“Jack, lift th’ shade a bit more ‘n shine it up this tree.”
“Righto,” he said, tugging at the shrouded lantern. “Demmed thing’s stuck!” He grunted, the globe rattling and the beam of light wobbling as he tried to loosen the hood.
“Now, Mandy,” Andrew whispered urgently. “Crawl as far as you can out this limb, then jump and run to the house!”
Shoving her away from him, he dove out of the beech tree. His elbow caught Jack in the chin as he landed, and knocked him topsy-turvy down the slope. The lantern rolled out of his grasp, broke with a splintering crash, and set fire to the pile of dead leaves blown up against the wall. Rolling clear of the small blaze, Jack came to his feet and started slipping his way back up the slope.
“Andy!” Amanda screamed at her brother, who’d turned toward Smythe with raised fists. “Behind you!”
As Andrew whirled to meet the charge, Harry dropped the sack and rushed to help Jack. He lost his footing on the wet grass, however, and crashed to the ground taking Jack with him. They rolled back down the hill in a tangle, Jack howling as his left arm was flung into the burning leaves.
“Andy! Watch out!” Amanda shrieked, as her brother turned once more toward Smythe, and spun squarely into the thief’s doubled right fist.
The blow snapped his neck and staggered him against the beech tree. Amanda heard the back of his head strike the trunk with a thud, and she shrieked again as he crumpled and slid slowly to the ground. Over Jack’s pitiful mewling and the slap of Harry’s hands beating at his smoldering sleeve, Amanda heard Smythe chuckle as he stepped beneath the tree and glanced up at her. Though she’d leaned as far over the limb as she dared, the low, smoking fire was too far away to show her more than the sheen of perspiration on his face.
“An’ who might you be, m’lady?”
“Amanda Gilbertson!” she declared fiercely. “Daughter of the Earl of Hampton!”
“Take m’word fer it, m’lady,” Smythe replied, gesturing toward Andy. “Spirited ‘lil thing like you c’n do better ‘an a cove what can’t take a punch.”
“That cove is my brother!”
“Is ‘e now?” Smythe chuckled, as he bent to retrieve the sack Harry had dropped.
Furious at his innuendo, determined to avenge Andy, and certain—at least reasonably so—that Smythe wouldn’t dare strike a lady of Quality, Amanda flung back her arms and jumped.
In that same instant, Lucifer came soaring over the garden wall with Captain Earnshaw standing in his stirrups and leaning over his neck. Jack and Harry, who’d put out the fire on Jack’s sleeve and gotten partway to their feet, flung themselves down again, and thereby missed having their necks broken. As the stallion’s hooves touched ground, his shoulder caught Smythe in the back, knocked the sack from his hands and spun him around—just as Amanda came plummeting earthward and swept Captain Earnshaw out of his saddle.
They fell in a heap of swirling, rose-pink satin, the horseman crying out as her little ladyship landed on his chest and began pummeling him with her fists. Mistaking the yelp of pain as a call for reinforcements, Smythe quickly hied himself over the wall and into the darkness beyond. Jack and Harry followed, the sack of loot half spilled and forgotten on the ground behind them.
“Ouch! Damn you! Stop it!”
Grasping her wrists, Earnshaw arched his back and easily reversed their positions. For a moment, until he shook his head, closed his eyes, and opened them again, he thought the fall had more than stunned him—but the heart-shaped, fire-lit face glaring up at him belligerently was still that of a woman. A small and remarkably strong one, he thought ruefully, his jaw still stinging from her blows.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, her voice trembling. “All thieves are cowards or they wouldn’t be thieves.”
“Why on earth would you think me a thief?”
“Although you speak like a gentleman,” she replied, “you are wearing a mask.”
She said it matter-of-factly, but the tremor in her voice had spread to her wrists. They felt quite small and delicate in his hands, her skin as soft as the silk-lined sleeves rolled up her forearms. In the dull glow of the fire, her loosened hair gleamed a deep, burnished red. Dirt smudged her face, her gown, and the too-large man’s evening jacket she wore over it. It struck him then that she hadn’t screamed or swooned or threatened him with either one. And despite her claim to the contrary, her wide, unblinking eyes and the rapid rise and fall of her small bosom told him she was terrified.
