by Joan Smith
“I still don’t see how O’Leary got at Susan,” John said.
“It would take more than ten thousand pounds to convince me to entertain her again!” his mama said.
When at last Penfel returned, he was alone. Farber had remained behind in town to deal with O’Leary’s incarceration.
“Congratulations!” Lady Penfel cried, when her son entered, smiling.
“You mistake the matter, Mama. I am not the hero of the evening. It is Singleton who merits the title,” he replied, bowing in Singleton’s direction. Singleton, hiding behind his spectacles, blushed and made strange gurgling sounds in his throat.
Penfel’s eyes turned to Abbie. There, where he expected a warm welcome, he saw only a travesty of a smile.
“No one said anything about hero, gudgeon,” his mama said. “I am speaking of your betrothal to Susan.”
“Betrothal!”
“Aye. Whatever you said to the chit, she has taken the notion you want to marry her—or have to. I daresay it is all one and the same to her. You are to write to Dugal Castle tomorrow for Wycliffe’s blessing. We were given to understand that under the circumstances, His Grace will agree, even if you are only a lowly earl.”
“But—” He turned in confusion from his mama to Abbie, who just looked her compassion. “But that’s impossible! Damme, the reason I was so eager to find her is so I wouldn’t have to marry her. One of the reasons,” he added, when he realized what had slipped out. He sunk into a chair and drew his hand over his eyes to think.
“What we require is a plan to give her a disgust of you,” Lady Penfel said. “That should not prove too difficult. A worthier suitor would turn the trick. A duke—even a marquess would do.”
“Who would have her?” Lord John asked, in a rhetorical spirit.
“There is that,” his mama agreed, nodding.
Penfel removed his fingers from his eyes and said, “I don’t see why I must marry her. No one knows of the kidnapping, save the few of us here and Farber. He’ll not tell anyone.”
Lady Penfel shook her bronze curls. “Oh, for the optimism of youth! The whole world will know it when O’Leary’s case comes to court. And even if we could keep it under cover, she was ill treated while under your roof, Algie. She knows it, and the duke will soon hear of it. One hopes to see her children avoid the mistakes that made her own life so miserable, but there is no getting away from it. You will have a perfectly wretched marriage, as I had.”
Lord John, who had been massaging his chin, suddenly spoke up. “What if Algie were already engaged?”
“Lady Eleanor has already turned him down,” his mama reminded him.
“I was not thinking of Lady Eleanor. What of Miss Fairchild?”
Lady Penfel could never recall Abbie’s name correctly, but she recognized it when she heard it. Like the others, she turned and examined Abbie with interest.
“An excellent notion, but alas, it would not fadge. You must know a duke’s daughter takes precedence over a schoolmistress. Susan—and the duke—would insist Algie jilt Miss Fairview and marry Susan instead. The only way your stunt would work is if he were already married to Miss Fairview, and he ain’t. Are you, Algie?” she asked hopefully.
“Of course not!” he replied, and looked an apology at Abbie. “Miss Fairchild would have something to say about that means of rescuing me in any case.”
Abbie found herself doing an imitation of Singleton. An inchoate, demurring sound issued from her throat.
“I don’t suppose we could bribe O’Leary to say he had his way with her and make him marry her?” was Lady Penfel’s next suggestion. “We would have to let on he is some sort of Irish gentleman, if that is not a contradiction in terms. But that would be a cruel stunt to play on an innocent thief.”
Tea was served. After discussing the matter for some time without finding a solution, Lady Penfel rose and said, “Well, it is a knotty problem to be sure. Perhaps if we all sleep on it, someone will come up with an answer. I am for the feather tick. We’ll discuss it again tomorrow before you write to Wycliffe, Algie.”
Lord John, who was attuned to romance, sensed that Algie wished to be alone with Miss Fairchild, and left, taking Singleton with him.
