My Lord Highwayman

by Valerie King

  “Good,” she said, her brow softening. “Oh, I cannot believe you are leaving me.”·

  “I daresay I shall remain in Bath through the end of the summer. Perhaps once you and Mr. Ditchling are wed, you may come and visit me.”

  “I should like that very much.”

  “You may even try the waters.”

  Sarah laughed. “After all that you and Henry have said of them? Never, though I would like to see the obelisk in the Orange Grove.”

  “Bath is a very pretty city. Much of the building is quite new, and there are not so many beggars as one was used to seeing a few years ago.”

  “Well, I shall let you continue your packing, then. When you are finished, will you stay for an hour and talk with us? Papa, as you must know, is inordinately fond of you.”

  “Of course I shall.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Sarah left the bedchamber satisfied that she had completed her mission satisfactorily. She went immediately to her father’s study and related to him the precise details of her conversation with Miss Chailey. “She means to go to Bath, which would put her on the highway up through the moor­land, and I bade her promise to talk with us for at least an hour before leaving.”

  “You have done well. Now let me pen this note and all shall be settled. You’ll see!”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Two hours later, with the moon rising in a pretty gibbous shape, Abigail’s coach reached the moorland under a blanket of stars. Over forty days had passed since she last saw this landscape at night from a coach window. So many interesting, passionate, and sad things had happened that she found herself caught up in a whirlwind of emotions. Part of her still reveled in the new creature Sarah had become in so short a time and in her subsequent betrothal to Mr. Ditchling. For this reason alone, she was happy to have been part of the changing life at Oak Hill. Another part of her was deeply satisfied that Lady Waldron had been capable of confronting her love for Treyford in such a way that she finally made peace with a man she had treated as her enemy for so long a time. However, thoughts of Lord Treyford and his seemingly unending love for Lady Chandos still dominated her.

  She tried to shake off the sense of desolation that seemed to be creeping upon her with every succeeding thought, but new tears seeped from her eyes regardless. She did not mean to become a watering pot, but how else was she to feel when she was leaving her heart in Three Rivers Cross, besides a host of friends who had come in so short a time to mean so very much to her.

  She whipped a kerchief from her reticule and dabbed at her eyes. The more she dabbed, however, the more tears arrived to torment her. A sob escaped her and would have been joined by another, but the coachman suddenly called out to his horses and the coach drew to a sudden stop.

  “What now?” she murmured into the cool night air. The thought that some accident had occurred that would keep her from reaching Bath before dawn nearly undid her.

  Then she heard voices, and her heart faltered within her breast. She did not wait, but flung open the door and leaned out as far as she could in order to see who had stopped her coach. She gasped, for there in the middle of road was the highwayman, sitting atop his horse, moonlight slanting over his Spanish hat, his cape flung back over his shoulder. Her heart began to pound, and she giggled, though somewhat hysterically.

  He had followed after her.

  If she had had any doubt as to his identity, his voice, thick in accent, rippled the night air. “I demand your passenger if she is Miss Chailey of Oak Hill.”

  Treyford had followed her.

  “That she is,” the coachman responded a little too brightly.

  She suddenly sensed Sylvester Lavant’s hand in this piece of mischief. She did not know whether to be grateful or chagrined, for what good could possibly come of this nonsense? She was certain of Mr. Lavant’s efforts when the highwayman walked his horse nonchalantly past a grinning coachman entirely without benefit of a pistol.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  He smiled but addressed the coachman. “I am taking Miss Chailey. She will ride with me. You may return to your master.” He drew close to her and offered his arm. “Come,” he said. “You have no choice, you know.”

  “I . . . I am going to Bath,” she announced firmly.

  “Not tonight,” he said, making use of his Spanish accent so that she could only giggle nervously.

  “Trey, you should not be running around the countryside in that costume. What if someone thought you really were a highwayman? You could be attacked.”

  “Who is this Trey?” he asked. “I know nothing of him. I am Don Juan, as you know, my beautiful daughter of the moon.”

  “Oh,” she groaned. Why was he doing this to her, for nothing was pleasing her more than his insistence on the charade. “This is all a mistake. You should leave now and permit me to continue my journey to Bath.”

  “The only mistake is your thinking that my heart belongs to another, my darling. It does not, only to you, always to you. Do you understand me, daughter of the moon?”

  “I . . . I do not believe you. I want to, but I saw how you looked at her. You still love her.”

  At that, he slipped the mask from his head, letting it fall to the ground. “Abigail, for just a moment during the night of the ball, I did see the young woman with whom I had tumbled so violently in love. But for a very long time I have known she was little more than a schoolboy’s dream. Is it possible you saw me embrace her in the conservatory?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I had been searching for you. I had wanted you to dance the quadrille.”

  He drew in a deep breath. “I was bidding good-bye at long last to all that had transpired before, even the pain of it. Marianne told me something that night, something that has worked within me to finally relinquish her. You see, Henrietta did not summon Chandos from London on that fateful night—Marianne did.”

  “What?” Abigail cried.

  “She said she did not know what to do. She was unwilling to divorce Chandos, yet she could not find a way of telling me, so she sent for her husband.”

