“G’wan with you,” the old coachman wheezed, “most of the ladies is pleased to give their baubles to a gentleman of the road.”
“Especially that brazen Robin fellow,” the footman added, taking another swig from the jug he refilled at every rest stop. “The one what kisses the ladies’ ’ands an’ calls ’em ‘chickie.’ Cock Robin is what they’re callin’ ’im, on account a’ that an’ ’ow cocky ’e is, but you don’t ’ave to worry none. ’E’s only interested in women what got jewels or looks. All you got’s an ivory-tuner’s brat an’ a sour puss.”
Annalise stuck her tongue out at the rudesby; Henny let her get away with it.
They were not set upon by highwaymen after all. Instead, the ancient driver wheezed his last right there on the box of their carriage. The footman sitting beside him was so castaway by then, he never even attempted to catch the ribbons as they fell from the coachman’s lifeless fingers. He just jumped off the box. What was a bad situation was going downhill quickly. And literally. The horses were panicky, the road was steep with a sharp curve at the bottom of the incline. The horses might make the turn; the coach never would, not without someone’s hands on the brake.
Now Robin Tuthill never made it his business to hold up drab and dusty hired chaises. Not worth the risk. And he surely never made it a habit to stop runaway coaches. No money in that at all. But there was something about the screams of a woman and child, coming to him as he sat his horse at the top of the hill, that just ripped away at his heart. Before he could wonder if there’d be a reward, he was digging his heels into his stallion’s sides and taking off after the careening coach. With her head out the window, Annalise could see everything, how the caped rider pulled even with the frantic horses and strained to reach the reins. How he stood in the saddle of his own galloping mount, then leapt up to the box of the coach and pulled with all his strength. How the foaming horses made the turn as sweet as pie, and the carriage barely rocked going around the comer.
“You saved us, sir!” Henny was crying as their rescuer opened the coach door. “How can I ever thank you?”
“Don’t fatch yourself, chickie, the pleasure was mine.”
Chickie? Henny collapsed in a dead faint, right into Robin’s arms. Oh, Lud, that’s what a fellow got for not minding his own business. Then he looked up, and it was love at first sight—between his fierce black stallion and a tiny golden-curled moppet who was feeding the unruly beast a peppermint candy from her pocket. Now, what was an honest bridle cull to do? He couldn’t go off and leave an unconscious nanny and her little charge out there with a dead coachman and, unless he missed his guess, a broken-necked groom. On the other hand, someone would be coming, there was no cover on this stretch of the road, and his own horse was winded.
At this point the debt was entirely Miss Avery’s, until she led his horse back to Robin, looked up at him with innocent green eyes, and sweetly inquired, “Do you really like being a highwayman? If not, I have an idea…”
So Robin Tuthill, wearing the footman’s livery, drove the ladies into the next village to report that the notorious Cock Robin lay dead on the road a few miles back, having fallen from his horse during an attempt to waylay their carriage. Their poor driver had had a seizure during the holdup. A new driver and groom were hired. Two months later Robin became Rob Hennipicker, Henny’s long-lost husband, home from the sea with a comfortable nest egg from prize money, and a fine, full beard. After they’d all moved to Worcester, Rob built Henny a little cottage and set up pig farming.
*
“So now, chickie, what’s to do? We can tuck you away in the tunnel beneath the cottage until Sir Vernon comes to his senses, but with the kind of blunt involved, you could sprout roots and turn into a mushroom quicker.”
“It’s too damp, Rob. Remember, the girl’s been sick.”
Annalise smiled, revived by Henny’s stew. “No, I’d have to stay hidden away in your bolthole for four years, until I reach my majority. Even marriage to Barny might be preferable to that. I don’t have enough money to keep myself for that long, either, not even in a tiny cottage, and no, I will not take any part of your, ah, pension. I have a better idea anyway.”
Rob spit into the fire and grinned. “And here I was thinkin’ I’d have to take up the profession again, it was gettin’ so quiet around these parts.”
“I’d take my skillet to the side of your head, Rob Hennipicker, and well you know it. So just hush and listen to what the child has to say.”
