Reluctant Escort

by Mary Nichols

  ‘Do you know what all that business with Mr Bellamy was about?’ she asked Martha as they climbed the stairs.

  ‘No, I don’t. It has something to do with what happened in the past, I think. But it has certainly put Captain Stacey into a bad temper. I shall be glad when we are on our way again. I believe the Captain means to reach London by nightfall tomorrow.’

  Duncan and Frank were finishing off the wine, before retiring themselves, when Bellamy strolled over to them. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, addressing Duncan. ‘How does it feel to hide behind a woman’s petticoats? I’ll wager you won’t feel so comfortable about it when you reach London. News of your cowardice will go before you. What excuse will you have then for refusing to meet me?’

  ‘There will be no excuses,’ Duncan growled. ‘Now, if you will allow me.’ He stood up and made to leave.

  Bellamy seized the sleeve of his coat to detain him. ‘You call yourself a Stacey. No Stacey I ever heard of backed away from a fight.’ He laughed and pulled a glove from his coat pocket and flung it into Duncan’s face. ‘Refuse again, if you dare.’

  Slowly Duncan stooped and picked up the glove, while the other diners looked on, their faces alive with interest. ‘I shall look forward to receiving a visit from your seconds,’ he said. ‘Come on, Sergeant.’

  ‘Now you’ve done it,’ Frank said as they left the room and climbed the stairs. ‘You should not have allowed him to taunt you into accepting his challenge.’

  ‘I can’t not accept it. I did it once before for Molly’s sake, but now I must act for my own sake.’

  ‘There were several witnesses in the dining room; someone is bound to send for the watch or a magistrate and there’ll be hell to pay. And if you should kill him…’

  ‘I have no intention of killing him. I merely wish to teach him that he cannot, with impunity, insult my good name or the honour of a lady who is under my protection.’

  ‘What do you think Miss Martineau will say when she hears of it?’

  ‘She need not know.’ He realised, as he spoke, that keeping Molly out of it was going to be very difficult, if not impossible. He had no idea what her reaction might be. Was her love of adventure such that she would be excited, rather than frightened, by the prospect? After all, she spoke gaily of highwaymen and holding up coaches, but then that was fantasy. She had no experience of death or severe injury and he did not know what she would do when faced with reality. ‘You do not have to stay.’

  ‘Captain, if you think I will leave you now when you need me, then you must have a very poor opinion of me. Who else will you find to act for you?’

  Duncan grinned. ‘Thank you, my friend. Now, see if you can procure someone else to make a second. I do not think Mr Bellamy will delay in sending his men.’

  He was right. He went to his room to prepare himself for what he knew was a highly risky and illegal undertaking, and in a few minutes Frank returned with a scrawny youth he had found in the tap room, followed by Andrew Bellamy, his valet and George Lampson.

  ‘You have the choice of place and weapons,’ Lampson said.

  ‘Pistols,’ Duncan said. ‘At dawn. In the clearing in the wood on the London road. It is about three miles from here. Far enough away not to attract attention.’

  Bellamy smiled, though now the challenge had been accepted he was looking decidedly shaky and rather pale. ‘Until tomorrow, then.’

  ‘Why did you choose pistols?’ Frank asked, when the others had left. ‘You are the best swordsman I ever met.’

  ‘I don’t have my sword with me and, besides, pistols will have it done more quickly. One shot each and it will all be over.’

  ‘And you might be lying dead or mortally wounded.’

  ‘I do not think so. It is not so easy to look a man straight in the eye and fire a pistol at him with any accuracy. Not in cold blood. Especially if your opponent has deliberately missed. Bellamy is a young pup; I’ll wager he has never fired a shot in anger. He will be shaking so much he will miss.’

  ‘That is a monstrous gamble.’

  ‘I have taken bigger risks.’

  ‘Are you coming back here afterwards?’

  Duncan smiled. ‘If I survive, you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t like to say it, but yes.’

  ‘We have no choice. I cannot abandon Molly and I know you will not leave Martha.’

