Lady Sherry and the Highwayman (3 page)

“Lady Sherry! Are you all right?” Daffodil ran to her mistress, then yelped as she barely escaped tripping over Prinny, who was delighted to join in this new game.

“No, I’m
not
all right!” Sherry attempted simultaneously to push Prinny’s great weight off her chest and to fend off his very wet tongue. “Get this wretched beast off me. Daffodil!” The abigail didn’t obey immediately. Sherry shoved at Prinny’s furry white bulk. “Help!”

Daffodil did respond then. “Lawks!” she said. There was a quality in her tone that inspired Sherry to greater efforts.

With a mighty shove, Sherry freed herself of Prinny. The dog looked at her reproachfully, then set about to be ingratiating, which involved sticking as close as a court-plaster to his lady’s heels. Sherry looked around for Daffodil, who was nowhere to be seen.

The gardener’s shed stood not far distant. Lady Sherry made her way toward the structure, past a barrel on wheels that could be trundled about to distribute water, and a lemon tree in a terracotta tub.

She paused on the threshold of the shed. The interior of the small building seemed very dark as Sherry stepped in from the sunlight. It was also cluttered with shovels and spades and rakes, displanter and dibbles and wheelbarrow, sieves and pots and shears and ladders, and other paraphernalia of the gardener’s trade. It was further cluttered by one very irate-looking highwayman, who held a trembling Daffodil with one hand and a wicked pruning knife in the other.

His expression grew even grimmer as he gazed at Sherry. “I’m not going to hang!” he said grimly. “So if you value your lady’s life—”

The threat was never finished. Prinny, bounding into the shed at Lady Sherry’s heels, took in the scene at one glance. There was a stranger in the gardener’s shed. Prinny knew what to do about strangers. He leaped.

Prinny’s weight was sufficient to overset a person in good pin, which the highwayman was not. Captain Toby groaned as his wounded leg gave way, and he fell to the ground. Though Prinny was disappointed to find the newcomer such a paltry playmate, he indicated his lack of hard feelings by planting his front paws on the man’s shoulders and giving his face a great damp lick.

Sherry’s first thought was that the rogue had fallen on the pruning knife, so much blood there suddenly seemed to be in the small shed—and if it would have been difficult to explain the presence of a highwayman on the premises, what the deuce were they to say about a corpse? “Off!” she ordered Prinny, and tugged at his plumed tail, which was violently awag, earning a reproachful glance.

Sherry bent over the fallen highwayman. Prinny withdrew in a huff to another part of the garden, there to instigate an enthusiastic game of toss-and-fetch with an intimidated under-gardener.

“Lawks!” Daffodil sighed, her hands pressed again to her breast. “It’s a right good thing you showed up when you did, milady. I don’t mind telling you I was all of a muck of sweat!”

Sherry found the pruning knife on the floor beside the highwayman, who appeared to have taken leave of his senses once again. The knife was miraculously free of blood. However,  the wound in his leg had begun to bleed again.

Though Sherry was far from expert in such matters, she knew the bleeding must be staunched somehow. She looked at Daffodil, who was gazing wide-eyed and somewhat wistfully at the fallen highwayman. It was a trifle lowering to recall that the abigail had been mistaken for the mistress while Sherry had been mistaken for the maid. Not that the highwayman’s misapprehension had been without foundation. Daffodil’s high-waisted gown with its short, puffed sleeves—rose-pink in color—was all the crack.

Sherry wasted no further time in lamenting the deplorable condition of her own well-worn riding habit, which had not benefited from exposure to hedges and Prinny and gingerbread. She lifted her skirt, removed her petticoat of thin India cotton, and began to tear it into strips. “Here!” she snapped at Daffodil. “Help me with this.”

Cautiously, awkwardly, Daffodil knelt on the other side of the fallen man. Her modish gown was not fashioned for such maneuvering. Also, she did not trust the highwayman not to awaken suddenly and manhandle her again. “Prime and bang up to the mark!” she observed as she stared down into his unconscious face. “I wish it’d been
me
he made off with!”

This remark put Sherry further out of patience. Daffodil, no few years younger, had obviously not passed the age of indulgence in romantical high flights. Nor, apparently, did she considering anything amiss in nourishing a
tendre
for an inappropriate object. Lady Sherry, whose sensibilities were far too mature to be overset by the sight of a handsome face, felt like shaking the minx.