  Abigail was astonished.

  He continued, “Marianne loves her husband very much and confessed that she knew what I could not have known when I was nineteen, that she had been a rather useless, silly female who had preyed upon the sensibilities of an untried youth. As for Chandos, knowing that his wife had come so close to eloping with another man awoke him to his love for her.

  “Abigail, please believe that I love you with my whole heart, to the point of madness. Why else would I have donned this ridiculous costume?”

  Abigail looked at him, his features lit with a glow of moonlight. She wanted desperately to believe him.

  When she remained silent, he continued, “When I received Lavant’s note explaining that you were removing to Bath within the hour, I vowed then and there that I would do anything to bring you back to me. If you think for a moment that Mr. Carter, Mr. Pomeroy, or Mr. Ferrers have shown persistence, I warn you that you have just witnessed but a small portion of what I intend to do to win your heart and your hand.”

  Abigail felt more tears threaten her countenance. “Trey, are you certain you love me?”

  “I know only this, my darling, how will I go on without you if you leave me now? I have come to believe that whatever struggles I may have had for the past score of years have served one purpose, to make me ready for your arrival in Three Rivers Cross. Abigail, come to me. Come now. Be my wife, live in my home, share my bed, bear my children, I beg of you.”

  She swallowed the terrible lump that had formed in her throat. He was holding his arm out to her. All she had to do was to lean toward him from her position in the coach doorway and he would be able to slide her onto his lap.

  The coach horses fretted in harness, and the body of the vehicle lurched slightly as she began to lean. She stumbled, but his arm caught her and held. She gained her balance and looked deeply into his eyes. She wanted his arm about h
er the rest of her life.

  She made her decision abruptly and fairly threw herself into his arms. He lifted her deftly onto his lap, and once she was settled, he slammed the coach door shut.

  “Off with you,” he called out to the coachman.

  A whip cracked the air and the horses charged forward. Treyford held his mount securely until the vehicle passed by. Only then did he turn his horse around and guide the gelding onto a nearby track so that very soon, horse and two riders were deep in moorland.

  Abigail could not believe this was happening, that Trey was holding her securely around the waist and whispering into her ear his love for her, his desire for her, his intention of making her his wife as soon as the banns might be published on four successive Sundays in church. He spoke of the delight his sister and niece would feel at his forthcoming nuptials, how much Lizzie, especially, enjoyed her company.

  She let him talk, leaning the full weight of her body against his. He untied the ribbons of her traveling bonnet, which she tied around the pommel of the saddle and let dangle on her lap. Afterward, he placed gentle kisses on her neck and her cheek.

  When he finally drew to a stop, she realized they were at the very place, near Oak Hill, where he had met her in the guise of the highwayman so long before.

  “How wonderful,” she said. She slid easily to the ground, using his arm to balance her. He followed swiftly and tied the reins of his horse to a nearby shrub.

  She moved to the rim of the moors that overlooked the beautiful vale below. Cottage lantern lights winked in the growing dark. He came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. She held his arms fast.

  “Abigail, tell me I am not dreaming.”

  She leaned sideways so that she might meet his gaze as she looked up, into his face. “You are not dreaming, my darling.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Of course I will,” she responded. She could not help but smile, however, thinking of all that had transpired to bring her to Three Rivers Cross. She added, “I feel as though I have come home at last.”

  “You have, my dearest Abigail,” he whispered against her cheek, holding her more tightly still. “And so have I.”

  For a moment, she let her gaze rove the landscape, the place where they would make their home together. He kissed the shell of her ear, the line of her neck, and as much of her cheek as he could reach at such an odd angle.

  She wanted his lips and turned fully in his arms until he drew her hard against him. He kissed her intimately, searching her mouth tenderly. Abigail became lost in the sensation of her love for him as a cool night breeze whipped at her skirts, passed by, and dropped into the vale below. She had begun her adventure in Devonshire in the arms of the highwayman, and so it would seem her adventures would continue in just the same, wonderful manner.

  Epilogue

  “Trey, I think you should take it away from him. He’s almost seven now and he’s bound to start asking questions.”

  Treyford, standing by the open bedroom window, stared down into the garden off the terrace. Lizzie walked slowly across the bricks, holding little Henry by the hand as she called out to young Trey, “Are you still wearing that mask?”

  The boy called back, “Yes, Aunt Lizzie, why ever not?”

  Trey chuckled. “My sister still keeps improving. Did I tell you that Sophia returns today with immense news? Apparently, she’s tumbled in love again.”

  “Yes, Lizzie told me earlier, but I will not be ignored on this subject. The mask, my dear. I wish you would take it away from Trey and destroy that thing. Whenever I see it, I fear Burwash will charge in from the shadows and haul you away to London.”

  He glanced at her. “Nonsense. Burwash is a good friend now; we have a standing engagement during the Season to meet at Jackson’s. He would never give up a boxing partner just to put me in prison.”

  “You’re avoiding the point.”

  “I suppose I am, but I want our son to wear the mask if he wishes to.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Besides, you were the one who sent me back to that lane to pick it up where I’d dropped it, remember?”

  “That is a very different issue.” Her cheeks turned a rosy hue.

