by M C Beaton
All Miss Tonks had to say was that it had all been a silly joke, but she saw the scaffold at Newgate rearing up above her and heard the jeering of the bloodthirsty crowd. She gasped and hiccuped. “It was not you I meant to rob, my lord, but my sister.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted her diamonds. I need the money. Oh, it will all come out at my trial. I am part owner of the hotel the Poor Relation, only Honoria does not know that. We are in need of funds and I told the others I would go to my sister’s and steal something. Oh, oh, oh!”
He seized her by the elbow and pulled her up. He guided her to his curricle and told her to climb up. Then he jumped in beside her and picked up the reins and urged his team forward. He drove a little way until he saw a farm gate by the side of the road. He opened it and led his horses and carriage through and round until they were hidden from the road by the hedge and then returned and closed the gate again.
“Give me your hat,” he said.
Sniffling miserably, Miss Tonks pulled it off. He put on her mask and pulled her hat down over his eyes and buttoned his long greatcoat up to the neck. Miss Tonks gazed at him bleakly, too frightened now to cry. She thought he was going to execute her there in the field.
His next words startled her. “Now, sit here, Miss Tonks, and pull a carriage rug about you and I will show you how it should be done. Are you sure they will come this way?”
“They have to,” said Miss Tonks. “But …”
“Don’t make a fuss.” His eyes glinted with amusement in the moonlight.
He vaulted over the farm gate and strode down to where he had come across Miss Tonks. He felt amusement bubbling up inside him. Honoria Blessop was such a monumental horror, she deserved to lose her diamonds.
He heard the coach approaching and moved closer to the shadow of the hedge. He did not want to emulate Miss Tonks’s mistake by holding up the wrong coach.
“And you will behave prettily to Lord Eston,” Honoria Blessop was saying to her daughter. “He is a great catch and we mean to secure him before he reaches those harpies in London. Remember, you cost us a great deal of money with that Season. It is your duty to repay us.”
“Mama,” said Cassandra, “why is it that you are so rich and Aunt Letitia is so poor?”
“Because that’s the way God ordained it,” said Honoria. “Everything that happens is the hand of God.”
The coach lurched to a stop. “Stand and deliver!” shouted a gruff voice.
“My diamonds, oh, my daughter, oh, my diamonds,” shouted Honoria like some sort of female Shylock. “Get down from the box,” they heard that same terrible voice ordering the coachman, “and you too,” to the groom at the back.
It flashed through Cassandra’s frightened mind that Aunt Letitia must really have the second sight. Then the carriage door was opened and a tall figure ordered them all out.
“Those diamonds,” barked the highwayman. “Put them on the ground.”
“No,” shrieked Honoria.
He raised the pistol and balanced it across his arm and took aim.
“Take them off, you silly woman,” shouted Edward Blessop.”
Cassandra faced the highwayman. “Will you go away and leave us unharmed if we give you the jewels?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
She unfastened the necklace from around her mother’s neck and flung it on the ground and then lifted off the tiara and dropped it beside the necklace. Honoria was making gasping and moaning noises.
“Into the coach,” ordered the highwayman. “You”—he pointed the pistol at Cassandra—“stay where you are.”
Any doubts he had had about thieving the jewels from Mrs. Blessop disappeared when he noticed how she dived into the shelter of the coach, followed by her husband, neither of them making a stand to protect their daughter.
Cassandra drew off the pearl ring she was wearing and threw it at him. “This is all I have,” she said contemptuously.
He thrust the pistol in his pocket and seized her in his arms. “You have other treasures,” he murmured, and his mouth came down on her own. Shock kept her still in his arms. And then he released her and, scooping up the jewels, moved quickly up the road until he was lost to view. Cassandra stared after him in a dazed way. Then she picked up her pearl ring, which he had left lying on the ground. Through all her confusion and fright came the one clear thought: Mama will not expect us to go to the ball now.
But her mother had recovered now that she was safe and was in a blazing temper. Cassandra noticed that she did not pause in her tirade to ask if her daughter was unharmed. “We are going to the Herefords,” she shouted. “Yes! For they can send out the militia.”
