Raven's Ransom

by Hayley Ann Solomon

  “You are teasing, sir! I cannot possibly present myself to be married in a shift.” Armand wanted to murmur that he could hardly think of any garment more suitable, but he manfully held his tongue.

  “Then I shall suffer agonies and return for you at sunset, tomorrow.”

  Daisy’s eyes sparkled. “This is exactly like a fairy tale! Grandfather will be spitting mad!”

  “You sound pleased. Is he such an ogre, Lord Raven?”

  “No, he only pretends to be one. He can growl quite prodigiously, but he is the greatest honey that ever lived.”

  “Yet you are pleased that he shall be angry.”

  Miss Chartley waved her hands airily. “Oh, naturally! Grandfather’s favorite activity is gnashing his teeth and growling about something or other. It keeps his wits sharp. This shall keep him amused for an age!”

  Lord Armand Valmont pondered, for a moment, whether he really, truly wanted to be a source of such questionable happiness.

  Deciding he did, he nevertheless could not resist asking a fairly natural question, under the circumstances.

  “I suppose it amuses him enormously to partake in duels, and suchlike?”

  “When he was young, he ran two people through with the tip of his rapier. He can tell some frightful tales!”

  Lord Valmont sighed, resigned to his hideous fate. “How fascinating. I must swap anecdotes, sometime.”

  Daisy’s eyes sparkled. Lord Armand Valmont, heir to the seventh earldom of Westenbury, could not help noticing that they widened, too. He felt his pulses race in a most ungentlemanly fashion and did nothing whatsoever to stop them. The sensation, he found, was worth the small trouble he might have convincing Lord Raven that he was something more than a common felon. He considered, for a moment, informing Daisy, too, but feared that would be a mistake. He might fall too dramatically in her estimation to make a suitable recovery before sunset the following night.

  “You must have some fearful tales to tell.”

  “You will shiver in your shoes.”

  Lord Valmont refrained from reflecting that the most fearsome tale he had yet to tell was the time he acted as an intrepid second to young Viscount Rigsby, who had rather foolishly challenged Lord Ashburn to a duel while in his cups. The outcome had had hilarious consequences, but none, he feared, that would appeal to Daisy’s rather bloodthirsty imagination. He would have a fine time dreaming up satisfactory heroics to please his bride. Still, the effort, he felt, was worth it.

  The night was growing subtly lighter, but the cold still bit into him sharply.

  “Alas, my Daisy, the dawn is breaking. I must be swift as the wind, or a horrible fate awaits me.”

  “Hanging?” Daisy shuddered uncomfortably. Horrible deaths were all very well in Gothic romances. She had a rather nasty suspicion that she wanted them to stay between the pages.

  Lord Armand watched her as closely as he could from two stories below. He hoped he noted a glimmer of doubt in her soulful eyes. It would be very trying indeed to get himself hanged, drawn, and quartered for her ghoulish edification. He rather hoped that her tender nature, for all its love of the dramatic, would prevail.

  It did.

  “Fly at once. I shall not sleep a wink until I know you are safe. Oh, please, please, kind sir, can you not give up this wandering life? I shall live in daily dread, else, and that would be horridly uncomfortable, I am sure.”

  His lordship had difficulty choking back a delighted chuckle. “Horridly uncomfortable” was just the type of understatement that endeared her to him. He was just relieved that she was not going to expect a caped rider for a spouse except, perhaps, on special occasions. Life, otherwise, might prove awkward. He could not immediately think of a precedent for coach-robbing earls clad in powder black.

  “For you, my love, I shall forsake all! Henceforth, I shall no longer be a highwayman and I shall bestow my name upon some other, less fortunate villain. Barnacle Jack shall disappear forever, vanquished only by a lady with an impossible twinkle in cornflower eyes!”

  Daisy clasped her hands to her exceptionally delightful breast. My lord was not yet sufficiently reformed to avert his gaze as possibly he should have done. On the contrary, his stare became so fixed that poor Miss Daisy was cast, once again, into a pretty confusion that arrested my lord still further. Sunset tomorrow could not come, in his estimation, soon enough.

  “What shall I call you, then?” Her voice was suddenly shy.

