The Original Miss Honeyford (17 page)

“You should not do that,” whispered Honey fiercely, her eyes on the waiter. “I am supposed to be your sister.”

“Of course you are, my love,” said Lord Channington gaily. “I had forgot.”

After all, Honey was not to know she was by no means the first “sister” he had brought to this inn.

He sat down opposite her and poured her a glass of wine. He eyed her covertly as she shook out her napkin. What a dreadful gown! Leighton Buzzard was still conveniently close to Town. He would have her this very night, and if she pleasured him well, he might consider keeping her for a little. But it was the initial seduction of a female which was more important to Lord Channington than the love-making itself. Once the prize was won, he soon lost interest.

“If we make good time,” he realized Honey was saying, “we should reach your home tomorrow. I hope your mother will not be put out by my visit and the announcement of our marriage.”

“Nothing in the world ever shocks and disturbs my mother,” laughed Lord Channington, and since that good lady was reposing in the family vault, he spoke nothing but the truth.

“There will be a lot of explaining to do,” said Honey. “She will wonder at my not having a maid. She will wonder why we ran away together instead of staying in London.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Lord Channington. “Have some more burgundy. The landlord keeps an excellent cellar.”

Their food arrived and they ate in silence. Lord Channington was pleased to see that Honey was drinking a lot of wine.

Honey looked around once the cover had been cleared and noticed that they were alone in the dining room.

“Are you in love with me, my lord?” she asked abruptly.

“My love,” he said, “how can you ask such a thing? I have never loved any woman the way I love you.”

Honey found herself wishing his eyes would show more what he was thinking and feeling. But his dead brown eyes observed her steadily although his mouth smiled.

Again, Honey experienced that feeling of unease. All at once she wanted to be alone, but put her nervousness down to fatigue.

“My apologies,” she said, rising to her feet. “I must retire.”

“By all means, my sweeting. We are both anxious for bed.”

Was it a trick of the candlelight or did his eyes gleam with a reddish light?

“At what time do we leave in the morning?” asked Honey.

“I will get the chambermaid to call you in plenty of time,” said Lord Channington, who had, in fact, told the landlord not to disturb them. But he had to admit to himself that he had drunk too much and he did not feel energetic enough to begin the siege of Honey.

She hesitated. “I have something on my conscience,” she said.

“My love?”

“I know I promised you I would not tell anyone, and I did not, in a way.”

He sat down and carefully poured himself a glass of port, tipping the glass idly backward and forward and watching the heavy drops of liquid cling to the sides.

“Go on,” he said softly.

“I did not tell you all about… about Lord Alistair.”

The deuce! he thought. Never tell me Stewart has had her first.

Honey sat down again. She rested her chin on her hands. “It was like this,” she said. “Lord Alistair was courting me, most assiduously. He led me to believe he had marriage in mind.”

“Odd’s Noddikins,” drawled Lord Channington. “He always does.”

“Lady Canon then told me she had asked him to court me so as to divert my attention from you.”

“And?”

“And after that, I naturally wished never to see Lord Alistair again.”

“Quite right,” said Lord Channington. “Is that all that is on your conscience?”

“No-o. You see, the previous evening, because I wanted to pack, I told Lady Canon I had the headache. She surprised me by being most kind and solicitous. I hated her, you see, for conniving with Lord Alistair. I felt betrayed. But I began to realize she has not much understanding of the softer feelings. I do not think she has ever been in love. She had done her best to puff me off in society and has, I believe, gone to a great deal of personal expense.”

“And so?” asked Lord Channington, trying to stifle a cavernous yawn.

“And so I left her a letter.”

“The devil you did!”

“I did not tell her where I was to be found,” pleaded Honey. “I only said I was leaving with you and that we were to be married.”

Lord Channington briefly closed his eyes. Already coaches full of enraged people could be scouring the countryside for them. If he was going to have this chit, it would need to be tonight or never.

He forced himself to smile. “Do not look so worried, my darling,” he said. “Go to your room and do not worry about anything. I am here to take care of you.”

