Dedicated Villain

by Patricia Veryan

  Fiona was summoned by her grandmother to help repair the hem of a skirt which had been accidentally stepped on. My lady was in a strange mood, variously bright and sombre, her usually unflagging energy showing signs of dissipating; and Fiona went out of her way to seem confident of a happy resolution to their problems. “We’ll be safe home within a week or two, dear Grandmama,” she said gaily. “And then we will set to work to redecorate your suite, for you will stay with us—no? At least until after the holidays?”

  My lady loved her Scottish home, but she acquiesced in this, and the two spent a pleasant hour sewing together and planning the new curtains and colours for the suite Lady Clorinda occupied whenever she was in Wiltshire. Cuthbert, who was actually my lady’s steward and major domo, must also be thought of in connection with these plans, but it was not until his name was mentioned that Fiona realized she’d not seen the big man for two days.

  “One might suspect you to have had your mind on other matters, child,” said my lady dryly.

  “Yes, but—” A pang of fear struck. Fiona asked, “Wherever has he gone? Dear ma’am, is something more wrong than we have been told? I’ve a sense of—”

  A shrill cry that was almost a scream interrupted her. Even as she and Lady Clorinda started up exchanging alarmed glances, angry shouts rang out followed by the unmistakable sounds of a scuffle.

  With a heightening sense of disaster, Fiona ran outside and down the steps.

  Everyone seemed to have congregated at the edge of the trees. Her father and Rob MacTavish were hurrying to join the little crowd, and Fiona, her heart in her mouth, followed. Elizabeth, her long golden curls hanging in loose disarray about her shoulders, stood weeping in Moira’s arms. Heywood was attacking Mathieson like a wild man, but Mathieson seemed more amused than irked as he ducked and dodged, calling to Heywood to “let be,” and not be “such a silly makebait.”

  “You thlippery damned libertine,” roared Heywood, livid with rage. “There’th no woman thafe … within a mile of you!”

  Her heart as if pierced by a lance of ice, Fiona was suddenly incapable of speech or movement, and stood as one turned to stone, watching in mute shock.

  Her father came up behind Heywood, grasped his arms and held him strongly, disregarding his impassioned demands to be released.

  MacTavish said a curt, “Quiet, Thad! What is all this? Have we not sufficient to worry about that we must now quarrel among ourselves?”

  “’Tis Mathieson’s doing, I’ll be bound,” said my lady tartly. She held out her arms and Elizabeth flew into them, sobbing incoherently. “Tell us what happened my sweet child.”

  Mathieson drawled, “‘A storm in a teapot’, ma’am, I assure you.”

  With a growl of rage, Heywood wrenched free, bounded forward, and lashed out. Mathieson avoided the blow, and struck back at once. Heywood was sent reeling and went down hard.

  Gregor ran to kneel beside and prop the dazed man, glaring up at Mathieson, who gave a sardonic shrug.

  “Will somebody be so good as to tell us what happened here?” MacTavish’s fine face was grim, and when Mathieson began to answer, he flung up a silencing hand and nodded instead to Japhet.

  The boy looked miserable and said reluctantly, “Miss Elizabeth had gone with Captain Mathieson to watch Rump dance. I saw them go over to the paddock. Then—Miss Elizabeth came running back, crying and—er, well, sort of—” his young face became scarlet “—er, tidying her frock.”

  “The devil,” muttered Bradford, fixing Mathieson with a disgusted frown.

  “I thought Heywood was your friend,” said my lady accusingly.

  “You are right to—to uthe the patht tenth, ma’am,” Heywood gasped. “You’ll meet me for thith, Mathie—”

  “Certainly not,” snapped Lady Clorinda.

  Gregor said incredulously, “But ma’am—Mathieson strrruck him! I dinna see how they can fail tae—”

  “There will be no duelling,” put in MacTavish.

  Mathieson smiled. “I knew you’d see reason, Rob. There’s no call for all these heroics. ’Twas a simple matter of—”

  “Of your forcing your unwelcome attentions on a lady,” said MacTavish, stern and relentless. “I might have known ’twould come to this. You force my hand, you fool.”

