Lady Blue (28 page)

It was a key. Harmony had seen it before. It was the key to Agatha’s safe.

Her thoughts whirled madly. There was money in the safe. Enough money, perhaps, for she and Anthony to get far away. If she could save him, rescue him. If …

The idea formed even as Harmony dragged her sister inside her bedroom. She slammed the door behind them and turned the key that Agatha had left in the lock. Then she raced down the hall to her sister’s room.

It was a daring plan. Risky. With very little chance of success. And a very large chance of failure … and death.

But she had to try. She had to.

H
armony waited for a rush of fear, guilt, anything. But the only thing she felt was power. Power and strength and determination. She ran into Agatha’s room and fell to her knees in front of the safe. The key turned smoothly and she yanked the door open.

It seemed the money almost leapt into her hands. She had no qualms whatsoever about taking it. When she had grabbed as much as she could hold, she jumped back to her feet. And realized her terrible error.

Everything she needed was locked in her bedroom with Agatha. Furthermore, Mrs. Rutledge would certainly be coming ‘round soon to see her mistress safely tucked into bed. Teeth bared, hands fisted around the money, Harmony knew what she had to do.

Holding up her voluminous skirt, Harmony took the stairs two at a time. At the bottom, she temporarily shoved her wad of bills into the potting dirt of a spindly potted palm. Barely in the nick of time. She heard footsteps approaching from the direction of the dining room and kitchen.

Her worst fear was not realized, however. It was not Mrs. Rutledge who appeared moments later but Sophie, the cook. She carried a tray with a pot of tea, a cup and saucer, and a small plate of biscuits.

“Sophie!” Harmony exclaimed, surprised and grateful.

“Miss Simmons. I hope I didn’t alarm you. Mrs. Rutledge has gone off to bed and I’m bringing the mistress her nightly tea and biscuit.”

“How kind of you. But here, let me help you. I was just going upstairs myself.”

Harmony held her breath for a moment, but Sophie willingly surrendered the tray.

One hurdle leaped. Balancing the tray carefully, Harmony retraced her steps to the bedroom. Agatha had apparently regained consciousness. The pounding and screeching began almost the moment Harmony reached her door. She set the tray down, inserted the key in the lock, and prepared to do battle.

Agatha was on her the instant she crossed the threshold.

“Bitch! Whore!”

Agatha’s eyes were nearly as wild as her hair. Her arms pinwheeled as she tried to strike Harmony, fingers curled into talons. Spittle flew from her lips as she spewed her imprecations. What Harmony knew she had to do did not bother her in the least.

This time her blow was not spur of the moment, but well planned and precisely aimed. Harmony hadn’t grown up rough-and-tumble on a cattle ranch for nothing. She knew where to put her fist to obtain maximum results. When she connected with her sister’s left temple, Agatha went down like a marionette whose strings had been severed. She would be out for a good, long while.

Mrs. Rutledge safely tucked away for the night, Sophie undoubtedly on her way to bed, and Agatha out cold, Harmony set to work with a vengeance. The first thing she did was strip to her chemise and petticoats, then pull open the lid to her recently packed trunk. Rummaging madly, she finally found what she was looking for at the very bottom, wrapped in a split riding skirt.

Triumphant, Harmony laid the bundle on the floor and carefully unwrapped it. A surge of something fierce and primal surged through her breast. Without further thought she stepped out of her petticoats and pulled on the riding skirt. It took only moments to locate a cotton blouse, and her fingers did not even fumble when she fastened it. Her eye was on the prize; she would not falter.

Black gloves and riding boots almost completed the ensemble. There was only one thing left to do in the house. Bending down, Harmony picked up the holster and fastened it low on her hips. It felt wonderful, powerful, liberating to slip her revolvers into place. A brief test of their proper placing for a quick draw and she was almost ready to leave.

The seeds of a plan had germinated in Harmony’s head and she hastily packed a smaller bag with some items she ticked off in her fevered brain: riding breeches, a Stetson, one of her looser fitting gowns, and a matching bonnet. Feeling as if it might be an omen, she noted the gown she had selected was blue. It was time to go at last.

It gave her grim satisfaction to once again lock Agatha into the room. At the bottom of the stairs she retrieved the bills, shoved them into her pockets, and buried the key in the dirt. Mrs. Rutledge had her own set, of course, but maybe the action would set them back just a little. An instant later she was out the door and on her way to the stable.

Harmony blessed her father for his insistence on her learning to drive a team. It took only a scant few minutes to take Agatha’s horses from their stalls and set their harness. Even amid the turmoil of thoughts spinning in her head and the adrenaline pumping through her veins, she felt sorry for the underfed, ungroomed beasts. In that moment she decided she would do whatever she had to do to keep them with her and never return them to her sister. If she survived.

The coach was heavy, but Harmony managed to haul it by its shafts out into the open. The docile horses were quickly and easily hooked, and Harmony climbed up onto her driving seat. She had already stowed her bag inside.

The first thrills of absolute fear began worming their way through Harmony’s body. How late was it? How close to dawn? How much time did she have left? Then the next problem asserted itself, and she put aside the tormenting questions.

The solution occurred to her almost as soon as the problem presented itself and Harmony turned her team down the road to the inn. When she arrived she kept the coach in the shadows of the attached stable and slipped into the fragrant darkness unnoticed.