“Henny, I’m not a child! I’m twenty-one, well past the age to be married and a mother in my own right. That’s the whole problem, don’t you see? If I hide away until I am twenty-five, I’ll never find a husband.” She fumbled through one pocket after another, handing the silver flask over to Rob, until she located the packet of letters. She waved them triumphantly and announced, “I am going to go live with Aunt Ros in London!”
“But, Miss Annalise, I thought you never heard from her anymore, not since Sir Vernon forbade your mother to correspond with her. That was years ago, right after they got married.”
“No matter, she’s been at the same address forever, and she was always inviting me to come visit. And her particular friend Lord Elphinstone is very high in the government. Surely with his influence something can be done about my stepfather’s guardianship. So I only need your help in getting to London.”
“Only? When every man, woman, and sheriff’ll be out looking for you soon as Sir Vernon puts out the word and the reward? A’ course here’ll be the first place he’ll look, so we don’t have half to worry about, now do we, chickie? ’Sides, seems to me this Aunt Ros of yourn blotted her copybook onct herself. I’m not sure she’s fit to be in charge of you and your cork-brained schemes.”
Annalise refuted that argument with a snap of her fingers. “Pooh. That’s just Sir Vernon’s priggery. And the Duke of Arvenell’s. You know what kind of man he is by the way he disowned his children. All Aunt Ros did was refuse to marry the man he chose for her. She has to take me in!”
Chapter Four
Unfortunately, Lady Ros was not in London. She and Lord Elphinstone had traveled to Vienna for the peace talks and parties.
This bit of news was one crushing blow too many for Annalise. She was cold, hungry, tired, and frightened. Crying still wouldn’t help, so as soon as the helpful watchman went on along his beat, Annalise kicked at the locked door of Aunt Ros’s small, tidy town house at Number Eleven, Laurel Street. Then she limped back to the hackney carriage where Henny and Rob waited. The devil fly away with it, she thought, they’d worked so hard just to get to London!
They’d waited at the cottage long enough for Sir Vernon to throw Rob off his land.
“Iffen we leave afore he gets back, he’ll move heaven and earth to find us,” Rob said. “You can put your blunt on that. The man’s mean, he ain’t stupid. ’Sides, I got preparations to make.” Annalise didn’t ask what those preparations were; Henny advised her it was better not to know. Rob promised Seraphina was safe and would be waiting in London when they arrived, and that was enough. Annalise slept the time away in her hidden little cubby behind the kitchen pantry, waking only to swallow the hot soup Henny kept bringing.
The retired highwayman was right: the cottage was the first place Sir Vernon looked, after sending men north to Arvenell and south to Bath. He arrived with the magistrate and three brawny grooms.
“Don’t see no writ for a search,” Rob said.
“I don’t need one,” Sir Vernon replied, holding a lace-edged handkerchief over his nose. “It’s my property.”
“Seems to me just the land is yourn, on rent. You know I built this cottage on my own.” The magistrate, Squire Bromley, was looking uncomfortable, so Rob went on: “No matter. I got nothin’ to hide. Go ahead, boys, look your fill. You find any sweet young thing under the bed, just don’t tell m’wife.”
So the men made a halfhearted search, Henny following them about, threatening to comb their hair with her f
ootstool if they so much as disturbed her pressed linens and stacked preserves.
“If she’s not here, Bromley, then this man helped my stepdaughter escape, a minor female, out of her wits and sickly. I demand you arrest him and hold him till he reveals her whereabouts.”
Henny started weeping into her apron, and the magistrate was shifting from foot to foot.
“And when you think about doin’ that, Squire, think about what himselfs done to make a gently reared female run off that way, and straight from the sickroom, too.”
“The chit’s dicked in the nob, that’s all. Her nerves came unhinged from the fever, so she doesn’t know what she’s doing. It’s obvious the dear girl needs a keeper,” Thompson insisted. “I intend to see she’s held safe and secure as soon as we find her.”
“Aye, clappin’ the poor lass in Bedlam’d suit you to a cow’s thumb, wouldn’t it? Then there’d be no one to ask about all that inheritance money.”