When Abbie and Penfel were alone, he rose and sat beside her on the sofa. They exchanged a long, deep gaze, then without speaking, he took her hand, lifted it to his lips, and held it there a long moment. In the silent room, Abbie listened to the longcase clock tick away the seconds and thought, I shall treasure this moment forever. It is the closest I shall ever be to Algie.
“I’m sorry, love,” he said in a soft, wistful tone.
“It’s not your fault,” she replied, fighting back the gathering tears.
He batted away her objection. “I am sorry for all the things I didn’t say to you when I had the chance; things I have wanted to say since the first moment I saw you, glaring at me at the circus, but it seemed too soon then. And now it is too late.”
“I’m happy to know you wanted to say them at
least.”
“Would you have accepted an offer?”
“You know I would, after a proper amount of vacillating.”
“I am happy to know that, too.” He frowned at their intertwined fingers as they sat together, each thinking sad thoughts. Then he suddenly looked up. “Do you know, we never did learn how O’Leary got hold of Susan.”
“She was at the refreshment stall, complaining of the lemonade. He offered her champagne. She went to his wagon—not into it, but to the door. He hustled her inside when no one was looking, trussed her up, and put her in his gig.”
“How does it come no one saw him snatch her? His wagon is right in the open.”
“She says he did it when no one was looking.”
“I wonder...”
“What?”
“If that is how it happened. It was a terrible chance for O’Leary to take, snatching her so publicly. He is usually a deal more circumspect in his criminal doings. Did she ever say anything about him?”
“She did mention a few times that he was handsome. ‘One of those irresistible rogues,’ she called him. Kate says they were talking together a moment this afternoon. In fact, she had what Spadger calls a billet doux, though it may have been a letter from her mama. When we were listening outside the cottage window, I thought she sounded a little put out that he had not molested her. In fact, she chided him that he should have used laudanum, and he said something about its not being necessary. That sounds as though she had gone willingly. You don’t think—No, she would never have agreed to accompany him to a low inn.”
“No, she’d never do that. This is Susan we’re talking about after all.”
“She holds herself pretty high, but—do you remember when your mama was saying every lady ought to have a flirtation before she marries? No, you were not there at the time, but somehow O’Leary’s name came up, and your mama and Susan agreed that O’Leary would make a charming flirt. I believe Susan had been flirting with him. In her innocence, she would have no idea how dangerous a rogue like O’Leary could be.”
“Do you think she might have set up a rendezvous and gone into his wagon willingly?”
Abbie considered it a moment. “She might have, not realizing the danger. She thinks she is above the world because of her papa.”
“That would explain the mystery of how he abducted her in front of a few hundred people. She went to meet him willingly, and once he had driven her to some lonely spot, he tied her up and took her to the Duck and Dragon.”
“Even if that is true, it would not exonerate you from responsibility for her welfare while she was living under your roof.”
Penfel gave a quizzing grin. “Not entirely, but the duke demands perfection from his litter. It would make a very large club to hold over her head, would it not?”
“Oh, my! If ‘Papa, the duke’ heard she had so far betrayed her family—and with a mere commoner— he would likely put her into a convent.” Sh
e stopped and frowned. “That is why she has decided to badger you into having her, Penfel! She is afraid the truth will come out, and she will be disgraced.”
“I am happy to know she prefers me to disgrace and a life in a nunnery!” he said, offended.
Abbie gave him an indulgent smile. “Do you know, I am coming to like her a little, now that she has revealed some human weakness.”
“I will like her a deal more when I am out from under the threat of having to marry her.”
The longcase clock in the corner emitted two tinny chimes. They both looked at it, then at each other, remembering their former conversation. Penfel seized her fingers and squeezed them. “Two o’clock, our witching hour.” As he spoke, his arms went around her, pulling her against him. When he spoke again, his voice was burred with love. “We are now old friends, Abbie. And as you have already admitted, you would marry me if I were free...”
