Carolina sighed. It was like this whenever they all got together. Complete confusion, no organization. She took the rope and handed it firmly to Reba. “Hang onto it,” she warned, “or you’ll drop me into the street for there’s not even ivy to cling to on that smooth brick front.” And that would be a drop of over twenty feet, for the English basement accounted for six feet, the ceilings of the first floor were twelve feet high and the window out of which Carolina was about to climb was more than two feet above the floor.
“Oh, you’re not really going to do it?” cried Clemency Dane, who was over her sulks and now felt guilty that her gossip might be the cause of Carolina’s death.
“We should all be allowed to decide our own manner of suicide,” quipped Madge, who was eager to learn if her contrived “periwig” passed the inspection of the town.
Carolina shrugged. She had never been afraid of heights. She was more afraid the girls would bungle it and drop her.
“At least it’s stopped snowing,” said Geraldine nervously. “I’m going to brush off the sill so Carol won’t get her clothes wet going over it.”
“Oh, don’t open the window ahead of time,” groaned Madge, who hated the outdoors, especially in winter. “You’ll freeze us!”
Reba gave Madge a derisive look. “Don’t you talk about freezing,” she said blithely. “Carol’s going out without a cloak and with no underwear!”
“Go ahead,” directed Carolina. “I’m ready.”
For a moment there was awed silence as Geraldine opened the window, brushed away the snow from the sill with her hands and turned with a hissed demand for a kerchief to dry it off.
The room had already turned cold and Madge had begun to shiver when Carolina swung a satin trouser leg over the sill and looked down at the icy street below. Suddenly this venture seemed very different from climbing some familiar tree where she could always stop if the ascent seemed too perilous. There was hard ice and harder cobbles below her, and a fall from this height could very well break her neck.
“I knew she’d be afraid to do it,” giggled Clemency as Carolina hesitated.
Those words were a goad to Carolina. She caught hold of the length of rope which all the girls were now holding as if in a tug of war and began to ease herself gingerly down the brick face of the building to the icy cobbles below.
There was a brief terrible moment when she went over the sill when the rope gave suddenly and she heard a concerted gasp from the girls above her. But they quickly adjusted to her weight. Madge and Reba at least had strong hands and two of the other girls stood plump as little pillars which helped balance Carolina’s weight as she was lowered down the face of the building.
Her hands felt damp and the cold struck her almost like a blow through the thin satin, but her grip on the rope was desperate. The tight binding across her breasts bothered her and interfered somewhat with her breathing, but she clung to the rope and concentrated on keeping the rough bricks from snagging or tearing her clothes during her descent.
There was a street light directly outside Mistress Chesterton’s front door and that light made Carolina’s descent glaringly apparent. But she had looked both ways before starting and had seen no one.
When she was halfway down, an elderly gentleman wearing a stocking cap came out of a house across the street and saw her—although Carolina did not, in her single-minded concentration on winning her way down to the cobbles alive, see him. The old gentleman paused in indignation. Young men boldly climbing in and out of the front windows of a girls’ school—what was the world coming to? Despite the hour, he was half of a mind to cross the street and wake up young Mistress Chesterton and tell her what he thought of her laxness! But even as he took a step forward a slide of snow from the roof above caught him and almost buried him in an avalanche of white. When he managed to brush off the snow and get his breath, the figure was gone, the rope had been hauled up and the window across the street was being hastily—and quietly— shut.
Half frozen and nearly wetted through by the fallen snow, the old gentleman shook the snow from his stocking cap, pulled it back down over his ears, and trudged forward shaking his head. The lad was gone, the virgin doubtless left deflowered, and when he happened to run across her would be time enough to tell Mistress Chesterton what he thought of the slipshod way she ran her elite establishment.
He trudged on down the icy street while around the corner a “young gentleman” in an ice green suit of most fashionable cut shivered along the shortest path to finding a hackney or a chair.
