Amanda Scott (29 page)

The following morning, when Carolyn discovered that Sydney intended to breakfast in the privacy of his bedchamber, she was sorely tempted to do to him as he had done to her, and invade his room. Only a minute’s reflection was necessary, however, to show her that she could do nothing of the sort, especially with guests in the house, without creating a scandal.

Possessing her soul in patience until he came downstairs was difficult enough, but to discover then that he did not intend to be alone with her was maddening. She was forced to sit in the drawing room, watching while he and the Regent discussed each item the latter had purchased the day before. Colonel MacMahon took notes on their conversation, and the only other people present were the dowager and Miss Pucklington, for Skipton had retired to the library with the papers, and Matilda had taken advantage of the first sunshine in days to go for a long walk.

The dowager kept up a stream of placid small talk, but Carolyn paid her no heed as she tried unsuccessfully to catch Sydney’s eye by such subtle methods as were available to her under the circumstances. He was blind to her efforts, however, and for a brief moment, she actually hoped Cumberland would join them, so that Salas would have to deliver his message where she could hear what was said. A second thought reminded her that even if the duke did decide to join them, no message could be delivered while the dowager or Miss Pucklington was present, since both would remember Salas only too well.

Cumberland put in no appearance until shortly before noon, but when he did enter, looking important and a bit self-conscious, Carolyn knew even before he spoke that Salas had once again successfully carried off an unlikely imposture.

“Know you’ll all be disappointed to learn that I must take my leave of you,” the duke said in a sardonic tone, “but a matter has come to my attention that demands that I depart as soon as my bags have been packed. Neall is seeing to that now, so we’ll be leaving in an hour. By the bye, Saint-Denis, I’ve a wish to travel swiftly and without folks making a great to-do about who I am. Since you’re a road trustee, I daresay you can write a pass that’ll get a pair of plain coaches through all the turnpikes in a hurry without my having to identify myself, can you not?”

“Certainly,” Sydney said. “I’ll inscribe it so you may use it for as many coaches as you like.” Ringing for a footman, he sent him to fetch paper from his desk in the library, and when the man returned, he wrote out the pass and gave it to the duke, who left the room at once.

This interruption having drawn the dowager’s attention to Matilda’s continued absence, she spoke sharply on the folly of a young woman’s striding about the countryside with no more than a gardener’s boy to accompany her. And when Matilda still had not put in an appearance twenty minutes later, her comments became so pointed that Miss Pucklington, setting aside the frock she was mending, offered cheerfully to go in search of her.

“For she might very well have come in, you know, and not knowing you wanted her, be in the library with her husband. Or, if she has not come in, I can send someone to look for her.”

Carolyn, who had been nearly consumed with curiosity by that time and wondered how Sydney and the Regent could so calmly continue to chat, promptly offered to assist in the search, hoping by this ploy to escape without drawing Sydney’s attention to her real reason for wishing to do so.

In the hall, telling Miss Pucklington that she would look in Matilda’s bedchamber, she hurried upstairs, took a cursory glance inside the empty room, and then, determined at least to witness the duke’s departure, ran to her own room, flung her red cloak over her shoulders, and hurried down to the hall. As she was on the point of leaving the house by the front door, however, the dowager, carrying Hercules in her arms, called to her from the top of the grand stair.

“Carolyn, ’tis the most ridiculous thing, but Judith appears to have gone out to find Matilda herself and never thought to take dear Hercules with her. Sydney thought you would not mind taking him out, and though I told him I was sure you had not meant to go anywhere, here I find he was perfectly right, though I am sure I don’t know why you should go. Matilda does not require a searching party to find her.”

“I was not … that is, I can’t possibly …”

“Surely, you do not object to taking him!”

Suppressing a sigh of annoyance, Carolyn said, “To be sure, I’ll take him, ma’am, although I believe he would not object on so fine a morning if one of the footmen were to do so.”

“He bites footmen,” the dowager reminded her, adding, “Here is his lead, so you may take him at once and be back in a trice.”

Resigned to her fate but not without fondly visualizing Sydney’s head on a platter, Carolyn went up and took the dog, setting him on his fat little legs before descending the stairs again. Abel, entering the house just then, saw her and said, “Miss Carolyn, I’ve brung a message for you.”

