claims, I shall make a large donation. I have a personal interest in the subject now! And what is more, my dear friend Amelia, Lady Garston, lives not far from York. She has been begging me to visit this age, but I have always been too busy. We shall stay with Lady Garston, and so stretch our funds. How long do you suppose it will take you, Peter dear, to arrange matters in London?”

Mr. Daviot frowned. “I am not sure where to begin.”

“With those letters I wrote,” Miranda said eagerly. “You remember I told you I wrote to every influential person I could think of who might testify for Lady Wiston? The letters are all in the bureau in the Admiral’s study.”

“That gives me an excellent start!” he said with a smile which warmed her from head to toe. “What next, Miss Carmichael?”

“Once you have their promises of support, go to Mr. Bradshaw.”

“Aunt Artemis’s solicitor?”

“Yes. It was his report that gave Lord Snell the idea for his scheme, I fear, but I have no reason to suppose he had any hand in it. He is the other trustee, so you will need to consult him at least. If he is unhelpful, time enought to find another lawyer.”

“Mr. Bradshaw has always been most obliging,” said Lady Wiston, “though he does not always quite approve of how I choose to spend my money. He cannot have been aware of Godfrey’s treachery.”

“Mr. Bradshaw it is.” Mr. Daviot pushed back his chair and stood up. “Time we were on the road. Ted, go and have a team harnessed to the carriage, and choose a decent hack for me. I shall ride beside the landau until you are safely past the turn to Oakham and Chesterfield. Snell will never look for you on the road to the North.”

“Aye, sir.” The coachman hurried off.

Mr. Daviot turned to the two bruisers. “Gentlemen, I fancy you are both ready and willing to go with her ladyship and guard her. Am I right?”

“Right enough, sir,” said Charlie. “‘Tis the least I c’n do.”

“I wouldn’t dare go home wi’out her, sir,” Danny avowed. “My Mary sent me to take care o’ her, di’n’t she?”

“Then, if you will just write down Lady Garston’s direction for me, Miss Carmichael, let us be off!”

Miranda wrote the requisite information in her notebook and tore out the page. “Pray keep us apprised of your progress, sir,” she said as she gave it to Mr. Daviot.

“Thank you. I shall write if it seems likely to take more than a few days. Otherwise assume all goes well, and you shall hear from me the moment it is safe to return. I wish....” He hesitated, and seemed to change his mind about what he was going to say. “I’ll do my best, Miss Carmichael,” he finished.

“I know you will.”

Ten minutes later, the landau stood in the passage leading beneath the inn from the yard to the street. Mr. Daviot had gone to ride through the town to check that Lord Snell had not by some evil chance arrived at just the wrong moment. Miranda, her head stuck out of the window in the most vulgar fashion, saw him reappear and wave to Ted.

Once more bits jingled, hooves clopped on flagstones, wheels rumbled; the carriage emerged from the tunnel and turned down the hill between façades of pale grey stone. Danny was playing footman, up behind. Inside the landau, both hoods raised despite the fine day, Lady Wiston and Charlie prepared to crouch down out of sight at a moment’s notice. Should Lord Snell appear, the others would pretend they had no more notion of the whereabouts of the missing pair than he had.

With two rugs to throw over them, Miranda, watching for a signal, had every excuse to keep her gaze fixed on Mr. Daviot as he rode alongside. He made a fine figure on horseback, she thought, upright yet not at all stiff, very much at home in the saddle.

She remembered his stories of learning to ride bareback with the Iroquois, through the tangled primeval forest. When they reached home at last, would he want her help with his book again? she wondered wistfully. Those hours of working together, laughing together, were a very precious memory.

They crossed the bridge at the bottom of the hill and started up the other side. Sharp left, sharp right, across a small square, and there ahead the road branched: Oakham to the left, Grantham and the Great North Road to the right, said the finger-post.

Ted took the right-hand fork. No sign of the dastardly baron—fortunately, as Charlie was not of a size to be rendered inconspicuous by crouching down. Another hundred yards and the road to Oakham and Northwaite Hall was hidden by trees.

Mr. Daviot waved and called goodbye. Turning his mount, he cantered off southward to carry out his plan.

