Lord of Ice (15 page)

Soon, they were storming up the road in the light, fast four-in-hand that Damien had hired from the livery stable and which he drove with the cold, steady control of an ancient Roman charioteer. Rage bristled in the broad lines of his shoulders and in the smooth, emotionless mask of his face. With a groom posted on the boot, Miranda sat beside him on the driver’s seat, shivering with foreboding and the chill of the wintry night. He drove the horses relentlessly, sweeping up the curving road. His hard face in the moonlight was unflinching, but the enraged glitter in his eyes told her that the headmaster was in dire peril.

When at last they turned off the road onto the drive of Yardley School, Miranda scanned the old farmhouse anxiously. The windows were dark, but a light gleamed from Miss Brocklehurst’s parlor. Damien pulled the horses to a halt, leaped down from the driver’s seat, and strode to the front door. The groom scrambled down from the back to mind the horses.

The night reverberated with the pounding of her guardian’s leather-gloved fist on the thick oaken door. Miranda sat paralyzed on the driver’s seat, her heart slamming in her chest. The curtain in the parlor window moved, and Brocklehurst peered through the glass. The sight of the headmistress’s hateful face snapped Miranda into action. She had to think of Amy. This was no time to freeze up over her own hurt and confusion. There was still time to save the child, and that was all that mattered. She jumped down from the carriage and ran after Damien, coming up behind him just as Miss Brocklehurst answered the door.

“Lord Winterley, whatever brings you—”

“Where is he?” Damien growled.

“Check his office,” Miranda said as Damien brushed past the headmistress and went marching across the entrance hall.

“Reed!” he thundered.

“What is the meaning of this?” Brocklehurst cried.

“You know full well,” Miranda muttered, then ran to the bottom of the stairs. “Amy! Sally! Jane!” she shouted.

As Damien threw open the closed door to Mr. Reed’s office, Miranda froze at the sound of Amy’s shriek coming from inside. With an explosive curse, Damien disappeared into the office. Miranda was only a step or two behind him, but Miss Brocklehurst tried to block her path.

“What do you think you’re doing, missy?”

Miranda shoved the woman out of her way. “Stay away from me! Amy!”

She flung into the office just as Amy jumped up from Mr. Reed’s sofa by the wall and came hurtling across the office with a hysterical cry, fleeing, wild-eyed, into Miranda’s arms.

Miranda hugged the girl hard, watching in fierce protectiveness as Damien advanced upon the headmaster. Mr. Reed’s face was a rictus of fear as he backed away, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his greasy hair mussed, his collar undone. She and Amy clung to each other, both flinching as Damien threw the man up against the wall and punched him in the face with a shattering blow. He picked him up and hit him again. Brocklehurst gasped from the doorway as Mr. Reed slithered down the door in a dazed heap, blood running from his nose.

Clenching his jaw, his nostrils flared in barbaric fury, Damien stared down at the semiconscious man as though he longed to skewer him. “Fetch Mrs. Warren,” he ordered Miranda. “Tell her to take the carriage into Birmingham and bring the constable and the magistrate. The groom from the inn can drive her.”

Miranda nodded. “Come, sweeting,” she murmured to Amy, but the child broke free of her embrace and ran over to Mr. Reed’s sprawled form.

“Yah!” Amy cried as she dealt the man a kick in the groin.

Startled, Miranda quickly retrieved her, then brought her back to the kitchens to fetch Yardley’s dear, old cook, Mrs. Warren, as Damien had ordered.

The girls huddled together in the dormitory, staring at each other, too scared to speak, when the constable came and led Mr. Reed away in manacles. Miss Brocklehurst was forced to go with the authorities, as well, to answer their questions. What their fate would be, Miranda did not know.

The next few hours passed in a blur of anxiety. Two sweet-faced ladies from a children’s charity came up and questioned them, shaking their heads as the girls haltingly explained their sordid ordeals. One of the ladies was the magistrate’s wife; the other was his sister. Miranda said little at first, frightened of the repercussions in case the ladies did not believe them, but from their reactions, she gained a new respect for her guardian’s standing in the world. Colonel Lord Winterley was an earl and a war hero, particularly known, she gathered, for his integrity. Now it was no longer the girls’ word against Mr. Reed's; the great Winterley had taken up their cause. He had seen Mr. Reed’s wrongdoing with his own eyes, and that, Miranda realized in awe, was as good as a noose around the corrupt minister’s neck.

Downstairs, the officials confiscated Mr. Reed’s ledger books upon Damien’s suspicions that the man had been misappropriating funds, judging by the ragged state of the girls’ clothes and shoes, by their insufficiently heated rooms, and by Mrs. Warren’s stated disgust at the poor quality of the food she was ordered to prepare when the school’s tuition was more than sufficient to afford better.

At last, their hero came up the steps and knocked gingerly on the door of the dormitory. Miranda let him in. Like a tamed lion, Damien sat down with the girls, tenderly asking each one in turn if she was all right. Amy hugged him hard and cried a bit on his shoulder.

Miranda watched his every move in silence, trying to reconcile this strong, caring knight with the savage warrior who had torn four criminals to shreds on Bordesley Green. He was the deadliest man she had ever encountered and, in his way, she thought, the gentlest. Then the crusading gentlewomen from the charity took matters in hand.

They agreed with Damien that the matter was best handled quietly for the sake of the girls, who had already suffered enough. The older lady, a childless widow, insisted that Amy, Sally, and Jane stay at her nice house in town for the rest of the Christmas break. The magistrate’s wife volunteered for the task of hiring new teachers and preparing a letter to the families of the students to explain the removal of Mr. Reed and Miss Brocklehurst. At long last, Miranda felt that she could leave knowing her friends were in good hands—and that meant, to her amazement, that she was free to venture through the door into the new life that Damien had opened for her, the life her mother had wanted for her.

