Just Deserts (18 page)

Seizing his chance, the nabob dragged his pistol from his
pocket. He was not quick enough. The highwayman rounded on him,
ready to discharge his own piece.

Before he could do so, there was a flash from his right, a
loud report, and the nabob gave a grunt, dropped his weapon, and
clapped a hand to his arm.

‘
Papa!’
shrieked Penelope, grabbing him as he began to sink to the
ground, dazed with shock.

Looking up, Persephone saw the gun smoking in the hand of
the mounted man outside the little circle. She dropped to her knees
beside her father, and, turning her back on the ruffian who covered
them, groped in the grass. In a few seconds, her fingers found
steel and her hand closed around the butt of her father’s
pistol.

The groom, leaving the strongbox, was standing
horror-struck in the doorway of the coach. Next moment, he jumped
clean into the air as another explosion shattered on the
night.

Seeing his accomplice pitch forward on to his face, the
second ruffian half made to dismount as he saw that a slip of a
girl had fired the shot that brought him down.

Then the groom sprang into action, dragging him from the
horse and grappling with his pistol hand. Wary of his cocked gun
going off, the highwayman had little attention to spare for the
fight and so was overpowered and the gun removed from his hand. Not
staying to recover it, he leapt on to his horse and made good his
escape.

The third man paused, his eyes on the girls, one of whom
was helping her father to strip off his coat, the other staring
down at the man she had just killed.

As if she felt his eyes
on her, Persephone looked up.

At that instant, the moon, which had been obscured by
cloud, shone out, and she was just able to glimpse the man’s face,
down which ran a livid white scar. Then he turned his horse and
rode off.

‘
Seph, help me,’ begged Penelope. ‘Papa is almost
fainting.’

‘
Drag this scum off the road,’ Persephone ordered the groom.
Then she dropped again to her knees, and helped Penelope to tie
strips torn off her petticoat about their father’s arm to staunch
the welling blood. Then she glanced up at the box where the
coachman had fallen on to the seat. ‘Is he dead?’

‘
They shot his brains out,’ the groom told her with a
shudder.

‘
Oh, God,
no
!’

‘
Be silent, Pen!’

‘
But how shall we manage if he is dead?’

Persephone paid no heed to her sister’s words. Bidding the
groom assist her, she managed with his help to pull the coachman’s
body off the box and bestow it in the boot behind the coach.
Setting her teeth, she returned to Penelope.

‘
How is he?’

‘
I will live, my peas,’ the nabob uttered with determined
cheer, but his voice was faint. ‘I will live. Good girls, both of
you. Now help me into the coach.’

But it was the groom who had to hoist the nabob to his feet
and half carry him to the coach. Penelope pulled from inside, and
they dragged him in, but the exertion brought the wound on to bleed
again and Archie fainted away.

‘
Seph, what shall we do? We must get him to the
Buckfastleigh place and to bed.’

‘
Seems I’d best ride there and bring back help,’ the groom
offered.

‘
Nothing of the sort,’ Persephone said. ‘Get up on the box.
Don’t fret, Pen. I will drive us to Buckfastleigh.’

‘
Oh, how silly. I never thought of that. Quickly,
Seph!’

Persephone shut the coach door and, retrieving the
coachman’s whip from where it had fallen, purposefully mounted on
to the box.

‘
You ain’t never going to drive us, miss?’ gasped the
groom.

‘
Certainly I am.’

‘
Lord a’ mercy!’

But when he saw how competently she took the reins and with
what ease she managed the horses he was struck dumb with awe. He
was not so enamoured, however, of the cracking pace she set, which
resulted in considerable jolting.

Inside the coach, Penelope had much ado to keep her small
hands tightly clasped about the bandages covering the wound in her
father’s arm and several times cursed her sister freely. But at
length they arrived within sight of a large country estate which
had to be the Buckfastleigh residence, as they had been told it was
the only house of any size in the district.

So indeed it proved, and since the drive, in contrast to
the rutted road, was very well-kept, Persephone was able to whip up
her horses, so that they arrived at the magnificent Palladian
frontage in a lather of sweat.

Under her orders, the groom jumped down and ran to the
front door to give the alarm. Within minutes, people came streaming
from the house and the twins were able to relinquish their
responsibilities, the one into the competent hands of several
grooms, the other into the care of their mother, who came rushing
out and, smothering her shock, immediately took charge of her
husband’s person, bidding Lady Rossendale take care of the
girls.

But her ladyship was already in a way to have a spasm, as
she assured the assembled company.

‘
Did I not say so? Did I not warn him?’ she wailed.
‘Outriders, I said. Highwaymen and footpads, I said. Would he
listen to me? Now see what has come of it!’

‘
Yes, indeed, Harriet, it is very bad,’ agreed Lady
Buckfastleigh, her eyes on her husband and butler who were bearing
the nabob up the stairs, his wife in close attendance, ‘but just at
this moment we have more important things to think
about.’

Then she turned from her guest and directed a servant to
ride for the surgeon. Following the cavalcade upstairs, she
prepared to render all the assistance in her power, despatching
maids for hot water and towels, and her hovering housekeeper to run
ahead and open up the bed for Mr Winsford.

The twins, beginning to look worn down now that the
emergency was over and reaction setting in, found themselves
surrounded by a vociferous crowd.

‘
How could this happen?’ Count Leopold demanded. ‘Villains!
An escape so fortunate.’

‘
It was not luck, Leopold,’ Penelope said on a weary note.
‘It was Seph saved us. She shot the blackguard.’

Into the sudden hush came Persephone’s husky
tones.

