Devil's Bargain

by Marlene Suson

  He dodged around the corner, not taking the time to reclaim the wagon, and disappeared from sight.

  Tia looked down at Winton. He was lying so still on the cobbles that she feared he was dead.

  She dropped down on her knees, laying the pistols aside, and placed her hand over his heart. As she did so, he groaned. Thank God, he was alive, but what was she to do now?

  She heard a horse galloping toward her on the cobblestones. Looking up, she saw her husband in his black silk evening breeches, striped silk stockings, and flat black dancing slippers astride Purple Pruitt’s little white horse festooned with purple satin roses.

  Marc was so tall and the horse so diminutive that when he removed his feet from the stirrups they reached almost to the ground. The sight of her haughty husband in his evening clothes on that ridiculously decked out little animal was so ludicrous that Tia could not help smiling.

  She tried to stand up to greet him, but found her legs were suddenly so wobbly that they would no longer support her. She sank back down.

  He was off the horse before it had stopped. Crouching at her side, he demanded hoarsely, “My God, have you been shot?”

  She looked at him, puzzled. He was staring in horror at her cloak. Looking down, she saw in the pale light of the carriage lamp that it had been soaked with blood from the bandit’s wound.

  “No,” she said hollowly.

  The oddest look crossed her husband’s face. He closed his eyes for a moment as though in relief. “But the blood?”

  “It is the footpad’s. He was shot.”

  “Who shot him?”

  “I did,” Tia confessed, certain that her husband would be no happier than the footpad to learn that his duchess shot people, no matter how strong the provocation.

  Marc’s face betrayed his astonishment, but his voice was calm as he asked, “Fatally?”

  “No,” she assured him.

  “How unfortunate.” He looked around. “Where is the cur now?”

  “He fled.”

  “Even more unfortunate.”

  Winton moaned again, drawing Marc’s attention. He dropped on one knee beside the unconscious man. “What happened to him?”

  “He tried to save me from the footpad,” Tia explained. “He took a terrible facer and hit his head on the cobbles.”

  “What the devil did you mean by leaving the ball without me?”

  Marc’s angry question recalled Freddie’s plight to Tia’s mind. Desperate to reach him, she jumped to her feet, crying, “I must get home immediately. Please take me up with you on Mr. Pruitt’s horse.”

  “Madam,” Marc said, nodding toward her cloak puffed out by the billowing skirt of her ball gown, “even if that poor creature could carry both of us, you are hardly dressed for riding.”

  “Neither are you,” she retorted, “and I must get home at once.”

  “Leaving my coachman lying unconscious in the middle of the street?”

  Tia swallowed hard. No, of course they could not do that. Marc would have to stay with him, and she would have to ride the horse alone. Fortunately, the animal was so small, she was able to easily place her right foot in the stirrup. Throwing her modesty to the winds, she bunched her skirts up about her thighs and threw her left leg over his back.

  Her husband jumped up and his arms locked around her waist, He yanked her down. “What the devil do you think you’re doing, making a spectacle of yourself like this on a public street?”

  “I have to get to Freddie. He may be dying.”

  Marc’s face inexplicably hardened, and he said with suppressed fury, “I sincerely doubt it.”

  Baffled by his reaction, Tia said, “Yes, he is. Did not Diana tell you of the message I got?”

  “She told me,” he said grimly.

  “Then surely you understand that I must get home at once.”

  He looked as though he meant to argue with her, but at last he said curtly, “Very well, madam. We’ll take the carriage.”

  “Who will drive us?”

  “I shall.”

  Marc looked around him. Several men in night- caps with cloaks hastily thrown over their nightclothes were rushing into the street. He enlisted one of them to help him get the coachman into the carriage. After Winton was laid on one of the velvet seats, Marc helped his wife into the equipage, climbed up on the box, and set off at a gallop.

  Pedestrians along Piccadilly gaped at the curious sight of the Duke of Castleton in full evening regalia driving his own carriage down the thoroughfare as though the devil himself were in pursuit.