And now that she was out on the dark cold street alone, Carolina realized the folly of her endeavor. Around her the houses were dark and shuttered against the cold. Icicles hung glittering from the dark eaves. A pale moon was staring down at the city, uncaring what it saw. She’d be lucky if footpads did not leap upon her at this hour, and she’d be no match for them! “You really should have a small dress sword,” Reba had murmured, seeing her suited up like a fashionable young buck. Carolina had replied with perfect truth, “I would not know how to use one if I did!” But right now, despite her greenness with weapons, a small sword banging against her thigh would have given her comfort.
But she was in luck. Not two blocks from the school she found a hackney coach to take her to Lord Thomas’s town house—for despite anything little Clemmie might have said about Lord Thomas being a recent visitor at the Star and Garter, she meant to confront him where he lived!
A servant she remembered all too well sleepily answered the insistent bang at the door knocker, and stuck his head out, peering into the night.
Carolina counted on the indifferent light and her disguise to keep her identity secret. She struck a masculine pose. “I am a friend of Lord Thomas’s,” she said, speaking in as deep a voice as she could muster. “Is he about?”
“No, sir. He’s off to Northampton.”
“What? At this hour?” The exclamation was drawn from her, even though her heart sank. Lord Thomas had most likely been in London, then, since he had left Kent. . . .
The servant sighed. “If ye’re a friend of his lordship,” he said, shaking his gray head, “then ye know he starts out when it pleases him, whether it be night or day. Ye’ve missed him by perhaps half an hour.” Carolina felt suffocated when she asked the next question. The binding around her breasts was too tight, it stopped her breathing. “Do you think he might be stopping by the Star and Garter on his way there?” she managed to inquire most casually.
The old man grinned at her. “I see ye know his lordship’s ways. Aye, I think he might. I do think though”—he leaned forward conspiratorially—“that he may be stopping by to say goodbye to a lady before he leaves.”
A lady! Why, Lord Thomas could well be coming to see her, to throw a pebble at her window in the moonlight and wave her a goodbye on his way to Northampton!
“Do you know who the lady might be?” she heard herself ask.
The servant shook his gray head again. “His lordship does not tell me these things. They come, they go.” His shrug was expressive and Carolina felt her face coloring.
“But you’re of the opinion he may end up at the Star and Garter later for a throw of the dice?”
At so much knowledge of his lordship’s habits, the servant grew more confidential. “For a bit of play— yes.” His head lifted. “I think his lordship might be going by way of Mayberry Street,” he added vaguely. “But he said he’d be breakfasting elsewhere and he’d not return here till after the holidays.”
Mayberry Street! That was some distance away. It should give her time to reach the Star and Garter ahead of Lord Thomas. She could confront him there. No . . . she would melt into the crowd and observe him at the dice.
If she had known who waited for Lord Thomas at Mayberry Street, Carolina would have burned with indignation. For Lord Thomas had had instant success with Catherine Amberley and they had enjoyed three reckless nights together while her aunt was down with a cold. It was his actual intention to lu
re Catherine to the Star and Garter if possible and leave for Northampton from there—preferably rising from a warm bed occupied by an even warmer wench, to breakfast cozily, naked beneath the sheets, alongside her, and then begin his journey.
But the lush brunette had other plans. Even as Carolina directed her hackney driver to the Star and Garter, Catherine was ushering Lord Thomas—with a finger to her lips to command silence—into the front hall of the house on Mayberry Street. “My aunt is still suffering from her cold and the doctor has given her laudanum,” she whispered blithely. “She’ll be asleep soon and the servants will all be abed—we’ll have the house to ourselves till morning, Thomas!”
In the face of this delightful prospect, Lord Thomas promptly changed his plans. He sent his horse back to his own stable with his groom and directions to return to Mayberry Street and wait for him outside just before dawn. He would spend the night with luscious Catherine, breakfast at the Star and Garter, and then leave for Northampton.
