Читать книгу Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1 - Louise Allen, Christine Merrill - Страница 36

Behind her the sound of the key in the lock tore across her nerves.

‘I will come back, I promise, Nick.’

‘No, not to this place.’ He took her shoulders again, so hard it hurt her. ‘Promise me. Not the last day. Promise me that at least.’

‘No. I will not promise and I will come back.’ The door swung open. ‘Goodbye, Nick.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed his set lips swiftly, then turned to the door.

‘Good morning, Mr Rawlings. Good morning, John. John, everything is packed, I will just put on my bonnet.’

Nick stayed still as a statue by the door as John helped her into her pelisse and picked up the bags. She stopped at his side as she tied her bonnet strings. There did not seem to be any words so she reached up, touched his cheek and left.

John was a brooding presence at her side as they walked down the endless dark passages and out into the blessed sunlight and fresh air. He hailed a hackney carriage and bundled her inside before plumping down opposite her and demanding, with all the licence of an old family servant, ‘Are you all right, Miss Katherine?’

‘Mrs Lydgate,’ she said firmly. It was the first time she had said it; it sounded rather well. Her coachman regarded her with much the same air her father had adopted when she came up with some excuse to distract him from a misdemeanour.

‘John, Mr Lydgate behaved like a perfect gentleman and absolutely nothing happened. Now that is as much as I am prepared to discuss with you so you can stop looking like a cross bulldog.’

‘Humph. If you say so Miss … Mrs Lydgate.’

‘I was teasing you, John, please call me Miss Katherine. Now, has Philip taken the carriage out?’

‘No.’ He was still regarding her suspiciously as if he expected her to burst into tears at any moment. This was obviously not the reaction he had been anticipating.

‘Good, because I need the horses putting to and for you to pack your bags. We are going into Hertfordshire today.’

Jenny was inclined to be tearful at her return and then as baffled as John by their mistress’s brisk determination to leave London. ‘Pack, Miss Katherine? But for how many days?’

‘I am not sure. It cannot be more than three, I pray it will take no more. And Jenny, you know that old hat box we put up in the attic?’

‘Yes, Miss Katherine.’

‘Fetch it down, please.’

Jenny departed, shaking her head. Kate ran downstairs and into Philip’s study. Now, where was the atlas? Yes, here it was, a volume of road maps. She conned the one for the Aylesbury and Oxford road carefully as it unwound in a long ribbon over several pages. There was Hemel Hempstead and there was Box Moor. Now, where best to stay? Her heart told her the Lamb and Flag, but her head counselled caution. Hemel Hempstead was large enough to hold several respectable inns and, more importantly, magistrates.

She lifted the volume and started to leave, then turned back. She had better leave Philip a note to say they had gone away, although as he was not even here to meet her on her return, she felt a chilly hardening of her heart towards him. She pulled a sheet of notepaper towards her, dislodging several bills as she did so. Oh, Philip! Was it possible to stop loving your own brother? How many blows to the heart does it take before that feeling died?

Jenny was in the hall, portmanteaux and bandboxes at her feet and a battered hat box in her hands. ‘What do you want this dirty old thing for, Miss Katherine?’

‘I do not want it at all, I want what is in it.’ There was an ugly hat resting on a bed of crumpled tissue paper. Katherine tossed it aside and reached under the paper. Her fingers closed over something as fluid and sinuous as a snake and she drew it out.

‘Miss Katherine! Diamonds!’

It was a necklace, dull through neglect, but still sparking with the unmistakable watery fire of the true gems. ‘This is my last thing of any real value and I have been saving it for a rainy day, Jenny.’ She sighed. ‘It belonged to my grandmother and it will have to be sold to be broken up, I am afraid, the stones are an old-fashioned cut and setting.’

‘But, Miss Katherine, if you had this …’

‘No, Jenny, it is worth a few hundreds, not thousands; see, there are not many stones and they are quite small. But I need it now—this is not a rainy day, this is a hurricane.’

John was ready and they piled their baggage into the old coach. ‘Newman’s of Lombard Street, please, John, and then the road to Aylesbury and Oxford.’

