by M. C. Beaton
“Looks like a gentry mort,” said the landlord. “Here, gather ‘round the stove and put our heads together and we’ll plan what to do.”
Upstairs, Harriet looked at the greasy ewer and the dingy water in dismay. But she should not be so fussy. The landlord was dirty and uncouth, but kind. She had no right to expect more. The room was stuffy and cold, with only a couple of coals and a charred piece of wood smoldering in the fire.
Harriet gave the fire an energetic poking and then stood, looking into the flames, seeing only the Marquess of Arden’s face and mourning what she was so sure she had lost. The cheerful crackling of the fire quickly died down. It was then Harriet realized she could hear the men in the tap below talking, their voices rising up through the chimney.
She took a steel comb out of her reticule and began to remove the pins from her hair, and then what the voices were actually saying struck her like a hammer blow.
“…so what I say is,” came the landlord’s voice, “we have a bit o’ sport with her to make her tell us whether there’s any family what would pay a ransom for her. If she turns out to be naught but some sort o’ lady’s maid, we’ll break her in and sell her to some Covent Garden abbess.”
Harriet stood for several moments while the room seemed to turn about her—rather like being kissed by the marquess, she thought dizzily, but not pleasant at all.
Then fear swam over her like a black, roaring wave. She tried the handle of the door. Locked.
“…got your piece?” asked one of the ghostly voices from the fire.
“My gun? Now. It’s under the mattress. She won’t find it, and if she did, she wouldn’t know how to use it.”
Harriet bent down and lifted the mattress. There was a long wicked-looking “birding” gun—a fowling piece with a four-foot barrel. A tin box containing powder and shot was next to it.
Amazed at the steadiness of her own hands, Harriet carefully measured in what she hoped was approximately a drachm and a half of powder. An overloaded gun would be quite capable of dislocating her shoulder. That was followed by approximately an ounce and a quarter of shot. She tested it with the rammer and estimated that shot and charge together came to about eleven fingers. The old gamekeeper at Pringle House used to show her how to clean and load guns when she was a small child, telling her he always liked his fowling piece to have a “full belly.”
Jim Marsh, landlord of the Bird in Hand, and his cronies had another round of gin-and-hot before they decided to mount the stairs and see what Harriet was up to.
They could not understand the long silence from the room above and, at last, decided she must have fallen asleep.
The landlord led the way, carrying a candle stuck in a bottle.
He fumbled in his pocket for the key and, before inserting it in the lock, looked over his shoulder to make sure his friends were close behind him. “You all there—Jem, Peter, Harry?” he asked. “Steady, boys, and we’ll have some fun.”
The door swung open.
Harriet Clifton stood facing them, the fowling piece raised to her shoulder, her eye sighed along the barrel. The candlelight flickered along the length of the barrel.
“Let me pass,” said Harriet, “or it will be the worse for you.”
The landlord fell back, stepping on Jem’s toes. “Go on,” jeered Jem. “She don’t know how to use it.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” said Harriet calmly. “Get back and let me pass.”
“If you’re all cowards, I ain’t,” said the one called Peter, who was smaller than the rest and had had his view blocked by the others. He pushed past and started to make for Harriet.
Harriet raised the gun and fired. The shot tore into the old plaster of the ceiling and a snowstorm descended on the room, covering it in flakes of white plaster.
The four terrified men turned and ran, down the stairs and out into the night.
Harriet ran after them and slammed the door of the inn behind them. Then she barred the heavy shutters at the window. The inn was well fortified against possible visits by Bow Street Runners. She went back upstairs and reloaded the gun. The window would not open, being sealed with the dirt of ages. Using the butt end of the gun, she smashed the glass and then fired a warning shot out into the night.
Once more, she loaded the gun and carried it downstairs. All she wanted to do was give way to a hearty bout of tears. So she went behind the bar and poured herself a strong measure of brandy and gulped it down.
