“Miss Tolerance, I give you my word. The fan is significant only to me and my family.” His voice was as steady as the dark gaze which transfixed her; had he been perhaps a little less open, she would have trusted him more. As it was, Miss Tolerance recalled Lord Balobridge, and reminded herself that both these men were politicians, bred to persuade.
“Have you a contentious family, my lord?” she asked in the same even, sincere, and reasonable tones he had employed. “Is there no one of them that has reason to want the fan? I should hate to think you are telling me less than the full sum of the truth.”
“You are asking if I lie?” The earl’s countenance did not change, but his tone became pointedly formal. Miss Tolerance took this to mean she had scored a point. She prepared herself for the possibility that Versellion would shortly have thrown her out of the house. After a long moment, the tension she read in his face eased; he appeared to come to some decision.
“Miss Tolerance, I have perhaps gone about this business in the wrong way, but it touches upon my family honor, and upon public matters I had as lief keep quiet. I still do not believe that anyone in my family could be responsible for the dreadful events you mention—your friend’s death and the death of that poor woman. But … I have still your promise of discretion?”
Miss Tolerance assured him that he did. Versellion rose and began to pace up and down the length of the small room.
“These are perilous times, Miss Tolerance. Perhaps more so than you are aware. The war drags on, the effect on the economy is catastrophic, it would take so little—” He held up a hand as if to forestall interruption. “I am not preparing an oration, I promise. But there are events—”
“My lord, you are the second person in as many days to lecture me on the perils of our times. I understand it to mean you have no intention of telling me what I need to know. And as far as the events to which you allude—I assume you mean the Queen’s illness?—unless you are prepared to tell me what your fan can possibly have to do with the matter, I am not prepared to be put off by their mention.”
“What have you heard of the Queen’s illness?”
“Very little, in fact, sir. Only that she was ill—an apoplectic stroke, I believe. And nothing since that time.”
He sighed. “I suppose it was inevitable that it would get out. But not yet, damn it. Miss Tolerance, I will be as forthcoming as I can, but I pray you will tell no one what I tell you. The Queen’s life is despaired of; if she lives, she will not be fit to rule. The King is old, blind, fitfully foolish. There will have to be another Regent chosen, and it’s a matter of some moment to my party and the Tories as to whom that will be. I spent the morning canvassing for votes, and this afternoon at Carlton House talking to His Highness—”
“Wales? But his marriage removed him from the succession.”
“It did.” Versellion sat again, speaking as if he were rehearsing his thoughts aloud: upon the Duke of York’s death, the Duke of Clarence became heir apparent. But Clarence, quarreling often with the Queen Regent, had been wholly compromised by his mistress; he had ten bastard children and not one legitimate heir. By comparison, Wales, a widower with two legitimate children whose greatest crime had been to marry a Catholic widow, and whose worst excesses had been curbed by his late wife, was a far more savory choice. Both parties were in a race to secure the Prince’s assurance of support—the Tories because they were in power, the Whigs because they were not. The Whigs were able to pursue the Prince with reminders of his old support for their ideals, and his friendship with Charles Fox. “But many of my party are for ending the war; the Prince stands with his mother in this, that Bonaparte must be stopped. As it happens, so do I.”
“As it happens, so do I,” Miss Tolerance agreed. “But the fan, sir?”
“If Wales sides with my party and we are able to return him to the succession and make him Regent, it is almost a certainty that I will take the ministry. I do not doubt that the Tories would like to discredit me and leave my party with no one whose war aims are sympathetic with the Prince’s.”
“And the fan? How could a thing which has been boxed away for twenty years cause your party trouble? I was approached by someone—of the opposition—who was uncommonly interested in the fan.”
“Was it my cousin Henry?” Versellion asked.
“Folle?” Miss Tolerance asked blankly, nearly startled into disclosure. “No, it—it was not Sir Henry Folle, sir.”
“And you will not say who?” Versellion asked.
