Lovely Lying Lips

by Valerie Sherwood

  Pamela gave him her sunny smile and threw her arms around his neck. “ We’ll save Constance!” she cried. “You and I!” And suddenly Tom didn’t care whether he had serenity or not—he had something better: a wicked golden wench to love forever.

  “I’ll cut him down, Pam,” he promised hoarsely. “If you insist. But I still think one of the Warburtons should do it—whichever she plans to end up with, of course.”

  Pamela was about to say, “Oh, no, this will be much better,” when through the window she caught a glimpse of Dick Peacham riding up the drive. “Oh, dear, it’s Dick,” she said. “I do hope he hasn’t seen me!” And glided away from the window. “Oh, Tom, do get rid of him for me!”

  Fired by her recent careless embrace, Tom rose to his feet. “I’ll call him out, if you give me the word,” he offered. “All in all. I’d much prefer it to calling out Pell!”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” said Pamela, giving him a little push. “I mean, get rid of him—not kill him! He’ll want to nag me about making lists of wedding guests, and ask me again have I remembered to ask everyone who might die and leave either of us any money—oh, I just can’t face him today!”

  Only too glad to rid her of Peacham, Tom’s boots briskly made it across the room. He met Peacham at the front door, opening it before Peacham could bang the iron knocker.

  “Oh. Thornton. Will you tell Mistress Pamela I’m here?” Peacham’s manner was formal.

  “Surprised you didn’t pass her on the road,” said Tom blandly. “She’s gone back to Axeleigh.”

  Peacham looked confused. “But she couldn’t have! I’d have seen her.”

  “She probably took a shortcut through the woods,” laughed Tom. “Maybe you can catch her if you go that way. How’ve you been, Dick?” He tried to force jocularity.

  Peacham, mounting up, responded in kind. “Very well indeed. Will we be seeing you at the hanging in Bridgwater tomorrow?”

  The words seemed to linger suspended in the air. Tom, who hadn’t been keeping up with things, dancing attendance on Pamela as he was, seemed to feel a cold draft of air rush around him. He kept his voice light. “Didn’t know there was one, Dick. Who’s to hang?”

  “Stranger. Name of George Mayberry. Killed a fellow on the Bridgwater Road—not far from here, I take it.”

  “You mean he confessed to it?” exclaimed Tom.

  Dick Peacham gave him a puzzled look. “Didn’t have to. He was found bending over the body with blood on his hands. Fellow named flipper brought him in. I’d come by to ask Mistress Pamela if she’d care to attend the hanging with me tomorrow.”

  Tom rallied. “I doubt me she will. Pamela doesn’t like hangings.”

  Peacham frowned. “Will I see you there?” he asked frostily.

  “Oh, yes.” Tom’s voice was grim. “I’ll be there.”

  From the window above, Pamela had heard their conversation. As Dick Peacham rode off, she ran to find Tabby. “Ride back to Axeleigh,” she told the girl rapidly. “I want you to arrive before Dick Peacham gets there. Tell him I came home because I felt poorly, I can’t see him and he’s not to come over tomorrow, I intend to stay in bed all day. Hurry, now!”

  Tabitha did as she was bid and managed to meet Dick Peacham on the front steps of Axeleigh.

  Peacham’s mouth tightened at the message Tabitha delivered. Damned cavalier treatment he was receiving from Mistress Pamela these days, and their wedding just days away! He rode off in a huff, determined that he would let the lady cool her slippers this entire week!

  To Pamela the name George Mayberry had meant nothing, and she had forgotten all about the hanging when she arrived back at Axeleigh.

  So Constance went to sleep that night unaware that Dev, who’d been going by the name George Mayberry, was to be hanged in Bridgwater the next day.

  Part Two

  The Beautiful Liar

  Truth is a beautiful shining thing

  And lies are blacker than night,

  Yet in love's hot arms in a glorious spring

  Is a wee small lie not all right?

