Dukes Prefer Blondes

by Loretta Chase

  Laughter. “For Chiver,” Husher said. “Ha ha.”

  The Long Meg had her hands full, that was plain to Freame. She was struggling with the horses, and sure to lose the fight. That was good.

  But not good enough. Better if the horses overturned the carriage. Better still if the damned lawyer broke his neck when he went down. But no, he was putting up a fight.

  Time to give Husher a hand—­or better yet, a knife.

  But before Freame could move, another cove jumped up from the box, launched himself at Husher, and took him down.

  The bloody damned box! Why hadn’t Squirrel gone up one of the hills or into the trees, to see what was in there?

  Freame didn’t wait to weigh the odds. He ran.

  With all the strength he could muster, Radford shoved the huge hand gripping his against Husher’s face. The whip handle cracked against Husher’s nose, and he roared and let go, clutching his nose as blood poured down his face.

  Something thundered nearby. A flurry of movement, then Husher went down, over to one side into the road, Stokes on top of him.

  Radford dragged himself to his feet. Another tide of darkness swirled in. But that was the park, whirling about him. Shadow-­filled now. He struggled to get his bearings. He caught a glimpse of dimming sunlight through tree branches. He heard a noise he recognized, of a carriage in motion.

  He turned toward the sound, in time to see the mail phaeton moving, gaining speed as it rumbled away.

  Clara.

  In a runaway carriage.

  Clara had got the animals to stop rearing and dancing but they were still jittery, dragging the carriage along the road. Ahead lay a downhill stretch, with a dangerous turn near the bottom. She held on, fighting for calm while she tried to remember what Longmore had taught her about panicked horses. Stay calm, yes, but what else?

  Then she spotted Freame. She’d been too focused on the horses to notice much else, but there he was, running as though the devil himself were after him.

  “No, you don’t!” she shrieked. “Raven! He’s getting away!”

  Chapter Twenty

  In ravens’ weather, that is, when the sky lowers and portends storms, or after the storm has just passed, they may be seen upon the more open parts of the woods, sitting on a dark mass of stone and eyeing the desolation around them with keen and cautious glance.

  —­Charles F. Partington, The British Cyclopedia, 1836

  Freame heard the Long Meg’s scream. He ran for all he was worth. He wouldn’t let himself look behind him. He heard it all: the hooves thundering too close behind, the chains rattling, the wheels rumbling. But he daren’t leave the road. It was all trees, rocks, bushes on either side. He wasn’t sure how much woodland there was or where the water was. He didn’t fancy breaking a leg or stumbling into an icy pond or bog.

  Never mind. Not far to go now.

  Squirrel waited with the curricle, only a little farther down the road. Freame could make it—­though he might have to jump out of the way of the bloody damned horses. But they’d end in a crash, and the long Meg would end in pieces.

  Next turn on the carriage road from there would take him and Squirrel to the Sheen Gate. From there, they’d be on the road for Putney in no time, then on to Putney Bridge. Then London, not four miles from the bridge.

  He made himself run faster.

  Make them think running is your idea, Longmore had said. Be in command. Pretend it’s a race.

  The horses were already worked up. They needed to run. The rest was up to Clara.

  All she had to do was stay calm and in control, watch for obstacles, hope nothing else alarmed the creatures, and keep them following Freame. Trees flew past her, pebbles flew up from the roadbed. The way ahead looked perilously steep and the horses were picking up speed, racing headlong down, toward the wicked turning and the thick stand of trees, stumps, and rocks it held.

  But he whistled, then shouted something and signaled with his hand. She noticed movement in the stand of tall shrubbery not far ahead of him.

  After a moment, she caught a glimpse of something, partly hidden in the shrubbery. It seemed to be a boy. Behind him, something else. Large animals. Horses. And more: the black hood of a carriage.

  Freame was running toward them, about to round the bend in the road.

  She couldn’t let him get in that carriage and get away. He couldn’t be let to run loose, to keep plotting against Radford.

