The Notorious Bridegroom

by Kit Donner

  The young soldier regarded her closely. “What’s your name and what business do you have here?”

  Patience put a hand to her chest, ineffectively trying to calm her nerves. “I’m Patience Mandeley and the French are planning to land near Hastings tonight.”

  The leering loitering soldiers nearby immediately straightened their backs, their weapons poised for action. The attaché barked an order and they immediately disappeared back into their barracks.

  The lone officer told her, “It’s close to midnight. We’ve already had one mistake this month over false reports of an invasion. I hope you know of which you speak. The commander does not like being awakened.”

  Patience shuddered at his choice of words.

  Several minutes later, in the dimly lit room of Commander Rightner’s office, both men listened incredulously to her story of Colette, her men, and the devastating plans to invade England.

  Patience’s confidence began to build. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Infantry number 79 immediately came alive with sounds of weapons being loaded, low men’s voices, and the jingling of horse’s harnesses.

  Patience had remounted, ignoring the commander’s orders to stay behind. There was no way he or anyone else could keep her from finding Colette.

  They rode single file through Winchelsea, heading for Hastings, when they came to a sudden halt by a larger contingent of militia, led by Bryce and Keegan.

  Patience saw him before he saw her, and thirstily drank in the sight of his tall form and beloved visage. All her anger fled as quickly as Kitten’s flying hooves. She wanted only to dive into his arms and remain there forever. Coming close to dying does strange things to your soul, she had discovered.

  Bryce, Captain Kilkennen, and a uniformed officer approached Commander Rightner.

  Bryce spoke first. “We have reason to believe the French will try and land tonight, somewhere between Winchelsea and Hastings. We’ve just come from London and my orders are from the secretary of war. We secure all lighthouses and bonfires, all infantry on alert.”

  Commander Rightner listened intently before replying, “I have information that the French will strike at Hastings.”

  Bryce studied the man before him, his face etched in stone. “Who is your source?”

  A lieutenant motioned for his men to send Patience to the front of their columns. She walked her mare cautiously toward the commander, Bryce, and Keegan, her eyes trained on Bryce. She thought she glimpsed relief, surprise, and something else in his stormy blue eyes before he turned away.

  “What proof does she offer you?” his question directed to Commander Rightner.

  “The truth,” Patience called over to him, daring Bryce to look at her again.

  He steadied his gaze at her and hesitated.

  Patience watched in horror at the emotions that played across his face. If she wanted evidence that Bryce had believed the note, he had confirmed it with his dark look and clenched jaw.

  Horror switched to astonishment when he said to Commander Rightner, “Let us onward to Hastings.” He reined his horse around, then back again to point to Patience. “She is to come with us.” Bryce and his mount became a blur as they leapt down the road in a hard gallop with the troops and Keegan following behind.

  Patience clutched Kitten’s reins, bending low over the animal’s neck. Soldiers surrounded her, making sure she couldn’t escape. But she paid no notice. She was trying to keep sight of Bryce’s broad back.

  The ocean gleamed silently and still, the moonlight winking in the roving waters. Only a few stars peppered the late-spring night that was cool and breezy. As they travelled along the coast road, Commander Rightner sent men to cover the lighthouses and bonfires, first warning them there might be Frenchmen waiting for them.

  Patience tasted the salty night air while clinging to Kitten’s back, her whole body fraught with fear of what the next few hours would bring. Worrying about the safety of Bryce and England her sore muscles tensed.

  She saw the cliffs in the distance and the lighthouse but none of the bonfires was lit.

  Something was wrong. She could feel it in her tired bones. She reached up a gloved hand to push away a lashing strand of hair obstructing her sight.

  At the front of the dark-colored columns of riders, one group broke away and headed farther south, the other group, including Bryce, left the coast road to begin the slow, arduous climb up the steep road leading to the top of the cliffs.

  Pesky thorns and branches pulled and picked at her hair, scratching her stockinged legs to shreds. Still, she climbed on with the soldiers.

