“Ah, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” he laughed softly, and took her again, this time in a golden glide to summer mountains far away and with a richness that surprised her even as she collapsed in shuddering ecstasy against him.
Come down at last from shattering emotions, from worldshaking heights, she found a golden sleepiness stealing over her, a rich warm feeling that relaxed her completely. Tomorrow was soon enough to talk about one’s mistakes, she thought, lulled by the sleepy remembered glow of their passions. Tomorrow when the sun was up she would look into Dev’s keen laughing face and drop her eyes and try to explain what had driven her to this final madness.
Tomorrow...
Even as she thought it, her young exhausted body was drifting off to sleep.
Not so the young highwayman. Although a delightful lethargy had stolen over him in the wake of his dazzling performance, he would not allow himself to fall asleep. When he was certain that Constance had drifted off, he rose quietly and went to the scribe’s small writing desk. Dipping quill to inkwell, he penned in the moonlight a note upon a stiff sheet of parchment.
When he had finished, he signed it with a flourish and sat considering it for a long time before he went over and laid it gently upon the pillow beside her.
Constance did not stir. She lay on her back, breathing evenly. Her arms were trustingly outflung and the dark tangle of her hair gleamed in the moonlight and haloed the pale oval of her face.
Deverell Westmorland, son of an aristocratic house, stood looking down at her and warring with his thoughts. He wanted nothing in life so much as to stay by her side. Her pale near-naked body in its light chemise that now rode around her chin tempted him, and his strong jaw worked as he traced those elegant lines and thought of the delights he had known with her. A few more hours of her company—ah, what would be the harm?
But even as his hand stretched out yearningly to touch and caress the slim white pillar of her naked thigh, he drew back. For what could he offer her? What could he ever offer her? The dangers of the road? The rough inns, the long hard rides, the company of cutthroats and bawds? And what if he were killed, what would happen to her then? Gibb would try to aid her, but would Gibb be able to?
She had a husband now, obvious wealth, a life of ease.
Who was he to deprive her of all that? He was a wanted man, hunted all across England, and if now he wrested her away from the only security she had ever found—and then if he were taken and hanged high on some lonely gibbet, what misery would he know in those last moments of his life, knowing what he had done to her?
Yet she was here within reach—and he desired her more than he had ever desired anything. In silent agony, he wrestled with himself.
But there was a gallantry in Dev. A gallantry that had come down to him across the years from those long-ago ancestors who had fought at Agincourt and at Crecy. A gallantry that would not permit him to bring ruin or shame to the woman he loved.
With an effort that cost him much, he wrenched his gaze away from the temptingly lovely sight of Constance’s frail white body displayed so elegantly there upon the bed and set his clothing to rights. In haste. His belt was jerked round his waist with a punishing yank, his arms thrust violently through his coat sleeves. With unaccustomed fierceness he tugged on his boots. At last he moved softly to the open casement and climbed through it, out upon the moonlit roof.
He cast a quick look around before he dropped to the ground—and saw no one.
But the moonlight had tricked him. Mirrorlike, it shone upon a window that concealed a pair of bright eyes.
His departure from Constance’s bedchamber was being observed.
Pamela, excited by her romantic imaginings about a masterful Captain Warburton carrying Constance away with him, had found it difficult to sleep. She had risen and gone to the window for a breath of fresh air, and as she looked out she saw a man just dropping over the edge of the roof. And he looked to her very much like the stranger she had seen earlier downstairs in the common room.
So swiftly did it all happen, so silently, so suddenly was the figure gone that Pamela could almost persuade herself that she had seen nothing, that her excited imagination had conjured up an illusion. Then she told herself sensibly that it was more likely some guest who had got himself drunk and been put to bed by a servant—and then waked up to discover he had drunk up the money to pay for his lodgings: some fellow who was leaving by a route that would not take him downstairs past the waiting landlord!
Presently she heard a horse’s hooves leaving the vicinity of the inn and another possibility occurred to her: The innkeeper had a pretty daughter and her room might well lie along this roof! This fellow who had left by the roof could be her lover stealing away in the night.
