A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (36 page)

“Exactly, Broad Ham,” Preston agreed. “And besides the legality of the thing, he isn’t fit to own her. He hasn’t any proper feeling for the animal, and that’s what I can’t have. If I can’t keep her myself, then she must be with someone who will appreciate her.”

“Master Thomas is yer man,” Broad Ham averred. “He has proper feeling for the horses bred into his bones by his father the earl. He’ll do right by her. I’ll see to it.”

“Good.” She turned that unflinching, blazing blue gaze on Will. “Then may I count on all of you to help me steal her?”

Chapter Twenty-one

“You may.”

They were a ragtag and bobtail lot—a viscount, a sailor, a coachman, a boy, and a girl dressed up as a boy—but the deed was accomplished with all the stealth and speed of a highly trained naval landing party executing a cutting-out action inshore. Will had rarely seen better.

Logistics had always been his forte, and from the moment Preston had stated her intention to steal back her horse, Will’s steely mind had banished all shades of devil-may-care nonchalance, and snapped into action. And not only his mind—his blood began to sing with the siren song of action and purpose. With purpose, he became a better version of himself.

“Broad Ham, I know it will go against your professionalism, but we’ll need an unmarked carriage and an unrecognizable four in harness. Can you manage anything so mundane? Clarges Mews is but two streets over, but for safety’s sake, we’ll need a carriage to provide noise and cover, and get us out of there in a hurry if need be. James, we’d best be armed, just in case. I have no idea where Father keeps weapons, if at all, but I’ve a serviceable pistol in my sea chest.”

“Always keep a brace of coaching pistols on the box,” averred Broad Ham.

“And I have mine.” Preston pulled her all too familiar stick out of her waistband and held it at the ready.

Thomas, who appeared to be the only one unarmed, gave a whistle that was equal parts admiration and alarm. Will knew exactly how he felt.

“Thomas?” Will asked their scholar. “Have you carried a pistol before?”

“No, sir.” There was nothing of the dozy schoolboy about his young brother now. Thomas was wide-eyed with attention. “I mean, I have shot one—two actually. But I’ve never carried one.”

“I appreciate the distinction. Thank you. Then it’s time you learned.”

“I’ll get what we need,” James agreed grimly, and headed out of the stables for the house.

“Right, Broad Ham, you get your lads to ready the carriage. Thomas, go find me pen and paper, or a slate from the schoolroom.”

The others dispersed to fall to their tasks, which left Will standing alone with Preston. And for the first time, Will’s easy insouciance deserted him. He had forgotten how much he liked her. And he was only just beginning to understand how much he had missed her.

Preston was the one to make a peace offering. “I’m sorry,” she said, but she was uncomfortable and strung taut, with nothing of her usual surety—that combination of stunning physical confidence and innate grace he found so incredibly appealing. Tonight her grace seemed to have deserted her—she was nothing but a tightly wound bundle of tense determination. “I didn’t mean to involve you. I would not have come if I had anywhere else I might turn.”

Will decided not to be put off by her very apparent lack of enthusiasm for his company. The fact of the matter was that she
had
turned to him, even if she thought she had gone to Thomas. And he meant to make the most of it. “If you went to Grosvenor for proof of ownership, why didn’t you ask him to buy back the horse?” He kept his tone calm—mild even, the way he did with jumpy junior officers. Encouraging them into belief in their own competence. But competence had never been Preston’s problem.

Yet beneath the slouchy brim of her cap, she looked unhappy, her mouth turned down as if she were disappointed in herself. As if her surety had deserted her. “I did not actually speak to the earl. His private secretary was kind enough to remember my name and see me, and then check the earl’s records. But Mr. Randall was not at liberty to buy a horse for the earl, even one he had previously owned. And I need ready money.”

Will chose not to ask the question foremost on his mind—for what purpose she needed the money—and continued with his encouraging approach. “You could have just asked me, you know. I would have given it to you—the money. I still will, right now, without you needing to sell or steal the horse.”

“I wish it were that easy.” She shook her head. “But I can’t take any money from you. I won’t.” But she looked up at him so he could see her eyes under the brim of the hat, and he was struck by that spark—that essential directness in her gaze that leveled him so. “And your help is more valuable to me. I’ll feel more confident in my success if you’re with me. I must get Velocity.”