  “What a needless conflummeration,” sighed Mathieson, bored. “I am quite willing to overlook poor Thad’s hysteria. I had no intention to offend. Miss Clandon did not seem averse to me, but—”

  “Damned lying rake!” cried Heywood, struggling to his feet.

  My lady said angrily, “I’ll not have my granddaughter insulted, Rob!”

  “Of course not, ma’am,” said MacTavish, looking weary. “The fault is mine. I knew what he was, but—”

  Mathieson’s dark eyes became narrow and deadly. “Have a care, Rob,” he murmured.

  Winking away stinging tears, Fiona looked in anguished bewilderment to MacTavish’s grim face.

  “What does he mean?” demanded my lady sharply. “And why should you blame yourself?”

  “I lied to all of you,” said MacTavish. “I knew this rogue by another name, and I knew of him as—”

  “Don’t be a fool!” cried Mathieson ringingly. “Merely because I stole a kiss, you would risk—”

  “Be silent,” thundered Bradford, supporting Heywood’s unsteady figure.

  Mathieson scowled, threw up his hands in a gesture of irked resignation, and sauntered a few paces from them.

  His face stern and pale MacTavish said, “I told you all that Mathieson helped me—that he saved my dear wife and me from sure disaster. That much, at least, is truth. What I did not tell you was that he came to me on the night of my somewhat dramatic arrival, and told me he had served in the Low Countries with one William Bond …”

  Lady Clorinda gave a gasp of shock. “Not—not our Will?” she stammered.

  MacTavish nodded. “Our Will, ma’am. The same Will Bond who was our fifth courier. And who carried the list of donors!”

  Bradford, pale and horrified, asked, “Why do you use always the past tense, Rob? Never say the poor lad is … is …”

  “He’s dead, sir.”

  There were concerted exclamations of dismay. In their alarm they pressed in closer around MacTavish. Only two of those present watched Mathieson. After one swift glance he avoided the anguished eyes of the white-faced girl, and, ignoring the youth who stared with such bitter but silent disillusionment, he stalked away.

  “How? When?” asked Gregor. “Are ye main sure, Robbie?”

  “I’m afraid so. ’Twould seem the poor lad was shot, and too far spent to recover. He died in the hills …”

  William Bond had been a long-time friend of Alec Pauley, and the young man turned away, his head bowed with grief. My lady gave a little sob and her handkerchief fluttered to her eyes.

  “Alone?” asked Torrey sharply. “How d’you know, then?”

  “Because he was not alone. Just before he died, Will was found by an old friend and—”

  “Mathieson?” asked Bradford.

  MacTavish nodded. “Will believed him to be an honourable gentleman, and entrusted him with the list.”

  “My God in heaven,” gasped Pauley, turning a drawn face. “Then we must—”

  MacTavish held up a hand for quiet. “Let me finish, please. That is why I lied to you. Mathieson came to me with a bargain. I could have the list provided I allowed him to stay with us until we collected the treasure and that I say nothing of his past. That’s why I kept it so secret that my fellows were going to switch caravans. Mathieson demands one-third of the gold and safe-conduct, else we never will see the list and he’ll—”

  Came a sudden thunder of hooves. A mocking voice shouted, “Catch me if you can, espèce d’imbéciles!”

  “Mathieson’s away!” howled Gregor.

  “After him!”

  “He’s turned the horses loose!”

  “There he goes! Shoot him down!”

  “No!
We’ll have the dragoons upon us! No shooting!”

  The little encampment became a confusion of running, cursing men, who raced for saddles and their milling horses.

  Swinging astride a piebald mare, Torrey did not wait for a saddle, but sent his mount galloping in hot pursuit of Rumpelstiltskin, already a rapidly diminishing blur across the meadows. A minute later, Heywood was also mounted and tearing after the other two. Gregor threw his saddle onto a rangy black horse and began to wrestle with leathers and buckles.

  MacTavish shouted, “No more! Gregor—help get the horses into the paddock! Let Torrey and Heywood catch the swine!”

  “Small chance of that,” said my lady, her worried gaze on Fiona’s drawn, white face.