  Bridgwater, Somerset,

  June 11, 1685

  Chapter 32

  It was a glorious day for a hanging. In the sunshiny weather people had been filtering into the market town of Bridgwater since early morning and parking their wagons and carts in a circle around the hastily constructed gibbet. For a murderer named George Mayberry was to be hanged this day and hangings were great social occasions. Now as the day wore on and the moment approached, a mixed gathering jostled: rude carts containing bluff country fellows and their giggling women, satin-clad aristocrats who had disdained their enclosed coaches on such a day and made the journey on horseback, and ladies who had arrived in open carriages with big silken skirts billowing out of the sides and ruffled pastel parasols waving in the June heat.

  Tom was there. He had ridden into Bridgwater to give himself up. For although he had wrestled with himself all night, by morning he knew he could not let another man hang for what he himself had done.

  Not till he shouldered his way through the crowd that was gathering around the gibbet did he hear about the wench: The condemned man, it seemed, claimed he had spent the night with a woman and refused to name her. Married beyond a doubt! There was speculation that it might be true, and if so, what a rare scandal if she spoke up to save him!

  That made Tom think. If there was even the smallest chance this Mayberry fellow might be saved by something other than Tom’s own confession, he preferred to take it.

  He settled himself to wait. Time enough to speak out when Mayberry was on the scaffold!

  Pamela arrived late. Indeed she would not have come at all save for something Bates, Tom’s old butler, had told her when she arrived at Huntlands to see how her father fared.

  “I don’t know what’s got into Master Tom,” Bates confided to her in an aggrieved voice—for Pamela was a great favorite with Bates, who had known her since she was born. Indeed all the servants at Huntlands wished Master Tom would give up his wild ways and marry sweet Mistress Pamela.

  “What’s he done, Bates?”

  “Locked his will and a note for you in his desk—to be delivered in case something happens to him—and galloped off to Bridgwater to attend the hanging as if the devil himself was after him!”

  If something happened to him! Pamela regarded Bates with alarm, for these were uneasy times. “I’ll go after him, Bates,” she decided.

  Bates gave her a contented look. Mistress Pamela, looking imperious today in her thin scarlet taffeta riding habit, such a departure from her usual stiff garb, would see to it that nothing happened to Master Tom! He watched as Pamela, calling Tabitha to follow her, rode off for Bridgwater with her tulip red plumes waving on her hat.

  But Tom had a long head start. The prisoner was about to mount the scaffold when Pamela arrived. She hardly looked at him—it was Tom for whom her crystal blue eyes scanned the crowd.

  Ah, there he was, dressed in tan broadcloth and looking remarkably glum. She waved to him but he didn’t see her. Well, whatever had driven him to dash into Bridgwater, she thought, at least he was safe now—and in plain sight. And after this grisly business of hanging was got through, she would make her way to him and find out why he should gallop away after leaving such cryptic instructions for Bates.

  She scanned the crowd restlessly to see who was there and who was not: The Hawleys were out in force, Dorothea craning her neck wistfully toward Tom, some distance away. The Ellertons had come over from past Bridgwater, and the Rawlings. The Hamiltons were there, but not the Warburtons. Dick Peacham, she noted with a sinking feeling, was there in gaudy satin but he had not seen her. She was trying to scrunch down in her saddle when Tabby plucked at her arm.

  “There’s room up there.” Tabby, who enjoyed hangings and had been to three, pointed. With a sigh, Pamela, to please Tabby, edged a nervously dancing Angel up toward the front of the crowd. Peacham, she told herself, was sure to see her anyway!
She tried to avert her gaze and look away from the tall russet-clad fellow just mounting the scaffold.

  Suddenly her bright head swung back so that the tulip red plumes danced on her hat and she regarded the condemned man with such a lively interest that a nearby lady nudged her companion and muttered tartly that the Squire of Axeleigh’s daughter seemed quite taken by the prisoner!

  Indeed he was something to look upon, was the man just now mounting the scaffold. His air of command set him apart. He might have been mounting the steps of a throne, thought Pamela with a queer little tug at her heartstrings, rather than climbing toward his death at the end of a hempen rope. Sinewy lean, he moved almost contemptuously to the platform with the light-footed grace of a prowling tiger. The daunting look in the cold green eyes that raked the assembled crowd made the hangman wonder nervously if the prisoner might not try at the last moment to break free—and he felt the ropes that bound the prisoner to make sure he was securely shackled.