  She urged the horses on.

  Freame looked back over his shoulder. His narrow face was white. He turned forward again and shouted something to the boy. But the boy had stopped short and he was gaping at Clara bearing down on them, wheels and horses’ hooves like thunder above the rustling leaves and the birds’ cries. Freame roared something and turned abruptly toward the boy—­and escape—­and she screamed, “No!”

  The scream went through Radford like a knife. He watched the carriage list precariously to one side as it entered the turning. His racing heart stopped, and for one icy instant, he saw in his mind’s eye the vehicle slowly toppling, toppling, unstoppable, over and onto her . . . tree branches and stumps and rocks—­all deadly weapons if she landed on them.

  Bernard’s head . . . striking a rock . . . instant death.

  Radford pushed the image away and beat back panic.

  He heard her scream. Then another. Not hers this time, but male. The mail phaeton teetered, then came fully upright again. Gradually it slowed and stopped.

  Radford dragged in what air he could and raced to the spot.

  Clara was looking down and to one side of her, but she must have heard his footsteps because she turned and looked at him, and smiled. Tremulously.

  Tremulous or not, it was a smile, and it was like sunshine breaking through the deepening gloom of the park.

  She was alive and unhurt, by the looks of it. But she had to be shaken. He was shaken, limbs trembling now, heart pounding against his chest wall.

  Radford started toward her.

  “Never mind me,” she said. She nodded toward a crumpled heap, a few feet from the horses’ hooves. “I was trying not to run him down, only keep him in view and running, but the road here is so narrow . . . then he jumped out of the way. He must have tripped over something. He cried out as he fell, then he didn’t get up again. I don’t know if he’s dead. But please take care he doesn’t get away.”

  The words were hardly out of her mouth when a boy irrupted from the patch of woodland ahead and ran, at stunning speed, along the road leading to the Sheen Gate.

  Radford could only watch him go. Had he been fresh, he’d have a devil of a time catching him. As it was, he hadn’t a chance. But he didn’t need to try. By the time the boy reached the gate, even he would be winded. He’d have to slow down—­and stumble into the arms of the constables waiting there for escapees.

  More police waited at the Putney Bridge. The Metropolitan Police district didn’t include Richmond and large segments of the park, but it covered the parish of Putney, where the boy was obviously headed. Stokes’s colleagues wouldn’t let Squirrel slip through their fingers this time.

  Radford moved toward the prone figure of his would-­be assassin.

  A short time later

  They had arranged beforehand to meet the police at the Sheen Gate.

  Thence Radford, Clara, and Inspector Stokes—­aka John Cotton, Purveyor of Fine Furnishings to the Nobility—­proceeded with their captives. The brutal young man Stokes called Husher, handcuffed, and Freame, immobilized, his shattered leg on a makeshift splint, shared the mail phaeton’s box, with Stokes on guard on the servants’ seat at the rear. Everybody was bloody and bruised, except for Clara, who was merely dusty.

  Radford’s coat hung in filthy shreds. The rest of his attire matched it. In the dusky half light, even with the lamplights’ illumination, she couldn’t id
entify the stains on his black clothes. Dirt, yes, but bloodstains, too, most likely. She could make out the marks on his face as well—­more dirt, bruises, cuts—­and signs of swelling. He probably had lumps on his head. He’d fallen hard.

  She was used to seeing the results of males’ fighting. This was different. This opened a cold, deep space in the pit of her stomach. He might have been killed, so easily. He might have died, in a moment, like his cousin.

  Freame’s accomplice Husher was loose-­limbed and muscled, with big, thick-­fingered hands. She’d seen a blacksmith who looked like that: tall, lanky, and apparently clumsy. But he could lift an anvil or an ox without breathing hard, and he could shape the smallest piece of metal into whatever form he wanted.

  The mail phaeton’s hood muffled sounds from behind and the rattle of wheels and clatter of hooves tended to drown out other noises, but she was aware of Freame, alternately moaning and raging, though she couldn’t make out what he said. Now and again she caught a whiff of Stokes’s pipe.