His head came down. Abbie didn’t lift hers, but she didn’t draw back, either. She gazed into the glittering darkness of his eyes a moment, as if mesmerized, and waited for the touch of his lips. At the first gentle brush, her heart leapt and began palpitating strangely. She felt her lips quiver in nervousness against his. When she shyly looped her arms around his neck, her fingers trembled.
Then he firmed her lips with his, and the kiss deepened inexorably, inevitably, as if her whole life she had been waiting for this moment. Warm fingers moved over the vulnerable nape of her neck, then slid down to feel the pulse throb in her throat, while his other hand pressed her ever more tightly against him, molding her feminine softness against him. A golden glow suffused her, spreading from her chest to her head, to make her giddy with new sensations.
She lowered her arms to his waist to hold him more tightly, savoring the hard masculine strength of his body. So this was love, this hungry, infinite yearning for another, that seemed almost a part of oneself. All that rubbish she had heard disseminated by her own teachers and had passed on to her girls in turn was nonsense. Love had nothing to do with respect or esteem. It was a visceral imperative that she could no more deny than she could deny breathing. And it was lovely.
After a long embrace, Penfel raised his head and just gazed at her, with his two hands palming her cheeks, while one of his slow, lazy smiles worked its way down from his eyes to move his lips.
She waited to hear what he would say at this crucial moment. The words “I love you” seemed appropriate, but she would let him speak first.
“Pity she took that sleeping draft,” he said.
Abbie gave him a dewy-eyed blink. “Sleeping draft?” she asked in confusion.
“Susan. I am eager to make myself entirely eligible. A quasi-betrothal is like my quasi-viscountcy. Something may come along to put an end to it. The only end I want to our betrothal is a marriage.”
“How can we be engaged? It would be quasi-bigamy!” She gave him a chiding look. “And besides, you haven’t asked me. Not properly.”
“Miss Fairchild! I trust you are not the sort of lady who leads a fellow on and jilts him!” She pouted. “Oh, very well. Miss Fairchild, I love you madly. No, I can do better than that. I love you to the edge— nay, the deepest depths of delirium. Will you do the honor to be my wife, providing I can divest myself of my other fiancée?”
“That’s better. I am happy to see romance is not dead. Yes, milord, I shall marry you, providing you can be rid of Lady Susan, and providing my uncle agrees to let me marry a man who is not an officer, and has never been to India.”
Wrapped up in each other, they did not hear the sounds in the hallway. Although it was very late, Sifton had not retired. He came to the doorway, smiled his approval at what he saw, then uttered a discreet cough.
“Mr. Farber is here, your lordship. He saw the lights in the saloon and came tapping to see if you were up and about. Shall I ask him to return tomorrow?” he asked, with a roguish twinkle in his eye.
“No, show him in.”
Farber entered apologetically. “Well, he is booked and locked up right and tight. I have had his wagon searched. He has still half a dozen purloined items in his strongbox, and the address of a certain Larry Wideman who acts as his fence. We can get him on the robberies right enough, but I am a little concerned about the kidnapping. He swears on the Bible, Lady Susan went to his wagon on her own accord. In fact, she agreed to go for a ride in his gig. Of course he kidnapped her, but she made the first overture. If he says that at the Old Bailey, the lady’s reputation will be ruined.”
This startling news was met with a wide grin.
“Excellent, Farber! Then, we shall forget any charge of kidnapping.”
“We may, but O’Leary swears he’ll tell his story to the journals. Of course she’ll deny it, though it is hard to see how he got her whisked off without anyone seeing him. He has a billet doux he says was written by her, agreeing to meet him at his wagon. It is written on her crested stationery. Any chance he might have pinched the paper?”
“Not a chance. She keeps it in her bedchamber,” Abbie said.
Farber nodded. “It sounded like a schoolgirl’s ranting. She admitted her heart was engaged, but that she could never be his because of her family, and they must be brave. She suggests that she might meet him to discuss it. I daresay that is what he was after, to make the kidnapping easier. If the note is not a forgery, it will blacken the lady’s reputation. That billet doux is his trump card, and he is playing it for all it is worth.”
