The Chaperon Bride (Harlequin Historical)

by Nicola Cornick

  Some unquantifiable amount of time later, Annis was aware of the kitchen door opening.

  ‘I wondered if you needed any help—’ Edward began, then stopped. ‘Evidently not,’ he said, and closed the door.

  ‘I scarce know where to begin, Charles,’ Annis said. A fresh pot of tea had been made and Annis, Adam, Edward, Charles and Della were seated in the drawing room. Charles and Della were holding hands. Della looked flushed and starrily happy and there was such a look of incredulous contentment about Charles that Annis could have cried. She herself was sitting close within the circle of Adam’s arm in a quite improper manner, but nothing could have separated them at that moment. She could not bear to be far from his side.

  ‘Is it you, or is it Ellis Benson, who has been leading the rioters against Mr Ingram’s property?’

  Charles looked relaxed and tousled in the firelight. ‘It is Ellis who has been one of the leaders, although I do believe that he shares that privilege with Tom Shepard. All the rioters are masked and they take it in turns to raise the men, so it is more difficult to identify who is involved.’

  Adam nodded. ‘We knew about Shepard and we suspected Benson, but what about yourself, Lafoy?’

  ‘The horse is yours, is it not, Charles?’ Annis said suddenly. ‘I saw it on my first visit here and I knew that the Shepards could not afford to keep a stable.’

  Charles laughed. ‘So you knew about that, did you? I thought you might have seen it, though Tom Shepard swore you had not.’

  ‘I did glimpse him. A fine stallion. I had a very nasty feeling when Pullen started looking for someone who possessed such a beast.’

  Charles looked shifty. ‘Well, I assure you that I have not been riding him. I have had a hand in some of the planning, but the execution has been down to Ellis.’

  ‘A difficult task,’ Adam said drily, ‘when trying to control an unruly mob of forty men.’

  ‘Yes indeed.’ Charles turned back to his cousin. ‘Ellis has had some bad moments where your safety was concerned, Annis, not to mention my property. Since it was imperative that no one knew that I was working against Ingram, it was inevitable that I should be a target.’

  Annis laughed. ‘How unfortunate that your carriage should have been destroyed,’ she said unsympathetically.

  ‘Ellis was more concerned for your safety,’ Charles said. ‘He knew that you were not in the coach, but he did not know where you had gone. You gave him a fright that night, Annis. Until we received Ashwick’s message we were scouring the countryside for you.’

  Annis sighed. ‘I am sorry. Though why I am apologising to a pair of law-breakers I am not certain! I am shocked, Charles. I had both you and Ellis down as Mr Ingram’s most loyal supporters.’

  ‘That was the idea,’ Charles said drily. ‘Do not judge Ellis too harshly, Annis. He has his reasons for what he did.’

  Della spoke for the first time. ‘What are his reasons, Charles?’

  ‘He loves Venetia Ingram,’ Charles said flatly. ‘They care for each other. Ingram found out and made life a misery for Ellis, taunting him, tormenting him until he was nearly mad with the strain of it all. It changed him completely from being Ingram’s man to being so set against him that I believe he would do almost anything to bring him down.’

  There was a silence. Annis saw Della tighten her grip on Charles’s hand. None of them, knowing Ingram as they did, could find it in themselves to condemn Ellis.

  Annis sighed. ‘What of your own motives, Charles?’

  Charles shifted a little. ‘I have known for a while that Ingram has been involved in some very questionable deals, but the man is as slippery as a fish and cannot be caught. I felt that he had to be stopped.’

  ‘I see. Why not simply refuse to work with him any longer?’

  Charles met her eyes very straight. ‘That is not good enough, Annis. He has to be stopped.’

  Annis saw Della smile, as though Charles had confirmed something for her. She felt the same. Both of them had thought Charles a man of integrity and neither of them could understand how that fit with his work for Ingram. Now, at last, he was free to tell the truth.

  Charles frowned. ‘I am sorry for deceiving you, Annis, particularly over Starbeck. I wanted to help you so much—or at the least to reassure you—but too much was at stake. I almost cracked that day you came to Ingram’s offices and as good as told me you would never speak to me again. Yet I could say nothing to you, for not only was it too dangerous but I could never risk Ingram finding out what I was up to.’ He looked at Adam. ‘There were several occasions on which I thought you might be a useful ally too, Ashwick, but I could never risk Ingram guessing the truth. I apologise for my apparent hostility.’