  Pamela studied him narrowly, for was the man on the roof she had glimpsed that night at the inn. Around her she could hear light conversation buzzing. Would he name the wench? Was it true? Listening, Pamela began to speculate on whether this “George Mayberry” had been calling on the landlord’s daughter—or his wife! Her heart went out to his gallantry in refusing to name the lady. Also, it seemed to her unlikely that a lover, whose only apparent altercation with the victim had been an argument over some spilt ale, would be incensed enough to pursue him down the Bridgwater Road and kill him. And had he even had time to do the deed? She was inclined to doubt it.

  Across the way Dick Peacham had discovered her. He waved his plumed hat wildly. Pamela regarded him with distaste and of a sudden she cocked her head and a new and wicked light danced in her crystal blue eyes. She could aid this gallant fellow on the scaffold and she could rid herself of Dick Peacham too—and with the same stroke!

  She leaned over and spoke in a low voice to Tabby, who reared back with a shocked look. “But I couldn’t”—she began to protest when Pamela’s shush silenced her. Several moments of muttered discussion ending with “Ask him—and you shall have your choice of my petticoats if you do!” capped the matter and Tabby, looking scared, dismounted. She began to push her way through the crowd.

  “ ’Tis good luck to kiss a man about to be hanged!” she cried defiantly. “My gramma told me she kissed a highwayman on the scaffold and after that she gave birth only to boys!

  I want her luck!”

  In the ensuing laughter. Tabby was urged forward and scampered up the steps to the platform. There—apparently enjoying the dramatic effect her interruption had caused—she clung to the prisoner, kissing him, some thought, rather more than twice. And several exuberant young girls had to be restrained from following her example as she flirted her skirts down from the gallows to the accompaniment of catcalls and a scattering of applause.

  “Now there’s a hot wench,” someone was heard to say as Tabby, her bravado evaporated, scuttled back to Pamela and whispered something to her, ending wistfully with “Can I have the red petticoat?”

  “You can. Hush now.”

  For the prisoner was about to launch into his parting speech before the rope claimed him.

  Dev looked out over their assembled heads—that gathering of the curious who had come to see him hanged. This truly put the crown to a wasted life, he was thinking sardonically. To die for a murder he didn’t commit! Fate had strange twists. If his uncle had died and his father had lived, he’d be a peer of the realm today—instead of a hunted highwayman!

  At least—his face softened—he had held Constance in his arms one last time. By God’s grace, he’d had that!

  He cast a last thoughtful look at the blue skies over Somerset—the last blue skies he would see this side of hell. For name Constance he would not. They’d have come from all over England, he thought grimly, if they’d known they were hanging “Gentleman Johnny” of the highroads! Ah, well, he would depart this life as George Mayberry—after all, what did it matter? He gave a mental shrug. And if he felt a bitter disappointment that Constance had made no attempt to save him, he told himself it was no more than he deserved, and that probably she was far from here by now and did not even know.

  At least he would not brand her as an unfaithful wife! He would carry her secret to his grave!

  “I say again that I am innocent of this crime.” His strong voice carried over the heads of the crowd and they hushed to listen. “I repeat that I spent the night in question at the Rose and Thistle in the company of a lady. And not ambushing some chance-met fellow on the Bridgwater Road! ’Twas my bad luck to find the body, and as I checked to see whether he was dead, I was hit over the head and ended up here.”

  “Name the lady!” bawled a raucous voice from the crowd and there was a ripple of laughter. And someone else shouted mockingly, “Speak up, lady! Save your lover!!”

  In the sudden expectant hush as the condemned man looked sternly about him, Pamela rose in her stirrups.

  “Very well, I will speak,” she announced recklessly. And now her calm voice rang out across the throng. “You have been very gallant, sir, in protecting my reputation”—she gave the prisoner a sunny smile—“but I cannot let you die for it. It is true, what this gentleman says. He did indeed spend the night in question at the Rose and Thistle. With me. In my bedchamber.”

