Lady Sherry and the Highwayman (10 page)

Aunt Tulliver followed, and flung a pillow over the girl’s face to muffle her sobs. “Plague take it!” the old woman muttered as she valiantly resisted an impulse to bear down on the pillow and stifle the silly chit permanently. She moved away from the bed, sat down again at the dressing table, and poked unhappily at her wig. “Demned if I’ve ever seen such a watering pot. Looks to me, milady, like you’ve landed yourself in the suds.”

Sherry gazed upon her elderly companion with a singular lack of appreciation. “How nice to have the support of one’s friends! Apparently, I must point out that
your
lot will hardly be enviable if I’m taken off to jail, because the first thing Lavinia will do is turn the both of you out into the streets!”

An unhappy silence greeted this announcement. What Sherry said was all too true. Daffodil and Aunt Tulliver would be no part of this household or any other if not for her efforts on their behalf. Daffodil’s dark eyes would not have so merry a sparkle or her cheeks the rosy glow of such good health, if she were brought again before the magistrate. And Aunt Tulliver would hardly wax so stout in the workhouse.

Tully tucked in her chins and looked ruminative. “There’s nothing else for it that I can see. You’ll have to pay up.”

“If only I could.” Sherry leaned against the mantelpiece. She felt sick at heart. “You forget that my brother controls my purse-strings. We could not continue to reside in the country house after Mama’s death because my brother would not allow me the funds. And now— Not that Chris is ungenerous. He anticipates and provides for my every need. Or almost my every whim! Oh, what a curst dilemma! What possible reason can I give him for wanting five hundred pounds?”

Aunt Tulliver had no answer for this question. Neither did Daffodil, who had been following the conversation very closely from beneath the pillow Tully had flung across her face. Nor, obviously, did Sherry, or else she wouldn’t have asked the question in the first place. The bedchamber was quiet as the ladies waited for inspiration to strike. Then suddenly Daffodil flung aside her pillow and sat up. “I know!” she cried, triumphant at this opportunity to redeem herself. “We’ll tell Sir Christopher you want the money to buy your bride clothes!”

Chapter Ten

The following morning Lady Sherry made her way to the stables, desirous of having a word with Ned. She was especially desirous of discovering whether the dramatically-inclined Daffodil had exaggerated the seriousness of the situation.

This, alas, was not the case. Ned had arrived at a decision and from it he would not be swayed, no matter how great an effort Sherry made to turn him up sweet. Nor would he be moved by threats and pleas. Ned was sure he was very sorry to see her ladyship in a pucker, but he was very needful of getting his hands on some of the ready-and-rhino and there was nothing else for it but that she must knuckle down.

The conversation, entirely too distressing to repeat here in its entirety, continued for some few moments. At its end, Sherry conceded reluctantly that she would be granted no reprieve. She abruptly left the stables before she fell prey to a violent impulse to wreak bodily damage on her groom with the pitchfork that leaned against one wall.

Sherry made her way back to the house and into the kitchen, where she requested a tray to take with her to the book room as a midmorning snack. A pot of tea and a plate of seedcakes, a large serving of cold green-goose pie—she recalled that she was providing this repast for a gentleman not in the pink of health and additionally requested that the cook provide her with some of the excellent restorative that she always kept on hand. Cook agreed that Lady Sherry was looking a mite peaked and immediately put a large teacupful of her calf’s-feet jelly into a saucepan along with a half-glass of sweet wine, a little sugar, and nutmeg.

Lady Sherry watched the cook beat in the yolk of an egg and a bit of butter, then grate into the concoction a portion of fresh lemon peel. “I’ll take it up myself.” She grasped the tray and walked out of the kitchen, leaving the servants to agree among themselves that this was a very queer household. Lady Childe was the highest of sticklers and could not be pleased, but at least with Lady Childe one knew where one stood. Lady Sherry, on the other hand, didn’t seem to know her proper place.

The cook had the final word on the subject. “Lady Sherry is neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring!” she announced with a shake of her head.

