A Worthy Wife (18 page)

“Her cat,” Aurora promptly answered. “Our friend in the coach is fond of her cat. You wouldn’t be. It scratches.” She held up her gloved hand to show.

“Ah, but I think I might have to see this cat for myself.”

Aurora glared at Brianne, who promptly brought her free hand to her forehead and declared, “I think I am going to swoon.” Which she did, collapsing right into the highwayman’s strong arms. Which gave Oliver, the driver, the opportunity to bash the man over the head with a rock, which then caused a great deal of blood, which caused Brianne to faint in truth.

Which left Aurora with two unconscious females, one concussed criminal, one caterwauling maid, one less than competent guard, and Oliver, who was all for leaving every last one of them behind for agitating his precious horses.

Aurora couldn’t do it; the earl might notice his sister gone missing. Much as she might wish otherwise, she held a vinaigrette under Brianne’s nose while Oliver bound the highwayman with a rope from the fellow’s own horse, then went to help Richard soothe the nervous cattle. Aurora revived Nialla, too, and threatened to have Maisy bound and gagged unless she cease her shrieking. Aurora then turned to bandage the bandit, using his own neckcloth, which she noted was of fine fabric and freshly laundered.

Brianne watched from over her shoulder, now that most of the bleeding had stopped. “What shall I do with this?” she asked, holding out the highwayman’s pistol.

“I suppose we should take it, and him, with us to the constable or sheriff in the next village.” Aurora was not pleased with the idea of taking a criminal up in her carriage, but she could not leave him bleeding by the roadside, or free to hold up the next coach.

“He did not actually rob us, you know.”

“Not for lack of intention, though. If not for Oliver’s cleverness, I hate to think what might have happened.”

“And Lady Brianne’s quick thinking,” Nialla added, which had Brianne puffing out her chest.

The highwayman groaned as Aurora untied his mask, so she gently laid his head back on the grass where they’d dragged him, in case another carriage came by.

“He’s quite attractive, don’t you think,” Brianne said, studying him through her lorgnette, “in a common sort of way.”

There was nothing common about the fellow that Aurora could see. He had pale gold hair, almost white, a square jaw, a slightly crooked nose, and laugh lines. He looked to be in his middle twenties. “No, he doesn’t resemble any gallow’s bait I ever imagined. I do not think he is a baseborn ruffian at all.”

“Thank you, my lady,” the highwayman said with another moan, opening his blue eyes. He had the audacity to wink up at Brianne, who blushed. He sat up, with Aurora’s help, since his hands and feet were tied. “Wesley Royce, at your service, my ladies,” He tried a bow, but only succeeded in rattling his aching head worse.

“Well, more at your mercy, it would seem. Do you think I might have a sip from the flask in my saddlebag? Then I’d beseech you to listen to my tale.”

“Here, hold this,” Brianne told Aurora, thrusting the gun into her hands. “I’ll get the flask.”

His tones were cultured, and he seemed the gentleman, but Aurora still kept the gun trained on this Wesley Royce, ropes or not. He might be a lord out on a lark, but he’d frightened them half to death. Nialla was still trembling, so Aurora told her to sit in the coach and console her cat.

Brianne returned and took Aurora’s place by the highwayman’s side, holding the flask to his mouth. After he drank, he smiled at her and said, “I never would have shot anyone as pretty as you, you know.”

Brianne smiled back, until Aurora hissed at her. “The dastard tried to rob our coach, you ninny, and he took liberties with your person.”

“That’s right, he did.”

Brianne’s dreamy voice scared Aurora more than the robbery. Lud, what if the addlepate decided to take to the high toby with this handsome rogue? Kenyon would have her liver and lights. “Let us hear your sad story, sirrah, and no more fustian.”

The highwayman, if Aurora could believe him, was the Honourable Wesley Royce, younger son to a baron, whose stepbrother had cheated him of his inheritance. Their father’s will was forged, he swore, or coerced from the old man on his deathbed. Baron Royce had been fond of his second wife’s boy, Wesley told them, despite his devil-may-care ways. According to the new baron, however, their father had disowned him as a profligate and a wastrel. Wesley had been cut off without a groat. Not wishing to take the king’s shilling and die as cannon fodder, Wesley had taken to gambling. He’d managed to support himself in a degree of style for the past months, but luck was a fickle friend, and he wished for a more reliable income.