* * *

Mr Newman was courteous to Mrs Lydgate. He did not know her, or recognise the name, and her dress was two Seasons out of date, but he recognised Quality when he met it. What he had not bargained for was a steely determination.

‘One hundred? I am sorry, Mr Newman, I have obviously been wasting my time and yours. I will find another jeweller with an appreciation of fine stones.’ She let her eyes roam around the shop dismissively. ‘You were recommended by Lady … er, well, perhaps I should not mention names. She will be so disappointed to hear she was mistaken in her advice.’ Katherine rose and picked up the necklace, careful that the darn in her glove did not show.

Half an hour later she was hurrying out to the coach, her reticule bulging, a gleam in her eyes. ‘Three hundred, Jenny, just imagine! I would have been happy with two, but I sneered so much at his lovely shop he gave me three.’

Her triumph lasted all the way to Hemel Hempstead. With money in her pocket they could afford a change of horses, and when they reached the town she indulged herself with two rooms in the Swan in the High Street. It was only as the three of them sat down to dinner in the private parlour she bespoke that the fear began to creep back. By tomorrow, four days left. Only four days.

If she failed, then Nick would hang. She would be there, although not where he could see her. He would hate that, his pride would revolt at the thought that she should see him choke and slowly strangle to death, kicking in front of a baying crowd. She had known him for only a few hours, but already she knew that his pride drove him, fed him with a sort of anger that had driven him into whatever life he had lived on the continent and now gave him the grace to look an unjust death in the eye with dignity.

‘Are you going to tell us what we are doing here, Miss Katherine?’ John demanded after the waiter had deposited a leg of mutton on the table and departed.

‘Yes. Will you carve that, please, John? We are going to prove Mr Lydgate innocent and to do that we need to meet a highwayman called Black Jack Standon and a magistrate whose name I do not know, but who probably has a new watch and a scar on his head.’

‘Heaven preserve us, Miss Katherine.’ Jenny reached for a glass of ale and gulped a mouthful. ‘We’ll be murdered in our beds.’

‘I doubt it,’ Katherine responded tartly. ‘We will have to identify the magistrate, of course, but I need to find Black Jack before I actually approach the Justice. Dear me,’ she added as John opened his mouth to begin what was obviously going to be a lengthy protest, ‘what melodramatic names these highwaymen adopt. Quite unnecessary, I would have thought. I am sure they are not as ferocious as they would like everyone to believe.’ She relented at the sight of their appalled faces and retold Nick’s story.

‘That’s a terrible thing if he is telling the truth, but do you have to do this, Miss Katherine?’ John asked sombrely. He appeared to understand at last that she was not going to be discouraged.

‘Yes, John, or I will always have it on my conscience. Now,’ she said briskly, ‘how do you suggest we find the magistrate who was robbed?’

Jenny took another swig of ale, tossed her curls and said, ‘I’ll ask.’ She got to her feet and with a swing of her hips vanished through the door into the taproom. Katherine looked dubiously at John.

‘I’ll keep an eye on her.’ He followed the maid out, leaving Katherine sitting alone, her chin propped on her hand, her mind at last free of all distraction.

Last night she had slept in the arms of a man she scarcely knew, a convicted felon she had married out of hand for sheer expediency. Her conscience nagged her. She had not deserved to have found someone who treated her with respect and consideration, she told herself bitterly, but by some miracle she had done so. She might be innocent of men, but she had a very good idea of just what self-control it had taken to sleep with her scarcely clad in his arms. Katherine folded her arms on the table, bent her head down and tried to send some message of support. She dared not think of hope yet: it would be too cruel.

Back in his dank cell Nick rested his head on his bent knees and let his mind dwell on the warm, soft, trusting femininity he had spent the previous night cradling in his arms. He corrected himself: not so trusting, perhaps. She knew exactly what she was expected to have to do last night and had been prepared to go through with it out of a sense of honour that men liked to think only their sex possessed. What must that have cost? He had all too vivid a memory of himself in that mirror: filthy, dangerous, desperate. And yet she had sent him soap and soft towels and a book of poetry. What was she doing now? He breathed slowly, deeply, recalling her voice and the generosity of her innocent lips against his. Kat. Kat, don’t come back. Please.