  “Rob,” said Bradford, his own face reflecting shocked dismay, “you are absolutely sure? He seemed such a—well, such a likeable young fellow.”

  “His charm has fooled many,” said MacTavish, also slanting a compassionate glance at the silent Fiona. “But he sometimes uses another name, sir; one you may have heard. It is—Otton.”

  “What?” Still clutching his saddle, Gregor jerked around. “Otton you say? Isnae that the murrrrdering scoundrel tried tae torment information oot o’ poor Quentin Chandler? And Chandler already sore wounded? He’s Mathieson? Och! It fair boggles ma mind ye coulda stomached him, Robbie!”

  “I’d little choice. He had the list. Without it …” MacTavish shrugged helplessly.

  “Without it!” exclaimed Bradford. “The question is what’ll the conscienceless scoundrel do with it? All our heads will roll if he sells it to the military.”

  Dazedly, Fiona whispered, “No! He’d not do so base a thing! However—however b-bad he may be … he’d not do that.”

  Elizabeth left her grandmother and crossed to Fiona. “Dearest, please do not look so heartsick. He’s—he’s nae worth a single tear! He only courted me because he’d somehow learned of my inheritance.”

  Racked by grief, Fiona closed her eyes. She had told Roland of that windfall. He’d wasted no time, acting on it. Elizabeth was so very beautiful … Perhaps he’d decided she was the—the better bargain … She turned to MacTavish, a bewildered pleading in her pale face that made him wince. In a cracked, thin little voice she asked, “Do you say that—that Captain Mathieson tortured one of—of the couriers, Robbie?”

  MacTavish could not bear to look at her. His accent becoming pure Scots, as it tended to do when he was upset, he said gruffly, “I’m waeful sorry tae tell ye, lassie. But—aye, he did that. And sent murrrdering assassins after Ligun Doone hissel’. His crimes ’gainst our people are many, and he’s fair withoot honour or merrrcy.”

  Fiona swayed a little, and a faint whimper escaped her.

  Bradford hurried to her side and Elizabeth moved back allowing him to slip a consoling arm about his daughter. “Come, child,” he said very gently. “You have had a bad shock, but ’twill pass. You mistook your heart, is all. I know it hurts now, but—as well you found out in time, m’dear. Come …”

  He led her away and she went with him like one in a trance, scarcely aware of what she was doing.

  My lady looked after them, her own bright eyes dimmed by tears. “Poor little soul,” she murmured. “So much for his vows and declarations, the ingrate!” She blew her nose daintily and dried her eyes. “Well, Rob? Do you really think Mathieson will use that list ’gainst us? He holds many lives in his bloodstained hands.”

  MacTavish stared at the campfire. “I think Miss Fiona was right, ma’am. There is a limit even to his baseness. And—I believe he once gave his word never to betray us.”

  Gregor sneered low-voiced, “Ye canna think such as that verrrmin would hesitate fer one instant tae betray us was there money in it for his ainself? Hah!”

  “He’ll not betray us,” said MacTavish, still frowning fixedly at the flames. “He’ll more likely try to blackmail those on the list, but we’ll get it back, never fear. Meanwhile, that shall have to wait, for I think we must now abandon our hopes to get through to the chosen place. ’Tis too far—the odds ’gainst us too great.”

  “Yes, I agree, alas.” Disheartened, my lady sighed wearily. “Would to God we’d a closer hiding place. We’ve come so far … tried so hard. To be defeated now is cruelly hard!”

  MacTavish lifted his eyes and smiled at her. “I know of a closer place, ma’am. A place where the treasure can lie hid for as long as need be. And—I’ve a plan. ’Twill be chancy but—with luck, it just may work!”

  The next day was a greyness through which Fiona moved and spoke and even managed to eat a little, although she was so hurt and sick with grief that she could scarcely have felt more pain had Mathieson struck her. In some strange fashion she seemed quite cut off from her family and friends. She knew that they were all around her, that they spoke gently and lovingly, that in their way they strove to comfort her. But it was as if she existed in a glass cage with the windows faintly blurred so that nothing looked clear and voices came only dimly to her ears.