Honey gave him a watery smile. “There are times when I think you are
much
too good for me.”

She rose to her feet and leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

Honey left the dining room and crossed the hall to the staircase. The landlord bowed low before her. “Goodnight, my lady,” he said, and to Honey’s amazement one of the landlord’s eyelids dropped in a fat wink.

She went up the stairs, feeling puzzled. Why had the man been so rude and familiar? But she was so tired, too tired to think any more. She would complain to Lord Channington about the landlord in the morning.

But the innkeeper’s insolence made her feel nervous. She undressed and brushed out her hair, tied a nightcap on top of her curls, and climbed into bed. She blew out the candle beside the bed but left the rushlight burning in its pierced cannister. After she had been lying for some moments, she got up again and took the pistol out of her reticule, primed it, and put it under her pillow. Then she turned on her side and composed herself for sleep.

Suddenly there came a scratching at the door.

She stiffened. Perhaps it was the landlord. Perhaps the overly familiar landlord was drunk. She drew the pistol out and, holding it firmly in her hand, called out, “Who is there?”

The door swung open and Lord Channington strolled into the room in all the glory of a cambric nightshirt and a red Kilmarnock nightcap.

She was jerked toward him, her feet slipped on the polished boards, she shot down and through his legs, twisted around, and turned and fired.

There was a terrific explosion and Lord Channington screamed and clutched his left buttock.

“She shot me. Help! Help! Murder!” he roared.

Downstairs, the landlord was just climbing into bed when the loud commotion from the best bedchamber came to his ears. He hesitated. But my lord had been most insistent that he was not to be disturbed. The landlord pulled his nightcap down around his ears and got into bed.

Lord Channington threw himself face-down on Honey’s bed, still howling for help.

“Get to your own room, sirrah,” said Honey. She reloaded her pistol and held it to the side of his head.

He twisted about and stared straight up into Honey’s implacable eyes.

Somehow he got himself from the bed and walked to the door with Honey following close behind.

His room was next to Honey’s. He tried to shut the door on her, but she pushed her way in behind him. The back of Lord Channington’s nightshirt was stained with blood and blood dripped on to the floor.

Honey felt herself growing faint. But there was one thing she had to make him do before she ran for help.

“You will write a letter, Lord Channington,” she said grimly. “It is only a few lines. I will dictate them. When you have finished, I will send for the surgeon. Do you understand?”

“Anything,” wailed Lord Channington. “Oh, hurry. I am dying.”

He stood in front of the writing desk and pulled forward a sheet of paper.

“I, the Earl of Channington,” said Honey, “do hereby state that I came by the wound in my left buttock when cleaning my pistol. I laid it on the floor and stood on it by accident, and it went off. I am shortly to be married to Miss Honoria Honeyford who resides with me at this inn, and who will handle all my affairs until such time as I am fit to take control of them myself.

“Good,” said Honey, when he had signed the paper. “I have no mind to hang. My father wishes me to bring home a husband, and that husband is going to be you, my lord. Get into bed and I will fetch a surgeon.”

She hurried from the room, taking the key with her, and locking Lord Channington in.

Once in the corridor, she leaned her head against the wall and shivered violently. It was a few moments before she could compose herself enough to make her way downstairs.

She picked up the handbell by the door of the inn and rang it violently. The landlord would appear soon enough if he thought he had a new customer.

He blinked when he saw himself faced with a trembling girl clad only in a nightdress and holding a pistol.

In a cold, calm voice, Honey explained what had happened, or rather, what she wished the landlord and the rest of the world to believe had happened.

“Are there any other guests here?” asked Honey.

The landlord shook his head. “My lord bought up all the rooms,” he said, shaking his dazed head to clear it, “so I gave the rest of the guests their marching orders.”

“Then you will not allow any other guest to stay here until I tell you,” said Honey. “We will cease this fiction about my being my lord’s sister. I am his fiancée, Miss Honeyford. Do you understand?”

The landlord nodded, eyeing the pistol warily.

“Then be off with you,” said Honey, “and send a servant to my lord’s bedchamber with hot water, towels, and laudanum.”

