With her mind on the delights in store, she enjoyed the feeling of his hands on her waist as he lifted her down from the carriage. Then, reaching for her, he kissed her on the lips, there in front of the Angel Inn for all the world to see.
“Jack,” she said breathlessly. “This is not at all convenient.”
“Oh, my dear Kate.” He studied her with odd solemnity. “You have no idea.” He let her go with obvious reluctance, turning to escort her into the Angel Inn. It was a quaint building, painted white with dark green trim. Kate noticed for the first time that it was no longer raining. The storm had blown itself out sometime during their ride from London.
Suddenly, a man dressed in the clothing of a gentleman exploded from the inn in a tearing hurry. A horse stood tethered to the post by the entrance. Untying it, he threw himself into the saddle, kicked the horse’s sides, and rode off at a gallop.
Jack narrowed his eyes, watching the man as he rode off. “Something dashed smoky . . .”
A man whose tan apron identified him as the innkeeper burst out of the door, holding a flat box by its hinged lid. “Sir, that man’s a murderer and a thief!”
Kate, roused roughly from her lovely stupor of desire, asked, “What is that box?”
Jack, suddenly alert, walked over and took it from the innkeeper, examining it quickly. “A dispatch box, I’ll be bound. With a broken seal put there by the War Office.”
She could feel her husband’s mood change into that of his alternate personality—competent, focused.
Resigned, she said, “Go Jack. Go after him. You know you must!”
“The courier had to have been bound for a vessel at Southampton. This box would have contained correspondence for Field Marshall Wellesley, Kate. It must not fall into French hands.”
As Jack followed the innkeeper at a run to the stables, Kate called after him, “Do take the greatest care, Jack! Do not reopen your wound!”
Worry seized a heart wide open with love. With a sigh, she opened the door to the Angel Inn, where she had hoped her marriage would be consummated this night. Instead, she was to mount a vigil here, praying for the safe return of her husband.
Before her lay a corpse. Walking to its side, she looked into the face of a dead man whose chest had just been blown open. The sight and smell of warm blood assailed her. The victim was near Jack’s age. She put a gloved hand to her mouth. Kate feared she was going to be ill.
Next to her stood a table with a white tablecloth. Whipping it off, she used it to cover the corpse. That was better.
Was she to be a widow before her wedding day had even passed? How would she even know if Jack was shot? He could lie somewhere unclaimed, just like this poor man. Oh, Jack! Come back to me!
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IN WHICH OUR HERO ENGAGES IN A CHASE
Jack was glad of the fact that the innkeeper had had a speedy horse and also that his senses had been automatically alerted by the demeanor of the guilty man. He was tall, fair-haired, and wearing a russet coat with black velvet lapels. Apparently, he had left his hat behind. His horse was a bay gelding with a white stocking on his right hind leg. But where would the cursed devil be off to?
Devonshire. He will try to contact the French brandy smugglers as Walsingham did. He spared a thought for his poor bride. Devonshire was a long ride from Reading.
It did not take long for Jack to get the traitor within his sites. He longed for his pistol. The man must realize he was being followed. Just as he was almost even with his quarry, his hack’s foreleg was trapped in a pothole, and Jack went sailing over his head, landing hard on the packed dirt road. Cursing freely, he watched the traitor gallop off.
He examined his screaming horse and found that he was badly injured. His left foreleg was broken, the bone showing through his hide. His screams died into whimpers as he lay in the road which was muddy from the rain. The sun was setting fast.
Fortunately, Jack knew this road from Reading to his Wiltshire estate well. They were nearly a mile from the next village. This poor beast needed to be put out of his misery, and a new horse hired. Damnably bad luck. Now his only hope was that the devil he was chasing was indeed bound for Devonshire, and that he could somehow be overtaken before the crucial documents were passed on.
His luck turned when a carriage came down the road. Waving his arms, he managed to waylay it. A plump, middle-aged woman he recognized as one of his neighbors opened the door and said, “By all that is wonderful! Jack, what has happened?”
“Lady Stanfield, you are an answer to prayer. Have you a pistol by any chance? I must put this poor beast out of his misery.”
* * *
It was full dark by the time Jack got back on the road on his newly hired horse. He could only hope that the man he pursued had stopped somewhere for the night. The villain surely could not keep pushing his horse at a full gallop all the way to Devonshire, if that was his destination. Jack had no choice but to keep going himself and to hope that Devonshire was his goal.
As he rode, his thoughts inevitably turned to Kate. Drat this business! It couldn’t have come at a worse time. But of course it was of the first importance to recapture whatever documents had been intended for Wellesley. Most likely they contained not only orders, but current positions of the troops on the Peninsula. If Napoleon got hold of them, many British lives would be lost.
But his minx, his dear, desirable Kate was losing her wedding night. The hopeful beginning to their marriage that had begun in the carriage. He had not thought she would prove so responsive.
But hadn’t he divined her nature the first time they had met? She wasn’t the typical shy debutante. She had been brimming over with a vitality she couldn’t contain. Caro had apparently told her enough to interest her in him before they had even met. Knowing Kate’s managing disposition, she had probably been throwing out lures to him, intent on capturing him for her marriage of convenience.