  She had waited all her life for the one, the true love. And love had come. But it had been a false love offered by a charming, handsome, deceitful gentleman whose eyes had held adoration, and whose heart was full of guile and greed. A savage who could stoop so low as to visit more suffering upon a helpless wounded fugitive, only for the sake of gold. A man who had been willing to hire murderers to track down the peerless and heroic Ligun Doone—thank God he had been circumvented in that wickedness!

  She sat in the caravan, staring blindly at the windows, seeing not the splashes of rain, for the weather had turned again, but a pair of dark, long-lashed eyes that could hold such a brilliant dance of laughter, or be soft as velvet with tenderness. She pressed shaking hands to her lips to hold back the sobs. It could not be true! It could not be! Yet every time she recalled some instance of valour or even heroism, his own words came back to haunt her.

  When they first had met and he’d saved Picayune, he had denied his bravery almost with indignation and said that his “‘cue was villainous melancholy.’” She smiled sadly and the tears slipped silently down her cheeks as she remembered him sitting there wrapped in the blanket, looking so far from heroic—yet so very dear, with his wet black hair curling about those superb features … How put out he had been when she’d told him it was funny to be wooed by “a real rake”; little had she known the depth of his depravity then. When he had saved the poor lady from the ducking stool he’d said that had he’d been alone, he’d have ridden away and left her to her fate … True, no doubt. Fiona sighed heavily. Always, he had spoken truth. And always, nobody had believed him …

  Someone was talking to her. A hand was taking her own, leading her from the caravan. Beth’s hand. How anguished dear Beth looked. How kind, to be so understanding. She managed a smile somehow and could not know how that pathetic travesty of her former bright beam wrung her cousin’s tender heart.

  She was mildly astonished to find it was dusk, and they had not yet left the little meadow. Her mind pondered it vaguely while she ate a few bites of something—heaven knows what. Gregor played his flute, and Heywood began to sing softly in his fine baritone. Fiona started and stared at him. “Oh,” she gasped, interrupting the song. “You are come back!”

  The others looked at each other, their troubled glances telling her she had been told of this and had not comprehended.

  Lady Clorinda took her hand. “They did not come up with Mathieson, my dear. He is likely miles away by now. I fancy we’ll not hear from him again until he lets us know what we must do to get the list back.”

  Soon, Fiona was sitting alone in the caravan again, thinking in that oddly detached way that he was safe. Beyond doubting, she should have wished he’d been caught. But she could not. Roland Mathieson had come into her life and brought an ecstatic happiness; a depth of love she had never dreamed would be hers. He was gone now. Out of her life forever, for he had never loved her as she loved him, and to leave her must have meant no more to him than to
change from riding clothes to evening dress. But whatever he was, however evil, in going, he had taken her heart with him, leaving her alone in a cold empty world, and she knew she would never love again.

  Despair engulfed her, and she wept until she fell asleep. Her next clear memory was of waking during the night and hearing the rain pounding down. They were moving once more. They must be crossing a bridge, for the wheels rumbled in an odd echoing way. They were slowing to a stop. She could no longer hear the rain, but the hollow rumbling continued. She heard her father’s voice call softly, “Shall we clear?” and Torrey’s answer, “By an inch, sir!” And after a minute, again, her father, “Godspeed! And go in His keeping!”

  Curious, she clambered from her bunk and hurried to peer from the back window. At first she thought they were in a tunnel. Then she saw a faint beam of light from a hooded lantern and was astonished to realize they had halted on a covered bridge, and barely scraping past them was a line of five caravans—five familiar caravans. She blinked, scarcely believing her eyes. They were the same caravans they had brought up from Gloucester! She gasped an astounded, “What on earth?”

  Lady Clorinda’s voice spoke in her ear. “We are trapped, dear. There are dragoons all around, and no possible way for us to escape.”

  Fiona gave a stricken little gasp as she turned to look into the small face that could seem proud and pretty, even framed by the beribboned nightcap. “Then—then Roland did betray us?”

  For an instant my lady hesitated. Then she said, “We cannot know that is certain. But—but this is our one hope.”