“Would my lady believe,” he asked, “that I’ve just come from a masquerade?”
“No. There are no masquerades being held this evening.”
“This particular one,” Earnshaw chuckled, “was not a Society affair.”
She blinked at that, twice, very rapidly, but otherwise held his gaze.
“If you are a gentleman,” she asked, “why are you pinning me to the ground?”
“If you are a lady, why did you jump out of a tree?”
“It is not a short tale,” she replied, her eyes—a deep shade of blue, he thought—luminous in the half dark. “And you are heavy, sir.”
“Your pardon, my lady.”
Reluctantly, Earnshaw rose and helped her to her feet. The top of her head came no higher than the first button of his muddy, ruined waistcoat. He still held her hands, could still feel the warmth of her small body against his.
The fire started by Jack’s lantern had smoldered down to the wet humus at the bottom of the pile. Smoke billowed up the slope, wrapping them in the sharp smell of burned leaves and damp earth. It tickled Amanda’s nose, yet freeing her hands from those of the masked man to rub it never occurred to her.
No gentleman, she reasoned, would ride the streets at night in a mask with a rapier at his side, yet a thief would not have begged her pardon and helped her rise. A gentleman most definitely would not have held her to the ground in such a shockingly intimate fashion, still—
Just then, Andrew groaned and stirred in the leaves beneath the beech tree. Stiffening, the masked man loosed her hands and reached for his rapier.
“It’s all right, he’s my brother,” she said, lifting her skirts and scurrying to his side.
He was still sprawled half against the bole and still unconscious, but he groaned again and coughed in the thickening smoke as Earnshaw dropped to one knee at his feet.
“What happened to him?”
“Your friend Smythe hit him and he fell against the tree,” Amanda replied, chafing one of Andrew’s limp hands between her own.
“I know no one named Smythe, my lady.”
“Oh, of course not,” she retorted, eyeing him sharply over her brother’s slumped form.
If indeed he was her brother, which the captain doubted. He’d cajoled more than one young lady into a dark garden himself, but never his sister. He’d never had a sister, but that fact made her explanation no less suspicious, perhaps because he wished he’d been the one to lure her into the darkness.
“And I don’t suppose,” Amanda went on, “you know anyone named Jack or Harry, do you?”
“As a matter of fact, my lady, I do not.”
She made a derisive noise in her throat, which turned into a cough as a particularly acrid puff of smoke from the smoldering leaves billowed around them. Tears welled in her eyes, and the man under the tree stirred again and coughed.
“We should remove your—er, brother,” Earnshaw said, leaning over Andrew to pick him up. “This smoke can’t be doing him any good. Or you either, my lady.”
“No!” Amanda cried, just as there came the faint shout of “Fire! Fire!” from the house.
Probably one of the footmen, Earnshaw thought, casting a look over his shoulder at the thick curtain of smoke drifting across the garden, and then at Amanda as he felt her hands close around his wrists. Her fingers were cold and trembling.
“You must go,” she said urgently, glancing around frantically as she drew him to his feet. “Oh, where in blazes is your
horse?”
“Halfway home by now, I’m sure,” the captain replied, grinning at her curse.
“Then you must flee on foot,” Amanda said, and began dragging him toward the wall. “Someone will be coming from the house any moment now!”
“But, my lady, there’s no need—”
“Are you insane?” she cried, whirling to face him on the lip of the slope. “How can you possibly explain your presence here? You are not one of the duchess’s guests!”
She was wrong about that, but right about explaining his presence, not to mention her own. Obviously, she had yet to think of that, but he had.
“And how will my lady explain herself?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll—I’ll think of something. Now go!”
Goaded by the clatter of footsteps on the terrace, and deciding he had enough to explain to his mother as it was, Earnshaw nodded and started for the wall. If the man under the tree was in fact her brother she’d be safe enough; if he wasn’t, she’d have the devil’s own time explaining herself without his presence to further complicate her predicament. He’d only taken two steps, however, when he felt a tug on his sleeve and turned back to Amanda.