She hugged Sally, Jane, and Amy each in turn for a long moment, promised to write to them from London, then followed Damien out to the carriage in a state of physical and mental exhaustion. It was already two in the morning. The stagecoach would leave Coventry in five hours.

Outside, the night was clear and the air was sharp. She paused and looked up at the onyx sky, thickly seeded with stars. She wondered if, behind their distant, dancing lights, Uncle Jason and her parents were looking down on her.

“Are you coming?”

She looked over at Damien’s softly spoken question. He stood waiting to assist her into the carriage, the starlight glimmering over the chiseled lines of his face.

Holding his gaze in the silvery darkness, she felt a fierce, instinctual loyalty to this man deep in her blood for what he had done for her tonight. The profundity of her gratitude shook her. He knew her shameful secret now about how she had suffered, and that was a dangerous weapon in a person’s hands. She wondered warily what he might want from her in return for the debt she now owed him. But her fears barely surfaced before logic and her newfound faith in him laid them to rest. Uncle Jason had indeed chosen well. It seemed that Damien Knight really wanted nothing from her but a little cooperation so that he could fulfill his sworn duty to her uncle.

“Perhaps you might begin to trust me now,” he said, his cultured baritone deep and steady in the inky stillness of the winter night.

Miranda could not find her voice to answer, staring at him in mingled longing and trepidation. He had saved her life; he had saved her friends; he had proved himself the hero the world proclaimed him. And yet her words of thanks lodged in her throat, blocked by the bravado that had been her sole defense for so many years.

She felt so strange. A quiet, womanly acquiescence settled over her with a willingness to set aside her childish ways; her tinselly, adolescent dreams of theatrical fame; and all her angry, headstrong willfulness. Instead, she would accept this strong, just man’s rule, as though his very gentleness had already begun to tame her. The rebel in her kicked against it—this was not the destiny she had envisioned. But when Damien held out his hand to her, waiting to help her into the carriage, she could not fight the pull of her heart.

She lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and went to him.

Algernon, Lord Hubert, could not sleep. It was not his conscience that plagued him, however, nor his dreams of what he would do with the money once enough time had passed to draw discreetly from Miranda’s account, but practical worry. The unsavory fellows he had sent to get rid of his bastard niece, disreputable but useful creatures who lived in one of his tenement houses, should have reported back to him by now to collect their pay. They had not come.

He sat in his oak-paneled study, the door open, giving him a clear view of the entrance hall. The grandfather clock chimed two, and still Crispin was not home from the gaming hells. The thought of his son filled him with a pulsation of mingled disappointment and helpless doting. He loved his son better than any creature in the world, better than his insipid daughters, Daisy and Parthenia, whom he had long since given up on as a pair of twits; aye, better even than he loved his empty-eyed wife. If only he could tell Crispin that he was doing all of this for
him
. Algernon stared into the candle’s flame while his servant huddled in the corner with the dogs, awaiting his next order.

He sipped a glass of warm cream with a shot of whisky in it to help make him drowsy, but sleep had grown even more difficult ever since he had learned from Jason’s solicitor that the man his brother had appointed as Miranda’s guardian was none other than the universally feared and esteemed Colonel Lord Winterley.

Algernon had sent his four hired criminals to Birmingham as swiftly as possible to get to Miranda before Winterley did, but he could only conclude they had failed. Perhaps they had fled their task, abandoning the promised gold rather than risk crossing the steely-eyed earl, he mused. If Winterley had already collected Miranda, Algernon knew he was going to have to devise some alternative solution.

“Egann,” he said, glancing toward the corner.

“Yes, master? I am here.” His slight-framed, balding valet came shuffling out of the shadows, dragging his clubfoot after him.

“I want you to go and watch Knight House. If our men in Birmingham have failed, Lord Winterley will in all likelihood bring my niece to his family headquarters,” he said with a faint sneer of envy. “I wish to know the moment they arrive. Be discreet. Don’t let them notice you.”

“I understand, sir.” Egann bowed and limped out to do his bidding.

Algernon felt more secure about his predicament after his reliable servant had gone. Soon, he assured himself, he would have matters well in hand. At least he did not have to worry about the Bow Street officers who had come to question him as a matter of procedure. The officers had asked if he and his brother had been on good terms. No, they had not been close, he had said, but they had always been cordial. The bonds of blood, of course.

Algernon had answered the questions with impunity, confident in his rank and in his certainty that he had not been seen by a soul when he had slipped out the back door of Jason’s lodging house into the seedy environs where he had roamed in his dissipated youth from one low tavern, brothel, or gaming hell to the next. He had purposely arrived by hackney coach, leaving his fine carriage emblazoned with his coat of arms at home so that he could not be identified. Let the police search as they may; the case of his younger brother’s murder would never be solved. The authorities had never figured out the truth about Richard’s and Fanny’s deaths, after all. Indeed, he was getting rather good at this, he mused, taking a satisfied sip of his scotch and cream. Major Jason Sherbrooke would merely go down as a casualty of the terrible neighborhood in which he had chosen to reside.

Just then, he heard the front door creak open and Crispin come stumbling in, home at last from his revelries. The dogs rushed out to greet the handsome twenty-five-year-old, their tails wagging, their nails clicking excitedly over the marble entrance hall. Algernon looked toward the door of his study with a frown.

“Hullo, hullo, boy! There’s a good boy!” the lad whispered in drunken good cheer.

Well, thank God, Algernon thought. His good mood meant that Crispin had won at the tables, or at any rate, had not lost too badly.