The next morning Katherine rose at seven, dressed with care in her best walking dress and left Jenny behind to discover the direction of Mr Highson, the outraged magistrate. Jenny had had easily extracted the tale of the magistrate and the highwayman from the crowd in the common tap the night before, even if she had had to be rescued by John from the somewhat over-amorous advances of her new friends.

John drove the gig they had hired and Katherine was thankful for his stolid bulk beside her. If she had realised he had felt it necessary to shove two loaded pistols into his belt, she would have felt considerably less sanguine. She tried to breathe deeply and calm herself. She had two days before they must return to London, surely that would be enough?

They crossed a bridge and she found herself looking out over water meadows dotted with grazing beasts. This must be Box Moor. What hope of being waylaid by Black Jack? she wondered. That would be a saving of time indeed! But nothing disturbed their journey and before many minutes had passed John was swinging the gig into a small stable yard.

Silence. The place appeared deserted. John shouted, ‘House!’ and finally a scruffy youth wandered out and squinted at the gig as though he had never seen one before.

‘Yer?’

‘Where is the landlord? My mistress requires refreshment.’

‘Er. Inside. Master’s inside.’

‘Well, come and hold the horse, you half-wit, while I help my lady down.’

Katherine climbed down into the yard and looked around. It seemed harmless enough. She gathered up her skirts and trod across the cobbles, avoiding the worst puddles, and went in through a back door.

Someone was singing tunelessly in the back quarters, but the voice was male and not young and she wanted to find the barmaid. Clinking noises from the front sounded more hopeful. Following the sounds, she made her way through to the bar room. A young woman in a plain gown, low cut to show the edge of her chemise and kirtled up to keep her petticoats clear of the newly washed floor, was replacing tankards behind the bar.

She spun round at the sound of Katherine’s tread and the flare of wariness and fear in her eyes gave Katherine hope. The woman collected herself quickly. ‘Yes, ma’am?’

‘A glass of your best ale,’ Katherine said pleasantly. ‘I will be glad of a short rest on my journey.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ she repeated, turning to one of the great barrels propped up behind the bar.

Katherine took a table on the far side of the room and waited until the girl came and placed the tankard in front of her. She took a sip. ‘Excellent. You brew here?’

‘Oh, yes, ma’am. Famous hereabouts the Lamb and Flag is.’

‘And for more than your ale, I hear,’ Katherine said smoothly, dropping her hand over the girl’s wrist to detain her. ‘You have a notorious highwayman amongst your customers, so I hear.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ The girl seemed unsure of how to deal with the detaining hand. ‘But no longer, ma’am. The troopers took him near a month past.’

‘Did they, indeed?’ Katherine kept a firm grip of the slender wrist and pulled the girl down to sit beside her. ‘Tell me all about it. Did you know this desperate villain well?’

Something in the quality of the air changed. Someone else was in the room. A powerful presence. Katherine’s heart missed a beat.

‘He’d come in from time to time, I s’pose,’ the girl said sulkily. Katherine watched her eyes flicker to the doorway behind her. The air stirred. She watched the dust motes dance and offered up a silent prayer.

‘So I imagine you were relieved that they got the wrong man?’ she remarked conversationally.

‘Yes … No! What do you mean?’

‘That it was not Black Jack Standon they caught, of course. Fortunate for Mr Standon and his friends, a pity for the man they are about to hang.’ Her ears strained for the slightest sound from behind her. ‘Not what I would have expected from a man of Black Jack Standon’s reputation.’

The maid’s eyes flickered and she tried to pull her hand free. ‘What do you mean?’ she repeated dully.

‘Black Jack has a certain fame for being a sporting man. A name for courage and being game. Not like him to let an innocent man hang in his place. Where’s the pride in that?’

Now she could sense the presence directly behind her. He moved as silently as a cat. ‘Good morning, sir.’ She spoke without turning, before he could take another step. ‘Please, will you not join me? Another tankard for the gentleman, if you will.’ Katherine released the girl’s wrist with a smile.

