“Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. And you must admit, Freddie is never anything but extreme.”
Indeed she was, Conrad thought with a grim smile. Extremely lush. Extremely vibrant. Extremely beddable. Although Conrad doubted that was what her brother had in mind when he used the word.
“Surely you can find someone else to play the part of the highwayman,” he suggested hopefully. “One of the servants or tenants, perhaps?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Even if one of them could carry off the masquerade without shooting himself in the foot or falling off his horse, she would browbeat him into the truth inside of five minutes. They’re all more terrified of her than they are of me.” The young viscount shook his head ruefully. “Besides, there are few men I’d trust with my sister’s virtue. You probably haven’t noticed, being as you’ve rarely seen her in a proper dress, but when she allows herself to look like a lady, she’s really rather fetching.”
Conrad suppressed a groan. If Nash knew exactly how fetching Conrad already found his sister, he’d find himself called out for pistols at dawn.
Fortunately, his friend failed to notice his discomfort and continued blithely, “All you need do is keep her in an out-of-the-way place for the night. Blindfold her and tie her up, give her reason to worry what may become of her, until I ransom her back. After such an ordeal, I warrant she should be chastened into behaving in a more appropriate fashion.”
Blindfold her and tie her up? An image so frank and carnal that it shocked even Conrad flashed through his mind—Freddie Langston, naked and blindfolded, her wrists bound and secured above her head, her legs spread wide and tied to the bed frame, her glorious black hair fanned out around her like a thundercloud.
Heat suffused him, and he drained his sherry in one swift gulp.
Nash raised an eyebrow and gestured toward Conrad’s empty glass. “Would you care for another?”
And another and another. At least if this conversation continued on its present course.
While Nash poured them both more sherry at the sideboard, Conrad tried to regain his composure. He’d come to the Langston estate this afternoon intending only to inform his friend of his sister’s planned escapade so he could put a stop to it before the girl managed to ruin herself and her family so thoroughly neither could recover. The last thing he had anticipated was to be enlisted into a counter-escapade that was even dafter than the original.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Worse yet, he could see no means by which to escape his conscription. He could hardly admit that he was absolutely not to be trusted with Miss Winifred Langston’s virtue; that he had, in point of fact, been lusting after her for years. And not in the polite, proper way a gentleman desires a lady he hopes to marry, either, but in the coarse, vulgar way he wants a woman of loose morals.
“So, what do you say, Con?” Nash asked as he handed Conrad his refilled glass. “I’ll see to it they have to take the coach instead of going by horseback and warn the driver that there’ve been reports of a ruthless highwayman preying on the road between Winmarleigh and Garstang. He’ll pull over for you in a trice, and from there, you’ll be in and out with Freddie in no time.”
Wincing internally at the phrase in and out with Freddie, Conrad considered his options, conceded he had none, and accepted his fate. He nodded. “I’ll do it.”
Nash beamed. “Excellent.” He raised his goblet in salute. “To putting my troublesome little sister in her place.”
“Indeed,” Conrad murmured, meeting his friend’s toast despite the certainty that he and Nash had entirely different visions of where, exactly, that troublesome young lady’s place was.
Freddie grimaced as the carriage hit yet another rut in the road and her backside was once again separated from, and then forcibly reacquainted with, the thinly padded seat. Here, at least, was one good argument for skirts and petticoats; they offered one considerably more protection from the brutal beating of travel by coach than breeches. Even then, she was bound to be bloodied and bruised by the time she reached London, since it was highly unlikely that Nash would permit her to ride into Town on horseback.
“You haven’t changed your mind about this, have you, Fred?” Walter asked, apparently noting her sour expression. “We can always turn back, you know.”
In truth, she had begun to think better of this excursion within minutes of proposing it, but she wasn’t about to admit that to her twin, who thought it a marvelous lark to sneak his sister into a house of ill repute. The problem was, as tantalizing as the idea was in theory, it had quickly dawned on her that it was likely to be rather boring in practice. What, after all, was she going to do in a house of ill repute? Certainly not what men did when they went to one.
