The Viscount's Revenge (The Royal Ambition Series Book 4)

by M C Beaton

  And then, to the dismay of both, she burst into tears and ran from the room and upstairs to bed.

  Amanda flung herself on the bed and sobbed her heart out. She had always looked up to Richard, followed him in all his boyish, and then manly, pursuits. Richard always told her what to do. It was Richard who had to teach her to read and write, Richard who had taught her how to shoot and how to fish. But the hard fact that her brother saw her neither as a woman nor as an intelligent girl but merely as some sort of small boy, tagging at his coattails, cut her deeply. Because they were twins and loved one another, Amanda had assumed they thought alike and were of the same character.

  But for the first time Richard appeared in her eyes as a rather… yes, callow young man.

  Were all men so? Were they young and clumsy like Richard or old and sneering and bitter like Lord Hawksborough? And he was old, thought Amanda, scrubbing her eyes dry with a corner of the sheet. He must be thirty if he was a day. And to think at one point she had thought him attractive!

  Now all she wanted to see was the look of fear on his lordship face as he looked down the barrels of the Colbys’ pistols.

  Her eyes began to close. There was Miss Devine to get even with, of course. But when she and Richard had pawned the stolen jewels and gambled successfully on the stock exchange with the proceeds and had thousands and thousands of pounds, then they could deal with Miss Devine.

  Amanda walked off into a dream where she entered a London ballroom wearing a gown made wholly from diamonds, on the arm of a handsome man with fair hair and blue eyes.

  But, in reality, still wearing her green ball gown and with her coronet of ivy crushed into the pillow, Miss Amanda Colby fell fast asleep.

  3

  The following day was warmer as the wind moved around to the southwest. Great fleecy clouds scudded across a hazy blue sky. The whole countryside seemed in motion. Leaves of gold and brown and red and amber flew before the wind, dancing across the burnt stubble as if dancing on tiptoe, swirling in clouds, up and up, as if trying to reach the heavens, and then swooping down again to continue their headlong dance across the fields.

  Amanda slept late and awoke to the sound of a shutter banging somewhere downstairs. She was amazed to find she had slept in her clothes, and stripped off and washed herself from head to foot, standing in a flowered china basin and pouring cold water from two brassbound cans over her body.

  She scrubbed herself down with a huckaback towel until she glowed, and then quickly donned her faded, yellowing underwear and an old gray wool round gown. She pulled a chintz mobcap over her hair and ran downstairs. The house appeared to be empty. Richard would have gone into Bellingham to spy out the land, but there was not even a sense of her aunt’s presence. She ran up again and pushed open her aunt’s bedroom door. The bed was neatly made, but of her aunt there was no sign.

  Perhaps Aunt Matilda, still revived by the excitement of the ball, had walked down to the vicarage to talk to Mrs. Jolly.

  Amanda decided to occupy herself with the household chores until Richard or her aunt should return. She went around to the stables at the back of the house, catching her breath as a great buffet of warm wind struck her as she turned a corner of the building. She led Bluebell out of his stall and turned him out into the field at the bottom of the garden.

  The field now belonged to Mr. Brotherington but it was not used for anything and surely even he would not object to one small donkey using it for grazing.

  Bluebell was rather an ill-favored donkey, being slightly cross-eyed and dusty-coated. He was given to erratic turns of speed but Amanda had become used to this and pointed out to any critic that most donkeys would not budge at all.

  She wished she had a good, well-behaved horse to take on a mission like highway robbery. But Bluebell it would have to be. The animal was not without a certain intelligence fuelled by low cunning, and had a passion for sugar loaves.

  The whole of the day began to take on an air of unreality. Amanda’s mind flinched away from the prospect of the night to come.

  She left Bluebell and went into the back kitchen. The jam had to be put into jars and sealed. I could sell this, thought Amanda, for about tenpence a pot. Perhaps I should think along these domestic lines. We cannot possibly be going to hold up a coach!

  But in her heart of hearts, she knew that she would, because more than anything else in the world she wanted revenge on Lord Hawksborough.

  The jam being finished, Amanda made herself a dish of tea and sat at the kitchen table, looking out vaguely at the trees and bushes in the garden, being shaken and tossed by the blustery wind.

  A sudden squall of rain darkened the sky and flung raindrops against the glass of the kitchen window.

  New thoughts and frustrations and desires kept springing into Amanda’s mind. For the first time, she realised she envied her brother the freedom allowed him by his sex. For the first time she realised that women were destined to have a hard time of it unless they were very lucky. Unless you married a rich man, you were tied body and soul to that jam-and-preserve-making factory called home, and whether you loved your husband or not, childbearing was exacted with a pious and pitiless vigour. Everyone assumed that women had inferior minds.

  The wives of the farmers and yeomen of the surrounding countryside automatically adopted their husband’s political opinions and never for a moment thought of forming any of their own. They either shopped at a “blue” shop or a “pink” shop, according to their political beliefs. A Tory would consider it very wrong to give custom to a “pink” shopkeeper, and a Whig would avoid a “blue” shop at all costs.