  By the time the last riders and Patience reached the top, Bryce, Keegan, and Commander Rightner had vanished. After nudging Kitten forward through the wall of heaving horseflesh, Patience came upon a group of men near a dead bonfire, the sound of bullets reporting perhaps two miles away.

  Where were Bryce and Captain Kilkennen? Where was Colette? Perhaps she was someplace else along the coast.

  She halted her horse and slipped off Kitten’s back, handing the reins to a soldier nearby. He tried to prevent her from leaving, but she easily evaded his reach while he tried to control both horses.

  Patience ran across the cliff top toward the lighthouse, stumbling down the shallow valleyed green in the dark. Picking herself up, she crept closer and closer, unsure of what she might find. She leaned against the lighthouse wall to catch her breath and heard the pounding, lashing crash of the waves against the rocks below and shivered with the implication.

  She had to reach Bryce and Kilkennen or Colette might try again to implicate Patience in her revolting plans. Feeling the raspy rough wall beneath her hands, she slowly rounded the lighthouse.

  There they were, behind the lighthouse, near the edge of the cliffs. A line of soldiers, the lieutenant, Commander Rightner, Bryce, and Kilkennen with weapons at the ready stood near the lighthouse as Colette and her line of men faced them with their backs to the cliffs.

  She edged closer to hear their conversation, and her eyes widened in surprise as Colette fabricated a story that she and her men were on the watch for the French spies and had just arrived to light the bonfires. She insisted that they had done nothing wrong. Although Colette’s men did carry weapons, they had as of yet committed no crime.

  Patience ran out into the clearing between Bryce and Colette. She turned an impassioned plea to Bryce. “She lies. This woman tried to kill me. She had me buried alive. She calls herself the ‘Dark Angel.’ She is a French spy who is responsible for the Frenchman Sansouche’s death. They are planning to invade tonight, she confessed this to me on our journey from London. It was Sansouche, not my brother, who killed my cousin, Lord Carstairs.”

  Too late, in the cover of darkness, Colette had snaked up behind Patience and grabbed her, the ever-present pistol cocked sickeningly against Patience’s forehead. Bryce and Keegan stood like statues transfixed at this sudden attack. Patience’s eyes remained fixed on Bryce as the blood drained from her face.

  Colette had her again and perhaps this time she would be successful in causing Patience’s death.

  “I want a clear route to the sea or else she dies, gentlemen, what shall it be?”

  Colette ignored Keegan’s indignant snort of disbelief, her sight leveled on Bryce. They stared at each other for several long minutes, both knowing they held Patience’s fate between them.

  Bryce kept his pistol cocked, his finger on the trigger. He burned with rage at the danger Patience was in and blamed himself for not better protecting her. With passionate eyes, pale face, and a cloak of dark tangled curls over her shoulders, Patience was alive, and he intended that she remain so. For his very love, his very life, was also held in the balance. He knew that Patience’s death would savagely wound him deeper than Edward’s had. A fate he would never have thought possible.

  His jaw clenched and unclenched. He had faced his own death before, but the pain and fear gnawing in his gut was unfamiliar to him. If only he had a distraction,
one second, and he could shoot the French bitch.

  Patience closed her eyes, summoning her strength. After seeing her death once tonight, this second time seemed almost easier. If she was going to die, she could still give one last present to Bryce, his brother’s murderer. Releasing her breath, she said loudly to Colette, “Tell Lord Londringham how you killed his brother, Edward, when you meant to kill him. That you were waiting for Lord Londringham in the cottage to kill him.”

  Colette uttered a sharp laugh. This news would surely prick at Londringham’s pride. “Yes, I was the one who sent you the note, but your brother came in your stead. He tried to escape, and I shot him.”

  She underestimated Bryce’s skill at hiding his feelings. His stare would have made a lesser man or woman back down.

  Not Colette. They were at an impasse.

  Bryce finally earned his second. Keegan, not able to stand the wicked laugh from the woman he once loved, vaulted forward in anger toward Colette.