  Adam’s arm tightened about Annis and he smiled at her. She knew that he was remembering the time she had told him how gloomy it was to be estranged from her cousin. Her heart lifted and she gave Adam a dazzling smile back.

  ‘Perhaps there is still time for us all to unite against Ingram,’ Adam said slowly.

  Della yawned. She practically had her head on Charles’s shoulder by now. ‘Do you know anything about banknotes hidden here at Starbeck, Charles? Is that part of Mr Ingram’s duplicity?’

  Everyone looked at her. Annis, who had completely forgotten about the notes in the canvas bag, jumped up. ‘Oh, yes!’ She turned to Adam. ‘This was why we originally came to Starbeck today, my lord. Mrs Hardcastle found this when she was cleaning the house…’

  She picked the remains of the canvas bag up from the side table and held it out to him. Adam turned the bag over in his hands, studied the scrap of banknote and handed it over to Charles.

  He squinted at it, then recoiled, his shock showing on his face. ‘Good God! I have been looking for this everywhere!’

  Now it was Annis’s turn to feel shock. ‘You mean that you knew? Charles—’

  ‘I mean that I suspected that the Northern Prince had never gone down.’ Charles looked at her. ‘Did you not wonder why I was so edgy when you mentioned it the very first day you were back in Harrogate? I was afraid that you might alert Ingram’s suspicions if you asked difficult questions!’

  Edward, who had sat a little apart during the whole discussion, now leaned forward. ‘You suspected that Ingram had saved some of the cargo from the ship, but you did not know where it was?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Charles said. ‘Ellis and I looked everywhere. He certainly searched here. It was one of the reasons that we kept the house empty, Annis, for we were certain that Ingram was using it. It was conveniently isolated. Ellis will kick himself that he never found this, though.’

  ‘I wonder why Ingram did not come back to take it,’ Edward said thoughtfully. ‘Or perhaps he did…If he had embezzled the cargo of the Northern Prince he might be helping himself to it little by little.’

  ‘And I would guess that he wished the hue and cry to die down before he started to spend too lavishly,’ Adam said. ‘Is this all that there is, Annis?’

  ‘I fear so. The mice have eaten all the rest, or shredded it into pieces so small that it cannot be identified.’ Annis sighed. ‘Della and I searched all day, as did Mrs Hardcastle, but all we found was a mouse nest. Whilst Ingram may not benefit from his ill-gotten gains, unfortunately we cannot pin anything on him.’

  Adam picked up the scrap of bank note again. ‘The Bank of England may be able to trace this note. If so, the insurers may be interested.’

  ‘If the ship did not go down,’ Annis said, ‘where is it?’

  Charles shook his head. ‘I have spent many fruitless hours trying to discover precisely that, Annis. The Northern Prince sailed from Whitby and was supposedly lost shortly afterwards, but there are any number of rocky inlets where it might be possible to unload a cargo under cover of darkness and then…’ Charles made a gesture ‘…the boat sails elsewhere. It is repainted, re-named. The ocean is a vast place and tracing one ship, proving that it has been re-named, would be a tricky business.’

  ‘What
of the crew?’ Annis said, frowning. ‘Surely there is someone who would give the game away?’

  ‘Someone did,’ Adam said grimly. ‘Woodhouse knew what had happened, did he not? Either he knew, or he suspected. Maybe he even tried to extort money from Ingram for his silence and ended up head first down the chalybeate well for his pains!’

  Charles sighed. ‘The crew were hand-picked by Ingram and I imagine that they were well paid. Very well paid.’

  ‘So Ingram pockets the insurance money and the cargo as well, and he still has a ship left at the end of it,’ Adam said. ‘Very neat.’

  ‘Very risky,’ Edward said. ‘He pocketed your thirty thousand pounds as well, Adam. Humphrey never incurred that debt. He was cheated.’

  Della raised her head. She was looking absolutely furious. ‘Oh, Adam! I cannot bear it! The man gets away with all that money and we can prove nothing!’

