The Wicked Guardian (24 page)

26
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Benedict arrived at Lady Thane’s rented house, and was admitted by Mrs. Bishop. He inquired for his ward, and received a shock.

“Miss isn’t here, my lord,” said Mrs. Bishop in a stern, disapproving voice. She knew what was proper and what wasn’t, and the way affairs were managed around here did not measure up to her rigid standards.

Benedict was conscious of a letdown. He had made up his mind to apologize, and the delay was offsetting. “Then I shall wait,” he said, unbuttoning his coat.

“Not much use, I think,” Mrs. Bishop informed him. “For miss and her maid will be long-delayed.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that miss went out, with her maid, and her bandbox, and I surely know a gentleman’s traveling coach when I see it.”

“And you did see it?” said Benedict smoothly.

“No thanks to miss, I can tell you,” said Mrs. Bishop darkly. She was not responsible to anyone but the owner of the house, and miss could go or stay and it would make no never-mind to Mrs. Bishop. But right was right. “She slipped out of the front door as quiet as you please, and if I hadn’t just happened to be looking out of the upstairs window, I wouldn’t have seen the coach stop right down at the corner and miss get in.”

Benedict, seething, put a few more questions to the housekeeper, received a description of the coach, and left the house. There was no doubt in his mind that the vehicle belonged to Sir Alexander Ferguson. And while Choate could not at once decide what had driven Ferguson mad enough to take off with a schoolgirl in a traveling coach, he could wait for an explanation until he caught up with them. And catch up with them he would.

The first stop was at Ferguson’s lodgings. Here his fears were confirmed. Sir Alexander had left Bath. According to the page, “His lordship’s gone and taken all with him. Left in such a hurry,” said the page, “that he didn’t have time to give me the sovereign he promised me to deliver a note to some swell over on the Parade.”

Benedict regarded the ill-favored urchin with such severity as to make him cringe. “A note? Could it have been addressed to me, by any chance? Lord Choate?”

“I dunno. Can’t read. But he didn’t give me the sovereign.” The boy was cowed but not conquered. If he could succeed in getting his sovereign, he would be possessed of the largess that dreams are made of.

“Let me see the note, if you will,” said Benedict, tossing a small coin in the air. The lad saw that it was clearly not a sovereign, and philosophically lowered his sights.

“He said,” said the urchin without conviction, “that he would give me a sovereign, sir.”

“I wish I may see the day that Sir Alexander Ferguson hands out sovereigns as tips,” said Benedict pleasantly. “But I warn you that my patience is not inexhaustible.” He pocketed the coin.

In moments, the elusive note had been produced and the coin had changed hands. The page scuttled away. Even a shilling was better than nuffin, he thought, rightly.

The note from Sir Alexander did nothing to allay Choate’s fears. “The little wretch!” he said, clenching his fists. “Wait till I get hold of her, suborning Ferguson like this. She knows full well Lady Thane is not in London! I wonder what her game is this time?”

He did not stand still. Even as he promised himself the utmost of revenge on the girl to whom he had been longing to apologize less than an hour before, he returned to his own rooms, ordered his curricle and the grays, and took time only to tell Grinstead that he did not know when he would be back.

He curbed his pair sufficiently until he reached the eastern outskirts of the city, and then he put them right along. The fine-bred horses ate up the miles, and Benedict began to entertain hopes of catching up with the runaways within the hour. Ferguson’s coach couldn’t begin to make the speed that the light curricle could, and Benedict turned his mind to formulating well-turned phrases that would serve to dissuade his ward from ever trying anything like this again.

By the time another hour had passed, and there was still no sight of his quarry, Benedict was in a towering rage. Of all the ramshackle, idiotic things to do—to cajole Sir Alexander Ferguson into such folly as taking her to London. For the first time he began to wonder whether Sir Alexander was quite the stuffy gentleman he had thought him. Surely it was not the act of an innocent man to lend himself to such an escapade!

Benedict was too well aware of the havoc his ward left in her wake to blame Ferguson for the runaway, but his rage did not diminish as far as Clare was concerned.

Unbidden, Lady Fenton’s remark, as passed along by her son Ned, occurred to him. “Too much fire for the cause. There’s more to it than on the surface.”

Benedict refused to consider anything other than his need to get the girl back. There was a revelation for him just beyond the brink of his thoughts, but he did not want to explore it. He had a dark feeling that he did not want to know more than he already did.