  “That did not go quite as planned,” she said.

  “It never does,” Radford said. “As Stokes warned us.” His voice was hoarser than usual, and that made her want to grab the horsewhip from his hand and beat Husher senseless, for whatever he’d done to her husband.

  They’d planned so carefully. Radford had written to Scotland Yard—­via Westcott, because all of Richmond knew where their post came from and went to. He’d described the situation. He’d hired Inspector Stokes, a highly regarded former Bow Street Runner, as a private detective. Everything had been arranged so as to involve the London police without offending local sensibilities and while allowing as few locals as possible in on the secret, gossip being what it was.

  Stokes had arrived within hours of being summoned, and he and Radford had made several plans to cover the most likely scenarios.

  As John Cotton, Stokes had passed to Freame the information needed to manipulate him into appearing at a certain time of day, along a predetermined route.

  On the daily drives, Stokes had curled up under a rug, out of sight of those spying from the bushes.

  Even so, even prepared and braced for an attack, and even having limited the possible attack sites, they couldn’t know precisely when or where.

  Freame’s bursting out of hiding had startled humans and horses enough to throw everybody off balance and give the criminals an advantage.

  “You knew the police were waiting at the gate,” he said. “And we agreed, did we not, that you would not involve yourself unless it was to stop somebody killing me—­and then only if it didn’t endanger you.”

  “We didn’t allow for your being pulled from the carriage and knocked down so quickly or the horses panicking.”

  The cattle were well trained, but they weren’t London trained, accustomed to constant hubbub and ­people, horses, and vehicles coming at them. Freame had known what to do: burst into a tranquil scene and make a big commotion, flapping his greatcoat about him and shouting.

  “It might have been worse, I suppose,” he said. “At least you didn’t jump out and try to kill Husher. Or Freame. Though I daresay Freame will claim in court that you tried to run him down.”

  “Here’s what I’ll tell the jury,” she said. “I was left alone in a runaway carriage. I did my best to get the horses under control. But it was difficult for a mere woman. Freame had the misfortune to trip when he leapt out of the way.”

  “Difficult for a mere woman,” he muttered. “I can hear your brother Longmore laughing now. No, all of your brothers. We’d better keep them out of the courtroom.”

  “I probably could have stopped the horses by then, or at least slowed them,” she said. “But that wasn’t what was in my mind. Though I wasn’t aware of thinking in a logical manner at the time, all the practicing and talking with Stokes must have prepared me.”

  “You had a great many what-­if questions, I recall.”

  She knew he remembered each and every one. She remembered that he hadn’t interrupted or dismissed a single question. He and Stokes had taken her seriously. They’d responded as though she’d been another man. She wasn’t sure either man would understand how important that was. Men took for granted that sort of respect. They had their pecking orders but still they were men, and in the great scheme of things, men and what they said mattered. Women didn’t. They were to be looked at and not listened to.

  She hadn’t called attention to it then and wouldn’t now, but she cherished it in her heart. Later she’d find a way to tell her husband what it meant to her.

  She went on, “While the front of my mind was on keeping the horses under control, in the back of my mind I was thinking, too. I knew the police were at the Sheen Gate and at the Putney Bridge. But Freame was escaping. I saw he aimed for the Sheen Gate, where the police were waiting. But that didn’t mean they’d catch him. In his place, I would have jumped into the curricle and driven like a madman, straight at them, the way he drove straight at us in Trafalgar Square. The police would have given way instinctively, as we did. Only for a moment, perhaps, but that could be all the time he needed. And who’s to say he’d make for the Putney Bridge? He might have turned off the main road sooner and made for the Hammersmith Bridge. It’s a long way about—­but for that reason, no one would expect him to go that way.”

  “You have a point,” he said. “An excellent point, by the way. Do you know, I was cleverer than I thought, when I decided to marry you.”

  “You decided!”

  “Yes, after you left me no choice.”