But Carolina could not know she was on a hopeless quest. It was with excitement seething in her blood that she listened, shivering, to the clip-clop of the hooves of the hackney coach horses on the way to the Star and Garter. She was on her way to Thomas!
Outside the Star and Garter she alighted, paid the driver and took a deep shaky breath.
Before her lay the acid test: the inspection of the gentlemen wreathed in pipe smoke who would be lounging about the inn’s common room. But if she was going to learn the truth about Lord Thomas there was no point in hesitating. She swung the door wide and went in.
Inside the low-ceilinged common room Carolina paused and looked about her. The Star and Garter was crowded tonight, filled with smoke from long clay pipes, noisy from raucous discussion. The advent of one more young gentleman to swell the throng occasioned no notice.
Encouraged by that, for the masculine clothing she wore made her feel conspicuous and the tight gauze binding made her overconscious of her ripe young breasts, Carolina eased her way through the crowd. A quick glance around told her that Lord Thomas was not among the company and a dash of disappointment went through her. But she buoyed her spirits by telling herself that he was still saying goodbye to his friend in Mayberry Street (as indeed he was, between the sheets, and would be saying goodbye in his own fashion all night!). She was sure he would soon be coming through the doors. And, she hoped, alone! She tried to position herself so that she could view the door but all the seats seemed taken.
Then at a far corner of the room she saw a table set up for dicing and clustered around it a group of men. Her eyes gleamed. That table would be a sure lure for Lord Thomas, he would certainly stroll over to observe the play even if he arrived late intending to ride on and breakfast at some inn along the way. She would have a good view of the door from there too, for if Lord Thomas arrived with a woman she wanted to see him before he saw her. It would give her the edge on deciding what course to take—and with every moment that passed she grew more unhappily certain that Lord Thomas was indeed with a woman, that it had been a woman he was going to say goodbye to in Mayberry Street, and that he might well show up with that same woman dangling on his arm. And that woman would probably be the famous actress, Mistress Bellamy.
So, half right and half wrong in her speculations, but with alarm making her eyes bright and her step wary, Carolina drifted toward the table in the back where a little knot of men observed the players. Halfway there she had to jump back to avoid a fast-stepping, blue-aproned serving maid who sidled by laughing, carrying a large tray above her head. That jump backward nearly cost Carolina, for the loud talk of a pair of half-drunk young bucks in travel-stained clothes just behind her erupted suddenly into fury as both leaped up with their hands on their sword hilts. To Carolina’s intense relief—for she had stumbled almost between the warring parties—their friends promptly pulled them back down upon the wooden benches amid ribald remonstrances and calls for more ale.
The gaming corner was brightly lighted by comparison with the rest of the dim low-ceilinged room where smoke drifted blue among the rough hewn beams, for the wagers were large and the players intent on their game. Only two men among those crowded around that wooden table, set up for dicing, could be said to be truly sober. The rest were all in various stages of inebriation, ranging from drunkenly merry to completely sodden, for the holiday spirit had already pervaded London.
One of those two, a tall man in gray, had ridden hard to reach this inn and this table tonight. He had not even stopped to dine, but had tossed aside his snow-covered cloak, shaken the snow from his dark gray tricorne hat, and joined the players. Now the intentness of his expression was shadowed by the brim of that same hat, worn indoors as was the fashion. Its brim cast his lean face in shadow, allowing the candlelight from the wall sconces to play along a clean-shaven jawline of exceeding firmness. His thick dark hair, somewhat carelessly cut, was a bit too short for fashion in a day when men vied with each other in the size of periwigs that sat upon them like pagodas and streamed down over then-shoulders and backs. Had he been asked, he would have said wryly that the only thing that justified such a hairy monstrosity was a cold winter. His dark hair was very obviously his own and it fell thick and gleaming to a formidable pair of shoulders encased in dark gray broadcloth. Even the casual observer would have noted how his deep-chested frame tapered athletically to the waist, how narrow was his hip line and how long and muscular were the strong legs encased in dark gray broadcloth breeches, how light his step in his polished black jack boots. His cold gaze had briefly surveyed the company, flicked over the players with the sharpness of a sword cut, found his man, imprinted that face forever on his memory—and then he had joined in the play with all the fervor of a dedicated gambler, which he was not. For some minutes now his hard gray eyes had never left the dice—or the hands that threw them out to spin upon the table.