“My dear,” said her husband. “What is this? Poor Cassandra has been frightened out of her wits and we are in no fit state to—”
“We go,” said Honoria, now icily calm. “And Cassandra will see that she charms Lord Eston.”
Now was the time to warn her mother that she had every intention of giving Lord Eston a disgust of her, but Cassandra was still too numb and shocked to make any sound.
Miss Tonks looked in awe at the sparkling diamonds in her lap. “I do not know how to thank you, Lord Eston,” she whispered. “But I feel guilty. I have involved you in crime.”
“I involved myself,” he said. “Now I must go to the ball. You cannot walk down the road carrying those diamonds. Here! Wrap them in this rug.”
“You are a hero,” said Miss Tonks, gazing up at him. “I shall never tell anyone what you have done. No, not if they drag me and whip me at the cart’s tail.”
Lord Eston bit back a smile. He felt sure that the customary punishment for prostitutes would never fall on Miss Tonks’s thin shoulders.
“Tell me,” he asked curiously, “are you all such practised villains at that hotel that you will be able to sell these valuable gems and not be discovered?”
“Oh, we shall break them up into single gems or get them reset,” said Miss Tonks blithely. “But we are all very respectable, I assure you. It was being poor relations that drove us to such straits. You have no idea of the petty humiliations to which one is subject. So much more worthy to be in trade.”
“I agree. But stealing is hardly being in trade.”
Miss Tonks looked miserable and then brightened. “But we shall only be borrowing the value of the diamonds, you see. As soon as we are in profit, we shall send Honoria the money anonymously and she can buy more. As a matter of fact, she is so very rich, she could buy more tomor row. Oh, since you have done me such a very great service, I feel I should warn you.”
“Of what?”
“Poor Cassandra is being bullied into setting her cap at you. She has decided to put an end to matters by being very rude to you at the ball. Please do not think badly of her.”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I shall not even blush. Off with you, Miss Tonks. You are a very wicked woman.”
He went to the gate and looked up and down the road before opening it for her. With the diamonds muffled in a large bearskin rug, and the duelling pistol she had borrowed safely back in her pocket, Miss Tonks whispered a farewell and marched off down the road.
She felt very elated and brave. Already she was rehearsing how she would tell the others of how she had turned highwayman, and of course as she had to protect Lord Eston’s good name, they would never know she had not committed the robbery herself.
Honoria Blessop created a sensation on arrival at the Herefords by standing at the entrance to the ballroom and shouting, “I have been robbed by a highwayman!”
Then she manufactured a swoon, collapsing into her husband’s arms, who tottered under her weight. Mr. Hereford sent servants off to alert the parish constable and to call out the militia. Only when Honoria heard Mr. Blessop being urged to take his family home did she pretend to rally, saying that her darling Cassandra must enjoy the ball. No highwayman should be allowed to spoil her daughter’s evening. Cassandra found it all very emb
arrassing and could only be glad that Lord Eston had not put in an appearance. But no sooner had all the inquiries as to details of the highwayman’s appearance been dealt with, no sooner was she seated beside her mother, than Lord Eston appeared.
Mr. Hereford spoke to him. He looked across at Honoria and her daughter and then crossed the ballroom floor towards them. “Smile!” hissed Honoria. “Here he comes.”
Cassandra scowled dreadfully.
“I am shocked to learn you have been robbed, Mrs. Blessop,” said Lord Eston. “You must have been dreadfully frightened. Should you not be at home?”
“Alas, my lord,” said Honoria, “my puss here was so determined to dance with you that nothing would prevent her from coming.”
“I trust the highwayman did not harm you in any way?” he asked Cassandra.
“He kissed me,” said Cassandra.
“He what?” shrieked her mother. “You did not tell me that!”
Cassandra looked at her with cold eyes. “And yet you and Papa went back into the carriage and left me with him and did not think to ask me if anything had occurred.”
“How dreadful for you,” said Lord Eston.