‘
No, Pen. You saved Papa’s life. It was you staunched the
blood.’

‘
Well, well, you are plainly a pair of heroines,’ came Billy
Bolsover’s jovial voice.

Something clicked at the back of Persephone’s mind.
Something about this man that connected with what had occurred
today. But she could not place it. She sank into a chair, the
discussion of their adventure still raging over her head, as each
person related to his neighbour what he had been told. Voices grew
louder, unnatural, a cacophony of disconnected sound.

Through the milling press of persons she saw her sister,
Fitz bending solicitously over her. She saw blood on Penelope’s
gown and the face of the man she had shot floated into her mind,
his mouth gashed wide in a look of utter disbelief as he gazed down
at the red-rimmed hole in his chest before he fell.

Spots began to dance before her eyes, colours jumping, as a
whoosh of silent vacuum hit her ears.

Chapter Seven

Persephone
felt herself lifted and from somewhere far above her heard
the harsh tones of a familiar voice.

‘
Make way, there, make way! Miss Winsford is
exhausted and in need of rest.
Make way
, I
say!’

Her head spun giddily and blackness threatened to claim
her. She clutched at the solid body which supported her and moaned
softy.

‘
My head swims.’

‘
Don’t try to talk,’ the same voice said, but gently. ‘You
will be better directly.’

The dizziness began to recede and as her eyelids fluttered
a little she became aware that she was being carried up a sweep of
staircase in unfamiliar surroundings. Yet the voice had been
reassuringly familiar. All at once she realised who it was and her
eyes flew fully open.

‘
Chiddingly?’

His gaze flicked downwards, but he neither loosened his
hold nor slowed his progress up the stairs.

‘
You swooned.’

Persephone could only gaze up at the line of his firm jaw
in wonder. The oddest sensation was succeeding the faintness. A
slow spread of warmth that seemed to glow and tingle in her veins.
Her heartbeat, already fast, began to race, thumping so strongly
that she was vaguely surprised he could not hear it.

Chiddingly bore her down a corridor and through an open
doorway, and Persephone saw, with a sense of shock, that they had
entered a bedchamber. The wildest notion crept into her brain and
her cheeks began to burn with the shame of it, until she saw that
Lady Buckfastleigh was present.

Chiddingly laid his burden carefully on the bed and stood
for a moment looking down at her, a frown in his eyes.

‘
I am sorry to have put you to so much trouble,’ Persephone
said in an unwontedly subdued tone.

He shrugged this away. ‘It is of no consequence at
all.’

Lady Buckfastleigh was at the windows, drawing the drapes
against the darkness. He lowered his voice.

‘
Whatever our differences, Persephone, permit me to say that
your valour commands my deepest respect.’

Upon which he executed a small bow, and, turning, left the
room.

The grey eyes followed him, in them a strange
perplexity.

They were closed in sleep, however, when Penelope tiptoed
in a short time later. She crept under the covers, not to wake her
sister, for with so many guests in the house they had been assigned
to the same room.

But although Penelope was tired sleep eluded her. She
wanted to toss and turn, but was afraid to wake Persephone. The
day’s adventures had taken their toll, but it was not so much this
that was keeping her awake. A picture kept forming in her unwilling
mind. One that might have been. And so horrible was it that she
kept trying to push it away. As fast as she did so, however, it
forced its way back.

In the end, she got up out of the bed, and, without
troubling to dress her hair, donned an undress chemise gown and
slid silently from the room. Slipping down the stairs, she avoided
the big saloon into which they had been swept on arrival, from
which she could hear talk and laughter, and darted past the open
door.

Across the hall were several rooms. After peeping into a
dining-parlour and a library, she found a small music-room in which
there was a harpsichord by an uncurtained window. There was only
one candelabrum alight on the mantel, but the moon was bright,
affording a silvery glow through the glass.

Penelope slid on to the stool and opened the harpsichord,
letting her fingers play idly over the keys. The desultory plucking
of the strings soothed her. So much so that as her fingers picked
out the tune almost at random her tension eased and tears began to
trickle down her cheeks.

She was unaware when the door opened and only the shadow
looming up behind the harpsichord caused her to glance up with a
gasp of fright.

‘
I startled you,’ Fitz said. ‘I beg your pardon.’

She shook her head, unable to speak for the sudden
constriction in her throat.

‘
What is it?’ he asked gently.

‘
N-nothing,’ she said huskily.

Fitz smiled, and, drawing up a chair, came to sit beside
her. He reached for one hand and held it imprisoned between his
own.

‘
Come now. It is a tidy thing, this nothing. You have had a
severe ordeal, but it is over.’

She looked at him then and he saw the trace of
tears on her cheeks. ‘It is just that—I keep thinking if—if that
dreadful man had aimed just a fraction further to one side, or if
Papa had been standing more to the left. Oh God, it was
so
close.
He might have
died, Fitz!’

She was sobbing, and found herself cradled to a broad
chest, strong arms comfortingly close about her.

‘
Hush, child, it is nothing but a bad dream,’ Fitz murmured
into her hair. After a moment, he spoke in a stronger voice, the
teasing note apparent. ‘Never mind. Tomorrow you will be in your
element watching the horses and will forget all about
it.’

Penelope was so much surprised that she sat up in a bang,
pulling herself from his hold, and dashing at her wet cheeks with
her fingers.

‘
In my element?’

Fitz frowned, but the gleam in his eye told its own tale.
‘Do not tell me I have the wrong sister?’

‘
Oh, you are quite abominable,’ Penelope said, breaking into
laughter. ‘You know very well it is I.’

‘
Pen?
Good
God!’