The Highwayman's Lady (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Read online

  “Of course not. But I can’t believe this is all you got from them, Jordan. One ring with a tiny stone? You didn’t ask for their reticules? What about brooches and pendants? You didn’t go through their baggage in search of jewelry cases?”

  “Never mind, Rollo.” Howland picked up the ring to examine it more closely in the flickering candlelight. “I said if he could just get a lady’s ring, that would be enough. This will do.”

  “Forgive me, but this is the first time—which is not to say there’ll be a second time—that I’ve ever waylaid a carriage,” Jack pointed out. “Indeed, one of the ladies actually had the temerity to ask if this was my first time.”

  “If she had to ask, then perhaps it wasn’t the first time she’d faced a highwayman,” Rollo surmised. “In which case that might explain why this ring was all you could get from them. Someone else got there first.”

  Jack stroked his chin. “Hm, interesting theory, though none of them gave any indication that they’d been waylaid already. I’m sure at least one of them would’ve whined, ‘Oh, not again!’ Either way, I’m first to admit I’m quite inept at being a highwayman. One of the passengers was a widow unable to remove her wedding band, and not being too skilled at acting the notorious highwayman, in my lamentable inexperience I’m afraid I forgot to bring a knife to chop off her finger.” He picked up the decanter to refill his snifter, stealing a glance at Howland. “There were also two younger women, one of whom may have been your Lady Lydia, as I heard the name. Does she tend to scream at every little thing?”

  Rollo chortled. “If she does, then that may not bode well for Howland’s wedding night.”

  Howland crushed his cheroot in the ashtray as if he wished to do the same with Rollo. “I believe Jordan said every little thing.”

  “She rued not having any jewelry to surrender,” Jack recalled.

  “That’s because I have yet to give her any. I take it, then, that this garnet ring belongs to Miss Felicity Griffin, the betrothed of Lord Renton?”

  Jack sipped his brandy, taken aback. “How did you know?”

  “She’s Lady Lydia’s cousin. The widow is Lady Lydia’s mother, the Countess of Tyndall, who’s only now coming out of mourning after the death of her husband. Miss Griffin is a poor relation, at least until she marries Renton. Who knows when that’s going to happen, especially since every year for who knows how many years now, someone in her family or his shuffles off this mortal coil, delaying their nuptials for yet another year. He inherited his title a couple of years ago, and with it a fortune greater than mine.”

  “And mine,” Rollo chimed in. “I’m only the second son and must make my own way unless I can compromise an heiress.”

  Jack eyed him askance. “Does she have to be compromised?”

  “To marry the likes of Rollo?” Howland chortled. “I daresay!”

  “I believe what you say about the great fortune Renton must’ve inherited, because I saw his carriage and cattle in the stable yard just now.” Jack took a quick pull on the brandy to conceal his ire. “Why would he stop here at this hour, so close to Howland Hall?”

  “Mayhap he’s traveling with his ladybird, and wants to enjoy one last slap and tickle before he leaves her here to join the house party.”

  Jack slammed down his brandy. “He’s traveling with his mistress?” While that might explain why he couldn’t invite Miss Griffin or her relatives to travel with him, it certainly didn’t excuse him.

  Rollo reared back in his chair. “Easy, old fellow. You seem quite scandalized by that. Don’t we all have mistresses? Of course, Howland’s is a widow who also happens to be a friend of his mother’s, so he doesn’t have to keep her at the local inn.”

  “I don’t have a mistress, as I’ve only just returned to England,” said Jack. “No, what offends me—and it should offend Howland, too—is that Renton allowed his fiancée and the other two ladies to travel on their own, without any protection.”

  “He probably assumed they’d be safe between their and my ancestral home,” Howland replied. “It’s only a day’s drive from their estate in Kent. Renton’s own estate marches theirs. I suspect that’s how he found himself betrothed to Lady Lydia’s cousin. He started out as the second son of a second son, with no prospects whatsoever—which might explain this sad little bauble you stole. He hadn’t a sixpence to scratch with until first his uncle and cousins, then his father, and finally his older brother all cocked their toes up in quick succession.”