“Why, you, you…” Sir Vernon looked around and noticed the interested grooms. “I want you off my property, you swine. There’s always been something havey-cavey about you anyway. No common seaman I ever heard of made enough prize money to live so well.”
The bearded farmer spit tobacco juice, missing Sir Vernon’s highly polished boots by a good half inch. “Mayhap I weren’t so common. And mayhap I kept back enough of my winnings to hire me a fancy advocate, in case some jumped-up toff tries to bring false charges ’gainst me, or tries to take my land without compensatin’ me.”
“My secretary will bring the rent refund tomorrow morning. Be gone by the evening.” Sir Vernon stomped out of the cottage.
“What about my house that I built with my own two hands?” Rob called after him.
“Take it with you.”
“I druther see it burn than leave it to the likes of you.”
*
So they burned the cottage, after packing what they could onto a wagon, and after Henny made her farewells in the neighborhood, leaving her cousin’s address in Swansea. “Her man’s a fisherman, you know, and my Rob’s been missing the sea for all these years. We were only staying to be near Miss Annalise anyways, and with her gone, and bad feeling from Sir Vernon, it’s better this way. You come visit, if you ever get to Wales.”
Henny cried softly despite her own advice as they drove away from the flaming building, even though there had been no choice. They couldn’t leave the cottage standing, lest Sir Vernon come find the hidden chambers.
Annalise did not see the flames or the tears. She was tucked away under the wagon’s false bottom.
They traveled slowly west, just another country couple in somber clothes. They bought food in the village shops or from housewives rather than from taverns, and they paid a shilling or two to sleep in barns instead of inns. Before Hereford, Henny got down with her portmanteau and walked the last quarter mile into town, where she purchased an inside seat on the mail coach to Oxford. No one paid any mind to the nanny on her way to a new position.
Rob and Annalise took turns driving the wagon, just another country couple in somber clothes, traveling west for another half day. Then they turned south toward Gloucester, where they traded the wagon for a hooded carriage; Rob shaved his beard and donned a caped driving coat, and Annalise pinned a silk rose in her bonnet, veiled to keep the travel dust from her eyes and nose. They stopped at only the busiest posting houses, Mr. and Mrs. Robbins, off to Oxford to see the sights. They left Oxford in a hired coach, Rob and Henrietta Tuthill, taking their widowed niece to London to meet her in-laws. In the center of London they switched to a hackney, whose jarvey didn’t care who the hell they were, so long as he saw the color of their money.
“Henny, have you ever seen so many people? Don’t you think the smoke bothers them? Did you see that man dressed all in green?”
“Look, Miss Annalise, I swear that’s the spires of Westminster itself.”
Rob frowned. “We ain’t never goin’ to get away with this if you two can’t remember your places. We made it so easy a goose could get it right. Annie and her auntie, and Uncle Rob. Unless you want to put a notice in the papers that Miss Annalise Avery’s come to Town, chickie.” He settled back on the squabs, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Pshaw, Robbie,” Henny chided, “just because you’re happy not to be Rob Hennipicker any longer, no reason to have your nose out of joint. I intend to enjoy my visit, see the sights, the Tower and Pall Mall and everything.”
“And as soon as Aunt Ros and her friends hear my story, I’ll be safe with my own name, Uncle Rob, so you can stop grizzling.”
They passed through twisty, dirty streets, then broad avenues shaded with trees and wide thoroughfares choked with traffic. They saw mean slums, then vast open spaces with houses set in parks minutes apart, right in the middle of the city. After a while they left the fancier neighborhoods for narrower houses on narrower streets.
“This don’t look like Mayfair,” Rob grumbled.
“It isn’t,” Annalise answered. “Didn’t you hear me give the driver the address? We’re going to Laurel Street, Bloomsbury.”
“Thought your aunt was Quality, knowing all the nobs. What’s she doin’ out in Bloomsbury?”
Henny looked out the window. “Oh, my, they sell near everything on every corner, don’t they? Look at that, Robbie, fresh lavender and milk and—”
‘Is Rosalind Avery respectable, or ain’t she?”