“So you took to a life of crime?” Aurora asked in disbelief. “Risking your life seemed better than risking your brass in a game of cards?”

Brianne was hanging on the highwayman’s every word. She glared at Aurora. “It’s much more exciting.”

Wesley winked at Brianne again, but addressed Aurora. “This was to be my first and last foray into felony. In fact, it was to be more in the nature of a loan. I fully intended to repay you for whatever I’d taken, my lady. I only wished to borrow a stake, you see, so I might establish myself as a gentleman in London. Bath or Brighton if the takings were not so high.”

Wesley did not notice the thunderclouds forming on the ladies’ brows, but he heard the ice in Brianne’s voice when she asked, “And what then, sir, once you had set yourself up as a man of means?”

“Why, nothing that hasn’t been done a thousand times before. In the age-old fashion of dispossessed dependents and under-the-hatches heirs, I would find me a wealthy widow or a rich man’s daughter to wed. I could not afford to be fussy, naturally.”

Brianne stood up from where she’d been kneeling at Wesley’s side. “You…you swine! You pig! You blot-on-the-earth bastard! You’re just like every other lily-livered libertine who thinks to repair his own fortunes off some poor female’s affections. How dare you hold up our coach, so you can then rob some woman of her dowry, her dignity, and her dreams?” In the midst of her tirade, Brianne began kicking at Wesley’s legs. “You miserable, mangy cur! You—”

“That’s enough, Brianne,” Aurora said, fearing her sister-in-law was about to start kicking the poor, bewildered man in the head. But Brianne was in a rant, and intent on trampling this latest traducer of women into the ground. Aurora tried to take her arm but, enraged, Brianne struck out at her, slapping Aurora’s hand away…the hand holding the pistol.

Chapter Eighteen

The horses reared in their traces, Oliver and Richard ran to their heads, Maisy started screeching again, Nialla passed out onto the carriage floor, and Brianne and Aurora looked at each other in horror. “I’ve shot a defenseless man,” Aurora repeated, “while he was on the ground, tied hand and foot.”

“He deserved it,” Brianne told her, trying to lessen Aurora’s guilt. “He was nothing but a wicked highwayman anyway. And not even a very good highwayman at that, getting captured on his first attempt.” She dashed away the tears in her eyes. “We just saved the sheriff the price of hanging him, that’s all. And now some poor woman is safe from his foul designs. He would have made a dreadful husband.”

“I…would have made…a good husband. Meant…to try, by George.”

He wasn’t dead, not yet at any rate! Aurora rolled him over and saw the bloodstain spreading from his shoulder. “His shoulder! I didn’t kill him!” She tore open his coat and his shirt, to Brianne’s exclamations of shock, or interest. The wretch had her lorgnette out. “Tear up your petticoats, Brianne. Hurry. We have to stop the bleeding.”

“My petticoats? They’re new—and silk.” She helped rip Maisy’s petticoats instead.

When Wesley was bandaged, the horses calm enough for Oliver to trust them to Richard, Nialla stepped groggily out of the coach, crying that all their misfortunes were her fault, that if they hadn’t been trying to help her, they’d never have found themselves in this position.

The silly goose was weeping again, or still, but Aurora had no dry handkerchief to lend her, so she handed her Mr. Royce’s flask, after swallowing a mouthful for her own nerves.

“Here, take a sip. It will make you feel more the thing. And if anyone is at fault, it is I, for not being more careful with the pistol.”

Brianne didn’t take any responsibility, but she did take the flask and drain it.

Wesley stared longingly at Lady Brianne, or the flask, and said, “I am the only one at blame. I deserve to die, as Heaven is my witness, for bringing such grief to such kind young ladies.” He was holding his hand out. Since the flask was empty, he must be seeking forgiveness, so Brianne took it.

“You are not going to die until they hang you. I refuse to believe otherwise,” Brianne insisted.