“So your evening’s work will not be a total waste,” she said, plucking her pearl earrings from her ears and holding them out to him.
“Keep your ear bobs, my lady,” Earnshaw replied, taking a step toward her. “I’ll take this instead.”
Gripping her small shoulders between his hands, he kissed her, very quickly but very thoroughly. And then he vaulted over the wall in the darkness.
Chapter Four
The swoon Amanda decided it was best to fall into to avoid lengthy and sticky explanations was only partially feigned. She had been kissed before, but not on the lips, never in such a shockingly familiar manner—and never by a thief.
Her mother, however, swooned so often that Amanda was able to maintain her ruse despite the heap of burgundy satin the Countess Hampton collapsed into when her father carried her through the French doors into the ballroom. The only thing that threatened to start her giggling and give her away was the Duchess of Braxton’s exasperated cry, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cornelia, not now!”
Once past that rough patch, however, Amanda was able to keep her eyes closed and lie limply on a settee in a downstairs saloon while the duchess dispatched a maid for the smelling salts, directed the footman carrying her mother to another settee, and Lord Hampton questioned a still groggy and mortified Andrew about Jack and Harry and Smythe. They were much too busy to notice the soft smile on her face or the fingertips she raised to trace her lips.
Her pretense held beautifully until her mother was revived and threw herself into the arms of the duchess, her lifelong friend, who sat beside her on the settee.
“Oh, Eugenia!” She sobbed. “Amanda is ruined! And all our wonderful plans for her future and Lesley’s are dashed!”
“Hardly, Cornelia,” the duchess soothed patiently, as she patted her on the back. “Swooning in a garden and muddying one’s dress never ruined anyone.”
“But you don’t understand!” the Countess wailed tearfully. “That old dragon Matilda Blumfield noticed Amanda’s absence, and while you and Andrew and dear Hampton were searching for her she demanded to know her whereabouts! She was so dreadful, and I was so frightened she’d bruit it about that Amanda had taken herself off right under my nose that I told her she’d taken a megrim and I’d sent her home with Andrew! And then—” Lady Hampton paused to sniffle and hiccup— “there she was, standing right by the terrace doors when dear Hampton carried her inside and—”
“Mama, how could you!” Amanda cried, shooting upright on the settee. “I’ve never had a megrim in my life!”
“And apparently, my gel,” the duchess said with a dubiously arched eyebrow, as the countess swooned again and she lifted one of her limp hands and began to chafe it, “you’ve never swooned, either.”
“But I did, Your Grace,” Amanda insisted, crossing the fingers of one hand behind her back. “Truly.”
The Duchess of Braxton’s eyebrow slid up another doubtful notch. Her Grace, whose temper was nearly as formidable as her poise, could quite justifiably hold her at least partially responsible for making a shambles of the ball. Her green eyes were already beginning to smolder, but it occurred to Amanda suddenly that she could use the duchess’s anger to her advantage.
“I did try not to,” she went on earnestly, “but I don’t think any young lady of sensibility would have been able not to swoon after such a kiss.”
“Kiss!” Lord Hampton roared, abandoning his interrogation of Andrew to grasp her by the shoulders. “Which of those vile thieves dared touch you?”
Amanda had meant to infuriate the duchess, not her father, whose temperate nature was as remarked upon as her mother’s swooning spells. Dumbstruck by his passionate and uncharacteristic response, she could do nothing but gape at him until Andrew appeared at his side.
“It was Smythe, wasn’t it?” her brother demanded.
“Heaven’s no!” She cried then, her nose wrinkling in revulsion. “It was the gentleman in the black mask!”
“What gentleman in the black mask?” Lord Hampton bellowed, letting go of Amanda and wheeling on Andrew. “And where were you while some blackguard was having his way with your sister?”
‘‘But, sir, I——’’
“Say nothing.” Lord Hampton held up a shaky hand, as much to control himself, thought Amanda, as to silence her brother. “I apologize for my outburst, Eugenia. We will continue this—er—discussion at home.”