In for a penny, in for a pound, that was Freddie’s motto. She wasn’t going to back out now despite her misgivings.
“That’s not it. I’d just much rather be going on horseback than by coach.” She wrinkled her nose as they hit yet another bump, dislodging a cloud of dust from the faded curtains that covered the windows. “Don’t you think it’s odd that Hermes should have thrown a shoe on the very same day that Mercury got the colic?”
Like Freddie and Walter, Hermes and Mercury were twins, a pair of Arabian bays their father had purchased several years before his death with his son and daughter in mind. They were also, aside from Nash’s gray stallion—the grandiosely named Thor—the only riding mounts in the stable, which was why Walter, Thomas, and Freddie had been forced to take the coach this evening rather than traveling, as they normally did, on horseback.
Walter shrugged. “Just a coincidence, I’m sure. Hermes is forever throwing shoes and Mercury has a penchant for eating things that don’t agree with him.”
Both were true, but Freddie couldn’t shake the intuition that their mode of conveyance had been determined by contrivance rather than coincidence, although she could not fathom what anyone would gain by such machinations other than her annoyance. Perhaps that was enough for her older brother, however, who seemed of late to be wholly focused on being as irritating to her as possible, no doubt because he hoped she would decide to behave herself in London and get down to the business of selecting a husband if only as a means of escaping his needling.
She was forced to admit that he might be onto something. The idea of spending the rest of her days under his roof had become a less-than-attractive proposition over the past several months.
The carriage jolted to an abrupt halt, almost pitching her from the narrow seat and knocking her knees painfully into Thomas’s.
“What the devil?” Walter muttered. He rapped his knuckles against the roof. “I say, Potts,” he hollered to the driver, “what’s the trouble?”
No answer was forthcoming, but the reason for the sudden halt in their progress became clear when the door to the carriage jerked open just a few seconds later. The person doing the jerking was not the driver, Potts, but a masked man clothed entirely in black and holding a pistol of impressive size.
A highwayman.
Freddie’s brow furrowed. When had highwayman begun to prey on the stretch of road between Winmarleigh and Garstang? It wasn’t exactly Hounslow Heath in terms of either traffic or fat purses.
While she contemplated this anomaly, Thomas raised one hand in surrender and patted the coin pouch in the pocket of his coat with the other, raising a weak clank of metal. “We haven’t much coin with us this eve, but we’ll gladly give you every ha’penny if you will but permit us to be on our way.”
Walter gave Thomas an angry scowl, no doubt irritated by the latter’s hasty capitulation, but there really was no arguing with a pistol, and Walter knew it. He reached up under his coat to untie the strings of his own purse, but the highwayman cleared his throat and shook his head.
“I don’t want yer coin,” he growled in a broad Lancashire dialect. “What I want…” He stretched out a finger and pointed it straight at Freddie’s chest. “…is ’er.”
&nb
sp; 3
Conrad steeled himself to hold both the pistol and his index finger steady. Although everything had gone swimmingly thus far, with the coachman just as intimidated as Nash had promised he would be, it could all go terribly wrong in a heartbeat. If he had to resort to actual violence to accomplish his goal, the masquerade would be over before it had really begun, since he was hardly about to shoot Walter or Freddie Langston, let alone his own brother.
Not that he could, even if he wanted to; as a precaution, he hadn’t loaded the pistol, which meant it would be useless if any of his victims actually resisted.
Naturally, it was his brother who resisted first. “You can’t have he—” Thomas began, then broke off, his eyebrows pulling together in a scowl as he fixed Conrad with a suspicious stare. “I say, how did you know he’s a she?”
Conrad’s blood chilled; he hadn’t intended to reveal that he was aware of Freddie’s gender. The word her had simply slipped out, no doubt because he was always aware of her femininity no matter how she was garbed. But now that he had let it out, he’d no choice but to go with it.