Will had been about to argue with her, to insist that she let him solve whatever problem was besetting her, but he was distracted by the distinctive fire in his gut at the compliment to himself and her trust in his abilities. And then Thomas came flying back into the stable at a run, paper, pen, and ink stuffed into his shirt to protect it from the rain, and Will pushed the warm feelings aside, and set his mind to the tasks at hand.

“Are we going to send a demand to Lord Aldridge?” Thomas asked.

“Demand? Devil take you, Thomas, weren’t you listening?” Will cuffed him gently, ruffling his hair. “A frontal assault is rarely the best strategy. Stealth is what we will need to accomplish our goal tonight. Stealth and luck. And a very good map.” He took the paper from Thomas and spread it out on a nearby table. “All right, Preston. I want you to draw me a map—a diagram—of Aldridge’s stable. Try to remember the layout—every stall and doorway. Everyone who works there. Every detail is important. Don’t leave anything—no matter how seemingly trivial—out. Let’s start with a general layout and flesh out the details, like the hinges on the big coach doors.”

Preston needed no further instruction, but bent to quickly scratch out a drawing of Aldridge’s stable. She was decisive and direct in her strokes, limning out a plan without hesitation or second-guessing. Half of the midshipmen he had spent years training to observe and report could not have done better. Will was impressed.

And something more. Something that kindled that fire in his gut, warming the cold, damp air in his lungs. Something that had him leaning in close, so his head was bent over the table next to hers, and he could smell the exquisite elixir of calendula beneath the earthy scent of wet wool. So close, his hand instinctively curved into the perfect indentation at the small of her back, as if the place had been created solely so he might rest his hand there. And he could not stop himself, when she turned and pushed the finished diagram out to him, from kissing her. It was nothing but a quick, blunt peck on her cheek, but it was a stamp of his admiration and possession.

He didn’t care if his brothers, or anyone else, were watching. This woman was his, whether she knew it or not.

And he was going to prove it to her. He was going to steal a horse for her.

Of course the others would help—in fact each and every one of them was instrumental to his plan, even Preston. After all they had already done together—riding about the countryside and initiating tavern brawls—Will didn’t even attempt to stop her from taking part. And he wanted her with him. She belonged there, at his side.

As soon as the carriage was ready, Broad Ham, with Thomas up on the box with him, brought his team at a clatter down the Clarges Mews to create a barrage of noise to cover the sound of their breaking and entering. Combined with the incessant drone of the rain, Will, James, and Preston were able to slip out of the carriage unheard and unobserved, while Broad Ham noisily maneuvered to turn the carriage in the narrowly confined space.

Preston tried the small door set into the wide coaching doors, but unlike at Northfield, when the door had been left open, Aldridge must have warned the stable lads not to leave the doors unbarred for her again. But they had prepared themselves for just such an eventuality, and with a pair of bolt croppers Broad Ham had cadged from the farrier, Will cut the iron hinges of the small window, and hoisted Preston through first.

Will suffered an anxious few seconds imagining all sorts of dire problems until she efficiently unlocked the inset door and opened it to him. Her surety was back. With his pistol drawn, he stepped over the sill to join her, and immediately passed Preston a small signal lantern which she set on the bricks just inside the doorway to dimly illuminate the stable.

James, with his own weapons drawn, stayed there to guard the door and douse the lantern should any alarm be raised, while Preston stealthily led Will down the row of animals to where a boy slept on a low pallet in front of Velocity’s stall.

Preston hesitated over the boy’s obvious youth, and looked to him, but Will had long since got over thinking of even such young boys as harmless children. They could pull a trigger or stick a knife into a man’s belly just as easily as anyone else could. He’d seen boys do it in naval battles time and again.
He
had done it as a boy in the navy, more times than he could remember.

Will had his hand over the poor lad’s mouth, and the gun pressed to his head before the child had even opened his eyes. “Don’t make a sound. Not if you value your life,” Will growled at him. “How many more are above?” He tossed his head at the stairway so the boy would know he was talking about the other stable lads.