  Inside the equipage, the coachman regained consciousness. In answer to Tia’s anxious query, he groggily allowed that his noggin felt broken, but that it’d take more than that to put him in an earth bath.

  However, when he learned the identity of his replacement on the box who was tooling the ribbons at such reckless speed, he muttered glumly that being put to bed with a spade might be preferable to facing His Grace of Castleton in a rage.

  When they pulled up in front of Castleton House, Tia did not wait for her husband to descend from the box but jumped out. She ran into the house past the startled porter and up the stairs to her brother’s bedroom at top speed.

  By the light of the candle that had been left burning in deference to Freddie’s fear of the dark, she was horrified to discover that he had been left alone.

  Tia ran to the bed. Freddie was sleeping peacefully, his face relaxed and untroubled, his breathing deep and even. She laid her hand upon his forehead and could detect no sign of fever.

  Nurse Gowan, hiding a yawn behind her hand, appeared in the doorway that connected her room to Freddie’s. “Is something amiss, Your Grace?”

  “Did Freddie’s fever break?”

  “Fever?” the women echoed, perplexed. “But he has had none. He was in excellent spirits all evening and without the smallest complaint.”

  “But you sent a message to Stratford House that he was very ill, and I was to return at once.”

  The nurse regarded Tia with the liveliest astonishment. “Not I, Your Grace.”

  Bewildered, Tia bid the nurse good night and went into the hall where a footman informed her that the duke wished to see her at once in his library

  She descended the stairs, wondering why he should want to see her there instead of coming to her bedchamber as he did every night. Three steps into the library, she checked herself at the sight of her husband’s face.

  “Shut the door,” he ordered in a tone he had not used with her since he had offered for her. “I trust nothing is wrong with Freddie.”

  “No, but I received a message—”

  “Which one of my servants delivered it to you?” he demanded curtly.

  “I don’t know his name. In fact, I did not recall seeing him before.”

  Her husband gave her a fulminating look. “Are you telling me, madam, that you rushed out into the night without a word to me on the basis of a message delivered by a man you had never seen before?” His tone implied he thought her the veriest shatterbrain who had ever lived.

  Tia had been so distressed at Stratford House that it had not occurred to her that the messenger might not be what he said he was. “But he was wearing your livery, and he said that Nurse Gowan had sent for me.”

  His icy eyes betrayed no sympathy. “But she had not.”

  “No,” Tia admitted.

  “Did this messenger call Nurse Gowan by name?” he asked brusquely. “Or did he merely say that your brother’s nurse had sent for you?”

  “He called her by name. Who could he have been?”

  “That, madam, is what you should have determined before you so foolishly ran off.”

  “But—”

  “I do not wish to discuss it further,” he interrupted, turning wearily away from her. “Go to bed.”

  Angered by this curt dismissal, she went. She had meant to tell him what the footpad had said about wanting her life more than her jewels, but Marc was in such a wretched hu
mor that she decided to wait until later when he visited her bedchamber as he did every night.

  Chapter 13

  An exhausted Tia dragged herself out of bed the next morning. For the first time since their wedding, Marc had not come to her bed. She had been so distressed by this that she had not fallen asleep until dawn, but she got up at her usual time in order to see her husband in the breakfast parlor.

  She found it deserted. When Tia asked Coles whether her husband had eaten, she was told that he had.

  “His Grace was up rather earlier than usual,” Coles said.

  “Where is he now?”

  “In his library with Lady Mobry.”

  “My aunt is here. Why wasn’t I told?” She started for the library

  “Begging Your Grace’s pardon, but the duke left express orders that they were not to be disturbed by anyone,” Coles said firmly, making clear that she was one of those to be excluded.

  Hurt and puzzled, Tm turned to the sideboard loaded with food. But her stomach revolted at the sight of it, and she settled for a cup of tea.