  After a pause, he said, “I hope this was adventure enough for you. I’m not sure how many I’ll be able to provide in future.”

  She gave a careless wave of her hand. “I’m not in the least concerned. Whatever you do with your new position, I know I can count on you to alienate and enrage any number of ­people, and we can always depend on somebody or other wanting to kill you.”

  “Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “But then, I’ve had no time to consider my future. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. First Bernard goes and falls on his head. Race to Glynnor Castle, and get them sorted. Race home to find assassins lurking in the shrubbery. Alert Scotland Yard. Bring in Stokes. Form a counterplot. Foil the villains—­which it turns out is easier said than done. Now we’ve got to make sure they get to London safe and sound for a trial next month, for which I must plan a case I can’t prosecute.”

  He spoke coolly enough in spite of what she was sure was a near brush with death. But it was his habit to view the world through the spectacles of logic and reason. Emotions were her department, and she ached for what he’d miss, though he seemed to dismiss it so calmly: to stand in wig, bands, and robe in the courtroom and ask his questions and make his arguments and joust with the judge and opposing counsel.

  “That must be . . . annoying,” she said.

  “Hmm.” He frowned.

  “But of course you’ll give Westcott detailed instructions as well as tell him which barrister is to represent you,” she said.

  “No.” He looked at her, and she caught the wicked glint in his grey eyes. “I don’t need a barrister. I must have suffered a minor concussion—­”

  “A concussion!”

  “A minor one,” he said. “The only explanation for my failing to remember a fundamental fact of law: victims of crime have the right to prosecute their own cases. They’ve done so for most of our history.”

  “But a concussion!” she said. She didn’t care about the blasted law.

  “I did fall on my head. But unlike Bernard, I survived—­and you can nurse me tenderly later. I quite look forward to that. And then so much fun to look forward to next month at the sessions. I shall be Lord Bredon, with everybody bowing and scraping—­including the judge, possibly.” He laughed, then winced.

  She wasn’t able to find out where else, b
esides his head, he’d been injured, because they were nearing the Sheen Gate, where the police waited.

  There Radford and Clara learned that Squirrel had eluded the police.

  He hadn’t come through the gate. Everybody there would swear to it.

  Yet he might have done, Radford thought. The boy was so quick. Or he might have hidden in the park, waiting for the excitement to die down. He’d shown patience enough that first time, following Radford as he led him on a long, tedious chase.

  Still, it would be hard to prove much against the boy, and the two men they knew to be deadly were in custody.

  Radford spoke briefly to Stokes, who sent a pair of constables back to collect Freame’s curricle. That, at least, might offer useful evidence.

  Leaving the police to finish their various tasks, including, at Radford’s insistence, taking Freame to the nearest surgeon, Radford drove home. Though the twilight was deepening into night, he went by way of the park. He could drive this road blindfolded, and it spared their facing gawkers. He knew he looked a great deal the worse for wear. Normally this wouldn’t trouble him, but he wasn’t in a humor to be gaped at.

  He needed some time to collect himself—­or rather, detach himself from recent events and the accompanying avalanche of emotions. Then, when it came time to traverse Richmond Hill, he could regard any staring multitudes with cool objectivity.

  His mind swiftly turned to familiar, logical spheres: the case against Freame and his associates, for instance.

  “It’s a pity the sessions don’t come on for weeks,” he said. “I’ll be healed by then, and the jury will think a great, healthy aristocrat, in all his finery, was in no danger from anybody except, possibly, a Mongol horde. Freame and Husher will claim I tried to run them down, you may be sure. And when Husher tried to prevent me, my wife tried to run Freame down.”

  “Evidence,” she said. “So difficult to prove intent—­as in the Grumley case.”

  “Unless somebody squeaks,” he said. “Even so, if the informant is one of the conspirators, the jury may not deem him reliable. I’d better warn you: It’s unlikely either of them will go to the gallows for assault, even violent assault. Some years of hard labor is more like it.”