At this interesting moment the butler entered. A messenger had arrived from the city. Versellion made no show of disinterest; he snatched the note from the proffered tray, broke the seal, and read it forthwith.
“Things move apace. His Highness has asked me to return to talk again. Miss Tolerance, I pray you a thousand pardons, but I must go back to London at once. Before I take my leave, may I have the fan?” He held out his hand. “I know we have a further reckoning, you and I. Perhaps tomorrow you can bring me an accounting of your expenses and I can discharge them, and your fee? And I promise, I will answer any other questions you care to put to me at that time.”
Trumped by the Prince of Wales, Miss Tolerance knew better than to resist. She took the fan from her pocket and placed it in Versellion’s outstretched hand. He looked at it for a long moment, then put it in his own pocket and looked out the window.
“The rain has stopped, I see, and there is half a moon. I have ridden to Town in worse circumstances. If you mean to return to Town tonight, Miss Tolerance, I would be happy for your company—but I intend to keep a stiff pace.”
Miss Tolerance dreaded the likely atmosphere of Mrs. Brereton’s establishment, but she was no more eager to stay in the guise of a man at some inferior country inn. She thanked the earl for his suggestion.
Night had fallen, and while it was not very late and there was still some traffic upon the Richmond road, there were stretches where it was only the two of them, riding side by side at a brisk canter. If Miss Tolerance had hoped for further conversation about the fan and its seekers, she was disappointed. The speed with which they rode precluded discussion. As Miss Tolerance was unaccustomed to riding with speed over such ground, she soon found her attention required to guide her horse through the shadows and past the holes that peppered the road. Versellion sat his own mount with the air of one familiar and comfortable with the route. Thus, between Miss Tolerance’s attention to the road and Lord Versellion’s familiarity, neither one was prepared when a man stepped into the road with pistols raised.
The highwayman had timed his appearance to a nicety, giving them no time to turn aside. As the riders came to a halt, two more men scrambled up the embankment toward them. These carried no pistols, but both had swords drawn. One of them stepped up to Versellion, the other to Miss Tolerance, with their hands held out for the reins.
Miss Tolerance spoke quietly. “Please don’t take the horse, sir. ’Tisn’t mine, and I cannot afford to pay the owner for it.” She tried to sound like a nervous schoolboy, and the dark aided her imposture.
The man with the pistols turned his eye to Miss Tolerance. “You may ride on if you like, boy—we’ve no quarrel with you. But if you go, you ride like hell and don’t look back. It’s as easy to kill two as one.” He approached Versellion and put his hand up, apparently to take the valuables he was about to demand. Then, startlingly, he grabbed the earl’s coat and pulled him off the saddle and onto the grassy verge. The man slapped at Versellion’s horse and watched it canter off. “Ride like hell, boy,” he said again.
“Like hell,” Miss Tolerance agreed, and kicked out with one foot. The toe of her boot caught the man nearest her neatly under the chin, depriving him of breath as he was thrown backward and down the embankment. She did not stop to see whether he was conscious or no; Versellion, on the ground, was grappling with the man with the pistol as the other man stood dumbly there, apparently stunned into immobility by what he found himself part of. Miss Tolerance drew
her sword and swept the pommel, backhanded, into the back of his head. The man dropped heavily, raising a cloud of dust in the moonlight.
Versellion was on one knee, wrestling for possession of the pistol. His opponent was distracted when his companion fell to the road, and Versellion took advantage of the moment to grab the pistol and toss it to the side of the road, where it released its charge—by some miracle not into any of them upon the road.
For a moment it seemed as if matters were in hand, and Miss Tolerance advanced to assist the earl with his attacker. But then she was grabbed from behind, her arms pinned behind her: the man she had knocked down the embankment had returned to the fray. Unaided, Versellion continued to fight, so closely positioned to the man that neither he nor his attacker could draw their swords. Their fight was an ugly thing of tumbling blows.