  “I?” His voice deepened, for he could not playact on a matter of such inscrutable importance. “You shall call me Armand.”

  “Armand?” She tested it on her tongue. “It is romantic!”

  “That is fortunate, for it is my birth name.” He refrained from telling her it was only one of a string of several more boring Christian names. He felt that Henry, Mortimer, James Garcia, eighth Viscount Valmont and heir to the seventh earldom of Westenbury lost something in the telling. His mother, French by origin, had insisted firmly that “Armand” be tacked on somewhere in this litany, and in truth, it had been as “Armand” he had become known all through his boyhood.

  “What shall you do, if you give up this wild life?”

  “I shall spend my days loving and adoring you.”

  Daisy dimpled. “Silly man! Perhaps you shall have the Raven’s Ransom.”

  “Perhaps.” His reply was noncommittal. He wanted to shout “To the devil with the Raven’s Ransom,” but he did not dare.

  “I must go. It is late. Do not worry your pretty little head about me. Raven’s ransom or not, you shall be mine. And Armand—this Armand—looks after his own”

  Then, with a swagger, and a suitable flash of rubies, he turned his back.

  Daisy sighed as she watched him, the bandanna once again over his extraordinary features. His cape billowed over him with a flourish of flamingo pink, the dawn just offering sufficient light to perceive the brilliant color. She wanted to call him back, then desisted.

  He waited for the window to click shut above him, before untethering his mount. If he had known what was next to ensue, he might have taken care to be quieter.

  Ten

  It started with a faint bark, somewhere invisibly behind the house. The Viscount Valmont’s horse, faintly restive from the wait, flared its aquiline nostrils and tapped the ground faintly with delicate hooves. Armand stifled an oath and murmured to it softly in French, a language he’d always found soothing. Perhaps it was because his mama still used it at times, when she was tenderhearted, or much moved. Either way, the horse did not appear to be impressed, for she whinnied uneasily and refused to obey the viscount’s expert tugs at the rein. In a moment, he knew why.

  Four great hounds were unleashed and bounding toward him in the faint dawn light, growing fearfully larger—and louder—with every stride.

  Behind them, a sleepy sentry—much startled—was giving chase. He gasped as he took note of the quality of the trespasser and bade the dogs be silent. Sadly, they paid him no heed at all, so Armand was forced to hope his horse would prove her mettle and not bolt, as he himself very much wished to do.

  He folded his arms and remained perfectly still, however, as the hounds wheeled all about him, alternately gnashing their teeth and panting at their exertions. After a moment or so, he felt inclined to stretch out his arm and pat the closest of the four. My lord, it must be said, presented a very strange sight with his cape outstretched dramatically. It was a commanding spectacle, though, and one that must have appealed to the dogs, for they stopped their dramatics and frolicked about him in a less menacing fashion.

  The sentry stared at him in awe. “Ye ’ave a right way wiv yer, guv! Them ’ounds be real terrors in the general way!”

  “I’ll warrant.” The heir to Westenbury allowed a faint dryness to creep into his tone. Unfortunately, it was lost on Potts, who was staring at him as if he had two noses or several heads. The viscount, surmising his turn of thought, removed the bandanna from his chiseled features and stifled a sudden
grin.

  “You must think me mad.”

  “Not so mad as the last guv wot cut up a lark, me lord! ’E decided to be a coachman, wot wiv his ’at and boots an all. ’Ad it off Simmons the postboy, I did. There be strange goin’s-on, I tell yer. Strange goin’s-on.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, aye. Ever since the lord an’ master ’ad Master Anchorage up from Lunnon, things ’ave not bin the same around ’ere, oh, no, they ’ave not!”

  Lord Valmont might have enjoyed spending a few more moments in idle—but informative—gossip with the sentry, but his trusty steed seemed to have another opinion on the matter. When two of the hounds sniffed curiously around her fetlocks, she took exception and whinnied on two hooves, causing all four of the beasts to scatter cautiously, though not before baring their teeth and emitting decidedly menacing noises from their throats.

  “If you will pardon me, I must be on my way.”

  Lord Valmont exuded an elegant poise that was somewhat at odds with his position. Still, he was a gentleman, and even in the direst of straits, gentlemen did not grow fainthearted and canter away without so much as a backward glance.