The dowager, still on the landing, said, “Indeed, young man, and what sort of message might you be bringing in from out of doors, if one may inquire?”

With an apologetic glance at Carolyn, he replied, “’Tis from a gentleman, m’lady. One of the gardener’s boys met him on the drive and brung this to me when he saw me helping to put his highness’s valises into the second coach.”

“And why, pray tell, does he not come to the door like a Christian?” demanded the dowager.

Abel so far forgot himself as to chuckle. “The lad was told he’d just returned to Bath and would as lief come nowhere near such company as we’ve got beneath the roof just now, ma’am. Says it fair gave him the fidgets just to be at the gate. Said he’d meet you in the hedge garden, miss.”

“Very well, Abel, thank you.” She scanned the note and found that although the message was couched in more elegant terms, the message was much as Abel had described it. The note was unsigned, just a scrawled, undecipherable letter at the end, but she had no doubt who had written it.

“Just one moment, Carolyn,” the dowager said. “It is not at all becoming in you to be meeting unknown young men in the garden. You must think of the very odd notions our guests may take into their heads, should they learn of such behavior.”

Carolyn smiled. “He is not unknown, ma’am, for ’tis Brandon Manningford. You need say nothing about him to our guests, or perhaps,” she added with a chuckle, “you might tell them that I have Hercules for my chaperon. If he bites footmen, I daresay he would also bite Mr. Manningford.” Taking the dowager’s silence for consent, she hurried out the door.

There was no sign of Cumberland’s carriage, but since she had no way of knowing if the duke had already departed, she decided that walking Hercules would provide her with an excellent excuse for going toward the stables just as soon as she had found Mr. Manningford. Indeed, she mused, seeing her there with Brandon, the duke would be most unlikely ever to suspect her involvement with the plot.

Hercules was not cooperative, for he wished to visit the stableyard directly and had no interest in side trips. Having involved herself in a tug of war with him, which she was by no means certain of winning without strangling him, she finally picked him up and carried him. By the time she reached the hedge garden, his growling and struggling had put her severely out of temper, and when she did not at once see Mr. Manningford, she called his name out in annoyance.

“Really, Brandon, I am in no mood for foolishness. Come out at once where I can see you.”

When the heavy, dusty cloak descended over her head, blinding and choking her, she dropped the dog; and as her assailant scooped her up and flung her over his shoulder, she had the deep satisfaction of hearing his muffled but unmistakably human cry of pain. Utterly furious with him, she hoped Hercules had drawn blood.

H
ER CAPTOR MADE SUCH
haste that Carolyn was bounced on his shoulder until she ached and could scarcely breathe. The ordeal lasted only minutes, the worst of which came when she was dragged willy-nilly through the hedge to the gravel road beyond and thrown heavily into a waiting coach. As she struggled to free herself from the stifling blanket, the coach rocked with the weight of her captor’s entrance, then lurched forward with enough force to fling her against the squabs.

“Wait till I get my hands on you, Brandon Manningford,” she muttered, trying again to free herself, only to have her efforts circumvented when her captor grabbed her and began to wind a rope around her arms and chest. “Don’t! I can’t breathe!”

There was no answer, and once tied, she was pushed ignominiously off the seat onto the floor. Finding that her struggles only bruised her arms and made it more difficult than ever to breathe, she soon grew quiet, and a moment of logical reflection then convinced her that her captor could not be Mr. Manningford, for she was certain that not in his most outrageous mood would he treat her with such roughness.

Her second notion was that Cumberland had somehow, and for reasons best known to himself, arranged her capture as a way of being revenged upon her for her part in the episode at Oatlands. But this thought, too, vanished after a moment’s thought. No matter how vicious his reputation, the duke had never once been accused of defiling a woman of quality. He could have no reason to abduct her and every reason not to present the Regent with the fact of such folly as a weapon to use against him.