Well, she had him where she had wanted him. But she must know by now that she had a tiger by the tail. She was much mistaken if she thought they could continue in each other’s company without passion driving them swiftly into their marriage bed. Despite his circumstances, he grinned. He hoped that Kate wanted a quiverful of children. He was going to make love to her not only in their bed, but in his secluded, private spot by the stream, in the hayloft, and possibly even in the forest on the bed of last autumn’s leaves. He longed to make her completely his. Desire inflamed him as he pounded the road through the cold night air.
Jack changed horses at Salisbury and was relieved to find that a lone rider had galloped through the town not a half an hour before. It had been too dark to see his clothing, except that he wore white pantaloons with no boots, and was therefore not in riding dress. He was most certainly Jack’s prey.
* * *
Just as dawn was breaking over the horizon, Jack crossed into Devon on a fresh mount. He was tired, hungry, and his wound was aching. A mist was rising from the ground, shrouding the rolling downs and chilling him to the bone. He could only hope that his quarry was still ahead of him.
When the sun was high enough for him to see the route that lay ahead of him for Budleigh Salterton, he spurred his horse into an unrestrained gallop. He had almost reached the town that hugged the Devonshire coastline when he spotted a solitary rider wearing white pantaloons and no boots. For the first time since leaving Reading, he drew a satisfied breath and slowed his mount to a canter so that they would not alert the traitor.
Instead of riding straight through the town to the coast, Jack’s prey turned into the gates of a private estate. Now, he must go cautiously. There was a very good chance that the owner of this estate was involved in the treachery. How should he proceed?
The answer came with a wave of exhilaration as he saw the brass plaque on the stone pillar beside the gate. Cleaverings Park! By all that was wonderful, hadn’t his new wife’s father been the Marquis of Cleaverings? He remembered her hostility toward the present Marquis—Fred
die, wasn’t it? What the devil was his traitor doing here?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A WAITING GAME
After watching Jack gallop away into what very well could be life-threatening danger, Kate initially felt bereft. Just moments before, she had been surrounded by delicious warmth on his lap. She could still feel his kisses in her hair, on her face, and the new thrill of the deep kisses on her lips. Her body still tingled from the feel of his hands roaming over it.
The corpse in the taproom of the inn ejected every wonderful sensation into oblivion, bringing the reality of life and death crashing down on her. Would she ever see Jack again? The idea that he might lie somewhere dead and unknown, that she might not even know what had become of him was so dreadful that her spirits plunged.
Though their portmanteaux had been brought to the lovely room that Jack had reserved in the inn, she could not even summon the energy to take off her wedding dress. Dimly, she realized that the room was all white—walls, counterpane, rugs, furniture. The only color was the royal blue of the pillows on the bed.
She wondered idly how Jack was managing without his Hessian riding boots. Opening his portmanteau on a whim, she removed his boots, wrapped in soft flannel and held one on her lap, clasped in her arms. Tears came and streamed down her cheeks, still flushed from their heavy kissing. Then she threw herself down full length on the bed and gave way to her wretchedness.
There was a knock on the door.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“Mrs. Poole, my lady, the innkeeper’s wife.”
Using the edge of the counterpane to wipe away her tears, she went to the door and opened it.
“Would you be wanting a tray in your room this evening, my lady?” Mrs. Poole asked.
The idea of eating when she was still bilious over the bloody sight of the corpse downstairs was out of the question.
“I do not believe so, Mrs. Poole. Just some hot water for a bath, if you please.”
“Happen after your bath, you could drink some chamomile tea? I know seeing that corp were a nasty shock.”
“Yes. What has been done with the poor man’s remains?”
“Mr. Poole and me was wondering if you knew what we should do. They’s out locked in the shed for the moment.”
Kate thought. What would Jack do?
“I will write a letter directly to the War Office. No doubt, they will send someone. The dead man was their courier.”
“Very good, my lady. There be writing paper in that little desk there. Now I’ll go heat the water for your bath.”
Glad of something to do, Kate went to the desk, removed a sheet of lovely vellum stationery, a quill and some ink.
Dear Mr. Secretary,
I regret to inform you that my husband, Lord Northbrooke, and I arrived at The Angel in Reading to find one of your couriers shot, and the contents of his dispatch case taken. My husband is currently pursuing the perpetrator.
Please advise the innkeeper, Mr. Poole, what you would like done with the courier’s remains.
Most sincerely,
Lady John Bailey-Wintersham, Marchioness of Northbrooke
Writing her new name made her feel hollow. Closing her eyes, she took in a deep breath. She must not give in to despair. It was not her nature to be hopeless and melancholy. If only Jack had not been so recently wounded!
Folding the vellum and sealing it with a wafer from the desk, she addressed it to the First Secretary of the War Office, London.
A moment later, there was another knock, and Betsy entered. “I’ve come to help you with your dress, my lady. I understand that you have ordered a bath.”