“Sure ye don’t think everyone hereabouts don’t know Viscount Langston ’as a sister what gallivants the countryside dressed like a boy?”
“So you know this is the Honorable Miss Winifred Langston?” Walter asked.
“Course I do,” Conrad responded, settling into his role with a bit more ease as the familiar accents of his tenants began to roll more comfortably off his tongue. “Why d’ye think I’m taking ’er for ransom? Wouldn’t do no good if she wasn’t Quality.”
“Well, you can’t have her,” Thomas declared stoutly, shifting his body so that, within the tight confines of the coach, his torso was positioned between Conrad’s useless pistol and Freddie. He folded his arms across his chest. “I won’t let you.”
“What do you mean, I?” Walter bristled. “She’s my sister. If anyone’s going to protect her virtue, it ought to be me.”
Conrad didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. Leave it to his brother and Walter Langston to argue over who should be shot first in a futile demonstration of heroism. The fact that neither of them could possibly know the pistol was unloaded made their idiocy all the more poignant. God help them if they were ever waylaid by an actual highwayman.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t be a pair of ninnyhammers,” Freddie huffed, clearly as exasperated with her companions’ bravado as Conrad was. “The man’s got a pistol, or did you think that was a cucumber?”
“But, Fred, you’ll be ruined,” Walter protested.
As if he had ever worried about his sister’s reputation before…
Over Thomas’s shoulder, Conrad saw Freddie wave her hand dismissively. “Nonsense. Nash will pay the ransom straightaway and then sweep the entire incident under the rug. No one but us will even know it happened.”
“And how do you know he means only to ransom you?” Thomas fixed a baleful eye on Conrad. “He could just as easily ravish you first and then ransom you, you know.”
“That’s a risk I shall just have to take, because I am certainly not going to allow him to put a bullet in one or both of you and then kidnap me anyway. Now,” she continued, giving Thomas a shove on the back, “do sit down and let me get out of the coach.”
Thomas pitched forward, catching himself just before bumping his head on the opposite side of the carriage.
“You can’t mean to go with him, Fred!” Walter grabbed her arm. “He might not just ravish you. He could kill you.” His tone was no longer blustering, but pleading.
Uneasiness slithered up Conrad’s throat as it dawned on him that Thomas and Walter weren’t just putting on a show; they were genuinely concerned for Freddie’s safety. And why shouldn’t they be? As far as they knew, Conrad really was a highwayman, and while highwaymen might have a certain romantic reputation among the lower classes, aristocrats rightly regarded them with a healthy dose of fear.
Why had neither he nor Nash spared a single thought when planning this escapade to the anguish they would be inflicting on their respective brothers? They had both been so intent on ensuring that Freddie would be suitably chastened by her experience that the potential effect on her companions simply hadn’t crossed their minds.
Come to think of it, the one person who seemed not the least bit troubled by the current turn of events was the one person who was supposed to be. Surely a well-bred young lady on the brink of being kidnapped by a brigand should be a trifle more…alarmed?
Instead, the lady in question was in the process of freeing her arm from her brother’s grasp with a businesslike composure entirely at odds with the gravity of the situation.
“He could kill me, but he won’t,” she said with such complete, calm assurance that Conrad knew at once she had figured out that this was all for show, although he didn’t think she’d yet recognized him. She’d simply concluded, correctly, that Nash had orchestrated the entire thing and that she was therefore in no real danger whatsoever.
For two heartbeats, Conrad considered pulling off his mask and confessing the whole scheme. And he might well have done it had Freddie not stretched out her hand—bare and slender and elegantly pale—toward him and said, “Do pretend to be a gentleman and help me down.”
He couldn’t have said whether it was her impudent suggestion that he feign being a gentleman or the tantalizing provocation of her naked hand so near his own, but some thread of control inside him snapped. Freddie Langston had always had the power to shake his composure, but as of this moment, she had torn his vaunted equanimity to shreds.
