Eloisa's Adventure (27 page)

It hurt
Eloisa even more to see the sympathetic tears on Cissy’s lashes,
and she felt even more unworthy for bringing her sister such
upset.

“Please,
don’t ever mention going to a ball again,” Eloisa asked quietly.
She placed a comforting hand on her sister’s shoulder but could
still see the instinctive objection in her eyes.

“Eloisa.”

Before
Cissy could say anything else, Eloisa offered her a shaky smile and
hurried toward the door. “Now, I am going to get a bath and into
some dry clothes. Then I will set about getting dinner
sorted.”

She
didn’t wait for Cissy to reply, and hurried up the stairs without a
backward look.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Simeon
crept through the woods at the rear of the castle and watched
Renwick’s friend edge carefully around the corner of the house.
Thanks to Jeremiah’s cunning, Simeon had already made a show of
leaving the castle via the driveway, with Jeremiah following
closely behind in his carriage.

As far
as Renwick was concerned, the castle was now empty. He appeared to
be wasting no time getting his hands on the contents he had so
carefully stacked in the garden room. Simeon watched his cousin
carry another armful of contents toward the woods on the opposite
side of the gardens and disappear into the trees for the third time
in the past half an hour.

“How do
you want to deal with this?” Jeremiah whispered. Although Renwick
was too far away to hear them, he still kept his voice at a
whisper.

Simeon
looked at him. “I am going to take a look inside, and see what they
are taking out first.”

“Wait,”
Jeremiah whispered, and placed a hand on Simeon’s arm to stop him
leaving their shelter.

“What?”

Jeremiah
nodded toward the woods. They didn’t have to wait long before the
second man, the man who had made the offer for the castle only
yesterday, emerged from the trees and followed Renwick back into
the house.

“His
accomplice,” Simeon explained when Jeremiah looked at him
askance.

“You
take Renwick; I will take the accomplice.”

“We need
to wait for the magistrate to arrive first,” Simeon replied. He
glanced down the driveway but couldn’t be sure which direction the
magistrate would come from. The magistrate had promised to round up
as many men as he could before heading over to the castle. Because
the village was through the woods Renwick was using, Simeon
suspected that reinforcements would come from that direction. If
they did, Renwick would be the first to come across
them.

“Do we
go inside and wait for them, or wait in the woods?” Jeremiah asked
as he watched the door close behind Renwick’s associate.

Simeon
shook his head. “There are secret passageways everywhere. Renwick
grew up in that house and knows every inch of it like the back of
his hand. We are better off out here.”

“They
must have horses through those trees.”

Simeon
nodded. There was a meadow on the opposite side of the trees, a few
miles away from Mitchelham village. If he was Renwick, he would
leave the horses in the meadow. All he would then have to do, if he
needed to escape, was run through the woods. He would be able to
race toward the village, or join the main road that led all the way
to London in the opposite direction before anyone could catch
him.

“Some of
the magistrate’s men should see them,” Simeon growled.

“They
could think the horses are ours,” Jeremiah countered.

“I am
not taking my eyes off that castle until Renwick
reappears.”

“There
is something I don’t understand,” Jeremiah sighed. “How does he
expect to get the contents away on a horse? I know there are two of
them, but how does he expect to squirrel away the
portraits?”

Simeon
considered that. “They must have a cart around here
somewhere.”

Having
to take his eyes off the house while Renwick was inside didn’t sit
too well with Simeon, but Jeremiah was right. They needed to see
how Renwick hoped to get his stolen goods away from the
area.

“Let’s
go,” he sighed.

It took
far longer than they expected to make their way across the uneven
forest floor but they eventually emerged from the trees right next
to Renwick’s waiting horses.

“Over
there, look,” Jeremiah whispered and pointed toward the road that
led to Mitchelham.

A single
cart was heading toward the open gate at the bottom of the field.
Simeon had no idea who was driving it; he had never seen the man
before in his life. It made him wonder just how many men Renwick
had working for him, and how much Renwick had already stolen from
the castle already because this seemed to be quite a smoothly run
operation.

“What do
you want to do?”

“Take
the saddles off the horses. We can let the horses loose in the
field. That puts Renwick and his cohort on foot. First, let’s wait
for the cart to get here though. We need to catch the driver
too.”

The
sudden cracking of twigs beside them made them both spin around.
Simeon heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the magistrate with
several men whom he presumed were villagers.

“I have
got ten men with me,” the magistrate reported somewhat
breathlessly. He looked around the woods and meadow askance. “Where
are they?”

“One is
on the cart down there. Two are still inside the castle at the
moment,” Simeon reported. “Renwick is in the castle.”

“An army
deserter, you say?”

Simeon
nodded. “I have dispatched a letter to Major Haughton at Hattington
Marches, informing him of the deception. They should send someone
to fetch him from you.”

“Then we
had better keep him secure until they do,” the magistrate declared
firmly. “My men are getting into position around the castle as we
speak. Meantime, we will get the one on the cart. Be careful mind,
my men are armed and have instructions to fire.”

The
driver was busy guiding the cart through the narrow entrance, and
didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late to take
evasive action. His downfall was over so swiftly that if Simeon
hadn’t watched it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it
possible.

As soon
as the driver was bundled to the ground on the opposite side of the
wall, his coat and hat was adopted by one of the magistrate’s men.
He climbed aboard the cart but didn’t move it out of the entrance;
just sat staring at his boots.