Honey forced herself to walk back up the stairs. She must not give way to weak and missish feelings. Lord Channington must not die.

She unlocked his room. He was lying face-down on the bed and twisted his head when she entered and looked at her. Honey wondered how she could ever have thought his brown eyes expressionless. They were filled with fear.

“The surgeon is coming,” she said. “Now let me have a look at that wound.”

“Have you no delicacy?” he screamed. “You are a monster.”

“Why so coy now, my lord,” said Honey, advancing on the bed. “If you had had your way, I would have been mother-naked myself.”

She whipped up his nightshirt and studied the wound, which was a mess of blood. She soaked a towel in warm water and gently bathed it.

She let out a little sigh of relief. “I think you will live,” she said.

Lord Channington buried his face in the pillows and moaned.

There was a knock at the door. Honey carefully arranged Lord Channington’s nightshirt and went to admit two scared and nervous servants carrying towels, hot water, and laudanum.

Honey poured a generous measure of laudanum in a glass and held it to Lord Channington’s lips. “You are going to poison me,” he whispered feebly, but he drank it nonetheless.

Honey dismissed the servants and sat down to wait. She felt nothing but contempt for Lord Channington. With a feeling of shock she realized Lord Alistair and Lady Canon had spoken the truth. They
had
been trying to protect her. But Lord Alistair should never have pretended to be in love with her.

Honey was very sure she would never love anyone else as she had loved Lord Alistair. It therefore followed that any husband would do. So Lord Channington would find himself at the altar at Kelidon church just as soon as she could get him there.

It might even be possible to make something of him, thought Honey, hiding in naive dreams from the reality of the fact that she had just shot a man.

Lord Alistair Stewart was almost at the end of his tether. He had searched and searched and he was starving and bone weary.

He had tracked the carriage with the crest on its panel to this neighborhood outside Leighton Buzzard. He had been told by a night traveler that The King’s Head was a mile along the road.

After the incident with the highwaymen, his senses were alert to any possibility of danger and he eased a long dueling pistol out of his saddle bag as two dark figures rode toward him from a side road.

The moon had come out from behind the clouds and he saw clearly two men, one dressed like a physician and accompanied by a burly man.

He hailed them and demanded to know if The King’s Head was indeed on the road he was traveling.

They reined in beside him. “I am Joseph Benskin, the landlord,” said the burly man, “but there ain’t no beds on account of a genleman having bespoke all the rooms in the inn.”

“Is his name Channington, by any chance?” asked Lord Alistair. “And does he have a Miss Honeyford with him?”

There was a silence. Then, “Better be getting on,” muttered Mr. Benskin.

Lord Alistair raised his pistol and pointed it at the landlord.

“Hold!” cried the physician. “There has been enough shooting for one night.”

“Shooting?”

“Yes. Allow me to introduce myself. Dr. Bradfield at your service. A gentleman has been shot at the inn and I must get to him as quickly as possible.”

“And it
is
Channington,” burst out Mr. Benskin, “so for the love of God, let us be on our way.”

“Ah!” Lord Alistair let out a long sigh and lowered his gun. “Take me with you,” he said. “I know both Lord Channington and Miss Honeyford.”

As they rode on, his relief was short-lived. He remembered the pistol Honey always carried. If she had shot Channington, then it would take all his skill to stop her from being hanged.

Lord Alistair had envisioned many meetings with Honey, but never one like this. They went straight up to Lord Channington’s bedchamber and pushed open the door. Lord Channington was lying face-down on the bed, snoring stertorously. Honey sat in a chair beside the bed.

At first she thought she was dreaming and that Lord Alistair had come to haunt her. His riding clothes were mud-spattered and his face was drawn and grim.

“What happened?” he asked, desperate to find some way to stop Honey from being dragged off to prison.

“It was an accident,” said Honey. “My lord left his gun on the floor and stepped on it by accident. It went off and shot him.”

Lord Alistair walked forward and picked up the pistol from the bedside table. He recognized it as Honey’s.