She was toying with them—him, Walter, Thomas, even the poor coachman. She knew what was afoot, and yet she kept it to herself, preferring to watch them all make fools of themselves. Conrad imagined she must be quite enjoying the show as they all danced to her merry little tune.
Which, in point of fact, was what she had done all her life. Every male in Winifred Langston’s life—from her father to her brothers to Conrad’s own brother—did as she wished, when she wished, for she had long ago mastered the art of making them believe that what she wanted was what they wanted. Well, no more. What he wanted was certainly not what she wanted, and it was well past time she learned that men were not playthings to be manipulated like marionettes on the strings of her whims.
Especially not this man.
He wrapped his black-gloved fingers around her slim wrist and pulled. Her chestnut-brown eyes widened as she tumbled out of the carriage and onto his waiting chest. She gasped at the same moment he released the air from his lungs on an involuntary oomph and their breath mingled, sweet and humid. Her parted pink lips hovered scant inches above his, and a flare of lust singed his veins as he registered how close he was to kissing her. All he would need to do was to slide his fingers around the base of her skull and draw her head down to his until their mouths met.
Except, of course, that this would require him to drop his pistol to free his hand, and that would not exactly lend itself to the completion of his task. Not to mention that he’d be kissing her in full view their brothers, both of whom stared balefully at him out the open door of the coach. Hardly the setting he had in mind.
Not that he had any sort of setting in mind for kissing her. He wasn’t supposed to be kissing her at all. Anywhere. At any time.
With a muttered oath and a renewed focus on his mission, Conrad tightened his grip on his captive’s wrist while continuing to point the pistol menacingly in Walter and Thomas’s direction. “The sooner ye ’urry back to Barrowcreek and deliver my ransom demand, the sooner this little lady’ll be free,” he told them, careful to continue disguising his voice behind accent. “If ye dally, I might forget to pretend to be a gentleman.”
Freddie stiffened at his mocking repetition of her words. Perhaps she sensed she had pushed her kidnapper rather further than was wise, even if she did believe it was all just a sham.
Walter crossed his arms over his chest. “How much do you want?”
Conr
ad quoted the sum he and Nash had agreed upon. “Two ’undred pounds. Not an ’a’penny less. I’ll meet ’im ’ere for the exchange at dawn. Tell ’him to come alone.”
Walter blanched. “Alone? You could kill him, take the money, and keep m’sister.”
“And even if you don’t, how are we to know you’ll return Freddie safe and, er…” Thomas cleared his throat, blushing furiously as he completed his thought, “…intact after an entire night with her?”
For the first time since he’d donned the scratchy black highwayman’s mask, Conrad was glad he was wearing it because he could feel his face go as hot and red as his brother’s. Freddie’s lithe yet lush frame so close to his was more than enough temptation. He could already imagine all too easily what he could accomplish in one night with her; he didn’t need any help, least of all from Thomas.
Forcing himself to remain in character despite the riot of lascivious images tumbling through his head, Conrad shrugged. “Ye’ll just have to trust me.”
“Trust a highwayman? How stupid do you think we are?”
Freddie twisted in Conrad’s grasp in order to glare at her brother. “Oh, for pity’s sake, if he meant me any harm, he’d have shot the both of you by now and got on with it. Just do as he asks. Please.”
For several long seconds, Walter stared at his twin, and Conrad had the eerie sensation that the two of them were speaking without saying a word.
At last, Walter set his mouth in a grim line and nodded. “Very well, we’ll go.” He gestured to the driver, who had watched the entire ordeal in silence, to resume his seat and the man, obviously eager to escape the scene, hastened to do so.
When the coach finally rolled away in search of a wider stretch of road to execute a turnaround, Conrad closed his eyes with relief. The hard part was over. Now all he had to do was convince Freddie that he really was a dangerous highwayman and she wasn’t at all safe with him. Given his current state of frustrated arousal, that shouldn’t be much of a challenge. He bloody well felt dangerous.
The Lesson Plan Page 2