His mood was thus dangerous when he became aware of an obstacle in the road ahead. A closer view told him that it was a gig drawn by a horse that appeared to be lame on the off hind foot. It could not be Ferguson, and Benedict had no interest in anyone else. He drew to the right, ready to pass, but the gig did not give him room. Instead, incredibly, the driver turned his vehicle into the center of the road and dropped to the ground to face Benedict.

For a moment Benedict wished he had taken time to allow Vilas to accompany him. Two armed men would not always be enough to assure safety on the road. But Benedict had not wanted to admit a groom to his confidence, and indeed he had every reason to believe that he could manage one armed man.

For he saw, with some disbelief, that the driver of the disabled rig stood now with a pistol in each hand. Benedict, a notable shot, reined in with prudence. If the fellow lost his poise because of unnecessary defiance, he might by accident hit his mark.

The desperate character in the road took a step toward Benedict’s slowing curricle, and Benedict recognized him. “Rowse! I had heard that you were in desperate straits, but I had not expected to see you turning highwayman.”

“Nor have I,” retorted Rowse. “This job horse has played me false, and I was about to inspect the damage.”

He put a pistol away, and made as though to holster the other, but with a casual air that did not deceive Benedict, he still held it. “Looks too lame to me to go on.”

Watching Rowse bend over his horse’s front leg, Benedict toyed with the idea of offering assistance, but the purpose of his journey did not allow for any delay. He could catch up with the Ferguson coach before Reading, if he were not delayed. At that point, roads led to Gretna Green, to London, toward Andover—though what Clare and Ferguson might be doing in Andover escaped him.

After a few moments, while Rowse dealt with his horse, had grown into a lengthier time, Benedict suggested mildly, “Could you not draw your gig over to the side, Rowse?”

Rowse straightened and came to stand only a few feet from the curricle. “I could, Choate. But I don’t think I will. I should imagine that you too are in pursuit of your ward.”

‘Too?”

“And it does not suit me to allow you to interfere again. For you know, don’t you, that Miss Penryck has taken to the road? In all likelihood, she is on her way to Gretna Green. I should imagine you would not like that above half, would you?”

Gretna Green! Choate had read Ferguson’s note carefully, and there was no mention of Gretna Green, or of an elopement. In fact, that ponderous Scot had said, in surprisingly few words, for him, that they were on their way to London, to Lady Thane’s.

But Benedict also knew that Lady Thane was not in London. Had that wily minx cozened Ferguson into an elopement? Choate would not put it past her. He reflected on these points in a moment, but Rowse grew impatient.

“That beguiling child got away from me once before,” said Rowse, somewhat irritated, “but she will not do so again. I promise you that. She won’t end up at Gretna Green, I can tell you.”

“What makes you think she intends to go to Gretna Green?” asked Benedict The situation was murkier than he had expected to begin with. At first it was a simple pursuit, but now, with this idiot Rowse in the way, with a loaded gun in his hand, Benedict trod warily.

“Well,” said Rowse with an air of reason, “where else would she go? Ferguson ain’t one to play false. And I would already be talking to him, instead of you, if this horse hadn’t gone lame.”

“Tell me, Rowse,” said Benedict conversationally, “what your intentions are toward the lady?”

Rowse laughed aloud, a harsh sound that startled Choate’s grays. Benedict brought them under control again with his left hand, his right one holding the whip.

“What do you want to know for?” demanded Rowse. ‘There’s nothing you can do, anyway. I’ll just trouble you to step down, and I’ll take your cattle. Prime goers, ain’t they? The great Lord Choate wouldn’t drive any job horses, the way I have to,” he finished viciously. He waved the pistol at Choate.

“It seems to me,” said Benedict thoughtfully, ignoring the loaded pistol, “that you are not so much interested in the lady as you are in Ferguson. Am I right?”

The pistol wavered. Rowse asked in an altered tone, “What if you are? Ferguson’s the kind who will pay well to keep scandal away from his door. Once I point out to him the way things look, or will look when I get through dropping a few hints in the right ears in London, he will make it worth my while to keep silent.”

Benedict regarded the man on the ground with scorn. “There is no limit to what you will do, is there?”

“No,” Rowse said, considering, “I don’t think there is. But Ferguson won’t see the jest, I fear. How delicious it will be for a man of such ponderous respectability and the most conventional of motives to be barred from Almack’s, lest he run off with the young ladies!”

“I fail to see the jest myself,” said Benedict. “Your dealings with Ferguson are your own affair. But I warn you, the safety and good name of my ward is entirely my business, and you will be well-advised to keep clear of Miss Penryck.”