In Miss Tolerance’s ear she heard her assailant’s growl, “Christ, Jerry, finish it! There’s no money if he lives. I’ll do for the boy.” The man tightened his grip with one hand, reaching, Miss Tolerance assumed, for a knife with the other. Uninterested in having her throat slit, Miss Tolerance brought her boot heel down hard on her attacker’s instep. The man loosed his hold just enough so that she could pull free. As she turned, she took up the sword she had dropped when she was captured, but in that moment the man had recovered himself and taken up his own sword. Hoping that Versellion could fend for himself while she dispatched her foe, Miss Tolerance engaged her attacker. For the next few minutes she was very busy; her opponent attacked with a savage slash to her shoulder, then attempted to drive her backward with a rain of cuts. He had the advantage in weight, Miss Tolerance in speed and training. Still, it took several minutes for her to land a deep cut on his left arm.
Versellion, who had broken away from his opponent and taken up the pistol, now moved to Miss Tolerance’s side.
“Give it up, boys,” he advised the highwaymen breathlessly. “You’ll get nothing from us tonight.”
The wounded man looked as though these were words he might heed, but the other, Jerry, spat at Versellion’s feet. “The charge is gone. Might as well aim your boot at me, Your Lordship.” Animated by the thought, the wounded man lunged past Miss Tolerance, aiming to run Versellion through. With no time for a neater job, she beat his sword away and drove her own into his side. The man folded over at once. Miss Tolerance had to brace her foot against his leg to pull her blade free again. When she turned back, the leader, Jerry, had leapt down the embankment, abandoning his companions cold-bloodedly.
Miss Tolerance surveyed the scene before her: one man crumpled at her feet, alive but badly bloodied, and another man still lying in the dust where her blow had put him. Her own horse still stood placidly in the midst of what a moment before had been a battleground, and Versellion’s mount some hundred feet along the road, cropping grass upon the verge.
“It seems I am in your debt again, Miss Tolerance,” the earl said. His breath still came raggedly, and even in the moonlight she could tell that his color was high. Miss Tolerance suspected that he had enjoyed the fight.
“A pleasure to have been of service, my lord,” Miss Tolerance said lightly. “If you will take my advice, we will not linger here. It might put you in further danger.”
“Further danger? Surely we won’t encounter two sets of highwaymen in an evening.”
“Not highwaymen, sir.” Miss Tolerance looped the reins to her own horse around one wrist and led it down the road, directing the earl to follow and collect his own mount. “Did any of them ask for your purse, your watch? Surely you heard what the leader said?”
Versellion shook his head and admitted he had given more attention to the pistol than the man holding it.
“First the man told me to run and not look back, for they had no quarrel with me. Then he said they could as easily kill two as one. Do you not infer from that that their task was a specific one: to kill you?”
The earl blinked. “Perhaps one of them had a grudge—”
“‘There’s no money in it if he lives,’” Miss Tolerance quoted. “These men held no grudge, sir. They were paid to kill you. I wonder how they knew where to find you.”
The earl and Miss Tolerance stood beside their horses now. A groan from down the road where their assailants still lay reminded Miss Tolerance that this was not the place to linger, and they mounted their horses and turned toward London again. “We can send aid back to them from the next inn,” Versellion suggested.
Miss Tolerance nodded, but her mind was busy with thoughts she suspected her companion would find unwelcome. At last she asked, “Do you think it is wise to return to London tonight, sir?”
“Wise? The Prince has desired to see me. As matters stand, I cannot refuse such a command.”
“I see.” Miss Tolerance thought for a moment. “Who would know you had been summoned to London?”
“My people at Richmond who knew I was returning to the City. The man who wrote the note. Perhaps the courier who brought it. His Highness, of course.”
“I think we can leave the Prince out of our calculations for the moment,” Miss Tolerance said. “Are you sure of your people, sir?”
“Sure?” Versellion, accustomed to political intrigue, paused to consider the idea that one of his servants might be in the pay of an enemy. “What you suggest … I pay my servants well enough that they should be able to resist bribes, Miss Tolerance.”