Satisfied that it was only a matter of time now before
Renwick was taken out of his life once and for all, Simeon waited.
It didn’t take long before Renwick reappeared in the meadow with
his colleague. Both men held boxes that overflowed with stolen
items as they slammed to a stop and studied the meadow.

“What
the hell is that bloody idiot doing, Barney?” Renwick snarled as he
stared at the cart. “Why hasn’t he come closer?”

“I told
him to wait by the trees,” Barney snapped. “Not the other end of
the sodding field.”

“Come
on. I will drive the blasted thing up here myself if I have to,”
Renwick grumbled. He didn’t stop to see if his friend was with him
before he hurried off across the field with his ill-gotten
gains.

Simeon,
Jeremiah, and the magistrate’s men all followed. It was only when
Renwick called to the cart driver and he didn’t bother to respond
or look up, that Simeon’s cousin realised that something was amiss.
He turned to look at his associate, Barney, and then noticed the
magistrate’s men over his shoulder.

Simeon
met his cousin’s wide eyes, and felt an air of dispassionate
disinterest toward anything the future had in store for his
irascible cousin. Any harsh lessons life threw at him now were well
and truly deserved as far as Simeon was concerned. He could feel no
compassion or pity for anything his cousin endured as a result of
his cowardly actions. Especially given what the man had done to him
and Eloisa.

“Did you
arrange this little welcome party, cousin mine?” Renwick
snarled.

“Of
course I did. You didn’t think that I would allow you to escape a
second time round, did you?” Simeon challenged as he nodded toward
with the box. “Helping yourself to my property again are you,
Renwick?”

Renwick
dropped the box onto the floor and turned toward the cart. It was
clear that he was considering fleeing, but the cart driver had
already removed the cloak and hat, and had his gun trained on
Renwick.

His
cousin wasn’t about to give in without a fight though. To
everyone’s surprise, Renwick walked toward the cart with his hands
up. The man aboard jumped to the ground and frowned as his quarry
approached. As soon as he was within striking distance, Renwick
suddenly lunged at him and knocked him off balance.

The loud
blast of the gun was the last thing Simeon heard.

Eloisa
prowled around the house and tried to ignore the boredom and worry
that had gradually settled over her during the past
week.

It
seemed like only yesterday that Simeon had tossed her out of his
life without a backward look. A lifetime had passed since then but
it had done little to ease her pain. She ached; yearned to see him
again, and was curious to know what had happened with his cousin
Renwick, but had no way of finding out. Given his cold attitude
toward her the last time she had seen him, she rather suspected
that if she wrote to him, he wouldn’t write back. It galled her
that she didn’t even know where he called home. He had told her
that it was in Cumbria somewhere but he hadn’t mentioned a house
name. She couldn’t even write to him at Mitchelham Castle because
she knew that he was most probably not there. He had ostensibly
vanished from her life, and she hated it. Moreover, she hated him
for just walking away from her.

“Eloisa,
please take a seat dearest. You are wearing me out,” Cissy chided.
She dropped her sewing into her lap and studied her sister in the
candlelight.

Over the
course of the past week, Eloisa had struggled to eat, had prowled
around the house at all hours of the day and night, and swung
wildly from snapping for no reason to being weepy with little or no
provocation.

“If I
didn’t know better, I would say that you were in love with your
rescuer,” Cissy murmured almost conversationally. She picked her
sewing up and studied it carefully, but all of her attention was
focused firmly on her sister.

Eloisa
glared at her. “I am no such thing,” she snapped just a little too
defensively to be truthful. “He is out of my league,” she added a
little more softly. Although her words were bold, she couldn’t hide
the pain in them. She knew from Cissy’s compassionate look that she
had recognised the emotion behind them.

“He is a
very handsome man,” Cissy said casually.

“He is a
lord,” Eloisa countered as if that explained everything about
him.

“He
looked upon you with considerably more interest than a mere rescuer
would,” Cissy sighed.

“He was
a gentleman.”

Well, almost,
hovered in the air,
but Eloisa didn’t actually say the words. She saw Cissy frown, but
couldn’t tell her sister what had really happened. She knew Cissy
wouldn’t understand.

“He is a
very nice man. He looked after you,” Cissy reminded her. “He gave
you shelter when you needed it.”

“He
showed me consideration in my hour of need I’ll grant you, but
anyone would have done the same. He is a lord, Cissy, and has his
reputation to uphold. Think of the scandal he would bring upon
himself if he had refused to help me and I died on his doorstep,”
Eloisa countered. She couldn’t bring herself to admit that he was a
nice man who had behaved with care and consideration toward her.
Well, until the last morning that is.

She
turned toward the window and stared blindly out at the back garden.
It was raining again, but had pretty much been raining since the
day she had arrived at Mitchelham. The stormy weather seemed to
match her mood. She missed him. In those few brief days they had
been together, he had become an integral part of her life. Now that
he was gone, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself and
hated him for it. She had never felt this lost and alone before,
and couldn’t find a way to work around the empty hole where her
heart should be.

“You
know, you really must accept the invitation to Lord Aldwich’s ball
next month. Mr de Lisle is quite keen for you to go,” Cissy
suggested, not for the first time.

“I told
you Cissy, I am not going to another ball. It’s as simple as
that.”

She
suddenly needed to get some fresh air. She was so sick of being
stuck indoors, listening to Cissy’s persistent reminders that about
the forthcoming ball that she just couldn’t stand any
more.

“I am
going for a walk,” she sighed, and hurried out of the room before
Cissy could offer to accompany her.

“Eloisa,” Cissy said when Eloisa had reached the door. “He
will come back for you, you know. I am sure of it.”