* * *
Kate tossed and turned all night in what was to have been her marriage bed. How could one miss something one had never had? She came slowly to the realization that in a very short space of time—the journey from London to Reading—she had fully opened her heart to another human being. Did she not know that human life was a fragile thing? Had she not learned that when Papa died, leaving her alone with her unsympathetic cousin? Aside from one or two embraces from Caro and Aunt Clarice, she had not known the comfort of human touch for over a year. She had been hungry for it. Starved, in fact.
Her eagerness had been a surprise to her. As a way of redirecting her thoughts, she cast her mind back to the first time she had seen Jack. Something vital had passed between them that day. So intent on casting out her lures to this very eligible parti was she that she had entirely overlooked how she herself had felt.
Had she not been drawn by his extraordinary masculinity, his vitality, his playfulness? In the days that followed, when he had been getting his ox out of the mire, she had largely discounted her own feelings of attraction, feeling merely bewildered that he had apparently disappeared. And when he had returned, they had immediately quarreled over Walsingham’s attentions to her. From that point on, saving their visit to the National Gallery, they had done nothing but quarrel over one thing or another. He had clearly rejected her offer of a marriage of convenience, stating that he would only marry for love. Then, because of her abduction, she had been placed beyond the pale. In spite of his determination not to marry for convenience, he had done the gallant thing and married her almost immediately.
So what had all his kisses and lovemaking meant to Jack? Was it possible for a man to feel attraction without love? Of course. Men did not necessarily love their mistresses or courtesans. Men had physical needs. They were not like women, for whom the physical and the emotional were intertwined. She and Jack had quarreled right up until the marriage ceremony that had put her totally within his power.
From that point on, they had surrendered to that attraction they had felt upon their first meeting. Did that mean they were in love? Had she opened the door to her heart unwisely? Was the tremendous anxiety and pain she was presently feeling the result of her own foolishness? Had Jack merely been exercising his prerogative as her husband when they were in the carriage?
She got out of her bed and went to the window. Pulling back the drapes, she gazed into the moonlit landscape, considering this question. Beyond the stable yard, there was a stand of poplars. The moon was heartbreakingly full. Maybe it was best that her wedding night had been delayed. Despite her runaway emotions and all the wonderful, new sensations she had experienced in the carriage, she did not wish to consummate her marriage until she knew unequivocally what Jack’s real feelings were for her. If he still thought her merely a troublesome chit whom he would subdue with his overpowering masculinity, she would keep her bedroom door locked. If he ever admitted to loving her, then and then only would she submit herself to him. A little thrill went through her at the thought.
But what were her own feelings? Had she somehow fallen in love with Jack? Was this more than a marriage of convenience for her? Why had she responded so wholeheartedly to him in the carriage?
Continuing to look out into the night, she realized that her thoughts were completely beside the point. Right now, under this very sky, under that full lover’s moon, Jack was in terrible danger. He was chasing an armed man. One who had already murdered. One whose capture would insure hanging not just for murder, but for treason.
The idea of Jack being shot and left by the road visited her again. Why was she trying to be so rational? Why was she trying so desperately to control her emotions?
Of course I love Jack! And if he dies out there tonight, part of me will die. I will want to crawl under my blankets, draw them up over my head, and die myself. It is different than when Papa died. If Jack dies, I will have no future. No happiness. Somehow, the blackguard has stolen my heart away when I was not even aware of it. I love him, body and soul.
* * *
After a sleepless night, during which her husband did not return to her, Kate considered her options as Becky dressed her hair.
One: She could wait here in the inn for him to return.
Two: She could leave the servants here with a message from her and take the carriage to see
if there was a body lying beside the road . . .
No. That was problematic, because she had no idea where Jack’s chase would lead him.
Damnation! It went against everything in her nature for her to sit and wait when her husband might be seriously wounded or dead. She would go demented.
Think! Where would a traitor go to pass on his information? Jack would have asked himself the same question in order to know how to follow the man. What did Jack know that I know?
Devonshire! The smugglers!
“Becky, please get out my traveling cloak and hat. I am taking the carriage to Cousin Freddie in Devonshire. If my husband comes back here, you will kindly give him the message?”
Her maid looked stunned. “You are traveling all alone in the carriage? What if there are highwaymen? I know his lordship would want me to go with you!”
Giving a slight smile, Kate said, “And how are you going to protect me from highwaymen?”
Betsy looked thoughtful. “Happen the innkeeper has a gun.”
Kate beamed at her servant. “Excellent idea! I shall buy it from him, if he does. But you are to stay here to wait for his Lordship. He will be very annoyed with me for going off on one of my starts. I rely on you to soothe his spirits.”
“But Marchionesses don’t travel alone without their maids! And Mr. Gibbons will be here.”
“Gibbons?”
“His lordship’s valet.”
“Splendid. Could you speak to Gibbons, while I try to buy a weapon?”
Less than an hour later, Betsy and Kate, a serviceable pistol concealed in the pocket of her traveling cloak, set forth for Devonshire in her husband’s carriage. Kate watched out one side of the carriage and Betsy out the other, for bodies lying beside the road.
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