As usual, it looked as if Brianne was going to get her way, for the bleeding had stopped, and the wound looked to be a clean one, having passed straight through the man’s shoulder. Aurora thought a surgeon should look at it, though. “Brianne, hold the horses while Oliver and Richard put him in the carriage. I…I will be back in a moment”

She fled behind the coach. Nialla, holding the highwayman’s head, looked toward Brianne, who shrugged. “She’s just going to shoot the cat.”

The cat now? Nialla fainted again.

Once they were under way, Aurora decided to press for Windrush. She simply could not hand Mr. Royce over to some local law enforcer, not after shooting him. Kenyon would be home soon. He’d know what to do. He was a magistrate himself, after all. And Oliver assured her that the head groom could doctor the prisoner better than any sawbones. If his condition worsened, they could always fetch a surgeon from the next town.

Still holding Brianne’s hand—for whose comfort? Aurora wished to know—Wesley begged a favor. “Please…I cannot just go off…leave Lucy and the babies to starve.”

Brianne dropped his hand so fast it bounced off the window of the coach. “You are already married?”

“Not…wed…yet.”

But there were babies? “Shoot him again, Aurora,” Brianne said, “or I swear I will do it myself.”

Following Wesley’s hoarsely whispered directions, the coach, with his horse tied behind, made its way up a narrow path to an old woodsman’s shack. Aurora and Richard, rifle finally in his hands, rapped on the door. Still muttering dire imprecations, Brianne held Wesley’s own pistol on the half-conscious highwayman. Of course it was empty, but Aurora deemed it safer for all of them not to tell her sister-in-law that. The battered brigand had the audacity to smile at her, though.

No one answered her knock, so Aurora opened the door and called, “Lucy?” before stepping into the rude shelter. “You’re Lucy?”

Lucy turned out to be a shaggy black-and-white mutt, with four tiny pups.

Kenyon would know what to do with those, too.

Heavens, Aurora thought as they made their crowded way home, she was expecting a great deal of the husband who didn’t want to be. Here she’d been going to show him what an exemplary wife she’d make, not causing any gossip, not squandering his fortune, not abandoning his sister to the melancholy. Well, one out of three was something. Brianne certainly did not mourn Podell any longer. But instead of making his life easier and his house more comfortable, Aurora was burdening Kenyon with more problems, more potential scandals. Why, his new wife might even be charged with shooting a defenseless man. She could not think he would appreciate that, or that he’d come visit her in jail. He’d most likely use it as an excuse to divorce her if he couldn’t get the marriage annulled.

Aurora did not want her marriage dissolved. Every day that passed by reinforced her belief that she could be very content with Kenyon, indeed. When she decided to bring Nialla home, it was because she knew he would be kind and capable. With Wesley, he’d be fair. She just knew he could not be cold and callous and uncaring. He was a good man. Moreover, he attracted her like no other, not even Podell. Why, looking at Wesley’s handsome visage made her think that auburn hair was far more attractive than blond, and while Brianne almost swooned at the sight of the highwayman’s bare chest, Aurora couldn’t help comparing it to Kenyon’s, with its soft downy covering. She missed him! Aurora couldn’t imagine how that was possible after so short a time, but she did. She missed Kenyon’s strength, and she missed his smile. She wondered if he’d ever smile at her again, after she brought her houseguests home.

*

What had the woman done to his house? Granted, it looked cleaner, smelling of lemon oil and beeswax, with flowers on all the tables. And the carriage path and the highway had been smooth, thankfully, for Christopher could not have taken much more jostling. The shrubs were pruned, the windows were washed, and the brass was polished, but Kenyon didn’t recognize half the furnishings and less of the servants. And his wife was not there!

Dawson came to the hall and instantly took charge, deploying the multitudes of military-type footmen to settle Christopher in the room prepared for him, to escort the surgeon to his own apartment, to help the earl’s valet with the trunks. And saying, “I shall notify the kitchens of Captain Warriner’s arrival,” he disappeared before Kenyon could ask where she was, his wife. Hell and thunderation, she’d gone away and left the management of his household in the hands of an embezzler. Kenyon touched the new vase on the hall table. Meissen, unless he missed his guess, so it didn’t matter that his major-domo was an embezzler. There wouldn’t be enough funds left to be worth stealing.