“As a matter of fact, it was quite pleasant.”
“Cassandra!” wailed Honoria, but there was worse to come.
“May I have this dance, Miss Blessop?” asked Lord Eston, his eyes dancing.
“No, you may not,” said Cassandra. “I do not want to dance with you, now or at any other time.”
“You have broken my heart,” he said solemnly and turned and walked away.
Honoria sat stricken. Her husband had gone into the card-room. She must go and get him and tell him to take them home, but she felt her legs would not move.
“Where’s that sister of yours?” demanded a dowager on her other side. “Heard she was staying with you.”
“Letitia is well, I thank you,” said Honoria, her great shock at Cassandra’s behaviour being replaced by white rage.
“Brave of you to give her house room,” said the dowager, “and tactful of you not to bring her here.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Honoria shrilly, giving the dowager her whole attention for the first time.
“Well, she’s sunk to trade, ain’t she?”
“Explain yourself.”
“Partner in that hotel in Bond Street, the Poor Relation, that’s what she is.”
Honoria’s face cleared. “You are mistaken. I called at the hotel myself and the Miss Tonks who is a partner there is a frightful old woman.” Honoria had in fact met Sir Philip in a cap and gown masquerading as Miss Tonks.
“No, no,” cackled the dowager. “Ask Hereford. He and Mrs. Hereford dined with the Rochesters there last year. Miss Tonks was acting as a sort of chambermaid, so Rochester said.”
Enough was enough. Outrage gave Honoria strength to move. “Come,” she said, taking Cassandra’s arm in a strong grip, rising and then marching her like a jailer to the door. “Mr. Hereford,” she said, “we are after all a trifle too shaken to stay. Please have our carriage brought round and my husband summoned from the card-room.”
She maintained a grim silence until they were all seated in the carriage and then she began to rant and rave. Cassandra herself was now horrified at the enormity of what she had done, but she sat with her lips folded in a firm line and said not a word. “And there is worse,” went on Honoria to her husband. “Letitia is in trade. She hoodwinked us. She is in fact working in that disgraceful hotel. No, no, that must have been someone masquerading as her we met. But I shall get my revenge. I am throwing her out this night and she can walk to the nearest inn for shelter.”
“It is very cold,” volunteered Edward timidly.
“I don’t care if she freezes to death. And as for you, miss, you will go away as well. Yes, I know what to do with you. There is a seminary in Bath run on very strict lines for wayward females. By the end of this week, I shall take you there.”
Cassandra felt weak tears rising in her eyes. She wished with all her heart that the highwayman would hold them up again and take her away.
Miss Tonks heard the carriage arriving and assumed that the shock of the robbery had made her sister forgo the ball. She setded down to finish Lady Penelope’s Revenge.
Her first thought when Honoria burst into the room was gratitude that the diamonds were safely hidden, as were the men’s clothes she had used for the masquerade, and that the duelling pistol was safely back in its box with its fellow.
“You,” said Honoria, pointing at her, “have sunk so low that I heard a report this night that you were working as a chambermaid.”
Miss Tonks gave a weak laugh. “What nonsense.”
“Are you or are you not a partner in that hotel in Bond Street?”
Miss Tonks took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said.
“How dare you stoop so low!”
“I was nigh starving,” said Miss Tonks.
“Fiddle. Get out of my house this moment, you slut. You can walk to the nearest inn.”
“Very well,” said Miss Tonks with a calmness she did not feel, for she was wondering how she could manage to walk the miles to the nearest inn on a freezing night carrying her trunk.
“It is your malign influence in this house that made my Cassandra behave so dreadfully tonight,” Honoria went on. “I was held up by a brute of a highwayman who stole my diamonds, and Cassandra had the temerity to tell Lord Eston—Lord Eston!—that the highwayman had kissed her and she liked it. Then she said she did not want to dance with him. She will go to a seminary in Bath and have the nonsense whipped out of her.”
“You,” said Miss Tonks in a trembling voice, “are a low, horrible, vulgar woman who kept me on such short commons that I had to sink to trade … no, not sink … to elevate myself to become partner in a successful venture. At least have the decency to get out and leave me in peace to pack!”