  “I can read your thoughts.” He turned in her direction. “Yes, I wore it many nights during our first year together.”

  Abigail laughed softly. “And spoke in your Spanish accent. We had a lot of fun back then, I must say, and I know I’m blushing. I can feel the heat on my cheeks.”

  “We’re having an enormous amount of fun now.”

  “Yes, we are.” She glanced down at the baby in her arms, her expression tender, then back to him. “But truly, Trey, what if our boy discovers what you did? I don’t want him thinking badly of his wonderful papa.”

  He settled his gaze on his beautiful wife, lying against a mountain of pillows and holding their latest child in her arms, an infant three days old. The baby, young Sarah Sophia, named after two of the important women in their lives, lay asleep after a good feeding.

  Abigail was an excellent mother and he strove to be her equal, a challenge of course, because she seemed to have so much sense and intelligence. He’d been lucky to win her and the mask their young Trey wore served to remind him of just how close he’d come to losing her forever.

  “I don’t give a fig what Trey discovers. One day he’ll know the truth anyway, in the meantime we’ll continue calling it ‘the prank we played on Sir Christopher and a Bow Street Runner’. He loves that story. And when the day comes, and the truth must be told, then I will share with him how I kissed his mother during a time when I was a Spanish thief and you were a mere governess.”

  She reached her hand toward him and he went to her, as he always did, hungry to be with her and deeply in love, grateful for his immense good fortune and for the large family they were in the process of building together. Sarah Sophia was their third child and he hoped for many more. He stretched out next to her, holding her hand and gazing into her eyes, then shifting to view for perhaps the hundredth time the small sleeping perfection of his daughter.

  He now understood all that he would have missed if his life hadn’t taken so many strange twists and painful turns, if he hadn’t been nearly killed in a duel all those years ago, and even if he hadn’t worn a mask that fateful night and kissed Abigail beneath a fall of moonlight.

  “The masks stays.” He leaned close and placed a kiss on her willing lips.

  She smiled at him. “You’re thinking about the past. Very well, the mask stays.”

  He met her gaze once more, sinking into the soft warmth of her brown eyes. “I love you with all my heart, daughter of the moon.”

  Sudden tears brimmed in her eyes. “And I, you, my lord highwayman.”

  Coming September 15, 2013: A Country Flirtation

  Excerpt From: A COUNTRY FLIRTATION

  One

  The sound of splintering wood and screaming horses penetrated the serenity of Constance Pamberley’s sleep one early July morning. She opened her eyes, uncertain, precisely, of what had awakened her. She listened, but heard nothing untoward.

  Perhaps she had imagined the sounds. She hoped so, for if she was not greatly mistaken, the same sounds had attended the numerous coaching accidents that had beset Lady Brook Cottage for the past several years.

  She lay in the bed of her childhood, content, at ease with the world, and, as always, letting the excitement of the day begin to build within her before settling her bare feet on the cold wood of her bedchamber floor. She extended her arms over her head and indulged in a catlike stretch.

  Somehow, amid the difficulties of her existence—which were numerous—she had learned to take great pleasure in each day, knowing that the sun wouldn’t set without presenting at least one surprise to enliven even the dullest of homey chores. For Constance, life was an adventure to be lived out in the unexpected twists and turns of fate, of things spiritual, things temporal, of things known and things unlooked for. Of cours
e, what made every manner of ill endurable was that she was the present owner of Lady Brook Cottage and would be until the day she died. Of additional succor was the fact that no genteel country house within a twenty-mile radius of Lady Brook could boast so fine a cook as the old brick mansion possessed.

  She smiled and mused that perhaps without Cook, life wouldn’t be such a fine adventure, that perhaps a delectable apricot tartlet or a flaky pigeon pie was the true source of every present happiness.

  She chuckled to herself. Such were the ridiculous ramblings by which laughter made her life bountiful.

  If she had any wish at all, though, she found she occasionally longed for someone, for a man, with whom she could share her ridiculous musings, ruminations, and thoughts. Were she to have some such person with whom she could share her sense of the absurd, she truly believed she would want for nothing.

  She was the eldest of five beautiful sisters who were woven into the fabric of a dozen surrounding neighborhoods as intricately as a medieval tapestry. The Pamberley ladies of Lady Brook Cottage were essential to their small part of Berkshire. There was not a lack in the countryside that the ladies failed to put right—posies for the infirmed widows who lived above the candle shop, pots of honey for an old sailor dying of consumption, delicate watercress to tempt the appetite of a waiflike girl in nearby Wraythorne, the only surviving child of the blacksmith, whose family had been decimated by scarlet fever two winters past.

  A distressed whinny caught her ear. Her bedchamber overlooked the front drive of the ancient house, and so it was when she heard the horse’s cry, she knew she had not imagined the crashing sounds that had awakened her.

  She threw back her bedcovers and slipped from her bed in order to determine which carriage and driver had come to mischief on her property. The bend in the road that led to the front drive of Lady Brook was very sharp, and if a traveler did not pay heed to the handmade wood sign which her gardener, Finch, had made only last fall to give warning to potential danger, an accident could easily ensue.