Sydney would never do such a thing to her, nor would any other gentleman she knew, except possibly, she realized with a start, Viscount Lyndhurst. Upon consideration of this last possibility, she decided that that gentleman was entirely capable of such a deed. It was quite likely in fact, that having been ordered off by Sydney, Lyndhurst had decided to take her by force, from under Sydney’s nose, so to speak. Congratulating herself upon clear thinking under duress, she decided it was, after all, the exact behavior one expected of the villain in all good romances, and Lyndhurst—though she had generally chosen to view him as a potential hero—was completely acceptable to her as a villain. No doubt, she concluded, following her train of thought to its logical end, Sydney would soon ride to her rescue.

There was, she realized, only one problem with that last assumption, in that Sydney had no way of knowing where she was. She did not think she ought to depend upon Lyndhurst having written a second note, gloating over his intention. Nor did she think the dowager would mention the first note. By the time anyone realized she had been gone too long—for Hercules would certainly tell no one what had happened—the coach would be miles away with no one having noted its direction. By and large, she decided, she would do better not to emulate any of the storybook heroines who waited patiently for their rescue. She would do better to attend to the matter herself.

This decision made, she set herself to devise a way by which to accomplish it and soon realized that her trussed-up condition rendered nearly any plan impossible. By this time, the bouncing of the coach was bruising her and she was rapidly becoming cramped by her position. She had just decided that her best chance lay in the hope that they were on a post road, where an observant turnpike-keeper might note her struggles when they had to draw up at the pike. If he could not effect a rescue himself, at least he might set Sydney on her trail.

Having reached this depressing conclusion, she did what she could to ease a growing crick in her neck, and had begun to wonder how long it would be before Lyndhurst revealed himself, when with a loud cracking sound and a hideous screech, the coach toppled onto its side and came to a wrenching halt. But for the heavy blanket and the fact that, somehow, she had managed to land on her captor, she might well have been injured. As it was, she nearly suffocated before, muttering curses, he struggled free of her weight. Even then, he seemed to pay no heed to her, and it was only through her own efforts that she was able at last to find a position that allowed her to breathe with any ease again.

Telling herself that the viscount would rue the day he had dared do this to her, she waited grimly for further events, listening for what she could hear of the conversation outside the coach. For the most part, she could hear no more than horses neighing in protest and men shouting at one another.

The coach rocked, and she heard a voice exhorting someone to “Get her out of there.” Strong hands grasped the ropes binding her arms and she was heaved painfully upward and out of the coach, certain she would be covered with bruises, but otherwise unhurt. When the hands drew her upright, she found she could stand, and on that thought she collapsed, trusting to the blanket to break her fall once again.

“Good God, sir, she’s bad hurt!”

“Get that blanket off her. And get her off the highroad, damn you! Someone could come along at any moment.”

Carolyn did not recognize the voice and wondered why Lyndhurst was not giving the orders, but she did not dwell on the matter, for she was heaved up again, yanked through shrubbery for the second time that day, set down again, and at last felt hands loosening her bonds. She kept perfectly still until the blanket was pulled away, then opened her eyes and looked scornfully up into the grim face of Cornelius Neall.

“You!” She spat out dust with the word, and breathed in fresh air as she tried to sit up.

He sneered at her. “I ought to have known you were having a game, but you’ll gain nothing by it, girl, for my master wants you taught a lesson and he won’t care how I teach it, so don’t rile me.” Seeing her peer through the leafless, straggly hedge at the coachman and two guards, all of whom appeared to be none the worse for the accident, he said, “They won’t help you. They know who butters their bread. Get those horses free,” he shouted to them, “and get that coach righted again. If the wheel can’t be fixed, you’ll have to do what you can to get the thing clear of the road. If anyone asks, remember you’re naught but lackeys. That is not a royal coach!” Then, turning back to Carolyn, he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward a nearby thicket with dense shrubbery, saying, “You come along with me!”

She seemed to have no choice, though she was still shaken and her arms and legs did not want to obey her. She went with him as best she could, stretching her limbs and trying to work the crick from her neck. She did not want to think about what she must look like, and when she reached to rub her neck and felt wisps of tangled hair everywhere, she indulged herself in a brief, foolish hope that Sydney would not ride to her rescue until she had managed to tidy herself a bit.