Folly's Reward (20 page)

With a strange, painfully rueful grin, he released her and strode away to the fireplace.

Prudence caught up her dressing gown and shrugged into it before hurrying away to her room, where she could face each bleak, desperate emotion and attempt to destroy it.

For she still loved him with the same utter desolation and hopelessness that she had felt from the beginning. That she could neither reach him, nor help him, was as bitter as gall.

* * *

It was raining hard, pounding on the trees in the deer park, churning the driveway to mud. The light carriage splashed through the downpour and turned out of the gates of Acton Mead toward London.

Prudence hugged Bobby to her side as Harry tooled the team around the worst of the puddles. He seemed to be completely sober, and said nothing about that extraordinary scene in his room. But the mystery surrounding him had become as deep and as black to Prudence as the forbidding darkness that enveloped them.

Bobby stirred against her skirt and she laid her hand over the child’s back. Then she leaned her head back, fighting despair.

An explosion of gunfire shattered the darkness.

Their carriage jerked to a stop.

“My apologies for firing, sir,” an unknown voice said. “Devilish rude! But it was necessary to get your attention, for I believe you intended to drive right past? Pray, don’t shoot back! We have you surrounded.”

Prudence peered into the darkness. A large carriage blocked the road ahead, lamps shining dully through the rain. Four horses were shifting and blowing nervously as the downpour battered at them.

Harry’s pair tossed their heads in sympathy, ears flat, making the harness jingle.

Immediately in front of them, a man on a tall bay pointed his pistol at Harry. On either side, two other horseman had also drawn pistols. They were all muffled in leather hats and loose cloaks, with handkerchiefs tied over their faces.

Oh, dear heavens! What other choice had there been but to stop?

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Harry’s voice expressed only mild exasperation with an underlying hint of amused indifference. “Highwaymen? You will forgive my impatience, gentlemen. I’m in somewhat of a hurry. Here’s my purse! Pray drink my health with the contents.”

Harry reached into his pocket. In one rapid movement he pulled out a pistol and fired. A spurt of flame accompanied an explosion of smoke, but no ball sped from the barrel. The Acton Mead horses jerked forward. Harry had to use both hands to steady them. Suddenly he was laughing with a genuine spurt of hilarity.

“Alas,” the first voice said with more menace. “Your pistol appears to have flashed in the pan. Whereas my pieces, as I have already demonstrated, are in prime working order. Did you mean to kill me, sir?”

“I’m a better shot than that,” Harry said dryly. “I meant only to cause that coachman to lose control of his team, and thus clear the road. Instead, you have the advantage of me, sir, and will leave considerably richer from tonight’s adventure. You may have my purse, after all.”

“Can I trust you to deliver it? Would you kindly step down?”

The horseman gestured with his pistol.

“For heaven’s sake,” Prudence whispered. “Let them have our gold! Pray, don’t try to fire again, when a return ball might harm the child. What is a little money against the risk?”

“But we don’t know what we risk, angel,” Harry replied softly. “Yet I don’t believe these men intend harm to you or Bobby. They have made no move to seize him. Stay there!”

Harry tossed aside his useless pistol and swung down from the carriage to stand bareheaded in the rain. The horseman who had spoken gestured to the others. They rode up on each side of him.

“I’ll have his greatcoat,” the highwayman said grimly. “For there is no doubt a mate to that gun in his other pocket.”

Harry shrugged out of his coat before the men could touch him and tossed it onto the road.

“Perhaps you would like my shirt and waistcoat, too, sir—or my boots? Damned cold night to strip, but they say that mud is a wonderful conditioner for the complexion, and rainwater the purest shower one can take.”

One of the men leaned from his saddle to hook Harry’s coat with his riding crop. He felt in the pocket, and thrust the weapon that he found there into his saddlebag.

The highwayman’s pistol remained unwavering, pointing at Harry’s heart.

“So does our pretty young cove have another pistol in his boot? Or a knife, perhaps?” He grinned unpleasantly. “No, keep your boots on for now, sir. But pray leave your hands where I can see them.”

Harry spread out his arms in a wildly insulting gesture of defiance. The rain beat over him, soaking his shirt and causing the thin fabric to cling to the lean, strong muscling of his arms and shoulders.