‘I won’t say no.’ The big man who appeared by her side was so like Nick that she almost gasped. Then he sat down opposite her and she could see the difference. This man was perhaps ten years older; a good thirty-eight, if not forty. His nose had been broken and his face was rounder with less apparent bone structure. He picked up the tankard the barmaid put in front of him and tossed half of it back without taking his eyes off the woman before him.

‘What do you know about Black Jack Standon, mistress?’

‘Nothing, except for his reputation. I know the man taken up in his place: I am married to him.’

‘Then tell the authorities who he is.’

‘I cannot prove it. No one can. The only way to prove my husband innocent is for the real Black Jack to be seen again. I am sure if he knew of the situation he would want to help.’

The brown eyes looked into hers for a long moment then he grunted. ‘Huh. What would be in it for Black Jack?’ ‘Pride,’ Katherine said simply.

In the yard John did as he had been ordered and watered the horse, checked the harness, then sat in the gig. Every nerve quivered with the urge to disobey. He squinted up at the sun. Ten more minutes, fifteen at the most and he was going in, no matter what Miss Katherine said.

He was on the point of climbing down from the vehicle when the door opened and Katherine stepped out, speaking over her shoulder as she did so. ‘Thank you. I will send word. I knew I could not be mistaken in you.’

In Newgate Nick paced back and forth in front of his bench, wishing he could stop thinking about Kat, returning to those very thoughts time and again as the only pleasant recollection he could conjure up. He felt uneasy about her and could not say why. Foolishness—she was safe enough in London now the risk from the bailiffs was gone.

The object of Nick’s concern was experiencing a far more unpleasant time than she had during her encounter with the highwayman. With the freedom of an old family retainer, John was giving vent to his anxiety and his self-reproach at letting her meet the man at all, let alone by herself.

‘And it’s no good you telling me you’re a married lady now, Miss Katherine, and can do what you want!’

‘I haven’t said that,’ she replied mildly. ‘But I must do what is necessary and I fear you are going to like the next adventure even less than this one. And I will need your help,’ she added, gazing trustfully at him.

‘Don’t you go batting your eyelashes at me, Miss Katherine!

It might work on some highwayman, but I know when you are up to no good.’

‘Let us hope that Jenny has had as much success as we have and then we can all go home the day after tomorrow,’ Katherine promised.

Jenny was waiting for them at the inn and positively bubbling with both the amount she had found out and her own cleverness in doing so.

‘I went to Mr Highson’s house, it’s but a mile out of town. And I went round to the back door and started chatting to the kitchen maid; told her I was new to the area and looking for work and wondered what was this place like.’

‘Jenny, that was brilliant,’ Katherine said admiringly. ‘Was she not suspicious?’

‘Not in the least. Bored to death, cook’s day off and she was left to make the day’s meals for the master. I settled down and helped her with the vegetables and she told me all about the household. The magistrate is unmarried and has a valet, a rather elderly footman, the cook and herself. When she said she had to lay the table for his luncheon I said I’d help her so along we go, right through to the dining room.’

‘Jenny!’ Katherine stared in admiration. ‘What else did you find out?’

‘Well, I said wasn’t it awfully exciting, her master being a Justice and all? Weren’t desperate characters dragged there at all hours of the day and night? I wondered what his study must be like—did he have a great chair like a judge?’

‘And?’

‘She showed me his study. She says that when he’s home he works there every day in the afternoon between two and four. It is on the ground floor and looks out on to the garden. See, I’ve drawn a plan.’

‘You’d make a fair good spy,’ John grunted with grudging admiration. ‘But how to we know which days he’ll be there?’

‘Every day this week,’ Jenny said triumphantly. ‘Mary—that’s the maid—said it was a nuisance because it made more work when he was home.’

Katherine sat back and closed her eyes against the sudden rush of relief. Thank goodness! Her biggest fear throughout was that they would not find the magistrate at home and she would have to persuade Jack Standon to travel to wherever he had gone.

Blinking, she pulled the plan of Mr Highson’s house towards her and conned it. ‘Now, this is what we must do. Listen carefully.’