  “What happened?” Jack inquired.

  “I believe it was an influenza epidemic at the Renton estate when the whole family was gathered there for the marriage of the oldest son and heir. Well, maybe not the whole family. The new Lord Renton only escaped because he was hiding from either his creditors or a cuckolded husband in a London brothel. But he’s fairly swimming in lard these days, so who knows? You may have done his fiancée a favor, Jordan. He’ll have to buy her a new ring now, and it will surely be bigger and more precious than this.”

  Jack found that inexplicably annoying, and he drained his snifter as if that might drown his inexplicable annoyance. “I thought we agreed beforehand to return this evening’s spoils—such as they are—to their rightful owners—or owner, as it turns out. Otherwise this makes me a common thief.”

  Howland nodded. “I thought I’d bring your haul to the house party tomorrow with the news that the highwayman was caught after terrorizing the district for some months, and is on his way to Tyburn to be hanged even as we speak.”

  Jack stared at the plain, pitiful garnet that didn’t even so much as glimmer in the candlelight. Guilt swamped him at the thought that he might have taken the most—and perhaps only—valuable thing Renton’s fiancée had ever possessed.

  “Why so glum, Jordan?” asked Rollo. “Would it make you feel better if you returned the ring to her yourself?”

  Jack shook his head. “If I approached her with it—and without the formal introduction required by her aunt—she might suspect I was the one who stole it from her.”

  “Even though you were wearing this mask?”

  “Well, there’s the little matter of my voice and speech…”

  “Your voice should’ve been muffled by the mask. Consider it from her point of view—why would you steal her ring only to give it back to her the next day?”

  “Because that’s exactly what I’d be doing, you fool! How do I know she won’t turn me in to the authorities? I know Lady Lydia’s mother would in a trice. For that matter, how do I know either of you won’t betray me?”

  Howland sighed and sat back in his chair. “Jack, we’ve known each other all our lives. We’ve pulled worse pranks than this one.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think any of them were hanging offenses. Sneaking into parties and clubs without invitations? Curricle races across Westminster Bridge in dense fog? And speaking of pranks worse than this one”—he darted a sharp glance at Rollo—“how about seducing a widow old enough to be your grandmother?”

  He thought Rollo might have cringed to the point of shrinking in his chair at the memory, but his rotund friend remained remorseless, as he tended to be about everything. “I was eighteen. At that age I would have seduced any female of any age. Still would, come to think of it.”

  Jack widened his eyes. “And by God, you did.”

  “But I made a hundred pounds that night, fifty from each of you. I should’ve held out for more.”

  Jack lifted his empty snifter, as if in a toast. “That’s because we knew you’d do it. We were eighteen, too, at the time.”

  “Maybe it was a hanging offense at that,” said Howland. “I know I would rather have hanged myself than tupped that scrawny old crone. I prefer my widows about twenty years younger and pleasantly plumper.”

  “What about your brides? Or should I say, bride?”

  “Why, you saw Lady Lydia this evening, didn’t you?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t see her so much as hear her. ’Twas dark, and as I
said before, I could barely see a thing in that mask.” Besides, Jack was more interested in what Miss Felicity Griffin looked like. He set down his snifter and picked up the garnet ring to scrutinize it. “I really think we should go with the original plan, Howland, and have you return the ring with a speech about how the highwayman was caught and duly hanged.” And with that, he quickly set down the ring as if it might be cursed. He certainly wanted nothing more to do with it. Or this whole lark. Or, he was starting to think, his two companions. After his time on the Peninsula, he sometimes felt as if he’d aged a hundred years, while Howland and Rollo, bored toffs with seemingly no worries beyond which coat to wear or widow to seduce, hadn’t matured a wit since they’d first befriended him at school twenty years ago.

