by Laura London
The highwayman took a hasty step backward and shook his head emphatically. “Oh, no! Here, child, put that thing back on your finger before you drop it! ’Twould be the devil to find it in the dark. We don’t want your baubles. Lord knows, we’d never even have stopped the coach if we’d known there’d be women in it. Thing is, we saw the crest and thought that Melbrooke’d be traveling within. Well, what I mean is, it’s fair game to hold up a fine swordsman like Melbrooke, but the lads and I wouldn’t touch things belonging to a lady.”
“Dunno ’bout that,” mumbled the highwayman who had yanked open the door. “Wouldn’t touch nothin’ o’ the tall, pretty one’s, but Oi wouldn’t mind to lift the gee-gaws o’ the little feisty one. A proper sauce-bucket she is!”
“Well, if that doesn’t beat the Yankees!” flashed Lynden, bridling. “You are the most uncivil robbers I’ve ever met! It is one thing to hold us up, shooting your pistols off in that irresponsible manner, but it is quite another to force us to stand in the night’s chill listening to your insults! Also, it’s all very well to say that you don’t hold up women, but could you not have anticipated that there might have been women traveling in Melbrooke’s coach?”
“Aye,” said the slender man before her, shaking his head in rueful self-reproach. “I ought to have thought of that, especially when you consider his success with the ladies.” He walked to Lorraine and took her pretty chin lightly in his gloved hand. “And I must say, I admire his taste. What a beauty you are, sweeting. Though I had thought Melbrooke’s mistress was a blonde, which shows you how rumor can lie.”
The artless and almost avuncular delivery of this speech caused a slight delay in Lorraine’s comprehension of its precise meaning, but it in no way weakened the strength of her reaction. The last days had been difficult for her; she had a painful awareness of her sister’s misery. There had been the flurried excitement of the wedding that morning, and then the long carriage ride culminating in the current frightening ordeal. Whether it was the shocking implications of the highwayman’s words or the unexpected caressing gesture of his hand on her chin, Lorraine felt her temperature plummet sharply and she knew with humiliating certainty that she was going to faint. She gave a soft sigh as the strength left her knees and she swayed forward limply into the highwayman’s arms.
“Rainey!” cried Lynden. “Oh, my poor Rainey! Have you caught her up firmly? Please hold her carefully! Oh, yes, that’s good, you know to support her head! How dreadful! Sir, you cannot know how poor Rainey hates herself when she swoons. You see, our mother is the most dreadful hypochondriac and Lorraine worries, I think, that she inherited Mama’s weakness. Though, of course, that’s nonsense! Oh, yes, bring her into the coach out of the wind. Thank you. Wait, let me fix this pillow. So!”
An interior flambeau spread a golden stream of weak light through the carriage. Lynden watched anxiously as the highwayman laid her sister carefully amongst the furs and saw with approval that he took great pains not to jar or bump Lorraine’s unconscious form.
“Haven’t you any… What are those things females are always carrying around?” He fumbled for the word. “Smelling salts! Have you any of those?”
“Yes!” answered Lynden. “In the portmanteau beside Mr. Coniston.”
He nodded and made as if to leave the carriage. “I’ll find them.”
“No, you can’t,” stated Lynden flatly. “The portmanteau is filled with… items of a personal feminine nature. I shall get the smelling salts.”
The bemused highwayman found himself alone in the coach interior, his arms supporting the most beautiful woman he’d ever held. He drew a plush fur across her body, gently untied and removed her bonnet, and loosened her cloak about her neck. He saw that she still clutched the offered pearl ring in one tightly closed white hand; he carefully uncurled her gripping fingers and slipped the ring back onto its proper place on her finger. It alarmed him that she lay so still, and he tried softly to rub some color back into her blanched, smooth cheeks.
Lorraine returned to consciousness with a distressed whimper. She lifted her head and looked about, starting in fright at the sight of the masked figure leaning over her.
“No, love, don’t be frightened, it’s only a mask,” said the highwayman softly. He pulled down the kerchief to reveal his face. “See, dear, I’m an ordinary fellow, after all.”