It was a good night for Maggie. The inn must be full. There were several mounts to choose from.

A clean-limbed bay gelding was swiftly tacked. Having already assessed the animal, it was relatively easy to judge its worth, and she threw a number of bills into the now empty stall and led the horse out of the barn where she secured the reins to the back of the coach. Within moments she was off again, in a race with the dawn.

The long night was almost over. Anthony knew because of the barest lessening of the darkness in his cell. Dawn approached. What did it bring with it?

He feared the worst. Something was very wrong. And not just the fact that he had been arrested. It was the way he was being treated.

Painfully, Anthony drew his knees up under him. Back pressed to the damp, moldy wall, he pushed to his feet. It was difficult with his hands still cuffed behind his back. The gag remained in his mouth as well, and his tongue was as dry as a desert. He had a powerful thirst. He had a powerful fear, too.

He had never heard of anyone under arrest being treated this way before. Of course, he wasn’t privy to the law’s deepest, darkest secrets. Was he about to become one of them? It was possible, he had to admit.

He also had to admit that Sneed had been right. He had taken the biggest risk, and made the biggest mistake, of his life. He should have been truthful from the very beginning. But would she still have loved him?

Yes. Having come to know her as he had, he could not deny that her love for him was honest and true. It had nothing to do with what he was or wasn’t. It would have been a little harder to win her, perhaps, at first. But their love, it seemed, had been destined. Nothing could stand in its way.

Or could it?

Had he achieved his final destiny? Had he reached the end of his life?

It couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t be. He had it all now. How could it be over?

Anthony shook his head as if to free himself from such horrific thoughts. He walked over to the tiny window of his cell, the one through which the first faint rays of light were entering. Approximately three-quarters of the jail cells had been constructed belowground, and he had to stand on tiptoe to see outside. He was eye level with the street that ran in front of the jail.

Someone would come along soon. And when they did, he would … what? Yell? How would he accomplish that, gagged as he was? He could ask for no aid.

Nor could he plead his innocence. Or tell someone in authority who he really was, and tell them whom to contact to verify it.

Something cold and hard lodged suddenly in the pit of Anthony’s stomach.

Was that why he had been gagged … to silence him? But why? And for how long? This state of affairs couldn’t persist. It was against all common procedures of English law.

It seemed he was about to get his answer. Anthony heard footsteps in the corridor. He turned to his cell door to face his jailer.

There were three of them again. The two younger men from the previous day, and a third he had never seen before. The man was squat, muscular, and had a balding head patterned similarly to a monk’s tonsure. He had hard, dark eyes set close together, and they seemed to gleam with a strange and unfathomable passion. Gooseflesh rose on Anthony’s skin.

The short man unlocked the cell door. “Bring him out.”

The other men flanked Anthony. Each took one of his arms. They marched him out of his cell and down a narrow corridor, the shorter man in the lead. At the end of the hallway he opened another door and they all proceeded through it into the pink glow of dawn.

They were in a courtyard, shielded on three sides by the U-shaped jail. A fence with a padlocked gate closed off the fourth side. In the center of the yard stood an erection whose familiar shape caused a temporary blackness to pass in front of Anthony’s eyes.

It was a gallows.

T
he first faint lessening of the darkness gave Harmony renewed strength, strength born of fear. Agatha had said Anthony was to be hanged at dawn. Pulling the coachman’s whip from its sheath near her right hand, Harmony sent the lash whistling over the horses’ backs, and their speed increased immediately. The ground seemed to shudder beneath their pounding hooves and Harmony rose to her feet, all four lines being manipulated in her left hand, the better to wield the drop-lash whip in her right. It vaguely occurred to her that she must very much resemble a stagecoach driver trying to outrun a band of marauding braves.

It was only a few miles to Millswich. Her horses ate up the ground, and she soon saw the village ahead. It was early enough that no one was about yet, and she was grateful. Nevertheless, to be as cautious as possible, she halted and pulled out the blue scarf she had

tucked into a pocket. Harmony folded it into a triangle and tied it over her face, leaving only her eyes exposed. Then she picked up the reins again and looked for a place to park the coach out of sight.

A copse of trees on the outskirts of town would do nicely. Harmony drove her team into the deep shade, then beyond into a clearing a good way back from the road. She put on the brake, wrapped the reins around it, and climbed down from the coachman’s box.

The bay gelding was none the worse for wear. Harmony detached his reins from the coach and mounted. Heart hammering painfully, she noticed that dawn pinked the eastern horizon when she left the shadows of the trees. She urged her horse into a gallop and headed straight for the Millswich jail.

It couldn’t be happening. But it was. Somebody wanted him dead.

Although he apparently walked to his execution, the irony of the situation did not escape Anthony. He had lived his life in secrecy. Now he was going to die in secrecy.

But why?

It was Agatha and Lady Margaret; it had to be. They must have discovered he had “borrowed”

Farmington’s lordship. All the jewel thefts, coincidental to his arrival in the area, would be difficult to ignore. There was also the incident with the sapphire ring he had “found.” They had attempted to add two and two. With a sum of four, their reputations would be at stake. They couldn’t allow such a thing to happen. Society could never possibly know they had harbored a thief. Féted him. Allowed and embraced his engagement to one of their own.