  Amanda did not feel that her mind was inferior to Richard’s. Despite the fact that she had had no schooling, she knew she had managed to surpass him in knowledge by studying at home every book she could get her hands on. And yet, she wondered, surely the well-balanced, intelligent woman she liked to think herself could have foreseen that Uncle would not live forever. They could have scraped a little each month from the allowance and could have bought a piece of land. The garden at Fox End was laid out like a gentleman’s garden in miniature. They did not even keep geese or hens, and the vegetable garden was ridiculously small.

  She wondered all at once where Aunt Matilda had gone.

  The rain had stopped. She put down her teacup and was just getting ready to attack the rest of the housework when there came a furious banging at the garden door.

  A servant Amanda had not seen before stood outside. He was wearing buckskin breeches, white swanskin lapelled waistcoat, and a light-colored cloth cape-coat. Despite his smart dress, his face was coarse and red, with tufts of hair sprouting from his nose and ears.

  “That donkey belong ’ere?” he demanded. “Well, you tell your master, my girl, that Mr. Brotherington will shoot that hanimal if ’e finds it on ’is land agin.”

  Amanda looked at him in trepidation. She could see he obviously mistook her for a servant. She was still wearing her mobcap and had tied an old gingham apron over her dress.

  “I brung ’im back in your garding,” went on the man, “an’ that’s where ’e’s got to stay, see?”

  “Yes, I see,” said Amanda faintly.

  The man touched his hat and slouched off.

  Amanda went back into the kitchen and sat down, vaguely surprised to find her legs were trembling. Why hadn’t she sent him to the rightabout?

  “Because you were afraid,” sneered her inner voice. “Fine upstanding superior woman you are. Can’t do anything without a man to protect you.”

  Amanda realised this was only the start of Mr. Brotherington’s petty persecutions. He meant to hound them out of Fox End and probably out of the county as well.

  She began to clean and dust and polish, working harder than she had ever worked before in order to keep her frightened, jumbled thoughts at bay.

  By the time the shadows began to lengthen, Amanda was fast asleep, her head on the kitchen table.

  “Well, here’s a fine sight
!” her brother’s voice roused her. “You’ve been snoring your head off while I do all the work!”

  “I’ve done nothing but work all day,” said Amanda furiously. “Do you think this house cleans itself?”

  “Oh, women’s work.” Richard shrugged. “Never mind. Everything is set. Nine o’clock’s the time we catch ’em.”

  “What time is it now?” asked Amanda, getting up and lighting a tallow candle at the kitchen fire.

  “After six.”

  “Then we are going to do it?”

  “Of course,” said Richard scornfully. “What’s come over you, Amanda? You’ve gone all soft and sort of trembly, like a girl.”

  “Well, I am a girl. How did you find out?”

  “It was easy.” Richard grinned. “I thought I would have to disguise myself and go to the seminary and try to bribe one of the servants, but that was not the way it happened. I found the seminary easily enough, and I was wandering around outside, wondering what to do, when this note dropped at my feet. It asked me to go around the back of the school to the garden gate. So I went around—”

  “Go on,” said Amanda, her eyes glowing with excitement and her fears forgotten.

  “Don’t interrupt. I went around, and there’s this minx of a girl waiting by the garden gate. She had one of those saucy sort of faces, you know, all pink cheeks and big black eyes. She grabbed hold of my arm in such a familiar way and drew me into the garden and handed me a shilling and told me to get her a half-pound of chocolate drops. ‘I would die for chocolate drops,’ she said. She said the food was awful and they were not allowed sweets except on holidays. So I saw my chance and said I would get them and pay for them myself. I would get her a whole pound of chocolate drops, if she would get me a little bit of information and swear never to tell a soul she had seen me. She promised and crossed her heart, so I asked when young Lady Hawksborough would be travelling to London. She looked puzzled and then she said, ‘Oh, you mean Susan Fitzgerald.’ Hawksborough was made a viscount for some public service or another, but of course his sister and mother still carry the family name.

  “Anyway, she said she would tell me after I got the chocolate drops. Which I did.

  “Do you know, Amanda, I thought every confectioner’s in Bellingham had conspired against me not to have chocolate drops?

  “But at last I found them and hurried back, praying she’d still be waiting for me. At first I thought she had gone, but then she leapt out from behind a bush, crying, ‘Did you get them?’

  “I handed over the sweets and asked her for the information. She said she would not give it to me unless I… er… gave her a kiss,” said Richard, turning a dull red. “I did, and she told me that they are to leave at eight o’clock, which means they will reach Fern Hill around nine. You had better wear that old suit of boy’s clothes of mine. Good thing we kept them. And we had better wear masks.”

  “And what was it like?” asked Amanda.

  “What like?”

  “Kissing Miss Thing.”

  “Oh, girls,” said Richard. But he blushed again.