Another man took aim at Harry’s heart. Did he want to die at the hands of these ruffians?

Prudence grabbed the little purse that Harry had given to her and held it out.

“Here, sirs! This is all of our money. Pray, take it and be gone!”

They ignored her.

“A very fetching insolence, sir! So you have not learned your lesson, even now, when we have you at our mercy, and I am kind enough to let you keep on your blasted boots?”

The highwayman circled his horse and glared down at Harry.

“Extraordinary generosity,” Harry said. “Since you’ve yet to test my prowess as a prize fighter.”

“Such confidence ill becomes an unarmed man standing helpless in the mire. If your weapon had not misfired I might be a dead man now, in spite of your pretty tale of startling the horses. I believe I owe you a little something for that, you damned, arrogant popinjay.”

Before anyone else could react, the man spurred his horse, swung his pistol by the barrel, and with sickening force brought the stock down on the back of Harry’s skull.

Harry dropped to his knees in the mud and grasped his head in both hands. He did not make a sound.

Prudence bit back her scream and turned Bobby’s face into her own body, holding him tightly against her. The child was sobbing quietly.

“Here, now!” a new voice shouted. “None of that! He’s not to be harmed.”

A man leapt from the coach and ran over to the little group. His big leather hat shielded his face as he leaned over Harry.

“Here, Mr. Acton,” the newcomer said, not unkindly. “Just come along quietly now, and there’ll be no more of that.”

“I trust not,” Harry replied. His voice was thick, but there was still that irresistible flash of humor. “For where’s the fun in beating a corpse? My head might be dense, sirs, but it’s unfortunately no match for cold steel. Another blow like that, and you’ll have to search for me in Hades if you want to offer further punishment.”

The man took Harry’s arm to pull him to his feet. Harry swayed against him, rain running over the planes of his face and plastering his hair. Water from the back of his head ran darker, soaking a black stain into Harry’s collar. Prudence knew it was blood.

Please, God! Don’t let him be seriously hurt! Please, God, let it be a ruse! Harry will knock them all down as surely as he knocked out Braw Jamie, and we’ll escape.

But Harry staggered as the man held him steadily upright.

“If you’ve cracked his bloody skull, it’s the devil himself will take revenge,” the man shouted at the highwayman. “You weren’t hired for murder.”

“Wish you’d told them that earlier,” Harry said.

The man slipped a sturdy arm about Harry’s waist. “Come, lad! Come into the carriage. I’ll see to that head myself. A fellow as stubborn as you will be harder to kill than that, I imagine.”

He helped Harry walk up to the closed carriage and began to hand him up the step. Prudence watched in a torment of fear as Harry collapsed against the door for a moment, his head still gripped in both hands, blood welling between his elegant fingers.

The man who had rescued him turned to speak again to the highwayman. Prudence couldn’t hear what he said, but in the light from the coach lamps she saw his face for the first time.

In a scene out of a nightmare, helplessly she reached out a hand. But Bobby sat sobbing into her coat, his small fingers clutching at her, his fragile body shaking with fear. She could not abandon the child, not even for the love of her life.

And what could one woman do against four men armed to the teeth?

The door of the carriage slammed shut and the coachman whipped up his team. The carriage holding Harry lurched about and disappeared into the darkness.

As they left, the man on the bay rode up and pulled out a blade. He leaned down to slash at the traces, freeing Prudence’s team from the curricle. The two horses galloped away into the night. The three highwaymen followed them.

Miss Prudence Drake and little Lord Dunraven were left alone on the King’s high road, while the rain roared down from an unrelenting heaven.

Prudence squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. She must be strong, for Bobby’s sake. But Harry had been kidnapped by a man with a great scar slashing over his features: a man with an eye-patch.

* * *

“Good heavens! Would you like salts, my dear? Nub, pray bring my salts!”

Prudence opened her eyes. A woman’s face peered in at her, a very beautiful face, fine-boned, exquisitely expressive. Both hair and eyes shone jet black, which only set off the perfection of the lady’s complexion.

It took Prudence several moments to notice the very tiny, fine wrinkles at the corners of the lady’s eyes, and the amused, mature cynicism of her expression beneath the fashionable little hat and veil.

The sun shone. It was morning.