She looked again at Captain Toby. Although the wound in his thigh was a nasty one, he didn’t look in imminent danger of bleeding to death, at least to Sherry’s admittedly inexperienced eyes. “There!” she said as she tied off the improvised bandage. “Hopefully that will staunch the bleeding until Tully can take a look.” And hopefully the wound would not be beyond Tully’s healing abilities. “Pray stop air-dreaming, Daffodil, and help me get him into this dress.”

It was not an easy task to garb an unconscious highwayman, the two women soon discovered, although perhaps the task was less difficult than if he had been able to protest. Daffodil set about it with a tenderness that made Sherry recall irritably all the garments into which she herself had been willy-nilly thrust. Had she done the right thing in bringing Captain Toby here? Sherry mourned the loss of her earlier clarity of mind.

“One can’t blame him, not really,” she said aloud, “for taking to his heels when he had the chance. The man could hardly relish the prospect of being hanged. And he didn’t do anything so truly dreadful in the first place. He didn’t hurt anyone other than in their pocketbooks, and he didn’t rob anyone who couldn’t bear the loss. One might say he wasn’t so much robbing unwary travelers as expressing his discontent with the way things are.”

Daffodil wasn’t at all discontented with the way things were, not at this particular moment. She relished the notion of a handsome highwayman hiding in the book room, where she could go and flirt with him whenever she was bored. “Just like Robbing Hood!” she said approvingly as she smoothed Aunt Tulliver’s gown over his muscular chest.

Robin Hood? Lady Sherry was not prepared to go as far as that. Perhaps she might have indulged in similar thoughts earlier, but that was before the wretch’s intrusion into her personal life. He groaned, reminding her of the need for haste.

Sherry draped Aunt Tulliver’s shawl around the highwayman’s head and shoulders. The women surveyed their handiwork. “I suppose he’ll do,” Daffodil said, without much conviction. “So long as no one gets a good look at his face.”

Sherry’s doubts about the wisdom of this undertaking were increasing with each passing moment, but it was too late to cry craven now. It would have been prodigiously unfair to turn Captain Toby over to the law after he’d made so miraculous an escape.

It would also be prodigiously stupid, since that escape would not have been made without her assistance. Sherry’s excellent memory presented her with an old statute still on the law books, which stated very clearly that every person or persons who should comfort, aid, abet, assist, counsel, hire, or command any person to rob another would be hanged without benefit of clergy. She very much wished that she might have benefit of clergy just now. Or preferably assistance from on high.

No such help was forthcoming, and nothing would be accomplished by further delay. Sherry removed the stopper from the vinaigrette she’d borrowed from Aunt Tulliver and held it under the highwayman’s nose.

He choked and coughed, then opened his eyes and stared at Sherry. “You!” he groaned.

How weak his voice was, thought Sherry, how pale his cheek. His eyes were certainly a vivid green. And she was as bad as Daffodil, mooning over a handsome rogue.

Sherry peered cautiously out into the garden, half expecting to find a bevy of Bow Street officers outside waiting to take the guilty trio before a magistrate. She saw nothing more exceptionable than the under-gardener at work in the distance and Prinny sprawled dejectedly outside the doorway.

Sherry turned back to her companions. “It’s time.” Between them, she and Daffodil managed to get the highwayman to his feet.

The man seemed dazed. He had to be in pain. Well, there was nothing to be done for him just now. And were he in a better frame he might well prove less tractable. Sherry grasped the pruning knife more tightly and took a firmer grip on the highwayman’s arm. On his other side, Daffodil gasped as he leaned heavily on her.

“Now!” Sherry said grimly.

“Right, milady!” Daffodil replied.

Together they stepped forward. The highwayman, who had not, cursed. It took some time to learn the knack of moving in unison while supporting the man’s weight. But before much time had passed, anyone gazing out the windows of Longacre House would have seen nothing more exceptionable than Lady Sherry and her companion, accompanied by abigail and hound, embarked on a gentle stroll.

Chapter Four

The next few moments seemed the longest of Sherry’s life. So weak was the highwayman, so unsteady on his feet, that it took the combined efforts of both women to keep him upright. Prinny did not lend his assistance to this project. Quite the opposite. Prinny knew perfectly well that a stranger was garbed in Tully’s gown, a fact his canine brain immediately translated into an invitation to play hide-and-seek. That his friends did not enter enthusiastically into this game mattered not at all. Prinny was finding this day, with all its unexpected happenings, a rare treat.