  “Did she tell you her name?”

  “No,” said Richard. “I won’t see her again, so what’s the point? Do keep your mind on the job, Amanda. We must start getting ready now. Where’s Aunt Matilda?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Amanda. “Has she not come back? ’Tis most strange. She has been absent all day.”

  “Probably gone for her yearly outing,” said Richard callously. “Do not worry. She’ll come home and go into either strong hysterics or hibernation, one or t’other. Let’s hope she does not arrive just as we are leaving, all booted and masked.”

  It took them quite a time to get ready. Richard insisted they wear the old wool wigs they had worn at Christmas when they were much younger and had staged a play to amuse Aunt Matilda. They were both bright red and made from dyed coarse wool. Richard donned a drab benjamin and lent Amanda his game coat, which came nearly down to her ankles. They put old-fashioned tricornes on their heads and their masks in their pockets and at last they were ready to take the road.

  The night was cold and full of the sound of the wind. It had shifted from the south to the east and Amanda shivered with cold and excitement.

  Fern Hill was only a short way from where they lived. Bluebell had put on one of his erratic bursts of speed and so they were there well before time, standing in the black shelter of the tossing trees. A little moon rushed high above, in and out of masses of ragged black cloud. Some wild animal crackled in the undergrowth and Amanda nearly fell off her donkey in fright. Her tension mounted as the minutes dragged past, her heart thudding against her ribs. Her mouth felt dry.

  Would they never come?

  Bluebell shifted restlessly under her. Amanda, near to tears, opened her mouth to say that she wanted to go home and forget about the whole thing, when all of a sudden the lights of the carriage bobbed like fireflies at the bottom of the long slope of Fern Hill.

  “This is it!” whispered Richard.

  They donned their masks and pulled out their pistols.

  The noise of the wind rushing in the trees was so loud that at first they could not hear the sound of the approaching coach. All they could do was watch the twin carriage lights coming closer and closer.

  They couldn’t… they mustn’t… Dear God… No! So rushed Amanda’s terrified thoughts like the wind rushing in the branches above her head.

  And then the carriage was almost upon them.

  Richard urged his mount forward. He made a huge, black, menacing figure.

  “Stand and deliver!” he yelled in a great voice.

  The coachman on the box pulled on the reins and slewed the coach around sideways so that it would not slide back down the steep incline. He reached under his box.

  “Raise your hands,” yelled Richard, “or I’ll send you to your Maker!”

  The coachman raised his hands. The groom next to him did the same.

  “And you on the back,” shouted Richard. “Round in front with your hands above your heads.”

  Two footmen emerged from the rumble at the back. Richard thanked God there were no outriders.

  “Keep them covered,” he called to Amanda.

  He dismounted and strode to the door of the coach and wrenched it open.

  “Outside,” he barked.

  Lord Hawksborough’s face was such a mask of cold fury that Richard’s pistol trembled for a moment in his hand. An elderly lady with Lord Hawksborough’s peculiar colorless eyes was helped down by a plain, severe-looking girl in a poke bonnet—Lord Hawksborough’s mother and sister. Richard held out a sack. He held the pistol straight at Lord Hawksborough’s mother and snarled, “Drop your jewels in there or I’ll shoot the old girl.”

  “Do as he says,” said Lord Hawksborough bitterly.

  He was cursing the fact that his mother had insisted they travel in her old cumbersome travelling coach with only her aged servants as guard.

  “There’s someone else in there!” said Richard, hearing a sound from the carriage. “Out!”

  A trembling maid appeared, tears rolling down her face. “I tried to guard your jewel box, ma’am,” she whimpered to Lord Hawksborough’s mother, Mrs. Fitzgerald.

  “Now we all know about the jewels,” said Lord Hawksborough wearily. “You may as well hand them over.”

  Sobbing, the maid put the jewel box in Richard’s capacious sack.

  “I hope that satisfies your greed,” said his lordship acidly.

  “You have forgotten something,” said Richard, keeping his voice gruff.

  Amanda, watching and listening, prayed Richard would finish and get them away, as far away as possible.

  “What is that?” she heard Lord Hawksborough’s icy voice asking.

  “Your ring, my lord.”

  Oh, no, thought Amanda, white to the lips.

  Slowly Lord Hawksborough drew off the ring. His eyes were like diamond chips as he stared at Richard, and Richard felt a
cold shiver of fear run through him.

  “I will find you, if it takes my life and my fortune,” said his lordship in pleasant, even tones which were more terrifying than if he had ranted and raved. “I will find you,” he repeated, “and you will hang. You will not escape me.”

  “Back in the coach,” growled Richard. “The old lady last.”

  Lord Hawksborough gave Richard one long measuring look and helped his sister into the coach. Mrs. Fitzgerald turned and followed them and slammed the door behind her. Neither she nor her daughter had uttered a word.

  Richard rode back to Amanda.

  “Move on!” he yelled to the coachman.