Pamela sighed and gazed wistfully out at the moon. For she too had thought she had a lover—and had found him false. Would the innkeeper’s pretty daughter find her lover false as well? Like as not, she decided. Cooled by the breezes of the summer night, Pamela leaned pensively on the sill and wondered how she could ever get out of her impending marriage to Dick Peacham.
When Constance woke, her world—so confused of late—had come back into focus. Now she knew that she did not truly love Tony Warburton—she loved Dev. She had loved him all along.
She stretched luxuriously and turned her head to smile at him.
There was no russet head upon the pillow beside her, no long muscular form lying there.
Only a note.
She snatched it up in fear. It was very brief but it rang through her head like a great gong.
I should have confessed to you last night that ours was not a legal marriage, the note read. I bribed the “preacher,” who by profession is a gunsmith. I must tell you that I have married an heiress in Bristol and am on my way to America. Here the ink was blotted as the pen had quivered. It ended firmly, I will always love you. And it was signed Dev.
Dev had done his work well. Constance found every word believable. Dev had found her again—and stayed to enjoy her body. And then gone merrily on. And this time the liaison was not some light love like Nan that he could readily shake off. This time he was legally married. And on his way to America.
She had lost him.
She reread the note twice before she crumpled it and her world crashed in about her. And then she put her white face in her trembling hands and rocked with agony.
All men—all men were untrue.
Even Dev.
Tersely refusing to go on to the Ellertons’, Constance rode home in a state of near collapse. All her new-made dreams lay in ruins about her and she answered Pamela’s chatter in monosyllables.
Pamela could stand it no longer. She reined up. “You have quarreled with Captain Warburton?” she burst out. “Is that it?”
Constance gave her a bewildered look. “Captain Warburton?” She sounded as if she had never heard the name before.
Pamela refused to speak to her all the way home.
Axeleigh Hall, Somerset,
June 5, 1685
Chapter 31
Clifford Archer had been glad to see the girls go. In fact, he had encouraged them to spend a night or two at the Ellertons—it got them out of his way.
For the blackmailer had at last overplayed his hand. Egged on perhaps by a feeling that England was drifting fast into revolution, he had demanded five hundred guineas in gold—and Axeleigh’s squire was of no mind to pay it.
Evening found him carefully cleaning his dueling pistols. He would have two in case one failed him. This night, he told himself grimly, he would become what he was paying hush money to keep the world from thinking he was—a murderer. Or else a dead man. In which case, he could give thanks that the banns were already being cried for Pamela and Dick Peacham.
Before he left for the hollow tree he carefully wrote out his will and signed it and left it in his writing desk—just as he would have done had it been a duel he was about to fight.
And then he rode throug
h the gates and down the familiar road toward Huntlands, perhaps for the last time.
He was early and he secreted himself in the bushes near the hollow tree and waited—just as Jack Drubbs had once waited.
But by now a swaggering Jack Drubbs felt very sure of himself. He had no need to hide in bushes, for was not the money always waiting in the hollow tree? And tonight’s piece of work would make him a rich man. In silvery moonlight he rode boldly up to the hollow tree, dismounted and reached inside.
It was a shock to come up empty—and an even greater shock to look up and see a man standing solidly between him and the waning moon.
Drubbs recognized the square body of the Squire.
“I’ve decided not to pay,” said the Squire, and brought up his pistol.
Jack Drubbs was catlike fast. He slithered to the side, brought out his own pistol and fired at the same time as the Squire.
Tom Thornton, who had bedded a tavern maid in Bridgwater this night and was headed for home half-drunk and very late, had slowed his pace as he passed the gates of Axeleigh, for he was thinking painfully of Pamela. Now as he rode, he kept hearing hoofbeats behind him. Although he paused several times, they came no closer. Nobody passed him. Whoever it was waited patiently until he started up again. The hoofbeats were somewhat distant but it annoyed Tom to think that someone was following him. The tavern maid, he’d heard, had a jealous lover somewhere—perhaps that was who was following him. Some fellow with murder in his heart who had laid back on the first leg of the journey and was now catching up. That thought sobered Tom. As he approached Huntlands he looked for a convenient spot to leave the road and watch to see who passed by—and found it just short of the hollow tree near which the Squire waited patiently for his blackmailer.