Sherry was aware that her brother’s servants didn’t approve of her country manners, and could not bring herself to greatly care. At this moment, as she continued down the hallway, Sherry was far more concerned about her own servant and his unexpected perfidy. How could Ned be so very unreasonable as to expect her to produce five hundred pounds in the winking of an eye? Even given an entire year, she had no notion how she might produce so much. Sherry supposed she would have to follow Daffodil’s suggestion, since she could think of none of her own. She had not forgotten that Daffodil’s clever notions were to a degree responsible for this wretched predicament.

Sherry detested the idea of prevaricating about a matter so serious as her own nuptials. And what was she to say to her brother when tradesmen failed to arrive with boxes containing the trousseau she had supposedly bought? For that matter, what was she to say to her prospective bridegroom, who had no notion that a trousseau was indicated posthaste? Unlikely that Chris could be persuaded to refrain from mentioning the matter to Andrew.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave!” Sherry murmured, greatly startling a young housemaid passing by her in the hallway. Deep in thought, Sherry continued on up the stairs and flung open the door to the book room, causing Prinny to leap alert and growling to his feet and Micah to come awake abruptly with a curse and a groan for his sore leg.

Some moments later, order had been restored. Prinny had been persuaded against savaging the intruder, and Micah from crawling across the room to retrieve his gun from its hiding place on the library shelf. “Oh, do hush!” snapped Sherry to the pair of them as she set the tray down on the little table by the bed and dropped into her writing chair.

Micah regarded her with some perplexity. The females of his acquaintance did not generally walk into a room, plop down into a chair, then prop their elbows on a table and drop their head upon their hands, without so much as a word of greeting exchanged. The woman looked as if she was praying, which struck Micah as somewhat strange. Unaware that his benefactress was a novel writer, the highwayman did not realize that this supplicating gesture was the attitude his hostess assumed when courting her muse. Queer as she might be, however, he was grateful to this red-haired female and meant to be civil to her, no matter how great the pain of his wounded leg.

Discreetly, he cleared his throat. Sherry raised her head to look at him. Micah forgot his good intentions of only a moment past. “You look worn to the bone.”

Sherry lowered her chin again to rest on her clasped hands. “It needed only that. How kind of you to tell me that I am hagged. It is my own fault, of course. I should have known better than to go about such arduous tasks as rescuing highwaymen at my advanced age.”

Micah detected a note of sarcasm in her voice. He could hardly fail to detect it, his only physical deficiency being his wounded leg and not his excellent hearing.

He recalled his determination to do the civil. “I already thanked you!” he pointed out. So that he might better reach the tray of food, he attempted to sit up. His leg pained him and he winced.

Aghast at her thoughtlessness, Sherry pushed back her chair and hastened to his assistance. “I’m sorry! I didn’t think.” She drew the table closer to the sofa. “There!”

Micah did not lack for acuteness, when pain and gin didn’t dull his brain, and a good night’s rest had done much to restore his native wit. He would not now have mistaken his benefactress for a serving wench. Furthermore, it was obvious that something troubled her.

He hoped those troubles boded no further ill for himself. Before the lady could back away, he caught her hand. “What am I to call you?” he asked.

Again that tingling sensation where his flesh touched hers. It required all of Sherry’s willpower not to jerk away. Even as she wondered if she should reveal herself to him or not, she was telling him her name.

What strange power did this rogue possess? Sherry forced herself to look away, to concentrate on an ancient counting table with a checkered top where counters had once been moved about and accounts cast. She realized that the man was still speaking. He said she was to call him Micah. Why, then, was he known as Captain Toby? She dared to glance at him. “What?”

The woman appeared on the verge of flight, like some shy woodland creature caught by the hunters unaware. Micah was not accustomed to being regarded thusly by the weaker sex. With a wry expression, he released her hand. “Don’t fear; you’re safe enough with me. I promise you I have no designs on your virtue, ma’am. And even if I did, I could hardly act upon my impulses.” He glanced ruefully at his wounded leg.

This evidence of the rogue’s excellent intuition discomposed Sherry even more. “Here, drink this!” she said, and forced upon him the calf’s-feet broth.

Obediently, Micah drank. The restorative had no pleasant taste. “What the devil is this stuff? Did you save me from the gallows just to try to poison me, ma’am?”