Annalise answered: “I explained that the duke cast her off, remember? I never knew the whole story; it happened before my time. As far as I understand, Lady Rosalind was beautiful and in love with a handsome soldier, but her father wanted her to marry a crotchety old nobleman whose land marched with his. Aunt Ros tried to elope with her soldier instead, but they were stopped before reaching the border, but not before, uh…”
“I know what uh is, chickie.”
“Papa always said she was just young and in love, like him and Mama. He said the Averys fell in love with their hearts, not their minds, but the Duke of Arvenell never did care about anything but the family name. So the handsome young soldier was sent back to the army, where he died. Aunt Ros refused to marry anyone else, which was of no account, I suppose, for the duke’s choice refused to marry her since she was ruined, although there was no child. But Arvenell never forgave her, and she never forgave him, so she left home and came to London.”
Henny nodded. “Leastways he didn’t cut her off entirely. She had enough income to set up her own establishment, though not the first stare, naturally.”
“And it was a brave thing to do, because most of her old friends cut her at first. Not all of them, though, not when they saw she wasn’t setting herself up as a cyprian or anything.”
Henny squealed, “Missy! What do you know about such things?”
“Enough to know my aunt would never be one! She’s not invited to all the ton parties, of course, and the highest sticklers didn’t recognize her when Mama was alive, but she is still Lady Rosalind Avery. Maybe they do now.”
“And maybe they don’t. Them niffy-naffy types have long memories.”
“So what? Mama was not received, either, so I have no place in society anyway. Can you see Henry Bradshaw’s granddaughter being invited to Almack’s?”
“I can see the Duke of Arvenell’s, for sure. And that’s ’xactly what I thought I’d see when I agreed to this harebrained scheme. Not settin’ you down on any primrose path with a fallen woman.”
“Now, Rob,” Henny put in, “Miss Annalise’s mother always’ spoke highly of her sister-in-law, and she was real upset when Sir Vernon made her stop writing. Lady Rosalind led a quiet life, she said. I suppose she couldn’t do much better on the portion she had.”
“And I didn’t come down in yesterday’s rain, chickie. No gentry mort lives in Bloomsbury.”
“Aunt Ros is respectable,” Annalise protested, “and her friends are influential. You wait and see. Besides, until everything is settled, I’ll be safer t
here, where it’s quieter and away from all the gossip. No one will care tuppence about some hagridden female on the fringes of town.”
“And when you get roses back in your cheeks and hair back on your head, chickie, what then? Where’re you goin’ to find any eligible part-ee to take you in hand, that’s what I want to know. Not in Bloomsbury with some—”
“Mind your tongue, Robbie Tuthill.”
Rob still grumbled. “Should of taken the womanizer. A little arsenic in his coffee, you could of been free in no time. That’s why they call it widow powder, ain’t it?”
*
Annalise could not look Rob in the eye when she reached the carriage and had to tell him what the watchman had said, that Aunt Ros was traveling abroad with a gentleman friend. “Of course there must be some innocent explanation,” she added, wishing she had the imagination to conjure one up. More important, what were they to do now? Her friends had already given up their home for her. How much more could she ask? “Do you think we should try to find her in Vienna?”
“Thompson’s sure to be having the ports watched. ’Sides, I ain’t never been on no boat, and I ain’t goin’ on no boat now. Good Lord wanted men to swim, He’d of given us gills.”
“Pshaw, Robbie, and here I’ve been telling everyone back home we were off to the coast so you could go fishing!”
“Cut your nattering, woman, and let me think.”
“Well, do your thinking in a hurry, Robbie Tuthill, for this coach is passing damp, and Miss—Annie needs to be in a warm bed. All that jouncing around in the cold and wet, and eating what I wouldn’t toss to the pigs, why, I can see my lamb fading right away.”
Annalise bit her lip. Henny’s shorn lamb would fare even less well locked away in some insane asylum for the rest of her bound-to-be-short life. She’d heard of such things, unscrupulous physicians taking money to declare an unwanted family member mad. Right now Annalise was so mad, she could just—
Lady in Green Page 3