  Rollo cocked a brow. “Afraid to take another dare, Jack? I can scarcely believe what I’m hearing. Tonight you risked being shot, perhaps even apprehended and sent to the hangman anyway. None of that scared you, or you wouldn’t have gone out and done it. Yet now you’re scared Miss Griffin will guess your identity and have you punished according to the law. What do you say, Howland?”

  “If she’s like most chits, she has feathers for brains and would never know the difference.”

  Only she wasn’t like most chits, thought Jack. Renton’s fiancée did not have feathers for brains. If anything, she was too clever by half. Clever enough to guess that this was his first outing as a highwayman. Clever enough to deduce he was a gentleman—at least in theory.

  But foolish enough to leave the safety of her carriage and come after him because he’d left without—what?

  All he could think of was a kiss.

  But why a kiss? Perhaps she thought he’d return her ring in exchange for a kiss. He might have done so. Then she could continue with her life and marry Lord Renton as if nothing had happened.

  The very thought made him wince.

  Howland broke into his reverie. “What’s the matter, Jack? Afraid of the noose?”

  “Not at all,” Jack assured him. He wasn’t about to tell them of how she’d risked her reputation by recklessly leaving her carriage.

  The last thing he wanted was to see her ruined.

  * * * *

  Ruined.

  The word every young woman dreaded. Even Felicity Griffin—when she wasn’t laughing at the idea of it.

  Ruined. Ladies who were ruined were almost always banished from society, never to be seen or heard from again, their names never spoken, as if they’d never existed.

  Small wonder that whenever anyone in the ton dared to pronounce a lady ruined, they did so in the same tone of voice used to say dead. For it was a truth universally acknowledged that those declared to be the former were as good as being the latter.

  Indeed, Cousin Lydia nearly fainted when Aunt Cordelia whispered it in the carriage. At least she hadn’t screamed again. But Felicity deemed it a normal reaction to the announcement that she had, for all intents and purposes, fallen off this mortal coil.

  “Only how could I be ruined when I’m already betrothed? I suppose Renton will have to marry me at once, to silence any talk of scandal.”

  Lydia started to cry. Felicity supposed it was only natural after all the screaming and swooning, though more likely Lydia feared her own pending nuptials might be upstaged.

  “I don’t know,” Cordelia quavered. “A sudden marriage so soon after this may actually make things worse.”

  “How so? Since our marriage has been delayed many times already by deaths in his family and ours, and now another period of bereavement has ended, surely people will say we should marry before another relative dies and we have to go back into mourning.”

  “That’s why I wish to marry as soon as possible,” Lydia said, as she wiped away her tears.

  Felicity wished that she wished to marry as soon as possible. Instead she saw marriage to Renton as something she had to do because other people wished it. Not for the first time, she thought she wouldn’t feel that way if their marriage hadn’t been arranged years ago by their fathers. Perhaps she wouldn’t feel that way if Renton had bothered to pay court to her—but what was the point, since they were already destined to marry?

  She knew she wouldn’t feel that way if only she and Renton could have fallen in love and made their own choice to marry each other.

  She sighed and gazed out the window of the carriage, not that there was anything to see. She’d never had a season. Since she’d been betrothed all her life, her family had seen no need to give her one, as the main purpose for such an extravagance was to find what she’d had all along—a prospective husband. One who seemed to take it for granted that since Felicity had waited twenty-three years for him to marry her, what were another twenty-three?

  She peered out the window again, and to her relief saw golden lights from the windows of Howland Hall as their carriage made a sharp turn into the courtyard. It was just starting to rain. The front door opened to cast a beam of warm light from the threshold to the carriage, as a footman stepped out holding a blazing candelabrum to light the way for other footmen who scurried every which way around the carriage, opening doors and unloading baggage.

  Cordelia emerged first from the carriage, followed by her daughter and finally her niece. Lady Howland’s silhouette appeared in the wide-open doorway of the manor, and no sooner did she greet her guests than Cordelia promptly began regaling her hostess with what had just befallen them a short distance down the road.