“Nothing of the sort.” Sherry wished he wouldn’t call her ma’am in that odiously respectful manner, as if she were his maiden aunt. “Were you to expire now, we’d be in even worse case, because I don’t know what we should do with a corpse. As for the other, I know you don’t— You couldn’t— I mean, I didn’t think you did— Oh, dear!” Cheeks aflame, she sank back into her chair. “After all, I’m hardly in my first youth!”

Micah looked up from the green-goose pie, which he was currently sampling, and which was very good. “Peahen!” he commented, none too distinctly.

Peahen? Had the man just called her a peahen? Sherry surveyed him with bewilderment. “I
am
past my first youth! Indeed, I’m quite twenty-seven years of age. What a very strange gentleman you are, Mr. Greene. If a gentleman you are! You speak like one, at any rate, yet no true gentleman would make reference to a lady’s age.”

“I never claimed to be a gentleman,” retorted Micah, his words much clearer now that he’d washed down the remainder of the green-goose pie with a gulp of tea. As if determined to prove his lack of social graces, he then inquired how it had come about that Lady Sherry had reached so very advanced an age without being wed.

The man was incorrigible. Sherry could not help but smile. “Are you always so very outspoken?” she inquired. He merely shrugged and helped himself to another seedcake.

Oddly enough, Sherry did not resent his question, perhaps because her sister-in-law had so frequently given it voice. Stranger still, she considered the question worthy of reply. Micah was a good listener, interjecting comments that indicated his interest, and Sherry found herself telling him much more of her earlier life than she had intended.

Belatedly she realized that she must be boring the poor man. He was simply not so unkind as to tell her so. She fell silent.

Micah promptly disillusioned his benefactress regarding his capacity for kindness. “So you left behind your country pleasures and came to London to catch yourself a husband,” he commented, curiously disappointed to find her so ordinary a member of her sex.

“I came to London because I had no choice!” retorted Sherry, stung by the man’s censorious tone. The highwayman, she reminded herself. How dare he judge her? But then ,why should he be the exception? Sherry felt as if everyone were judging her these days. She thought of Lord Viccars and her impossibly muddled romance, and sighed. “To tell the truth, I liked country life very well. If I could, I would trade all these teas and balls and
soirées
that my sister-in-law so dotes on for a country fair with a traveling fiddler to play for the dances, and puppet shows, and gingerbread stalls. As for Almack’s, I think I would find more honest entertainment in a hasty-pudding contest or chasing a greased

pig!”

Micah quirked a brow. His benefactress had redeemed herself by denigrating the temple of the
ton.
“Did you participate?” he inquired.

“Did I— Don’t be absurd!” Perhaps she should have participated, Sherry thought. Even Lavinia would quail at introducing to polite society a sister-in-law who’d gone about chasing greased pigs. “Life used to be so simple. Perhaps it didn’t seem so at the time, but it certainly does in retrospect! But I don’t need to tell you that, do I? Life must have been a great deal simpler for you also before you were caught and sent to jail.”

“Simpler? You might say so!” Micah’s laughter was humorless. However, this subject was not one that he cared to discuss. He reached for another seedcake, only to discover that the remaining seedcakes, as well as the rest of the green-goose pie, had vanished from the tray. Prinny, stretched out on the floor beside the sofa, looking for all the world like a large, shaggy rug, emitted a gentle burp.

Micah regarded the beast with disfavor. Prinny was accustomed to seeing that expression on the faces of his nearest and dearest. Apologetically, he wagged his tail.

Lady Sherry was oblivious to this byplay. She was thinking very hard, remembering what Lord Viccars had said about the highwayman and how great a shame it was she’d had no interview. Here was her opportunity, and she must go about it tactfully. As shy as Sherry was about talking of her books, she’d discovered people were even shyer of her, afraid that she would translate them somehow into a character in one of her novels, with all their foibles and follies in plain view. Micah, she had already put between the pages of a book, for she had based a character on his exploits. Instinct warned her that he would not take kindly to that intelligence, or aid her struggling efforts by laying bare his soul for her to dissect.

Therefore she would not tell him. She would be subtle in her approach. “It was very brave of you,” she said. “To take to the road. Not that I am commending highway robbery, of course! Particularly when it is committed by some gay young blood who takes a purse for the mere fun of the thing. But I cannot disapprove of it entirely, either. Particularly since it is merely a symptom of a greater social ill! Consider Robin Hood, who took from the rich to give to the poor.’’