The pistol came up again, and Rowse said in a deadly tone, “I think there is no reason for me not to indulge my fancy both for money and for a bit of dalliance with a pretty maid.”

“You can’t be so lost to decency,” said Benedict, his voice dripping the scorn he could no longer conceal, “as to pursue a well-bred young lady just out of the schoolroom!”

“So well-bred,” countered Rowse, “that this schoolgirl starts off cross-country with a man who is not related to her? In a closed coach, besides, and beyond all that, I should be greatly surprised if Ferguson knows the plans of that schoolroom miss!”

Benedict lost patience. He was increasingly anxious about what might be happening on the road ahead, and desperate to overtake the runaways before they reached Reading. It would be much more difficult to track them down, when a choice of roads was open to them. Besides, it would take tedious inquiries and more curiosity on the part of those he asked than he wished to sustain.

“Get out of my way, Rowse!” he said viciously. “You’re hopelessly out of it to think you can come up with them and seduce my ward. Lay one finger on her,” he added with menace, “and you will wish you had never lived.”

Momentarily intimidated, Rowse stepped backward in the road. Then, with a laugh, he chortled, “A great deal of fire, Lord Choate! Only a guardian? You make me laugh. You’ve got a fancy for the girl yourself! This too will cause a stir in London, in the right ears!”

“Why nobody has killed you before this,” hissed Benedict, “I couldn’t say. But I know that after this I shall indulge myself in dealing with you.
After
I rejoin my ward.” His fury was out of bounds. He could see the effect his rage had on Harry Rowse, and he regretted it. Rowse clearly thought that Benedict had a
tendre
for the girl, and nothing Benedict could say would change his mind. His very anger only reinforced the conviction that he could read in Rowse’s face.

Lurking under the surface of his thoughts stirred the conviction that there was more truth than falsehood in Rowse’s accusation. Lady Fenton’s dictum came back to him again. He bit his lip on the words that sprang to his tongue.

Rowse seemed to be in a deep study. He stood too close to the grays’ heads for Choate to drive around him, and the hired horse and rig of Rowse’s moved erratically across the road.

“How much?” said Rowse at last.

“For the grays?” demanded Choate unbelievingly. “Out of the question. You’ll just have to get to town the best way you can.”

“For my silence,” retorted Rowse. “It won’t do you any good with Miss Morton, to hear how you scorched out of Bath to keep your schoolgirl from running off with another man. I wonder—”

‘That is positively the last straw!” seethed Benedict. “Out of my way or I’ll run you down. I warn you, Rowse, if I see your face again in Reading, in London, or anywhere on earth, you are a dead man!”

He began to turn the grays around Rowse, not too carefully, for at that moment he had not the slightest aversion to sending the splendid horses directly over Rowse’s body. Rowse, reading rightly the ferocious expression on his enemy’s face, lifted his pistol and cocked the hammer.

With a reflex motion, Choate, incensed at Rowse’s dastardly demands, raised his whip and flicked it. The same touch of the whip that would, in the park, take a fly from his horse’s ear, this time unerringly cracked around Rowse’s right wrist, and caused Rowse to cry out in pain.

Everything happened at once. Rowse could not remember firing the pistol, but the report deafened him. Even though the whip had deflected his aim, and the ball did not reach its mark, yet the results were disastrous as he could have wished.

The grays, unused to loud noises in their ears, reared out of control. Rowse, seeing the great forefeet above his head, dodged desperately, He did not, saving his own skin, see Benedict thrown from the curricle as the horses, maddened, bolted.

But when the smoke cleared, and Rowse, to his surprise, found that he was uninjured, he saw, on the hard surface of the road, his enemy, stretched full length and unconscious.

Harry approached and knelt beside him. Never a man to lose his head, first he made sure that Choate was unaware of his surroundings. Then, with fingers made swift by practice and by the need for haste, he transferred the contents of Choate’s note case to his own.

For a moment he looked down at his enemy. A momentary pang of pity crossed his mind, and he nearly decided to look about him for help for Lord Choate.

The pang lasted hardly as long as a breath, and Harry Rowse, noting that his own gig and the curricle and the grays were totally out of sight, turned his back on Choate.

Patting his full note case with satisfaction, he set off on foot down the road in the direction he had been heading before Choate had caught up with him. At first that had seemed like a disaster, he reflected, but he was well out of it, with enough money to hire a curricle and pair at the next town, and before nightfall he would be much surprised if he had not come upon the runaway couple.

He began to whistle an air that sounded much like a triumphal march, and his steps quickened to keep pace with the rhythm. He never looked back at the body lying spread-eagled on the road behind him.