The boy pried his grip off Will’s hand where it covered his mouth, only long enough to hold up three fingers, before he grasped Will’s hand again, as if he were as anxious to keep quiet as Will was to keep him so.

Will kept his eyes on the stair, and his ears open for the sound, or vibration, of footfalls upon the ceiling above, but all he could hear was the steady drum of the rain, the roll of the carriage wheels outside, and Broad Ham cursing fluently and loudly, in admirable imitation of a drunk Irishman who had lost his way in one of London’s interminable blind alleys.

Preston had the tall mare’s stall open, and the animal simply walked out without so much as a rope to leash her. Both Will and the stable lad scooted back to get out of the way of her bloody great hooves as she passed close by.

“I can’t find a halter,” Preston muttered, low and angry. “Did Aldridge order that, too, to make it harder to take her? Bloody odious man. At least he didn’t chain her.”

Anxious to be as helpful as possible with a gun pressed to his head, the lad again released Will’s hand long enough to point to a hook on the back of the stall door, where the halter hung.

“Thank you,” Preston whispered, scowling mightily at this incongruous show of assistance. But she snatched up the halter and lead, and slipped it on in a trice. And then she was leading Velocity to the door and coaxing the mare over the lip of the small portal, as James backed out of the way with the lantern.

Will spoke into the boy’s ear. “I’m going to take my hand off now. Not one word. Do you understand?”

The boy nodded instantly, full to his brim with wide-eyed, compliant terror. But when Will took his hand away, the lad didn’t cower away, but gripped Will’s arm and wouldn’t let go.

“Please,” he pleaded with desperate, frantic energy. “Take me with you. Please. It’s not worth my life if his lordship finds I’ve let this mare go. Please. Don’t leave me here.”

Will didn’t like the images that flashed into his mind of what the child may have already had to endure from Aldridge. “Damn my eyes.” He fished the urchin up by his collar, and frog-marched him through the door, though he hadn’t an idea in the world of what to do with the poor lad.

“What’s this?” James asked in a furious whisper, as he slid the door closed behind Will.

“He’s says he doesn’t want to be left for Aldridge.”

“Of course not. And who could blame him?” Preston ended any further discussion by simply taking the boy’s hand and leading him into the carriage with the same calm surety she had led Velocity. “You don’t have to worry about his lordship anymore. You’re among friends now.”

Her quiet vehemence should no longer astonish him. But, God, it moved him. He should not have questioned her sense of what was right. He should have asked her how he could help her do so.

But speaking of moving— They could not loiter.

Will put James in charge of the boy by the expedient method of looking at his brother, tossing his chin at the boy, and walking away to urge Preston to leave her new friend and move her mare in front of the carriage. If any following fire or chase of any kind were to come from Aldridge’s, Will wanted her covered by the sheltering bulk of the carriage.

He legged her up to ride the beast barebacked, with nothing more than the halter and the lead to control her. If the damned great animal took it into her mind to run away with Preston, there was precious little he could do about it. Conversely, if Preston took it into her mind to run away with the mare, and disappear into the night, there was even less he could do about that. But he tried.

“Stay near the coach,” he instructed. And then despite the danger, or perhaps because of it, he broke every single one of the rules that he had carefully constructed in his head during the past hour, and pulled her down by her lapel to kiss her hard on the mouth.

More than a blunt peck. Longer. So he could taste the sweetness of her mouth. So he could feel the answering promise of her lips. So she would make no mistake about what he felt for her.

But only a moment. There was no time to linger. There was no time to contemplate the rough, bitten texture of her lips. There was no time to do anything more than slap the great black beastie’s rump and send the pair clattering up the alley, before he jumped into the moving carriage to follow.

*   *   *

The gritty euphoria—and the lingering feel of Will’s lips hard upon hers—gripped her all the way back to the stables. On Will’s instruction, Broad Ham led them on a merry goose chase out of the mews and on toward Green Park, through a dark and nearly deserted London, until they finally sneaked down Union Street and fetched up at the Charles Street back gate to Sanderson House, not a quarter of a mile from where they had reclaimed the mare.