  “Beg pardon, me lord, but that be precisely what I canna be doin’.”

  The viscount lifted an eyebrow in surprise. He hoped it was sufficiently haughty.

  “And why not, pray?”

  “On account of ’is lordship orderin’ me to keep an eye out for all them shenanigans wot might arise. Seems ’e was expectin’ a few ’igh larks.”

  “Was he, by George? Well. I should be loath to disappoint him. You may tell your lord and master I shall call on him tomorrow first thing.”

  To the honorable viscount’s profound surprise and annoyance, this bland statement—whilst perfectly true—did not seem to satisfy the minion. What is more, out of the corner of his eye, he could see two of the hounds creeping closer. His thoroughbred flared her regal nostrils and in deference to her, he threw aside caution, sighed profoundly, and announced that his fate was undoubtedly in the sentry’s hands. Whereupon that gentleman—if such he could be termed—grinned a wide, toothy, rather happy smile—and wagered his rather grimy nickle that there would be a handsome outcome to all this.

  Lord Valmont snorted. “Possibly, my good man, but if there is, it shall not be from me! I hope for your sake Lord Raven is as generous as he is mad.”

  Whereupon the sentry nodded doubtfully and commented vaguely that “Me lord was not allus the terror wot ’e seemed.” And with this happy assurance, the Honorable Henry, Mortimer, James Armand Garcia, eighth Viscount Valmont and heir to the seventh earldom of Westenbury, was taken into a polite but very firm custody. He wondered whether his alter ego, the enigmatic cutpurse, would have been quite so sanguine at his prospects.

  The dawn broke pink across the sky. Daisy, in high fidgets, wondered whether to confide in her sisters. It was not in her nature to keep anything from them, but oh! Would they not count it as passing strange that she should fall in love so completely with a stranger not a week of her acquaintance? Worse, an impoverished one with felonious ties and a warrant upon his head? If it was Lily up to such tricks, she would undoubtedly scold her for a featherhead.

  Daisy sighed and allowed her thoughts to roam to that evening, when his dark head would return, once more, to below the eaves. Would she go with him? She trembled to think it. Then she trembled again, to think not.

  Across the hall in a delightful canary yellow chamber, Primrose nibbled at her elegant nails. How happy she was that Daisy’s gentleman had returned! Daisy deserved happiness and gaiety and a little adventure in her life. Even if he proved not to be a highwayman—and Primrose—practical Primrose—counted, no, relied on this being the case—he still had a zest for life, a sparkle, and a sufficiently pliable sense of humor to suit her Daisy very well indeed. She wondered how much the Raven’s Ransom would influence any decision he made. She hoped not too much, though with gentlemen it was always hard to tell. He might, after all, have engineered their whole meeting upon the moors. But no! He had no notion that they would be fleeing from Sir Rory Aldershot, or that their wheel would be needing mending.

  Or had he? Primrose shivered and pushed the thought away. Grandfather’s reprehensible ransom was causing her to be jumpy and overly suspicious. She tried very hard to keep her thoughts on Daisy, but they kept veering toward her own rather unmaidenly conduct the night of the ball. Oh, what a cake she had made of herself, clambering into Lord Rochester’s chaise! And how providential, for surely if she had searched the earth, she could not have found a man more complimentary to her spirit than he. Her lips tilted upward, for a moment, for Primrose, though dreamy, was always scrupulously honest with herself. In truth, it was not just to her spirit that he was uplifting. He had the most wanton effect upon her sensible person and frankly, though she was appalled that she should feel quite so brazen, she would not forgo the sensation for all the decorum in England.

  Lord Rochester was a man she could grow to trust and depend on. He had already very ably managed to keep her out of one unholy, unforgivable scrape. It was his cool-headedness, after all, that had stopped her dashing from his chaise and positively proclaiming to the world that she had been compromised. Oh, but how unsettling it all was! Lord Rochester, whilst no doubt enjoying the interlude—Primrose was not so coy as to imagine it had only been her senses so rivetingly engaged—would, sadly, consider it just that. A pleasant interlude. He was a seasoned bachelor and the foremost catch of the Season. It was unlikely that a prosaic, rather sensible society miss past her first Season was likely to ensnare him. Especially not when her sisters were both so much more beautiful and lively, and it was a guinea for a groat she had no fortune to sweeten any dowry he might require. Primrose avoided thinking of the embarrassing “Raven’s Ransom” that hung over her head, for she was certain that such a thing would not weigh with a man of Rochester’s stature. If anything, it was an annoyance, for it was causing her name to be bandied about town in a manner she could only deem unseemly.