Lorraine blinked in the dim light and his face came slowly into focus; the light was too diffuse and shadowed to perceive colors, but the form was there, the contours as clean and attractive as its owner’s voice. It was a marvelous face, with high cheekbones and a gracefully bridged nose. The mouth was wide and sensitive, the corners curled slightly in a smile. His hair was long and as dark as her own. He was so near that she could smell its crisp, healthy fragrance. She wondered briefly and without fear whether his right eye was patched to answer the demands of disguise or deformity and decided that he was so perfectly made otherwise that it did not matter.
“Better now?” he asked her, his finger light against her cheek.
“Yes. I—I fainted? I’m sorry for it. But where is Lynden?”
“Lynden. The hot-blooded brat with the curls? She’s outside hunting through her undergarments for smelling salts. And the fainting was my fault. I shouldn’t have handled you so roughly. I fear my manners are better suited to the taproom than the presence of ladies. I make you my apologies, Little Delight.”
She turned her face away from him, the soft white lines of her profile resting against the sable blanket. The weak interior light caught in the dense warmth of her long eyelashes, so thick and silky that they appeared to have been plucked from the sable.
“I accept your apology,” she whispered, “but pl-please, you mustn’t address me in that manner.”
“Mustn’t?” replied the highwayman softly. “Aye, but you needn’t worry, I haven’t forgot that you belong to Melbrooke, though it would be easy enough to do. Lord knows, you’re soft on the eyes.”
A soft “whish” of velvet on velvet and a draft of sharp night air indicated Lynden’s return to the coach during the highwayman’s last speech.
“What a flirtatious tongue,” said Lynden tartly as she climbed inside. “You ought to try your hand at writing syrup sonnets instead of robbing coaches. You could hardly do worse than this, and if you were brought to book, you wouldn’t be hanged unless it were by the literary critics. Raine, I’m so glad you’ve waked up. I couldn’t find the salts, and then I remembered I’d thrown them out at the last minute because having them along reminded me too much of Mother.” She brushed past the highwayman to sit on the edge of the seat near her sister, then looked up at him. “Oh, and I’ve a message from your rascally friends outside. They say they’re clearing that brush barricade away from the carriage path and then they’re leaving, so you’d better come along and be off with them. Which advice I heartily echo.”
The highwayman reluctantly drew his gaze away from Lorraine’s lovely profile and grinned at Lynden. “Do you, hornet? Well then, I’m off. Tell Melbrooke not to come and hunt me down. I haven’t harmed you.”
“That,” said Lynden sharply, “is a matter of debate. And let me tell you one thing more before you leave. Mister Highwayman. About your wicked, detestable insinuations. My sister, Lorraine is not Lord Melbrooke’s—that is to say, Lord Melbrooke and my sister are not—are not…”
The highwayman’s smile widened. “Is ‘mistress’ the euphemism you’re stumbling for? Lord, child, spit it out. I won’t tell your mother.”
“Very well then, mistress!” returned Lynden with dignity. “And Lorraine isn’t Lord Melbrooke’s… Lorraine isn’t Lord Melbrooke’s anything. Because it is I…”
“It is?” said the highwayman, quirking an eyebrow quizzically. “I wouldn’t have thought—though you’re pretty enough but… what did you do, lock your sister in the closet ’til you had your man leashed?”
Lynden answered this sally with a glare that might have sent a lesser man to bed i
n his britches. “Before you continue making vulgar jests, I think you ought to know that I am Lady Melbrooke! Lord Melbrooke and I were married this morning,” announced Lynden frigidly, suppressing a very unladylike urge to add “so there.” She noted with satisfaction that she had at last succeeded in impressing the fellow. He gave a low, surprised whistle.
“Truly? It must have been a late moment match, then. And Silvia waiting in her castle, itching like a first-skin snake to be at Melbrooke, by all accounts… I wouldn’t be in his shoes for twice his fortune!”
Lynden’s satisfaction evaporated abruptly. She studied the highwayman, her brows knitted, and asked, “Who’s Silvia?”
“Don’t you know, then, little hornet? Here’s innocence!” The highwayman’s handsome countenance became a study in contrite dismay. “If ever there was an addlepated gabblemonger, I’m he! I shouldn’t have said anything—but Lord, wherever you’re from, well, the gossip must be staler than the dark side of the moon. Still, the Bard of the Lakeland is a master catch. Your people must have baited a devilish cunning trap!”