The slamming of the door answered her.
Miss Tonks rose and dressed. She felt cold and calm and brave. She had the diamonds and her friends would be proud of her. She dressed in a wool gown and warm cloak after packing the diamond tiara and necklace at the foot of her trunk. She looked ruefully at the bearskin carriage rug belonging to Lord Eston. She would need to throw it away out on the road, or better, hide it in some field. It was too bulky to go in her trunk. She could not leave it behind to cause inquiries as to where it had come from.
Perhaps Cassandra’s adventures would have ended in a seminary in Bath if Miss Tonks had not decided to stay her departure until she had finished Lady Penelope’s Revenge. She had just reached the last chapter of the last volume when her door opened and Cassandra slipped in. Her face was blotched with weeping.
“Sit down by the fire, my dear,” said Miss Tonks. “This is a sad business. Could you not tell your mama that you were so overset by the highwayman that you were rude to Lord Eston?”
Cassandra shook her head. “I have decided to come with you, Aunt, if you will have me.”
“Of course I will, and gladly. But I shall be accused of kidnapping or something.”
“Not if I leave a letter.”
“But it is so cold and such a long walk to the nearest inn, for Honoria is not letting me have a carriage.”
“As to that,” said Cassandra, “the coachman, Philip, will do anything I ask. I shall slip over to the stables and ask him to help us and then pack a few things. Shall I work in the hotel with you? I shall not need pretty ballgowns for that.”
“We now have servants in the hotel.” Miss Tonks thought quickly. In order to have more rooms for guests in the newly refurbished hotel, the poor relations had taken an apartment next door for their sleeping quarters. There was a spare little room next to her own. That would do very well for Cassandra.
“My dear,” she said earnestly, “much as I would love your company, please think carefully of what you are doing. You are ruining all chance of making a good marriage, possibly of any marriage at all.�
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“Good,” said Cassandra fiercely. “Now I will go and rouse Philip.”
“I would have thought Honoria would have locked you in your room.”
Cassandra grinned like a schoolboy and held up a ring of keys. “I have been locked in so many times in disgrace that I had these keys copied.”
Soon she and Miss Tonks were jogging along in the second-best carriage under the burning stars.
“It was very bold of you,” said Miss Tonks, “to tell Lord Eston that you had liked the highwayman’s kiss. Do you not think, my dear, that Lord Eston might be able to kiss you like that?”
“Pooh! Men like Lord Eston are made by their tailor. But is it not marvellous that you really do have the gift of the second sight? You saw a highwayman and a highwayman appeared!”
Miss Tonks was almost tempted to tell her about the diamonds, to tell her that the highwayman and Lord Eston were one and the same. But just in case she was ever discovered guilty of the theft, then there must be nothing to implicate Cassandra.
Lord Eston called at Chapping Manor the following afternoon, ostensibly to pay his respects to Mr. and Mrs. Blessop but in fact to find out how Miss Tonks had fared and if she had the diamonds well hidden. Also, it would be amusing to tease Cassandra a little. She deserved it for being so rude.
After being kept waiting for a full quarter of an hour, the butler told him in a hollow voice that Mrs. Blessop would receive him in the drawing-room. Lord Eston began to feel guilty. The house was so dark and still and quiet, as if someone had died. He hoped he had not shocked Cassandra so much in his highwayman’s guise that she had gone into a decline. He had an aunt who went into a decline if she saw a mouse.
Mrs. Blessop was alone in the drawing-room. He felt disappointed.
“My compliments, ma’am,” he said, bowing low. “I trust you have recovered from your ordeal?”
“Thank you, but I fear my nerves are very delicate.”
“Is Mr. Blessop at home?”
“He has gone out hunting.”
“Miss Blessop is well?”
“Yes, my lord, although I fear her sensibilities were so shattered by that highwayman that she was rude to you.” Honoria had no intention of even hinting that her daughter had left with Miss Tonks.