  In seemingly slow motion, Colette turned and shot her once-lover as Patience tumbled to the ground, free. Bryce shot the Frenchwoman below her left shoulder.

  Colette dropped her pistol, amazement stretched her features as a tiny sliver of blood leaked from her mouth. Her hands flailed as she fell backward toward the cliff, her mouth open to argue her fate.

  Patience tried to crawl to Kilkennen, lying motionless on the hard ground, when she felt a strong pull on her skirts.

  Suddenly, she found herself being dragged to the edge, and looked down to find it was Colette with life still beating in her eyes clutching her clothing.

  Patience clawed the earth frantically as Colette yanked her toward the abyss. In a fevered litany, Patience called for Bryce over and over. Then he was there in front of her, grabbing her arms and shoulders, his heels dug into the crumbled ground for leverage.

  He tried to draw both women onto safer soil but Colette’s grasp was tenuous. When her eyes glazed over in death, her grip lost its potency, and she freed Patience’s skirts, falling backward and down, down, down to the black waiting sea below.

  Bryce hauled Patience into his arms, both of them shaken from her near death over the cliff. She gloried in the sheltering warmth of his arms but couldn’t stop shivering, knowing she would never forget Colette’s last look of desperation.

  Bryce tilted her chin so that he could look into her eyes. “You’re safe now, she can no longer hurt you,” he whispered against her forehead before they rose and walked over to where Kilkennen was receiving treatment from one of the soldiers. They learned he had been shot in the shoulder, high above the heart, but was losing blood rapidly. Plans were made to immediately carry him into Hastings for a physician.

  Commander Rightner’s soldiers seized the last of Colette’s band of mercenaries and poor English farmers who had been promised French riches for their services. As Bryce and Patience rounded the lighthouse to return to their horses, she caught sight of her four brothers, Louis, Benjamin, and James with Rupert in tow. She flew down the path and into their arms, joyful to see them and curious as to their presence.

  Satisfied that Patience was safe for the time being with her brothers, Bryce followed Keegan’s man-made stretcher down the road.

  She kissed them all and kept clutching Rupert’s hand while listening in astonishment to her younger brother’s derring-do. While she and Bryce were saving England from being invaded, Rupert had assisted in capturing Frenchmen trying to land in a longboat near the shore a few miles away. They were actually smugglers and now safely ensconced in a welcoming prison cell.

  “Excuse me, miss. I found this lying on the ground and this hanging out of it,” a solder told Patience, handing her Sally’s doll, Spring. The gift of the emerald necklace splayed dark in her hands. Colette must have found the doll and hidden the necklace in it. At least Patience could return Sally’s doll and his lordship’s necklace. She grimaced.

  The Mandeley family rode down the foothill and heard Patience’s horrid tale of being abducted by Colette and her brush with death. She had no time to tell them more about her stay at Paddock Green or London, and needed to think more about what she wanted to tell her older brothers about Bryce.

  Relaxed in a safe public room in Hasting’s only inn, the family chattered away as they caught Patience up on news back home. They had obtained rooms at the inn while they awaited Bryce’s report on the captain’s condition.

  Bryce finally left the physician’s cottage after speaking to Keegan and reassuring himself that his friend had not suffered any permanent harm. He arranged to have Keegan moved, when able, to recuperate at Paddock Green. If he knew Patience, she would want to take complete charge of his friend’s convalescence.

  He quickly wrote a note to Patience, explaining his urgent need to see Secretary Hobart to report the failed French invasion. He said he would meet her at Paddock Green within a week, and they could discuss their future.

  Patience. He had to see her, talk to her. There was so much he wanted to say to her.

  But he had to start preparing for his trip to London. Soon he would come home to Patience. He would send his house staff and Sally back to wait for him at home. Home, a place where he wanted to be.

  The first breeze of the morning awakened Patience to the bold sunlight. Although her body and mind still begged for sleep, Patience had to find Bryce.