Since this last remark was not only highly unflattering, but also far too close to the unhappy truth, it was not surprising that Lynden lost the final tatters of her temper. “You—why, you are the horridest, rudest person I’ve ever met! Including my cousin, Elmo, and he’s so ill-behaved that Aunt Sophronia has been forced to hire a former prizefighter as his tutor! You can say what you like about me, at least I’m a Christian citizen. I don’t go about robbing and insulting folk at night on the King’s Highways!”
“Well, you shouldn’t be about at all at night on the King’s Highways,” retorted the highwayman, giving a quick, teasing tweak to one dark soft curl escaping Lynden’s bonnet. “Ain’t safe, child, and so I’ll bet you were told before you decided to give a drop by to the Jerneaux Abbey. It’s my belief that you’re a ballad that likes to compose itself. Learn prudence, hornet. It’s best to have a care. The nights are full of rogues!” He smiled at her again, and cast a brief, almost wistful glance at Lorraine before leaving the coach. The sisters heard the brisk tempo of his retreating footsteps as he rejoined his companions, and the highwaymen melted into the forest’s thick blue shadows.
Chapter Five
“As every English schoolboy knows,” claimed the guide book, “Fern Court is the residence of our Poet Supreme, Lord Melbrooke. The graceful stone-and-timber dwelling nests within the fair bosom of Westmorland in the peaceful dale below the awesome crags of Loughrigg Fell. Few pleasure-travelers care to brave the Lakeland winters; those who stream to the site in summer hoping to glimpse Lord Melbrooke en reverie beneath an ancient oak, or on a contemplative walk through the fellside, will be disappointed; the poet is in residence at Fern Court only during the winter season. However, summer tourists making the pilgrimage thence will be well rewarded for their efforts, for the surrounding aspect of dour cliffs with their gaily throbbing brooks and the nearby sparkling mirror of Grasmere Lake are sights that will at once humble and uplift the visitor.”
Contrary to the guide book’s pronouncements, the twins arrived at Fern Court more quietly depressed than either humbled or uplifted. The author of the invaluable guide book would have been disappointed to know that they attributed their melancholia to the stern lecture delivered to them by the coachman on the imprudence of their behavior with the highwayman, rather than to the disobliging darkness that prevented their viewing the surrounding aspect.
The carriage made a slow, rocky descent down a potholed mountain pass and into a valley; then, suddenly, the coachman pulled the carriage neatly through a right-angled turn and the road became smooth. Lorraine commented that they must have entered Melbrooke property; only a private roadway could be so well maintained. Lynden drew back the leather curtain and opened the carriage window to peer into the darkness. For a while she could see only the occasional blur of a roadside fir tree as it caught the coach’s flambeau. Restless black shadows filled the distance as the coach entered a thicket and then a clearing. Now, some one hundred yards ahead, Lynden could see the groping form of a long, two-story building, its many windows glowing into the night like staring cats.
“Fern Court,” whispered Lynden.
Lorraine looked over her sister’s shoulder.
“But, Lynnie, he said it was small, didn’t he?” she said wonderingly. “And it’s twice the size of Downpatrick Hall. Why, I shouldn’t wonder if we found it had twenty bedrooms! If Lord Melbrooke thinks Fern Court is small… Lord Melbrooke must be fiercely rich!”
“Well,” said Lynden, tossing her head and trying bravely to swallow her awe, “if he thinks that I shall be intimidated by his fortune, he’s wrong!” She was silent a moment and then added hopefully, “Perhaps it’s shabby inside.”
But shabby it was not. Lord Melbrooke had called the furnishings “old-fashioned” and it was true that their style proclaimed their age as some fifty years—but old-fashioned? Fern Court had been furnished from the sketchbook of Adam and bore the style of the Neoclassical Revival. Not a table, nor a chair, nor a bookcase existed that was not gracefully formed and delicately detailed. Indeed, as Lynden entered the warm, walnut-paneled foyer, she saw before her a demilune pier table so enriched with gold inlay that she was sure it must be worth more than all the furnishings of Downpatrick Hall together.