  “Then it’s true what my son told me!” Lady Howland exclaimed. “He couldn’t be here to greet you this evening because he said he’d received word of a highwayman in the vicinity, and he went into the village to see if the fiend might show up at the inn to inquire about any travelers passing through. Oh, I hope he didn’t run afoul of the thief himself! Tell me, what happened?”

  Not surprisingly, Cordelia embroidered the otherwise very uninteresting truth with yards of floss in different colors and every kind of stitching, to include backstitches, long stitches, and tiny knots here and there.

  But alas, embroidery also meant plenty of unsightly loose threads dangling underneath it all. For in spite of four and twenty highwaymen astride giant, fire-breathing horses, all of them armed with pistols, swords, knives, bayonets, bludgeons, Brown Besses, and blunderbusses—Felicity was rather surprised her aunt didn’t throw in a cannon—somehow this rampaging regiment of ruffians had escaped with nothing but Felicity’s betrothal ring, for Cordelia still kept the third finger of her left hand with the gold wedding band squeezed around it, and she still had her own jewelry safely tucked away in her baggage.

  As they streamed across the cavernous front hall, Cordelia stopped stitching long enough to insist the younger women be taken upstairs to their rooms at once, for they were both exhausted from the long journey and still quite visibly shaken from the fearsome robbery.

  “Why, just look at Felicity! The poor thing keeps trembling and heaving and clutching her hand over her mouth—obviously to keep from screaming again! As it is, she’s making these horrid sobbing noises. Just look at the tears in her eyes! And she’s been like this ever since the highwayman—men—finally fled into the night. She needs to be put to bed at once, and a hot posset sent up.”

  Yes, Felicity thought, perhaps a hot posset would stop her laughing fit.

  “Should we summon someone to carry her upstairs?” Lady Howland asked.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me!” Felicity protested. If anything, she was far too excited to go upstairs to bed, even though she’d been more than ready to do so until that highwayman stopped their carriage.

  “There now, Felicity, you’ve been such a brave soul that you needn’t try to be brave any longer!” her aunt declared, whereupon she turned back to Lady Howland and readjusted her metaphorical embroidery hoops to begin stitching away at a new spot. “As you might expect, the ruffians were most put out at not being able to steal anything from Lydia or me. I feared they might demand a penalty, but good, brave Felicity use
d her charms—”

  Felicity had charms? She’d never been aware of that until now. She’d always thought Lydia was the one festooned with all the charms and graces, blessed with her mother’s buxom beauty, endowed with a great fortune, and—

  “—and persuaded them to spare Lydia’s innocence and my age,” said Cordelia, who was only seventeen years older than her daughter.

  “Say no more,” Lady Howland replied, and Felicity, who was already halfway up the staircase, could have dashed back down to hug the woman in gratitude. “You needn’t elaborate, Cordelia, for I can well imagine what the brigands demanded next.”

  Felicity tightened her grip around the banister. “They—I mean he—demanded nothing. Nothing happened!”

  Lady Howland lowered her voice, but not so low that Felicity couldn’t hear the nonsense that came dribbling out next. “I think I’ve heard of this odd phenomenon, wherein the victim is so traumatized by what happened that they actually insist it never happened.”

  Felicity saw no point in repeating what she’d already said. She didn’t even see the point in rolling her eyes, but she did it anyway before stumbling upstairs to bed, unable to do little else about the matrons’ escalating hysteria.

  When she awoke the next morning, she was dismayed to discover that none of her clothes were in her room. Upon coming upstairs the night before, she’d found her own night rail already unpacked and waiting for her on the bed. She’d naturally assumed the maid had unpacked everything else as well, but no. Her portmanteau was nowhere to be seen, and even the clothes she’d worn on yesterday’s journey had vanished into thin air.

  Felicity was trapped in this bedchamber with nothing but her night rail.

  The maid soon entered with a breakfast tray, and Felicity inquired as to the whereabouts of her portmanteau and its contents.

  “Perhaps it was taken to one of the other bedchambers by mistake, Miss Griffin.”

  “I don’t see how, since this is my night rail. But I can’t step out looking like this.”