Frowning at Andrew, he strode across the room, opened the door—and caught the Baroness Matilda Blumfield, the most notorious gossip among the beau monde, as she all but fell into the room. The duchess gave an indignant cry, but Amanda groaned, covered her face with her hands, and thanked God her mother had already fainted.
“If I were you, Hampton,” said the short, squat baroness, as she quickly recovered her balance and her aplomb, “I’d thrash the two of them within an inch of their lives.”
“Perhaps, madam,” Lord Hampton retorted frostily, “Blumfield should do the same to you.”
“We-e-e-ll!” the baroness gasped, every inch of her plump figure going stiff with outrage. “I have never—”
“Your pardon, Your Grace,” the butler said, appearing in the doorway behind the baroness. “A Mr. Fisk from Bow Street is waiting to see you in the library.”
“Assure him nothing was stolen, Denham,” replied the duchess, who was glaring at the baroness and still holding Lady Hampton’s hand, “and ask him to come back tomorrow.”
“Your Grace.” The butler paused and cleared his throat. “He has Master Theodore with him.”
“What?” She shrieked, leaping so suddenly to her feet that she nearly jerked the countess off the settee. “Oh, Lud, what now!”
Dropping her friend’s hand, she rushed out of the room behind Denham with the Baroness Blumfield, her beady little eyes agleam, on her heels. Lord Hampton started after them, but wheeled back to glare at his children.
“Summon the carriage, Andrew, and take your mother and sister home. I shall remain here to see if I can be assistance to Her Grace and Theodore. I will see the both of you in my study tomorrow morning, however, at ten o’clock promptly.”
“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.
As the saloon door closed behind him, Armanda lowered her hands and turned a wide-eyed gaze on her brother. “I’ve really put us in the sauce this time, haven’t I?”
“That you have,” he agreed sourly, “and Father is going to baste us in it at ten o’clock tomorrow morning promptly. Whatever possessed you to tell such a wild tale?”
“It isn’t a tale,” Amanda retorted hotly. “There was a gentleman in a black mask, and he did kiss me!”
“I saw no such person,” Andrew replied with a raised eyebrow. “There was only Jack and Harry and Smythe.”
“Of course you didn’t se
e him!” Amanda sprang angrily to her feet. “You’d already hit your head and fallen unconscious when he jumped his horse over the garden wall!”
“There was no horse, either,” Andrew pointed out, his eyebrow sliding further up his forehead.
“He bolted when I jumped out of the tree!”
“And threw his rider, I suppose.”
“No, I knocked him out of his saddle as I fell.”
“For which, I’m sure, he was so grateful he kissed you.”
“No! I offered him my earrings, but he took a kiss instead.”
“Thank God you didn’t tell Father that!”
“I didn’t intend to tell Papa anything. I meant only to incite the duchess and make her think twice of marrying me off to Captain Earnshaw.”
“Well, you botched it,” Andrew stated flatly. “And if you’ve any sense at all, you’ll confess to Father you made the whole thing up.”
“But I didn’t!”
Andrew said nothing, just raised his other eyebrow, and left the saloon to call for their carriage.
He doesn’t believe me, Amanda realized, and fell back onto the settee in a daze. She tried again in the carriage on their way home to convince him, but he remained unmoved. She was so upset by his mulishness, that it didn’t occur to her until she’d bathed, washed the leaves and twigs out of her hair, and sat down on the hearth rug before the fire in her room to brush it dry that her purpose would be as well served if no one—especially the Duchess of Braxton—believed her story of the man in the black mask.
As Andrew had pointed out, there was no physical evidence whatsoever to prove he’d been in the garden. Perhaps Her Grace would also think she’d made him up. Or even better, that she’d imagined him, that she was given to hysterics, that she was a goosecap, a bacon brain, and wholly unsuited to being her daughter-in-law.
And perhaps she was, Amanda reflected pensively, as she put her brush away and got into bed. How could she have let—no, helped—the man in the black mask escape? Where had her determination to capture the thieves vanished to? Why had it vanished? She certainly hadn’t been overcome by his handsomeness because it had been dark and his mask had covered his nose and cheekbones and most of his forehead. The only one of his features she could clearly recall was his mouth; and not the shape of it so much as the feel of it.
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