They were met in the foyer by a tall, pretty woman in her thirties. Clad in a neat brown frock, she wore her light hair in a tidy chignon. Her green eyes were warm with maternal concern.
“There, come in now, bonnies. And you must be Lady Melbrooke,” she said, taking Lynden’s hand. “How cold your hands feel! I’m Mrs. Coniston, Lord Melbrooke’s housekeeper. Such a grand surprise it was to hear that My Lord took it upon himself to marry!” She busied herself taking the girls’ wraps, stacking the wintry capes in the arms of the diminutive chambermaid standing behind her. “And this must be Miss Lorraine, isn’t it? Such rosy cheeks! It’s been cold this night, indeed.” She looked behind the girls, her gaze meeting with the coachman’s, who had followed them in and stood near the door stamping his feet. “And how is my John tonight?” she said to him. “Lady Melbrooke, Miss Lorraine, you’ve met my husband, Mr. Coniston, of course, as he drove you here. But how late you’ve come! We were beginning to fear some misadventure.”
“Aye, May, there’s been a bit of an incident,” answered her husband, stripping the heavy leather gloves from his hands. “That’s why I’ve put th’ grooms to carin’ for m’ horses whiles I come in t’ talk t’ His Lordship. I must tell him myself what’s passed on the lanes here tonight and the explainin’ wouldn’t wait ’til to-morn. But first thing is to put these lasses before a fire. They must be fair chilled from the ride.”
Mrs. Coniston gazed anxiously at her husband and gave his hand a quick squeeze before ushering the twins into a spacious drawing room, its walls hung in a soft golden cloque silk. The chairs and side tables were decorated in polychrome designs painted on a cream ground, and faced a generous marble fireplace, its chimneypiece carved in bands of honeysuckle ornament. Fanciful paintings of mythological subjects were tastefully arranged along the walls; there was one small aureate portrait of a lovely plump lady at her bath that Lorraine reverently identified as a Rubens.
Mrs. Coniston pulled a cushioned bench with out-scrolled sides in front of the fireplace and invited the twins to sit down. She then turned to the attendant housemaid. “Jill, please have the footmen carry the luggage to the rooms we’ve prepared—I shall be up to assist with the unpacking in a moment—and have Cook send up tea for the ladies. Oh, and you may inform Lord Melbrooke that Her Ladyship and her sister have arrived.”
“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Coniston,” said Melbrooke, entering the room on her words. He was formally dressed for evening, Lynden noted that he must have arrived well enough in advance of them to have had time to change his riding clothes. She could not avoid the rather rueful reflection that if he had been worried by her late arrival, he certainl
y gave no sign of it.
Melbrooke favored the room’s occupants with a remote, yet charming, smile, nodded kindly to Lorraine and crossed over to Lynden, taking her hand for a welcoming kiss that brought an odd little skip in her heartbeat.
The twins sat listening guiltily while Mr. Coniston told Lord Melbrooke the story of their journey, not omitting Lynden’s insistence on the inadvisable stop at Jerneaux Abbey. Melbrooke made no comment until Mr. Coniston related that Miss Lorraine had swooned. The poet’s expression had hardened and he looked down at Lorraine’s fire-flushed cheeks. “As Mr. Coniston couldn’t hear your conversation with the highwayman, perhaps you would care to tell me what he said to you?” The words were gently said, but imperative.
Lorraine sent one quick, scared glance to her sister and stared fixedly at the tips of her kid boots.
“He was horrid and… familiar,” said Lynden vehemently. “Lorraine and I don’t want to talk about it! And if you mean to give us a bear-garden jaw about stopping at the abbey or about the imprudence of letting the highwayman carry Lorraine into the coach, let me tell you that Mr. Coniston already has! You may as well know that I am not very much in the mood to be lectured any further!” She looked challengingly at her husband.
“Yes,” said Melbrooke, with what Lynden regarded as maddening calm. “So I observe. I’m not trying to harry you, Lynden. But I think that even though nothing was taken, we should send a groom into Keswick tomorrow to report what happened. It appears that you and Lorraine were close enough to identify this man. Can you describe him?”