The other sober fellow at that table was shifty-eyed and clad in that particularly obnoxious shade of red known as puce. His name was Twist. He was by trade a gambler and he had drifted across Europe, fleecing inebriated young gentlemen where he found them— and leaving for the next town when his welcome was worn out. He spoke a polyglot of half a dozen languages but England was his home and he had drifted back mainly because of a foolish young gamester he had fleeced in Naples. Ruined, with no prospects, the lad had committed suicide and his uncles, guessing that Twist had won the lad’s fortune by means other than fair, had set a hired swordsman on his trail. Their paths had crossed in an alley on the Naples waterfront and it was only by luck—and a slippery mud puddle from a recent hard rain—that Twist had escaped with his life. He had run all the way to England, for surely an Englishman born and bred could hide easier there than in some European town where he would immediately attract comment as a “foreigner.” And he was back at his old ways, fleecing the unwary. Indeed he was riding high right now on what he had won only last week from a rash young gentleman from Colchester—an aspiring gamester who considered his “luck” invincible. Twist ate that kind for breakfast. Now he had a pocket full of gold and a strongbox upstairs half full of gold—mostly from that same young gentleman. Such a good haul it had been that Twist was thinking of moving on after tonight.
But tonight there was gold on the table, a crowd full of ale, and two reckless young bucks up from Hampshire for the holidays. One of them he had already broken, the other was losing steadily. Yes, after tonight he would move on. . . .
Carolina noted all of the players at a glance—and it was a pity someone knowledgeable at her elbow could not have briefed her about those two, Twist and the tall man with gray eyes, for between them they were to change her life.
THE STAR AND GARTER
LONDON, ENGLAND
December 1687
* * *
Chapter 10
With her radiant beauty, had she been dressed seductively in skirts, Carolina would have commanded everybody’s attention as she joined the group around the gaming table. But dress
ed as a youth, regardless of the elegance of her garb, the players were impatient at having her crowd in between them, and the man on her right—a heavyset individual wearing a gravy-stained pink coat—promptly shouldered her away.
“Give me room, lad, if ye’re not going to bet,” he grumbled and swept his elbow around so that it nearly grazed her tightly bound breast. Not used to such rude treatment, Carolina stepped nimbly back a pace. It put her out of position to view the door—that all important portal through which Lord Thomas might soon be striding. And to regain her place she fumbled with the coins in her pocket. Thank heaven her parents had sent her money for Christmas with instructions to “buy herself something pretty in London.” Her mother had suggested a ballgown, for “there will be plenty of balls, I promise you, when at last the house on the York is finished and we can move in!” Well, the money would go for something else now—perhaps she would even win! The idea exhilarated her. It would be very pleasant to have Lord Thomas arrive and see her scooping up a double handful of gold pieces from the table!
She wondered what she would say to him if he did come. It would be so obvious that she was now the pursuer—really, it would be very embarrassing. She almost wished she hadn’t come. Let him have the dashing Mistress Bellamy if he wanted her! Much she cared!
But in her heart she knew that she did care, and she felt that if she lost him she would weep forever. And besides, she could not be left dangling throughout the holidays—she must know.
So—what better way to appear dashing in Lord Thomas’s eyes than to be out on the town dressed as a young buck and winning at dice?
And all the while she was inwardly scolding herself. For it was inconceivable that Lord Thomas would pursue her so resolutely and then forget her in less than a fortnight!
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