“You have been set upon, I must suppose,” the lady continued, “by highwaymen? They even took your horses? It is really a disgrace in this day and age—and so close to Acton Mead. I shall have to speak to my son about it.”

“Your son?” Prudence asked, but she already knew the answer. The family resemblance was too striking.

The lady smiled. “Lord Lenwood. Acton Mead is his home. It’s not far. I believe I shall have to take you there. I am the Countess of Acton, my dear. Lord Lenwood is my eldest son.”

“Oh, gracious!” To her dismay, Prudence burst into tears. “If we had only waited, you would have arrived in time, and Hal—Harry—wouldn’t have been kidnapped. Oh, Lady Acton, we’ve been such fools, and it’s all my fault.”

* * *

Harry woke up to find his arms expertly bound behind his back. His head throbbed like the very devil. He cautiously looked about. He was lying on a coach seat opposite the man with the eye-patch. The coach appeared to be traveling at some speed, for he was being shaken like meal in a sieve. He was very much afraid that if he was shaken much longer, he would—like the wheat—simply fly apart into floury dust. He closed his eyes again and swallowed hard.

“So how did you lose it?” he asked.

“Then you’re awake, Mr. Acton?” the man replied. “Is there much pain, sir?”

“Enough,” Harry said dryly. “But you must know something about pain yourself, sir. Was your eye lost in battle, or is it the result of some piece of villainy?”

The man touched one hand to his face and made a small grimace. “Badajoz, sir. It don’t hurt now.”

Harry braced his feet against the rolling of the coach.

“Villainy enough, then. I was not in the Peninsula, but my brother was. He has told me enough. A French saber, I presume?”

“I had my revenge, Mr. Acton. Pulled the frog from his horse and skewered him with my bayonet, before I passed out. I was a sergeant, sir. Sergeant Keen, at your service.”

Harry grinned. “Then, sir, with your
keen
appreciation for the exquisite aftermath of an injury to the head, I wonder if you might untie me? I’m a mite uncomfortable, sir.”

Sergeant Keen fixed Harry with his one good eye. He was not smiling.

“I’ve already felt the force of your fist. You’ll not try to bolt, Mr. Acton?”

“I give you my parole, Keen. I consider myself your prisoner, and the consequences be damned. You have my word that I shall not try to escape—at least, not today. Therefore, it would be an act of considerable mercy if I could be allowed the use of my hands.”

Sergeant Keen pulled a small knife from his pocket and cut the ropes that bound Harry’s wrists.

Harry sat up and dropped his head to his knees for a moment.

“I believe, sir, that it might be advisable to stop the coach for a moment.”

“You gave your word.”

“Indeed. And I’ll keep it. But for God’s sake, man, I’m about to cast up my accounts.”

Keen rapped on the panel and the coach swayed to a stop. Harry looked up at him and grinned.

“I fear my face is as white as my cravat,” he said.

“Damn those rat-tailed fellows!” Sergeant Keen spat. “I had to hire them to help, for I knew I’d never nab you alone. But I’m sorry that cove struck you. Crack to the nob make you sick, then?”

“No,” Harry said with a wry grin. “It’s the things I have recalled, sir, which are raising my bile. Your friend’s blow to my skull seems to have restored the rest of my errant memory. Events are beginning to fall into a pattern that is delightful in its symmetry. I have just remembered a French gunsmith and an importunate message from Scotland. Furthermore, I now also recall that I brought a paper with me from France, which no doubt your employer will be most anxious to secure.”

The man with the eye-patch grinned. “Aye, Mr. Acton. We’d all like to see the paper, sir.”

Harry sighed. “Yet the devil only knows what’s become of it. And now I know where you’re taking me, I believe I shan’t receive a very warm welcome. Isn’t that cause enough for a little nausea, Sergeant Keen?”

Prudence stared into the roaring fire, facing Richard and his mother, Lady Acton. She clutched a large cup of hot chocolate in both hands. Helena sat beside her on the chaise longue, one hand laid comfortingly on her knee. Bobby had been put back to bed.

Mrs. Hood was sitting with him. The housekeeper had sworn on her mother’s grave, the soul of her grandfather, and her apron strings, that she would not leave the little boy alone.

“Why must my sons involve themselves in such desperate coils?” Lady Acton asked. “Richard, pray, who would wish to kidnap Harry?”