The Squire had heard Tom’s hoofbeats and presumed it was the blackmailer. The blackmailer had presumed the rider ahead was the Squire. Maybe he had had trouble raising so much cash, and was now riding out late to deposit the money on this lonely road. For him. With that pleasant thought in mind, Drubbs waited a bit when he no longer heard Tom’s horse, assuming it was taking the Squire a bit of time to place the money in the hollow tree to his satisfaction. This pause had given Tom time to walk his horse silently over the soft sod and so come up across the road, well hidden by bushes, directly across from the hollow tree.
And so he had witnessed in amazement the encounter between the Squire and the blackmailer.
Tom spurred his horse forward as both men fired. He saw both shots go wild, saw the Squire dragging out another pistol. Simultaneously he saw the blackmailer mount in a single leap and ride down the Squire, dashing into him with his horse and sending the Squire—who did not leap out of the way in time, taking aim on the blackmailer as he was—flying to the side. Drubbs would have gone after the fallen man but that Tom and Satan crashed through into the road at that moment. Drubbs wheeled his horse around and fled. And his horse was the fleetest the Squire’s money had been able to buy him.
Tom, who wore—as all gentlemen of the time did—a sword at his side, but who was not carrying a gun, put Satan to the test that night. Streaking forward at a dead run, he ducked as the blackmailer turned and fired at him point-blank.
Satan fled down the road like a shadow, pursuing the fleeing Drubbs. Tom was brandishing his sword in the moonlight as he rode, leaning forward, urging the big horse on. He had almost reached Drubbs, thundering close on his heels, when Drubbs—who had been hampered by the necessity for reloading his pistol as he fled—turned and fired wildly—and this time the bullet, as he ducked, went clean through the crown of Tom’s hat and creased his hair. So close were the two thundering riders now that Tom took a wicked swipe at Drubbs, his blade flashing in the moonlight. Drubbs, who wore no sword (having no skill with one), pulled out a dagger and threw it at Tom. It whistled by, missing Tom as Drubbs’s horse stumbled over a rock, and Tom, lunging forward in the saddle, drove his sword entirely through Drubbs’s body.
The impact carried Drubbs off his horse and to the ground. In a moment Tom had dismounted.
“Who are you?” he demanded, but Drubbs’s eyes were already glazing. His head fell to the side, limp. Tom retrieved his blade and coolly wiped it on Drubbs’s cloak. He frowned down at the fallen man, remembering the Squire’s, “I've decided not to pay.” Then he bent down and went very thoroughly through Drubbs’s pockets. It was clear to Tom this man must be blackmailing the Squire for such words to pass between them on the road by night, and he half expected to find incriminating papers—love letters to a married woman perhaps. Instead he found a considerable purse of gold coins, which he grimly pocketed.
Leaving Drubbs where he was, he rode back to find the Squire groaning, for although the blackmailer’s shot had missed him clean, Drubbs’s horse in its surge forward had sent him flying and he had twisted his back painfully as he fell.
“He’ll not bother you again, whoever he was,” Tom told the Squire as he helped him up. “I’ve done for the fellow—left him back there on the road.”
“Then ye must get ye gone, Tom,” gasped Clifford, ashen from pain. “I thank you for doing what I came to do, but ’tis no affair of yours and I’ll not have you suffer for it.”
“No one will suffer for it,” shrugged Tom. “Can ye ride?”
“I don’t know.” Clifford Archer groaned as Tom assisted him to his horse, and lay writhing across his horse’s neck as Tom led the horse through the trees and across a meadow to Huntlands.
“I’m up and about so late that none notice my comings and goings,” Tom told the Squire. “We’ll say ye were visiting me and ye fell down the stairs, too much to drink—right?”
The Squire, very white about the lips from pain, nodded.
Tom got him inside, poured out brandy and gave the Squire some. Then he got him to bed.
Once his guest had been made comfortable in the big airy bedchamber, Tom tossed the purse of coins he had taken from Drubbs upon the bed. “I don’t doubt these rightfully belong to you,” he said. “And I don’t care to know why you paid them.”