  Oh, curse Grandfather! She wished, for once, his keen mind was not as convoluted as it undoubtedly was.Now she was saddled with a bag of undesirable suitors and a dream that was beyond fulfilling, a circumstance far worse than her amiable spinsterhood of a few days before.

  Primrose looked upon her slender fingers. Her nails were now rather shorter than they had been, for she’d been absently nibbling for several minutes. Fortunately, she was a rather tidy sort of a person, so the damage did not appear quite as bad as it might have, had it been Lily, or even Daisy, committing a similar offense.

  The mug of hot coffee steamed in Lord Armand Valmont’s hands. He had to admit that though he was undoubtedly a prisoner, he was certainly a very well-treated one. The poor sentry had been running circles around him all evening and Mrs. Bartlett’s partridge pie tasted uncommonly good at dawn. He felt a little foolish in his spectacular garb, but since none of the house servants seemed to bat an eyelash at his outrageous rig, he relaxed a little and turned the pages of yesterday’s Morning Post which one of the scullery hands had been so obliging as to save. He wondered what Daisy would say if she knew he had spent the night in captivity in Lord Raven’s own kitchen.

  He smiled a little, for doubtless it would be rather tame to her compared with the type of trial she might imagine him facing as a common felon of the road. Still, by all accounts, the interview in store for him with the eccentric Lord Raven would be trial enough, so he cast aside the society column and waited with a growing impatience that was not detectable in his cheery smile and polite compliments to cook and chambermaid.

  Both, it might be said, thought him a prodigiously handsome fellow and felt many a flutter of the heartstrings at his wayward gaze. The stable hands were occupying themselves in wagering all manner of things concerning him. Whether his boots shone from champagne or beeswax, whether the rest of his stable matched the fine mare they had groomed for him as he dozed a little by the kitchen fire, and most im
portantly, whether Lord Raven would send him the rightabout as he had done many a suitor before him. Many whispered that it would be a pity, for such good looks were a rarity, and “the gennelman was powerful ’andsome.”

  The scullery maids crept closer to have a quick glimpse at his features and Richmond, privy to the cozy scene, shook his head disapprovingly and muttered that my lord must be “dicked in the nob” to countenance criminals in his noble home. At which he was shouted down with indignation, for it was plain as a pikestaff that the gentleman was “gentry, like and up to some ’igh larks wot is not our place to unnerstand.” They nearly came to fisticuffs over the issue, but as dawn broke sultry and leisurely and pink across the cobblestones, my lord was pleased to put an end to all comment by announcing that undoubtedly the illustrious Earl of Raven must be wakened.

  “Certainly not!” Richmond glared at the intruder, who stared back politely, but with unyielding fortitude.

  “Then, my good man, I shall have to either cut my way out of here with my sword”—he patted the golden object with intent—“or find my own way to his chambers. Much as I have enjoyed your delightful society—and Mrs. Bartlett, this pigeon pie was exceptional—my compliments—I find I have other matters to attend to. I believe, up until now, I have been remarkably patient.”

  “Aye, for a villain!”

  “Say you so?” The heir to Westenbury’s mouth creased into an amused grin. “Then try not my tolerance further, for this villain is quick of feet and minded to test his steel.”

  “Potts, you are a half-wit to have left him with his sword.”

  “But it is gold, sir. And crusted with rubies, like. I couldna take such a thing off ’im. Besides, ’e promised to be’ave, gennelman’s ’onor!”

  “A pox on gentleman’s honor! The man is a cutpurse.”

  “Aye, but if he is Miss Daisy’s cutpurse it be different, like.”

  There was a silence about the kitchens as everyone regarded the prisoner with renewed interest. My lord was given to understand that Miss Daisy was much beloved of Lord Raven’s household staff, no matter how he himself was viewed.