  Twenty minutes later, she was lingering alone in the breakfast room over the tea when Lady Mobry came in.

  Tia asked, “What brings you here, Aunt Augusta?”

  “Your behavior last night.” The marchioness’s face was grimmer than Tia had ever seen it. “I thought you had more sense, girl, than to plunge into such a hoydenish escapade without so much as a word to your husband. Do not ever do that again.”

  Her niece, who had expected sympathy from her beloved aunt for her harrowing experience, was shocked at this unjustified rebuke. She protested, “But I had been told Freddie was desperately ill. What else was I to have done?”

  “Sought out your husband and let him escort you home,” her aunt snapped. “Females of the first respectability do not go rushing through the streets of London alone, not even in daylight. I am appalled that you would have done so. I thought that I had trained you better.”

  Tia was appalled, too—at her aunt’s harsh criticism of her.

  “London is a very dangerous city at night—full of cutpurses and cutthroats,” her ladyship continued. “I trust you will never pull such a crackbrained stunt again. I must be off. I am late for another appointment.”

  Tia could only stare at Lady Mobry’s retreating figure. Both her aunt and her husband acted as though she were to blame for the attack on her, and her anger rose at the unfairness of their attitude.

  As the door shut behind the marchioness, her husband coldly requested Tia to join him in the library. The hard, rigid set of his face shattered her hope that his behavior of last night had been an anomaly that would have vanished with the new day.

  Once she was in the library, he closed the door and, without so much as a good morning, asked brusquely, “What is your schedule for today?”

  “I have promised Lady Sefton that I would attend her musicale this afternoon.”

  “I am persuaded that your nerves must be over- set after last night, and you should remain at home today.”

  “I am not such a poor-spirited creature as that,” she exclaimed indignantly. “I am looking forward to the musicale.”

  “I said, madam, that you will not attend it.”

  For a moment, she could only stare at him in astonishment. Then her own temper flared. She would not be ordered about like the lowliest of his servants. “I most certainly will go. Why should I not?”

  “I will tolerate no insubordination in my household, madam,” he said, at his most arrogant. “When I command, I shall be obeyed. I require every member of my household to accept my edicts without question and that includes you.”

  He stalked out of the library, leaving behind an outraged wife seething with indignation. She would, she thought mutinously, go the musicale.

  But as her temper cooled, she realized that to do so with Marc in his present mood would only widen the gulf between them. Furthermore, she was so tired and miserable she did not want to go anywhere that would require her to be sociable. She sent the young footman, Robert, with a note to Lady Sefton, saying she was indisposed.

  Robert was so handsome with his dark eyes and dark hair that Tia could easily understand why her maid was in love with him. He asked politely, “Should I also inform the stables that you will not be wanting your landau after all this afternoon?”

  The gray clouds that had hidden the sky when Tia arose that morning were clearing, and it promised to be a perfect afternoon for a ride. She would forgo the musicale in deference to Marc’s wishes, but she was determined to enjoy the fine weather.

  “No, leave my order for the carriage,” she told him. “I wish to go out this afternoon.”

  Tia went upstairs to her private sitting room to write a letter to Antony.

  She was sealing it when Freddie, much agitated, burst in, confiding in brokenhearted accents that her husband had reneged on his promise to show him Hounslow Heath that afternoon.

  “He said he had urgent business to attend to and could not take me.” Freddie’s lower lip protruded a dangerous distance, signaling that he was on the brink of tears. “He said maybe we might do it an- other day. But I know the way he said it, he doesn’t intend to take me ever, Oh, Tia, I was so looking forward to seeing it. Would you take me instead?”

  She was furious at her husband for disappointing her brother—and for his insufferably high-handed manner with her that morning. Her carriage was already ordered. Why shouldn’t she use it to take

  Freddie to see the heath? An outing in such pleasant weather would surely lift her low spirits. And also defy, in a small way, her infuriating husband in the bargain.