She hoped they would not set fire to the inn in an attempt to smoke her out. She dearly hoped they would report her to the authorities but was, naturally, very sure they would not.
There was nothing she could do but wait for the dawn and shoot her way to freedom.
It was only after the Marquess of Arden had gone many miles along the wrong road that he began to think Bertram had deliberately sent him in the wrong direction.
He slowed his pace, asking every wayfarer on the road if he had seen a young lady walking alone.
At last, in desperation, he decided to make his way back to the crossroads at all speed to see if he could find news of her on the other road.
At last he reached the crossroads and was about to turn his carriage around into the other road when he saw a chapman with his pack strolling toward him.
“Hulloa, my friend,” called the marquess. “Have you seen a young lady walking alone along this road at any time today?”
The chapman touched his forelock. “Reckons I have,” he said, and the marquess’s heart missed a beat. “Sore exhausted she were.”
“Where? Where did you see her?”
“Back there a bit,” said the chapman, jerking his thumb in the direction of the inn. “‘Bout a mile along you’ll see a liddle turning. Leads to the Bird in Hand. Thieves’ den, that is, so as like as not she won’t be there. I was having my supper behind the hedge and I sees her go past.”
Thanking him and tossing him a coin, the marquess edged his tired team slowly forward. It was a bright moonlit night, but he had no wish to go racing along and perhaps miss Harriet.
He had gone a little way when he heard a shot coming from the left far up ahead.
“Trouble,” he murmured. “Hold hard, boys. I will go ahead on foot and see what’s about. I have no desire to be surprised by highwaymen.”
“Best let that young groom, Billy, go along,” grumbled the coachman. “Time he did something ‘stead o’ singing ‘is ‘ead off.”
“My horses are valuable and I would like you all to prime your pistols and stay here.”
He climbed down and began to run lightly along the road.
He began to feel haunted. The moonlight played strange tricks with his eyes. Every tree was Harriet, every bush. Every hummock of grass was an exhausted Harriet collapsed by the road.
As he approached where he roughly judged the sound of the shot to have come from, he saw a low building, a black shape, against the blackness of the trees, to his left, along a lane.
He walked cautiously toward it. If this inn was indeed a haunt of thieves, then before continuing on his search he must make sure Harriet had not been captured by them.
And then a savage blow from behind struck him down.
Moon and stars swung in a giddy circle above his head.
“Well done, Jem,” said a hoarse voice. “Let’s strip him and then finish him off. That hellcat o’ a gentry mort can stay locked up for life for all I care. What pickings. Look at them jools.”
Rough hands turned the marquess over. A grimy hand eagerly reached down to seize the sapphire pin from his stock.
But the words had a magic effect on the marquess. In a split second, he was sure the “gentry mort” was Harriet.
Just as the hand reached his throat, he kicked out savagely with both feet and sent one of the men flying. He struggled to his feet. Someone jumped on his back, and, reaching behind him, suddenly feeling as if he had been endowed with the strength of Samson, the marquess heaved the man over his head and sent hi
m sailing off into the bushes.
“There’s only one o’ him and there’s four o’ us.” squeaked Peter. “At him.”
Jim Marsh, the landlord, lumbered forward, swinging his blackjack in his hand.
The marquess watched his approach with contemptuous eyes. “You are too fat to fight,” he said.
“We’ll see about that,” growled the landlord, raising the blackjack, and he rushed in to the attack.
A kidney punch from the marquess doubled him up, and the uppercut that followed it sent him to oblivion.
The marquess swung about and faced Peter, who was creeping up on him, a long knife in his hand. The marquess kicked quickly and savagely. The knife flew from Peter’s hand, and there was a loud crack as his arm broke.
He fell whimpering to the ground.
“Where is she?” demanded the marquess, bending over Peter, who was writhing on the ground.
“My lord!” came a call from the road. The sounds of the fight had carried back across the quiet countryside to the ears of the marquess’s servants.