“What is he after?” Penfel inquired. “He can hardly expect to go scot-free.”
“He’s trying to save his neck. Even without a charge of kidnapping a duke’s daughter, the string of robberies is enough to see him hung.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Drop a note to the attorney general, or as a last resort to Lord Eldon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, hinting that a duke’s daughter is involved, and any easing of the sentence would be appreciated. No need to name names. They will know what duke’s daughter is visiting Penfel. My sisters will see to that. Those London worthies won’t want to offend Wycliffe, whatever about me. Something can be arranged, some decrease in O’Leary’s sentence.”
“I’ll hie me back to town and tell him, then, for he was threatening to send for a London journalist and give them his story.”
“I’ll start the machinery in motion right away, and have an arrangement by tomorrow. But if he breathes a word of all this to anyone, the deal is off.”
“He realizes it. O’Leary is up to every rig in town. Well, I’m off, then.”
“I shall see you and O’Leary tomorrow.”
Farber left, well pleased with the arrangement. Either way, his pockets would be jingling, and he wasn’t eager to see O’Leary hang for helping himself to a few baubles from those who could well afford to lose them.
“I should let you get a few hours’ sleep,” Penfel said to Abbie, when they were alone once more.
Hand in hand, they walked to the bottom of the staircase. Sifton, who was locking the front door and beginning to blow out the lights, disappeared discreetly into the butler’s room. In the throes of their love, they didn’t want to part.
“I still haven’t showed you the da Vinci cartoons,” Penfel said.
“And I have not arranged when I am to paint your mama.”
“And your fiancé. There will be plenty of time for both after we’re married.”
She looked at him trustingly. “We will be married, won’t we, Algie?”
“That is the first time you have called me Algie. Yes, we will be married, my darling. By hook or by crook. I don’t mean to lose you. It would be too bad if I, who have always championed true love, should fall victim to a loveless match. I have always gone scrambling for cover at the first indication of being snared. If some call me a lecher or a flirt, that is the cause. How can you know whether you care for a lady until you know her? How can you get to know her without some advance in friendship? Alas, those initial steps can be taken for a commitment, so one h
as to dilute the message by pursuing two or three friendships in tandem. And suddenly a gentleman finds himself labeled a gazetted flirt. All I ever wanted was—you.”
Then he kissed her again, reluctantly letting her go. She continued abovestairs with stars in her eyes, to be brought down to earth by Spadger, who was lurking in the doorway for “a word in private” with Miss Fairchild.
Chapter Eighteen
“What is it, Spadger?” Abbie asked, trying to conceal her impatience. She just wanted to go to bed and think about her newly found love.
“It is Lady Susan, miss.”
Abbie’s impatience rose to fear. “What’s happened
to her?”
“She’s sleeping like a babe now,” Spadger said, imbuing the “now” with awful overtones. “She was drowsy-like after taking that sleeping draft. The girls were quizzing her about O’Leary and Penfel, as girls will do, you know.” She paused for dramatic effect before making her announcement. “The truth of the matter is, she let out that she went calling on O’Leary, if you please! And went willingly for a spin in his gig, too, with no duress at all.”
“She actually made the first move?”
“Can you credit the brass of her? Lady Susan, of all people. Her nice as a nun’s hen, or so she would have us believe. And blaming it all on her ladyship. Lady Penfel, I mean. She said her ladyship told her that young ladies should have a flirtation with some devil’s kin like O’Leary before they got married, so she took her chance while she was here—she knew well enough her own papa would never allow it—and that is how she came to get herself kidnapped. ‘Twas all arranged by billet doux. I knew by her sly smile when I saw her conning that little letter this afternoon that it had to do with a man.
“It seems he has been making love to her on the sly. She admits sending him off a note, and he sent her one back, wrapped around a stone, through her window. He wrote that he would be waiting for her at his wagon this evening. Mind you, she only agreed to a little spin in his rig. Much as she knows, she don’t know a thing about men, now, does she?