This viewpoint, Sherry could not share. She saw nothing pleasurable in hiding in the water closet to avoid being caught. Nor was she particularly interested to learn that Daffodil vastly mistrusted the earthenware vessel that was constantly washed by rainwater from a cistern on the roof. Even less did Sherry relish their encounter with her brother’s superior butler, Barclay, to whom she ruthlessly blackened Aunt Tulliver’s character by explaining that the old woman’s unsteady gait was due to having once again overindulged in the grape.

All in all, Sherry was little steadier on her feet than the highwayman. Not much farther now, she told herself. Once in the safety of her book room, she could indulge in vapors to her heart’s content.

Sherry concentrated very hard on climbing the stairs. And then the greatest of all this day’s disasters—thus far—struck. Her sister-in-law’s voice arrested her in mid-stride.

“Sherris!” the voice said. Sherry grimaced, though Lavinia’s voice was not unpleasant in quality. Sir Christopher was even prone to claim, in moments of husbandly excess, that it was soft and melodious and soothing to the ear. On Sherry, however, Lavinia’s voice had the effect of fingernails against slate.

“Now we’re in for it!” Sherry muttered. “Can you support him, Daffodil? Go on, then. I’ll stay and do the civil.” She disengaged her arm. The highwayman’s expression, as he looked at Sherry, was puzzled. Goodness but his eyes were green.

As Aunt Tulliver’s were not. Hastily, Sherry turned to confront her sister-in-law. If Lavinia glimpsed that swarthy face, those disturbingly green eyes, the fat would be in the fire.

Lavinia was flushed from her exertions. She was not used to dashing up so many nights of stairs. “Sherris, where have you been? I have been looking for you high and low. Then I saw you in the garden. Whatever were you doing? It certainly looked queer!”

Sherry took a firm grip on Prinny, so that his furry bulk helped block the stair. “Looked queer?” she echoed vaguely. “I was only taking the air.”

“In your riding habit?” Lavinia surveyed that shabby garment critically and repressed a sigh. If she had told Sherris once, she had told her a dozen times that it simply didn’t do to go about looking like a dowd. Yet here Sherris was, her unstylish habit embellished lavishly with leaves and twigs and gingerbread crumbs as well as some very nasty-looking damp spots. Whatever she had been up to, in its course she’d lost her hat. “Perhaps,” Lavinia suggested tactfully, “you might wish to change.”

What Sherry wished to do was remove her sister-in-law as far as possible from the vicinity of a certain highwayman. “Oh, no! I am perfectly comfortable, thank you!” she said, and began to descend the stair. Since she maintained a firm grip on Prinny, the dog accompanied her.

There being scant room left in which to maneuver, Lady Childe likewise stepped back. Truth be told, Lavinia had scant liking for Prinny, whom she considered too large and rough and altogether rude. She could hardly admit to these sentiments, however, since the beast had been a present from her doting spouse. Prinny, on the other hand, was constitutionally incapable of understanding that all who made his acquaintance were not necessarily immediately smitten with affection for him. He looked upon Lady Childe as a surrogate mama and had done so since the memorable day when Sir Christopher had brought him home and deposited him in Lavinia’s silken lap. The fact that Prinny had immediately christened that silken expanse with various bodily fluids may have partially explained why Lavinia most often responded to the advance of her pet by beating a hasty retreat.

Today, Prinny appearing even more than usually exuberant, Lavinia descended the steep stairs at such a reckless pace that Sherry feared a nasty tumble might ensue. Sherry did not dislike her sister-in-law so much that she wished for her to suffer a broken neck. She grasped Prinny’s collar and held him back, thus enabling them to continue their descent with some semblance of dignity.

Lavinia drew a deep breath and sought to calm herself, then awarded her sister-in-law a grateful glance. Sherry—who had no notion that Lavinia suffered recurrent nightmares in which Prinny pursued her to a spent standstill and then licked her to death—in return merely blinked. Lavinia wished Sherris were not such an oddity, going about so preoccupied with her own thoughts that she was hard-pressed to render the observances of civility. Though this freakishness might not have raised eyebrows in the rural area where Sherris used to live, here in London she was out of her element.