  Tia told none of the servants except her maid where she was going for fear that one of them might tell Marc when he returned. In his present ill humor, he might set out after them and abort their outing for no other reason than to prove that he was master of her and all else in his household.

  “If the duke returns and asks you where I went, I forbid you to tell him,” Tia instructed Marie. Let him worry about where she might have gone.

  “But shan’t I go with you?” the maid asked.

  “No,” Tia said. “I think it will be fun for my brother and I to go off, just the two of us, as we used to do at Birnam Wood.”

  When the landau, driven by Gunther, the second coachman, appeared at the front door, he and the groom riding on the box beside him assured her that Winton was recovering.

  She and Freddie set out at a sedate pace for Hounslow. Her little brother bounced upon the seat in excitement at the prospect of seeing the notorious heath where so many highwaymen had roamed. He described their exploits to Tia with such enthusiasm and vivid detail that, in the wake of the previous night’s events, she was more than a little nervous by the time they reached the heath.

  So nervous, in fact, that she could not help thinking uneasily how isolated the area was. They had not seen another vehicle in at least a half dozen minutes. She was beginning to regret having decided to defy her husband in this manner.

  Looking out the window, she fancied that she saw two horsemen hiding in a clump of trees to the left of the road a hundred yards ahead. She scoffed at herself. After all, this was 1814, and highwaymen no longer roamed the heath at will, particularly not in broad daylight.

  But as the landau neared the trees, the two men lurking there proved her wrong. They galloped out of their hiding place straight at the equipage. Both wore masks and carried pistols. They yelled at the vehicle’s occupants that age-old cry of highwaymen to “stand and deliver.”

  Instead, Gunther lashed valiantly at the horses to induce them to top speed.

  Shots rang out, followed by a yelp of pain. The two highwaymen swung in so close beside the pair of greys pulling the landau that Tia could not see what was happening. Shouts and violent cursing rose above the sound of the horses’ pounding hooves.

  For Tia it was as though she were experiencing the same nightmare a second time, but she was far more frighte
ned now than she had been the previous night because she had her little brother’s safety to worry about.

  Slowly, the vehicle was forced to a shuddering halt. Tia grabbed Freddie, whose earlier enthusiasm for knights of the road had died a quick death, and held the trembling boy in her arms.

  The bandits, still on their horses, ordered Gunther and the groom off their perch at pistol-point. The groom quickly complied but Gunther had greater difficulty in doing so. When he was on the ground, Tia saw that he had been wounded in his left arm, and it dangled uselessly at his side.

  The highwaymen ordered the two servants to march with their “rammers” above their heads toward a gorse bush twenty yards from the road. They were angered when Gunther could not comply by raising his wounded arm. For a moment Tia feared that they might shoot him in a more vital spot, but they did not.

  She braced herself for the brigands’ invasion of the coach, clutching Freddie tightly to her, ready if need be to throw her body over his to protect him.

  But instead of flinging open the doors as she expected they would, their assailants fastened the reins loosely to the box, then whipped the poor horses mercilessly. The driverless coach plunged forward, picking up speed as the two bandits continued to lash the high-spirited horses, unused to such brutal treatment, into a terrified frenzy.

  When they had succeeded, they turned and galloped away.

  The landau careened wildly off the road and across the heath toward certain destruction.

  Nothing could save them now.

  Tia pushed Freddie to the floor of the equipage and threw herself over him, trying to provide him with as much protection as possible in the inevitable crash that would reduce the landau to kindling.

  Chapter 14

  The landau, pitching about behind the runaway horses, tipped dangerously several times on the rocky ground but miraculously remained upright.

  Freddie, lying beneath Tia, screamed in terror as they were tossed roughly about on the floor.

  Suddenly the equipage began to lose speed and, after what seemed like an eternity, clattered to a halt.

  Tm rolled off Freddie, who was sobbing quietly now. Before she could pick herself up from the floor, the door of the landau was flung open with such force that it crashed against the body panel.