  ‘No, but there will be a hue and cry and if Mr Bellamy is wounded this is the first place anyone will look.’

  ‘You can come back for the ladies alone and bring them to me and we can go on as before.’

  ‘And if…?’

  ‘You can still come back for them. Take Molly to Holles Street as planned. It is only one day’s ride from here. You should have no trouble.’

  ‘Very well, though I could wish this business had never been begun.’

  ‘You expect me to take that young pup’s insults?’

  ‘No, of course not, but…’

  ‘Let us get some rest, then. It will soon be dawn.’

  Molly was woken from a deep sleep by voices in the room next door, the one occupied by the Captain. Curious, she rose and put her ear to the wall, but the voices were too low for her to hear more than a single word here and there. She heard the murmur of the Captain’s voice and this time her own name came to her clearly through the woodwork, then Mr Upjohn’s voice, raised in protest. Pistols; she heard that word very clearly. If someone was going to shoot off a pistol, she hoped no one would be hurt by it. More than anything she hoped it would not be the Captain. The thought of him lying bleeding, perhaps dying, was more than she could bear.

  A door was opened and shut with a soft click. She scrambled out of bed and opened her own door. The Captain and Mr Upjohn, dressed for outdoors, were disappearing down the stairs; she could just see the tops of their heads in the light from the lamp left burning on the landing.

  She scrambled into the breeches she habitually wore under her old habit, pulled on a shirt and stuffed her hair under her riding hat. Picking up her boots, she tiptoed from her room and down the stairs. Pausing on the step to pull on her boots, she heard, rather than saw, two horses leave the yard and gallop off down the road.

  It took only a couple of minutes to saddle Jenny and then she was galloping after them, digging her heels in and urging Jenny to go faster.

  It was a clear moonlit night and it was easy to see the ribbon of road winding ahead, but there was no sign of the horses in front of her. Already the horizon to the east was tinged with pink. Soon it would be day and then everyone would be astir, going about their business. Why had the Captain and Mr Upjohn left the inn in such a hurry, abandoning her and Martha? It did not seem the sort of thing they would do voluntarily. If she had not known that he was not the Dark Knight, she would have thought he was going to hold up a coach.

  Galloping along the empty road, she could easily believe the whole adventure was fantasy, a dream from which she would soon wake to find herself in bed at Stacey Manor with the sun shining through the window and the birds twittering in the eaves. But that would mean the Captain was a figment of her imagination too and she did not want to believe that. She wanted him to be real. He was becoming a necessary part of her life. Without him she would be lost.

  The road ahead disappeared into the gloom of a copse of trees and she was forced to slow down. It was as well she did, for she heard the unmistakable snuffle of a tethered horse among the trees to her left. She pulled up sharply and dismounted. Leading Jenny by her bridle, she walked slowly forward, eyes and ears alert.

  There was a clearing in the trees and in the clearing were six men, standing in a circle. Molly gasped as she recognised the Captain and Mr Upjohn, Mr Bellamy and his cousin. The other two she did not know, though she thought one of them had been with Mr Bellamy the first time she had seen him.

  She watched as the Captain and Mr Bellamy took off their coats. Mr Upjohn offered Mr Bellamy an open box from which he extracted a pistol. Duncan took another from the
same box and the two men moved to the centre of the clearing and stood back to back. They were going to fight a duel!

  She stood, hidden by trees, clinging to Jenny’s bridle as the two men paced away from each other while Mr Upjohn counted: one, two, three…It seemed to take an age, but could only have been seconds before they reached twenty, turned to face each other and raised their weapons. She plunged her fist into her mouth and looked away as two shots echoed in the morning air, one some seconds after the other.

  They were followed by a deathly silence and then she heard Andrew Bellamy laugh. It was a shaky kind of laugh, a laugh of relief, a laugh that told her he had not been hurt.

  She swivelled round to see Duncan on the ground where he had fallen. She forgot her fear, forgot she was supposed to be asleep in her bed, as she ran out from her hiding place and sped across the grass to where he lay, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘My, the filly was here all along,’ Bellamy drawled. ‘Such devotion!’