“Over here,” he called, “and make sure you are armed.”
“Now, you,” he said, returning to Peter. “Is there a young lady at that inn? Tell me, or I’ll break your other arm.”
“Don’t,” whined Peter. “She’s there all right.”
“Who’s with her? How many?”
“She’s alone, curse her. She chased us out with Jim’s gun.”
The marquess’s grooms came running up, the coachman having prudently decided to “stay and guard the valuable horses.
“Tie them up,” said the marquess. “And then go to the nearest town or village—I think Burming is the nearest—and fetch the local authorities.”
“Oh, lor’,” said Billy, the groom, surveying the moonlit scene. “What a mill!”
“See to it,” said the marquess, striding off toward the inn.
Harriet heard the approaching footsteps and wearily picked up the gun. She was feeling tipsy, having helped herself to more brandy. She had gone into the kitchen at the back to try to find something to eat, but the smell was so sickening that her appetite had fled.
Would this night ever end? So they meant to take her to a Covent Garden abbess? That, Harriet remembered, was the cant name for a female brothel-keeper. Well, she would put the gun in her own mouth and pull the trigger before she allowed them to do that.
“Harriet!” called a well-loved voice. “Open the door.”
For one mad moment, Harriet thought she was dreaming. Then she dropped the gun and flew to the door, sobbing as she tore at the bars and bolts.
At last the door swung open and Harriet, dusty and drunk, fell headlong into the Marquess of Arden’s arms.
He caught her and swung her up and carried her into the inn.
“Oh, I do love you so.” Harriet sobbed, her face buried in his waistcoat. “You must hate me. I didn’t know Bertram planned to elope with me. He said he was taking me to see his mother. H-he s-said…”
“It’s all over,” said the marquess, cradling her in his arms. “Shh! Gently now. I want to kiss you and tell you how very much I love you, but I can’t do that while you are crying like a watering pot.”
“You can’t love me.”
“I can… very easily. Like this.”
His kiss plunged Harriet into a warm, dark world. She returned passion for passion with innocent enthusiasm until at last he set her on her feet, holding her a little away from him, his breathing ragged.
“My sweeting, my adorable Harriet, you will drive me mad. If you do not want me to frighten you with my ardor, then don’t kiss me like that.”
“You mean like this?”
“Minx, baggage, and wanton jade. Kiss me again!”
After fifteen dizzy minutes of passion, Harriet suddenly cried, “Your knuckles are bleeding.”
“Naturally, my love. I was in a fight.”
“I forgot all about those terrible men.”
“Those terrible men are tied up outside. My servants will take them to the local authorities or fetch the authorities to them. Now, sit down like a little lady before I forget myself and tell me about your adventures.”
He poured himself a brandy and brought a glass of it to Harriet, who was now sitting at a table in front of the stove. “I am sure you have had more than enough already.” The marquess grinned. “I have never kissed such a well-seasoned lady before.”
“Have you kissed so very many?”
“Never a one like you. I think you had better tell me first of the poisonous lies Agnes Hurlingham told about me.”
“So they were lies! What made her do such a thing?”
“Cordelia. Always Cordelia. Lady Bentley told poor Agnes, who was already in love with Prenderbury, that if she did not poison your mind against me, she would be locked up, treated like a slave, and she would never see Prenderbury again.”
“Poor Agnes!”
“Poor Harriet. Agnes is very well. She has been rescued by the redoubtable Prenderbury and they will be married. Prenderbury told me all about it as I was leaving London. What of that young idiot Bertram?”
“He told me of a mistress that you had whipped. Oh, I must have been out of my mind to believe such a thing! But when you returned to London, the last time I saw you, you were so very angry and—and cold.”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I was jealous of Bertram, and it was that jealousy that brought me to my senses.”