  They all looked dolefully at the scraps of mouse-eaten money.

  ‘There is still the gold,’ Charles said slowly. ‘Ellis is convinced that Ingram secreted some bags of that as well. Do not forget that he was still Ingram’s man at this point and was deeper in his confidence than I. The only thing he does not know is where it is hidden—or even if it is still hidden. Ingram may have spent it by now.’

  ‘I do not think so,’ Annis said thoughtfully. She turned to Adam. ‘Remember what Woodhouse said, my lord. It was like a riddle and no doubt it gave Woodhouse a sense of power to taunt you so. He mentioned sunken treasure, and suggested that you look to the skies and into the depths. Supposing that the skies are Starbeck, then the sunken treasure is in the depths—at Starbeck.’

  ‘Sunken,’ Edward repeated. ‘Can it be buried in the cellars, Lafoy?’

  Charles shook his head. ‘We have searched there. Several times.’

  ‘Sunken, not buried,’ Adam said. There was a blaze of light in his eyes. He turned to Annis. ‘There is a well here at Starbeck, is there not? I saw it that day we came to inspect the property.’

  ‘It is a natural sulphur well,’ Annis confirmed. ‘There are many hereabouts, as you know, my lord.’

  Charles’s face was a picture. ‘A fine pair Ellis and I have been! Ingram hides his paper money in the house and his gold down the well right under our noses—and we cannot even find it! Of all the damned nerve!’

  Annis laughed. ‘We will have him yet, Charles.’

  Adam stretched. ‘We may check in the morning, I suppose.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘I do believe that it is almost the morning already.’

  ‘Then all we have to do is think of a way to lure Ingram into giving himself away,’ Annis said softly. ‘Which is easier said than done, I suppose.’

  There was a gleam in Adam’s eye. ‘I have a plan,’ he said.

  Some two days later, Annis and Della were both at the Starbeck once more, concealed in the summerhouse in the garden on the night that Adam intended to put his plan into action. ‘I am beginning to regret this, Annis,’ Della Tilney said. ‘Adam and Charles both insisted that we should not stir outside the house all evening and who is to say that they were not right? We have no guarantee that Ingram will come. We might be immured in this summerhouse the whole night long and see nothing and achieve nothing but to be tired, hungry and aching! I am tempted to go back to the house.’

  ‘Well, I am not.’ Not for nothing had Annis defied Adam’s instruction to stay safely indoors until the danger had passed. Starbeck was still hers, she thought fiercely, and if Ingram had been using it for his own nefarious purposes she wanted to be in at the end of it all when he was caught. She pressed closer to the summerhouse window and stared out into the starry night. Tonight there was no moon and the gardens were all in shadow.

  ‘I am glad that you and Charles appear to have settled your differences, Della,’ she said. ‘I hope that the two of you will be happy.’

  ‘There is nothing like a shock to bring one to one’s senses,’ Della said. ‘When I thought that Charles had been injured I could think of nothing but all the time we had wasted.’ She sighed. ‘I shall always feel guilty for what happened between us when Humphrey was alive, but I cannot carry that regret forever. And one has to live.’ She smiled at Annis. ‘It is your wedding in two days’ time. Do I imagine it, or have you and Adam resolved all your differences, Annis?’

  ‘Almost all.’ Annis gave her a smile. ‘I have only to explain to him the reasons why I was so reluctant in the first place. I feel I owe that to him—’ She broke off. ‘Della, look! Is that not a light? There, coming down the path—’

  There was indeed the light from a lantern skipping down the path from the house, through the neglected topiary garden, dodging the bushes, faint but clear. The two girls pressed closer together. They watched as the figure came on, dark against the darker background, until it reached the walled garden and put its lantern down on the stones beside the well. There was the faintest creak of a chain and the splash of water.

  ‘He is here!’ Della clutched Annis. ‘I did not believe that he would come.’

  ‘Adam said that he would,’ Annis whispered. ‘He said that if Ingram were given a hint that his banknotes were found he would come to retrieve the rest. Charles dropped the hint. Ingram trusts him, so he did not guess that he was being tricked. That was all that was needed…’

  ‘Look!’ Della pointed. Beyond the walled garden, out on the drive, a column of light flared.