  Around her there were gasps. Townsfolk and countrymen alike gaped at her. Satin-clad ladies dropped their fans from nerveless fingers. Gentlemen choked on their snuff.

  For the golden-haired lady who was speaking had turned up her nose at one time or another at proposals of marriage from half the eligible gentlemen here. They could not, they felt, be hearing her aright.

  Pamela ignored their mutterings. “So I demand that you release him,” she added, heedless that she was shredding her reputation with every word she spoke. “For I can swear that on the night in question his mind was not on murder. He was”—the slight flush on her soft cheeks deepened—“otherwise engaged. And lest you fail to believe me,” she added defiantly, using the information she had got from Tabby, “I would tell you that the prisoner has a scar on his right side just below his belt.”

  Dick Peacham’s face was contorted. He looked as if he might fall down in a fit.

  From the crowd the magistrate who had condemned Dev now raised his voice. “See if there is such a scar,” he commanded. Rough hands were laid upon Dev and the scar promptly located.

  The deep frown of the magistrate abruptly lightened. Only this morning a woman named Mollie—just returned from Bristol and seeing the murdered man displayed in his coffin—had identified him as one Jack Drubbs, whose treasonous activities she had reported to the King’s men last summer. The magistrate, a King’s man to the core, had decided that this George Mayberry had done the country a service by eradicating Drubbs, and had been looking for some excuse to let him go. Now he had found it.

  “Release the prisoner,” he said dryly. “It seems there has been a miscarriage of justice here.”

  From the scaffold Dev—who had been more astonished than anyone at this outburst from a perfect stranger—was looking down at Pamela in joy. Now he understood. Constance could not come herself—but she had sent this lustrous lady to save him!

  Another face in the crowd was mirroring joy at that moment: Tom’s.

  How she had learnt about it, he couldn’t know—unless the Squire had told her. But it was clear to him that Pamela had ridden in to save his hide! And blasted her reputation to do it! She had spoken up to keep him from confessing to killing the blackmailer in a wild duel on horseback on the Bridgwater Road! Darling girl! He turned his horse’s head, jostling his way by brute force toward Pamela.

  And it was at that moment that a dusty rider on a lathered horse, waving both arms and his weathered hat, galloped into the outer edges of the crowd, shouting hoarsely. And as those nearby heard what he was saying, there were exclamations and people turned to look at this n
ew wonder, riding at them through a cloud of dust.

  And now for the first time Tom—and Pamela too—could hear it clearly.

  “The Duke of Monmouth has landed at Lyme! All of the West Country is flocking to him! Thousands are pouring in to Lyme!”

  A thrill went through the crowd. The Duke had landed! Their soon-to-be king had landed! The West Country would rise, the whole of England would rise in rejoicing! As one, they surged toward this dusty messenger, bearing him and his horse by the sheer weight of numbers down the street.

  Magically the crowd around the scaffold had cleared.

  In towering fury, beribboned Dick Peacham had taken himself elsewhere, vowing he’d see himself in hell before he’d marry that wanton wench! There was no one in the immediate vicinity but Pamela—and Tabby, who skulked nearby—and Tom and Dev, the latter just rebuckling his belt and sauntering jauntily down from the gallows.

  Tom, about to ride over and thank Pamela from the depths of him—checked his forward rush as he saw the tall former prisoner saunter toward Pamela and bow low. A horrible thought struck Tom at that moment—Pamela could have been telling the truth! Perhaps she had not connived with Tabby to learn about the scar! She had indeed been at the Rose and Thistle in Bridgwater that night! Had she taken this handsome stranger to her bed? The knuckles that gripped his sword hilt turned white and he sat very still in the saddle.

  “My fervent thanks, my lady.” Dev was saying to Pamela. “Might I know to whom I am indebted?”

  Pamela, intent on Tom, who sat some distance away, steadily regarding her, barely noticed him. “It is not necessary for you to know my name,” she shrugged. “I did not do it for you!”

  No, he thought tenderly. You did it for Constance. And wondered of a sudden what quixotic reasoning had impelled this lustrous lady to lie for him.