“He begged me to go with him to see his mother,” said Harriet. “I was so very unhappy and bewildered, I longed to get away for a little. And Bertram—Bertram had been so warm and loving and carefree very much like I imagined a brother would be. I agreed to go with him. I was so stupid. He had trunks corded up at the back of his coach, but I thought he was taking presents to his mother. We traveled and traveled, miles and miles, until he stopped at a village and said he Would investigate the local inn. He returned and said it was too common but that a friend lived nearby. It was a house belonging to one of the villagers, but I did not know that until later.
“When he told me we were eloping and he was saving me from you, I told him I would not do such a thing, that I would return to London and talk to you myself. He became so angry and sulky, and—and… he struck me.”
“I’ll kill him.”
“No. He has been hurt enough. I punched him and then I hit him on the head with a tankard of beer. You must not laugh! I shocked myself. I am not a violent person. And I found his carriage abandoned and damaged. He must have been set upon by maniacs.”
“Only one, my sweeting. It was I. And before you begin to believe again all those horrid stories about me, Bertram deserved worse. He sent me off on the wrong road. He has been forced to walk back to London.”
“After that I ran away and hid in a field until I was sure he had left. I had very little money with me, just a few shillings.”
“But why did you not go to the nearest large house and ask for help?”
“I had become suddenly afraid of people. My world was falling about me. No one was what he seemed. Agnes and Bertram, whom I had trusted, had betrayed me. I would not even have come near this inn had I not been so very tired.”
“Go on,” said the marquess gently. “What happened when you arrived here?”
“There was the landlord and three men. They looked sinister and evil, but people in poor circumstances often do through no fault of their own. He offered me a room, and although the room was disgracefully filthy, I was glad to have shelter.
“Then I heard them talking. They must have been sitting here, next to the stove, for their voices carried up through the chimney. They were wondering whether I would be worth holding for ransom. They said if I turned out to be merely some sort of upper servant, then they would sell me to a Covent Garden abbess after ‘breaking me in,’ as they put it. They said something about there being a gun under the mattress but that I would never find it, and, if I did, I would not kn
ow how to use it.
“But of course I know how to use a fowling piece. And the one I have at Pringle House is equally old-fashioned, having a flintlock instead of one of the new percussion caps. So I loaded it, and when they entered the room—they had locked me in—I fired it, not at them but at the ceiling. They ran away and I chased them out and barred the door. And here I am.”
“I hear my servants returning,” said the marquess. “I will take you to my carriage and you may rest there until I deal with the authorities. My redoubtable Harriet. You will let me take care of you from now on.”
He led her out and along the lane past where his servants stood with a small band of the local militia, calling to them that he would return in a moment.
Dizzy with fatigue, Harriet was lifted into the carriage, and warm rugs were tucked about her. His lips pressed briefly against hers, and then he was gone.
Later, she tried to struggle awake when the carriage started to move, but his quiet voice beside her said, “Sleep, Harriet. There is nothing to trouble you now.”
She awoke again to feel herself being lifted out. All about was the bustle of a posting house. She was led in to the elegant hall of the hostelry. The marquess was talking and explaining. Then two chambermaids helped her upstairs to a pretty bedroom, undressed her, put her in “one of mistress’s nightgowns,” and helped her into bed. “I could eat five breakfasts… I am so hungry,” mumbled Harriet, and then fell asleep once more.
When she awoke, the sun was streaming through the window and the marquess was lying on the bed next to her—but on the top of the bed with all his clothes on and a book in his hand.
He rolled over and kissed her slowly and passionately.
“You see,” he said softly, “your reputation is quite ruined, so you will have to marry me. I have decided we will be married here.”
“Here?” said Harriet, struggling up against the pillows.
“Yes, here. Far from Cordelia and London scandal. I have already been to see the vicar. We are both to call on him, so I will leave you to dress.”
“I am glad to be away from Cordelia,” said Harriet. “But poor Aunt Rebecca! Cordelia must be making her life a misery—may even have turned her out in the street!”