  She ignored him and flung herself on the ground beside Duncan. He was still as death and there was a great deal of blood seeping into the ground beside him. ‘Captain! Oh, you must not be dead. Oh, please God, don’t let him be dead.’

  ‘Touching,’ said Bellamy.

  ‘Get out!’ Frank snarled. ‘Get out of here. Think yourself lucky he did not put a bullet through your heart.’

  Molly, intent on feeling for a heartbeat through the blood-stained shirt, was hardly aware of the young man’s going, but soon the echo of several sets of hoofbeats faded and she realised that only Frank remained. She looked up at him with a tear-streaked face.

  ‘He could have fired,’ he said, kneeling beside Duncan and carefully cutting away his shirt to reveal the wound. ‘He could have picked his spot, easy as eating pie, but he didn’t. He fired into the air and waited.’

  ‘He did it on purpose? Why? Did he want to die? Oh, Mr Upjohn, what was he thinking of?’

  ‘He’s not dead,’ he said, looking up from his examination into blue eyes that no longer sparkled with mischief but with tears. ‘Winged. The bullet passed right through his shoulder, which is a blessing, but it is making him bleed like a stuck pig.’

  ‘Then we must get a doctor to him.’

  ‘And have him arrested? No, miss, I think not.’

  ‘But he will die if he is not attended to. I have never seen so much blood.’

  He forbore to point out that she was inexperienced in such matters whereas he had seen worse—a great deal worse. ‘At least you are not swooning at the sight of it,’ he said, prepared to concede that much, just as Duncan stirred and moaned.

  ‘Captain, thank God. But lie still, do, for you are bleeding badly.’

  He opened his eyes and grinned lopsidedly at her. She had wiped her tears away with blood-stained fingers and her cheeks were smeared with dirt and blood. And the expression of tender concern in her eyes made his heart leap. ‘It is only a flesh wound,’ he murmured. ‘I shall be as right as ninepence in no time.’

  ‘You should never have had the wound in the first place,’ Frank put in, his concern for his friend making him speak more sharply than a servant ought. ‘Why in creation’s name did you not wing him? If you had only put a ball in his pistol arm, he could not have shot you. But to stand there and invite him to do his worst…’

  ‘His worst was not so bad. And now he has to live with his conscience and I have no such problem. How could I take Molly to London if the law was on my heels?’

  ‘I thought it already was,’ Molly put in as Frank stood up and went over to Caesar’s saddlebag where he knew Duncan always kept a clean pad and bandage—a practice he had started while in the Peninsula. It had saved more than one life and he had made it part of his baggage on this particular mission.

  ‘No one is on my heels, little one, not on Duncan Stacey’s heels. Unless it be you. How come you to be here? Did you follow us?’ He was making a valiant effort to speak normally, but it was obvious he was in pain.

  ‘Yes. And it is as well I did. You need a doctor…’ She started to rise, but he reached up with his good hand and pulled her down again. She almost fell on top of him. His lips were on hers before she could even draw breath.

  Unwilling to hurt him, she did not struggle, and then she realised she did not want to. His mouth was warm and sensuous on hers, making her insides stir with a strange uncontrollable heat, which spread from her fluttering heart to her belly and down, down to her groin. She had never been kissed like that before, had never been kissed by any man that she could remember; neither of her stepfathers would have dreamed of kissing her, except perhaps an affectionate peck on the top of her head when she pleased them.

  This was different—so different, she was lost to time and place. There was no hard ground beneath them, no blood-stained shirt between them, no onlooker in the shape of Frank Upjohn, no horses snuffling impatiently nearby, nothing but their two selves, floating on a cloud.

  He released her at last. ‘My poor sweet, what have I done to you?’

  ‘Me?’ she queried, her voice thick with the sensuality of what had happened. ‘You have done nothing to me. It is you who are wounded, but Mr Upjohn will not fetch a doctor.’

  He smiled. There had been no histrionics, no protestations of outrage, no maidenly blushes. She ought to have been scandalised; she ought to have been angry. Instead she was looking at him with loving, innocent eyes. He was a cur and deserved to be whipped. But somehow he could not form the words to apologise; apologies would spoil the moment, make it sordid and wrong and it had been neither. It had felt so right.