  ‘They are coming!’

  Annis was gripped by the same primitive fear that had caught her up on the night she had first witnessed the riot. Suddenly the air seemed alive with it. Straining her ears, she heard the insistent beat of a drum on the night air. It had a ragged, savage rhythm, an undertone of violence.

  The man in the garden heard it in the same instant and raised his head to sniff the air like a hunted animal. He scrambled to his feet, turning towards the gateway. There was only one way out of the walled garden and it was already too late. Already the procession was flooding through the gateway into the garden, torches blazing, and the barbaric rhythm of the drum filling the air. The light and shadow flickered over the faces of the masked men as they lined the walls.

  Annis drew in a sharp breath. She could feel Della beside her, tense as a bowstring. There was something primitive here. In this seething crowd it was not possible to tell which was Charles, or Adam, or Edward or Tom Shepard. The masks were on, the tricorne hats drawn down over the eyes, the men dressed all in black tonight.

  There was a clatter of hooves and the crowd parted with something like a sigh. The drumbeat died down. The magnificent bay stallion sidled almost gently up to the cowering figure by the well. The rebel leader raised his voice a little.

  ‘I told you that we would come for you, Ingram.’

  Samuel Ingram struggled to his feet and immediately two masked men came forward to take up their stance on either side of him. They did not touch him. There was no need. He was almost expiring with fear where he stood.

  ‘Why do you not take your money?’ The leader said gently. He turned the horse. ‘Take it, Ingram. Pull it out of the well.’

  Ingram fell to his knees, grappling feverishly with the chain of the well, half his gaze on the horse’s circling hooves. No one moved to help him. Everybody watched him. The torches flared in the breeze. The men stood like sentinels.

  Eventually Ingram managed to haul up the bucket and dropped a dark, dripping canvas bag onto the grass.

  ‘Open it,’ the rebel leader said.

  Ingram scrabbled at the neck of the bag. A few golden coins rolled out to lie amidst the grass and to sparkle in the torchlight. There was a rumble as the rest of the money fell out in a huge pile.

  For a moment there was absolute stillness, then Ingram gave a high, keening cry of pain and loss and started to clutch hopelessly at the piles of tarnished coins. There was no gold here, only a mound of blackened metal with a greenish tinge. There was a strong smell of sulphur.

  ‘Take your money, Ingram,’ t
he leader said. He turned the bay stallion and Ingram flinched away from its hooves. ‘Take your ill-gotten gains and run away. Spend it, Ingram! Spend all the money you have stolen from the poor and the dispossessed and the weak! Take it and run, before we come after you.’

  Ingram scrabbled in the grass for the few golden coins that still sparkled there, shoving them in his pockets, staggering to his feet. The crowd parted silently for him. He cast a feverish look around, from masked face to masked face, reeling from one to the other as he tottered towards the gate. No one moved to stop him. No one moved at all.

  Ingram looked back once as he reached the gateway, then took off into the night. Five long, slow seconds passed then, and with a roar, the mob suddenly poured through the gateway after him, the primeval beat of the drum in the air, the torches blazing. Ingram took to his heels and the rabble raced after him, spilling across the gardens and fields until the night was still.

  Two men only remained in the walled garden. Charles Lafoy pulled off his mask, his eyes bright, laughing. Della opened the summerhouse door and tumbled out into his arms.

  Annis stood waiting in the shadows, then came forward more slowly. The man on the bay stallion turned his horse unhurriedly and brought it alongside. He looked down at her for a long moment, eyes brilliant behind the mask, then, as he had done once before, he bent down and swept her up onto the saddlebow before him.

  Annis turned into his arms. ‘Adam,’ she said, her mouth very close to his, ‘swear to me that that was the first time you did that. Swear to me that you were never the rebel leader before tonight.’

  She saw Adam grin, saw the blaze of triumph and satisfaction in his eyes. ‘What do you think?’ he said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘There was gunpowder in those sacks originally,’ Charles said as, later that night, they sat once again in the drawing room at Starbeck. ‘Ellis told me that he had used canvas bags like that one and the one in the attic when he went hunting on the Linforth Estate. One of them must have held his bread and cheese and the other his gunpowder. An unconscionable piece of bad luck for Ingram.’