The Squire spilled the coins out on the bed and counted them out. He had back now most of the gold he had given Drubbs. He looked up at Tom. “I never knew his name,” he said. “But eventually he’d have broken me. He was bleeding me dry.” He considered the sturdy master of Huntlands who had killed a man for him this night. A pair of calm blue eyes gazed back at him from the face of a golden Viking. “I’m beholden to you, Tom.” And as Tom shrugged his broad shoulders, “I wish it had been you instead of Peacham,” he said wearily.
Tom turned away with a hardening jaw.
So did he.
Deverell was not so lucky as Tom. He had left Bridgwater shortly after Tom and by the same road. Riding along pensively with his thoughts on Constance, he had heard distant shots ring out and curiosity had impelled him forward at a gallop. Normally he would not have been so careless, but tonight he was full of tolerance and kindness toward his fellow beings. Indeed he was in just the proper quixotic mood to rescue someone and the quirk of fate that had led him down this particular road at this particular moment now led him forward at a rush.
Tom had already removed the Squire from the road and the pair of them were well into the trees when Dev galloped by—he never saw either of them. What he came upon a little later was a man in a puce suit and light cloak lying on his back near a little waterfall that gushed down out of the hills. Blood stained the man’s doublet and cloak and Dev could not tell whether he was alive or dead.
Swiftly he dismounted and knelt beside the fallen man. And in surprise recognized the surly fellow he had booted out of the Rose and Thistle that afternoon.
He tore apart the fellow’s doublet to expose the wound and see how bad it was, staining his hands with Drubbs’s blood as he did so. Useless, he saw. The man was dead. Dev sighed and would have risen but at that very moment a stout club descended on his head and he slumped senseless atop his earlier adversary.
When h
e woke, he was in jail with the worst headache of his life.
A laconic jailer, jangling large keys, explained the situation to him. One Alger Tupper, whose young wife had come suddenly into labor with her first child, had been last night trudging from his cottage to the home of a midwife some distance away when in the distance he had heard shots. Tupper had prudently stayed crouched where he was for a time and then had crept over a rise to see what appeared to be a gentleman kneeling over a body on the road.
A wandering brigand, Tupper had thought, and had eased his body forward over the soft ground without breaking so much as a twig.
The plash of the waterfall concealed the sound of Tapper’s footsteps, thought Dev ironically, and opened his mouth to explain that he was the would-be rescuer—not the assailant.
Tupper had struck him down and had, it seemed, draped both bodies over Dev’s horse (Drubbs’s horse having run away) and plodded on to the midwife’s, roused her and sent her scurrying to his cottage where she had delivered Tupper’s young wife of a bouncing eight-pound baby boy! Meanwhile Tupper, mindful of his duty, had tied Dev’s hands and feet' securely and brought both victim and presumed assailant on to the constable in Bridgwater. It was Tupper’s view that the deed had not been done alone for he had heard, he thought, distant departing hoofbeats. But as Dev’s hands were covered with the dead man’s blood, and as the dead man’s purse was missing, it seemed reasonable to accuse Deverell of the crime.
In vain Dev (whose papers identified him as one George Mayberry) told them he had spent the night at the Rose and Thistle in Bridgwater and had only just reached the scene of the trouble when an overzealous Tupper had struck him down (“But the landlord claims you took no room and departed the common room early in the evening”). In vain Dev pointed out that his sword was clean (“You wiped it clean on the deadman’s cloak”) and that neither of his pistols had been recently fired (“You could have carried a third and thrown it away somewhere”). In vain he protested that he had spent the night in the arms of a lady (“Who is this lady? Will she come forward?”) Steadfastly Dev refused to name her, giving her reputation as the excuse (and indeed he thought he had brought enough grief on Constance without involving her in this). And when witnesses from the Rose and Thistle remembered before a hastily called court in Bridgwater that Dev had had an altercation with the dead man earlier that same evening and had indeed booted him from the inn, Dev found himself adjudged “guilty of murder on the Bridgwater Road” and sentenced to be hanged on Monday next.
Lovely Lying Lips Page 43