  The innkeeper directed her to the only physician’s house. Patience walked quickly, anxious to find Bryce and concerned over the captain’s health. She met a soldier on the path striding from the physician’s direction, who assured her Captain Kilkennen’s condition had improved considerably over the night.

  Patience breathed a sigh of relief, realizing she would not have his death on her conscience. But she would have to find a way to make it up to him after his sacrifice.

  She stopped for a moment to get her bearings. Right at this corner and straight up the hill until she saw the low cottage. Inside, Patience found the captain sleeping peacefully but learned to her surprise that Bryce had left for Town.

  Unbeknownst to Patience, the letter from Bryce had arrived at the physician’s home, but then had fallen to the floor and was forgotten.

  Why would he not have stopped for her? Then she remembered the necklace he had left her. Was there still time for them? She slowly walked back to the inn, lost in her thoughts.

  Benjamin and James assisted Patience into their coach, her solemn expression forbidding any questions as to their early departure. As the coach carried them down the coast road, Patience thought she heard the dirt plunking suffocat-ingly on top of her coffin.

  Chapter 31

  It had been two weeks since the eventful night in Hastings. Long weeks as they collected suspects in the failed invasion attempt and heard depositions. He had finally obtained a reprieve after attending several long conferences and seeing to the demands of the PM and the secretary of war. He knew he would have to return to London soon, but, God willing, with his new bride by his side.

  His town house was empty except for Stone and a few other staff. Bryce had occupied the lonely wee hours of the morning by writing letters to Patience—telling her how much he missed her, and holding on to his promise of a quick return, which perversely made every day seem that much longer.

  Now, after a long carriage journey and his hard ride on Defiance the last several miles in anxious desire to see Patience, he ran up the steps to Paddock Green.

  As he entered the hallway, he noticed a stack of his letters to her sitting on a table.

  “She is not here, my lord.”

  Bryce stared in confusion at his butler.

  Furthermore, Marlow informed him, Patience had not been at Paddock Green since their first departure for London.

  Exhausted from his journey, Bryce wanted only to sit down and rest his leg, drink a stiff glass of port, and ponder over Patience’s absence. With a fire crackling by his side on this early May night and a full bottle of the finest spirits this side of the Chann
el untouched, he was no closer to understanding the truth about Patience’s whereabouts.

  Of course it didn’t help matters when Sally, Lem, Melenroy, Martha, and even Kilkennen all wanted to know where Patience was and when she would return home. Presenting Sally with yet another new doll did help pacify the child somewhat, however.

  Always one to think matters through thoroughly, that is what Bryce set about doing. He considered the possibility that having been put through such an ordeal, she had wanted to rest in her own home. He frowned, then dismissed the thought. Not likely. Perhaps her brothers had not been keen on her returning to Paddock Green alone, and had persuaded her to wait in Storrington for him to come and formally ask for her hand in marriage. Yes, good.

  His features hardened into stone upon contemplating the more bleak possibilities. Why had she written that traitorous letter? Had Colette forced her hand? Why—as Sally had asked him, that morning—had she been crying? He refused to consider that her lovemaking had been out of gratitude for helping her brother. She didn’t have a dishonest bone in her body, he knew that about her.

  He had to put the pieces together, but it was impossible without consulting Patience. Bryce determined to sleep off the effects of his exhausting trip, promising himself he would leave for Storrington in the morning to find her. He feared not the consequences of what he might learn there, but only what would happen if he didn’t make the effort to find the truth.

  Patience was angry, furious, even. After all she had done to save Bryce and their country, and almost losing her own life many times, albeit most of the time her own fault, but still. She determined she would go to Paddock Green and confront Bryce and tell him that she loved him. And he would just have to accept that because he couldn’t send her away. Not ever again.

  With a quick note to her brothers, she grabbed a few necessities in a carpet bag, and ran to the stables where the groomsman, Mr. Grundy, hitched up their little gig. She was going home.