“There are, of course, other motives for betrayal than money,” Miss Tolerance suggested. But she could see the earl was unwilling to consider such a thing. She tried another tack. “If I may ask, sir—please remember my discretion in this matter is complete—what did the note you received say?”
The earl smiled. “I trust you, Miss Tolerance. But the note said very little, simply that His Royal Highness wanted to talk and desired my return to London.”
“In those words, sir?”
“Exactly?” Versellion shook his head. “I believe the words were, ‘He needs to speak again, this evening.’”
“And that was sufficient to bring you back from Richmond?” Miss Tolerance’s eyebrows rose. “No specifics, no names, no—”
“Miss Tolerance, at this moment there is only one He in the kingdom: Wales. This is, as I said earlier, a dangerous time. Specifics and names are the things one strives not to put in such a missive.”
“But you are sure who sent it.”
“His secretary, I assume,” Versellion said blankly. “Who else would do so?”
Miss Tolerance felt a moment of fulminating outrage. “There was no crest on the paper? No seal? No signature? Nothing to suggest that the message was not a joke on the part of your bootblack, but from the household of the Prince of—”
Versellion held up his hand. “Please, Miss Tolerance, I admit I did not think to look for a seal—”
Miss Tolerance nodded without satisfaction. “You cannot be certain of your servants, you do not know for a surety from whom the message came or whether it truly was a summons from His Highness, and we do not know how many accomplices our friend with the pistols may have waiting on the road to London. I don’t think you should continue onward.”
“I must go. I was summoned—”
“By someone who may or may not have been speaking for Wales. Was that message in the character of every other message you have received from Carlton House?”
“There have not been so many that …” Versellion stopped and considered. At last he whistled a long, low note. “Damn. Damn it, you’re right. It was only the urgency of the summons that kept me from questioning it. I rode straight into a trap.”
“I very much fear that you did, sir. You should not go forward to London. And I misdoubt that a return to Richmond is a good idea, either.”
“Well, then, where the devil can I go?” The earl was beginning to assume the familiar aspect of a much-tried man. “If I cannot decide whom to trust, I cannot think of a place to go.”
Miss Tolerance stood in her stirrups, surveying
the night-shadowed landscape to the north. “Perhaps, my lord, you need, then, to go to a place away from your usual haunts, where you are unknown.” She turned back to the earl. “I believe I may have a solution—a place where no one would think to look for you.”
Níne
The Briary Arms was located northwest of London by some twenty miles, at an inconvenient distance from the Birmingham road. It was a hostelry as undistinguished as its name, little more than a public house with a few tiny rooms upstairs; the village of which the inn formed the center was no more than a tidy cluster of cottages and an old graystone church. An hour past midnight, a half-moon provided the only illumination on fields, hedges, and cottages along the road; in the village itself, no single light burned. It was just so that Miss Tolerance had last seen the town, on the occasion of her elopement. Riding through the moon-frozen landscape, she was filled with gladness and a sudden strong wish to hear news of all her old friends. The only part of the town which did not beckon to her was the manor itself, which she associated only with acrimony and banishment. In all the years, she had never come back, never intended to come back. Until this night. After all, no one would think to find the Earl of Versellion in Briarton. And no one who knew her would ever imagine Miss Tolerance returning there of her own will.
The landlord of the Briary Arms had stumbled downstairs in response to her merciless knocking, his musket clutched in one hand and his nightcap hanging well off the back of his head. It had taken him more than a moment to understand who the insistent fellow at his doorway really was—then Miss Tolerance had been pulled inside, examined, and embraced with exclamations of delight which lasted until the innkeeper realized what Miss Tolerance was asking.
“Miss Sarah, ‘f it were up to me, I’d give my own chamber to you,” the man protested. “But your brother holds my lease, and his orders—and your dad’s before him—was plain. If he found I’d been harborin’ of you …” There was no need to finish the sentence.
Point of Honour (Sarah Tolerance) Page 14