  ‘I should hope not,’ he said cheerfully to cover the depth of his emotion. ‘I have Frank. He’s a great one with wounds, is Sergeant Frank Upjohn. It will not be the first time he has bound me up.’

  Frank came back with the bandage and began staunching the fresh flow of blood and securing the pad over the hole. ‘Raise him up,’ he commanded Molly. ‘I have to get this round him.’

  She did as she was told, putting her arm about Duncan and helping him to sit up, while Frank bound him tightly. ‘There! That should hold it.’

  ‘Good. Now help me up, old friend.’

  ‘You think you can ride?’

  ‘Well enough to reach Foxtrees.’

  ‘Good idea. They will look after you.’

  ‘Oh, I do not intend to go up to the house and embarrass them all,’ Duncan said, grunting with pain as Frank stooped and lifted his good arm to put it round his shoulders and haul him to his feet. ‘There is a deserted gamekeeper’s cottage in the grounds. It is almost derelict but it will serve until I have recovered a little…’

  He was standing now, but leaning heavily on his friend. His face, beneath the early morning stubble, was grey, his eyes too bright. He forced himself to stumble towards the horses. ‘Get me up on Caesar, Frank, then go to your wife. When she wakes and finds we have all disappeared, there is no telling what she will do. The last thing we want is a hue and cry made of it.’

  ‘Later. First we must find that cottage you spoke of.’

  ‘It is only a five-minute ride. I can manage.’ Mounting his horse set his shoulder bleeding again and he was all but fainting. ‘Come,’ he said, gritting his teeth and turning his horse deeper into the wood, followed by a watchful Frank.

  Molly ran back to Jenny, hauled herself without decorum or elegance into the saddle, glad that Jenny was a good-natured beast and stood still for her. Her heart was racing and her hands trembling. This had been a night to remember, when she had been kissed for the first time. Oh, it had been magical. Nothing had prepared her for the sensations it had caused in her body, sensations over which she had no control—the tingling, the trembling, the warmth washing over her, the virile smell of him, the taste of his mouth, her own involuntary response. At that moment, nothing on earth would have prevented her from following him.

  Chapter Eight

  He turned in his saddle and gave her a quirky smile, as if to reassure he
r, before facing forwards and plodding on. His back was ramrod-straight, but she could guess the effort it was costing him to remain in the saddle and half expected to see him thump to the ground with every step the horse took.

  She followed, every sense heightened by what had happened. It was as if the sun had exploded into a million pieces which were showering down on her in brilliant splinters of exquisite pain. She was vibrantly alive. If he had not been wounded and if she had not been so worried about him, she could have sung with joy.

  Was she in love? But it was nothing like the love she had read about in the romantic novels she devoured. Indeed, if a man had tried to kiss the heroine of those pages in that way, she would have flown into the boughs, shouted for help, considered herself ruined. Was that why Captain Stacey had smiled? He was undoubtedly experienced in these matters and she was not.

  On the other hand he was injured and only half conscious, that was it—he had not known what he was doing. When he recovered he would be ashamed, apologise, swear never to let it happen again. And she would be the poorer. How confused she was and yet how unbelievably happy.

  A five-minute ride, he had said, but that was five minutes for a healthy man who could canter. They had been riding slowly along this woodland path for at least ten.

  And then suddenly the trees thinned out and there was another clearing in front of them. The sun had come up while they had been in the wood and now it bathed a little flint and stone thatched cottage in its light and warmth. It was a haven, even though all the windows were broken and weeds choked the flowerbeds.

  Duncan slipped from the saddle and was caught by Frank who had dismounted as soon as they stopped. ‘He’s out again,’ he said, picking the heavy man up and staggering with him into the little house. Molly followed.

  Most of the furniture had been taken out; there was nothing but a broken chair and a slatted bed. A cupboard door stood open to reveal empty shelves. Frank lowered his burden onto the bed.