It was a good plan, a sensible plan, Miranda told herself. So why could she not rid herself of the suspicion that Peter Daviot had devised this particular plan because it put two hundred miles between him and Miss Miranda Carmichael?

Chapter 20

“I cannot say, my lady, how deeply I regret any part I may have played, however unwitting, in leading Lord Snell to imagine....” Unable to bring himself to utter the trend of Lord Snell’s imaginings, the lawyer pulled out a large white handkerchief and blotted his high, glistening forehead.

The day was excessively hot for early September. The Admiral’s study, even with the window open to the rose garden, was like a furnace. But Miranda, fanning herself, rather thought the tall, thin solicitor was overcome less by the heat than by emotion. Mr. Daviot said he had almost wept when informed of Lady Wiston’s plight.

“There, there,” said Lady Wiston soothingly. “My dear Mr. Bradshaw, all is well that ends well. My nephew says your assistance in clearing up the legal situation was invaluable.”

“I trust you believe, ma’am, that Lord Snell revealed nothing to me of his plans. When he came to apply to me for access to your funds, he would have found me...recalcitrant, yes, that is precisely it, recalcitrant.” He nodded to himself, modestly pleased with the word. “Sir Bernard’s instructions are quite clear, that in the event of your incapacity I, not his nephews, was to oversee any expenditures on your behalf.”

“I daresay Godfrey failed to make himself thoroughly familiar with the terms of the Admiral’s trust. Am I correct, Mr. Bradshaw, in thinking my dear Sir Bernard in no way obliged me to leave a penny to his nephews?”

“Not a farthing, ma’am.”

“Well, after their infamous conduct, I no longer feel the least obligation to them simply because of their relationship to him. I wish to change my will.”

“In favour of the Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate?” asked the lawyer cautiously.

“I shall not change the provision I have already made for Mrs. Fry’s work, but I shall add something for the York Retreat. A splendid place.”

“Indeed, ma’am!”

Her ladyship reflected for a moment. “I am inclined to think, Miranda, that we should attend the Friends’ Meeting more often. They are excellent people, if a trifle straitlaced.”

Mr. Bradshaw recalled her to business. “And the other changes to your will, ma’am?”

“I know precisely what I want to do, but I cannot bear to sit indoors any longer. Let us go out to the terrace.”

Mr. Bradshaw’s jaw dropped and he cast a rather hunted glance around the comparatively familiar territory of Sir Bernard’s study. Would a will composed outdoors be valid, his gaze seemed to ask. Then he squared his narrow, black-clad shoulders. “If you wish, ma’am.”

“There is a table outside for your papers, sir,” Miranda reassured him. She would not shock him further by revealing she and Lady Wiston and Mr. Daviot had taken breakfast and luncheon on the terrace, and Lady Wiston was determined to sleep there. “Do you want me to come, ma’am?”

“Yes, dear, it is far too hot for you to be poring over Peter’s papers, especially as I sent him off to get some fresh air on horseback.”

Mr. Daviot’s manuscript, retrieved from his club, was in a lamentable muddle. He had begged Miranda—literally on bended knee!—to have mercy on him and take it in hand again.

Since their return from York yesterday, he had been his old friendly, joking self. It was exactly what Miranda had prayed for, yet she found herself dissatisfied. She wanted more from him now.

The memory of their brief embrace haunted her. If his hand happened to brush hers, a shock ran through her like the jolt from an electrifying machine. She had to constantly avert her gaze from his mouth, whither it was involuntarily drawn as she recalled the touch of his lips on hers. Sometimes the longing to feel that touch again was so intense she hardly dared meet his eyes.

And when she did, she saw an indefinable difference there, some inexplicable emotion lurking behind the amiable smile, the quizzical, teasing look.

Could he fear that, in spite of his diligence in providing ten days apart for a damper, she might expect him to come up to scratch? It should be obvious by now that she did not mean to press him.

Perhaps he simply felt guilty because he had no intention of offering marriage. In that case, she must do all in her power to prove she had no expectations, to allay his remorse before it poisoned their friendship. Failing his love, she had rather have his friendship than nothing, she decided with a sigh.

If only she could persuade herself she really had no desire whatever to be his wife! It ought to be easy. Despite the myriad lovable qualities she had discovered in him, he was still a happy-go-lucky knight errant, a rolling stone who might decide at any moment to roll on.