Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (21 page)

Not that she had jumped much before, never having ridden extensively astride. But she had seen it done often enough, and it was too late to pull back—they were passing close by the coach, and the mare took a great soaring lunge into the air.
 

Up and over the gate, as if they were swimming through the sky—as if the night was made dark with inky molasses that stretched every moment out like sticky toffee. She could see the whites of the passengers’ wide eyes as she sailed past the coach, and watch the open, astonished mouth of the toll keeper, and hear her own shout come out of her mouth as if she were at the other end of a tunnel and not four feet away from him.
 

“
En garde
!” her
Monsieur Minuit
cried, brandishing her pistol high above her head.
 

What a sight they must make in the moonlight!

And then the mare’s head went down, down, down, and they were falling—tumbling through space as if the road had disappeared beneath them. They fell so far, they landed with a terrifyingly jarring jolt that made the mare stumble to her knees. Quince grabbed for Piper’s mane, but with her hand full of reins, it was a near thing to keep from coming to a cropper on the dirty cobbles. But luckily, the mare regained her balance and surged on down the hill at a clatter.

The surge of elation—of pure unbridled vainglory—was more powerful than any other sense of pride or accomplishment she had ever felt before. It was a slippery rush so intoxicating, she laughed out loud, and recklessly set Piper to jump the wall into the concealing shelter of Saint Cuthbert’s churchyard, and then out again into the dark expanse of the parkland.
 

But the last jump proved her comeuppance—Piper refused, stumbling on the uneven ground, and the two of them nearly went down in a tangle of horse and leather.
 

Holy thundering fools.
 

Quince found herself fair puckled, panting and blowing as hard as the mare. She immediately pulled up and dismounted to check Piper’s legs—the mare had a bloody scrape on one knee, and needed to be taken home and tended to. She had done more than enough damage for one evening.
 

She walked the mare in a few slow circles, taking a moment to catch her own breath while she did so, stripping off her hat and fanning her face to let that slippery elation subside. There was a lesson here for her, about not overreaching, about being more cautious, and being satisfied with what she had managed to accomplish.
 

But she wasn’t much for lessons or caution—never had been.

Because the night was young, and so was she, and on the other side of the stone wall, she could hear a lone coach slowing to turn down the lane cutting through the park. The carriage was so close, she could hear the passengers’ conversation through the open window.
 

Quince peeked over the wall to see the same hired carriage from the tollhouse, carrying two cup-shot young men—all pink faces and voluble high spirits—in the well-lit interior.

Over the jangling of harness and creak of wheels, a young man spoke. “… the most bloody exciting thing! Bloody hell. Imagine, Monsieur Midnight, in the flesh. I never would have believed it if I hadn’t see him with mine own eyes.”

“Aye, we’ll dine out on this for days—being held up by the infamous highwayman.”

“Well, we weren’t exactly help up by him, what? But still—”

Quince didn’t wait for the fellow to finish his thought. Instead, she let the intoxicating excitement still coursing through her veins lend her strength and speed, jamming her hat low on her head, and running for the wall diagonally opposite.
 

She managed to vault atop the wall just as the lead carriage horse turned into the narrow confines of the lane. Her heart was pounding a terrific thunder in her ears as she drew both pistols from her belt.
 

“Allow me to change that circumstance for you young gentlemen. It will be so much better if you can tell your dinner companions that you were made to stand and deliver,” she cried.

The driver immediately sawed on the reins. “I told ’em it was a fool’s errand to come along after ye this way,” he groused, while he raised his empty hands. “But, no, they were keen as flamin’ mustard fer another damn look. Well, they got it now!”

“Just so.” Quince addressed herself directly to the flummoxed man. “We’ll keep this simple, shall we? You and I”—she belatedly remembered to inject her spurious French accent into her speech—“we are professionals,
non
? You help me weeth your young gentlemen, and you weel keep your own purse. Agreed?”

“Aye,” came the ready reply.
 

At his businesslike agreement, Quince’s pounding heartbeat evened itself out into a steady but lively throttle. Not that she wasn’t still as nervy as the devil’s manservant—her hands shook slightly though she gripped her guns tight. “
Bon
. Tell them to come out weeth their hands in the air.”

“Aye.” The driver turned and obediently spoke through the latch into the carriage. “Come oot handsome-like, gents, or ’e’ll blow ye to bits, ’e will.”
 

An exceedingly rough translation, but it would more than do, especially since the drunk galoots complied immediately, tumbling into the mud of the narrow lane in their haste to have a look at her.
 

They themselves had the look of newly made professional men—solicitors just come to the bar, or medical doctors just setting up practice in the fashionable stretch of George Street—with polished but slightly ill fitted clothes, and less-than-polished accents.

“Are ye really ’im?” the taller of the two galoots said in a broad northern English accent.
 

“
Oui.
Purses,” she demanded in as disdainful a manner as possible, flicking her gun menacingly at their empty heads. The less said—and the quicker said—the better this evening, when word of
Monsieur Minuit
might already be spreading from the tollbar to the garrison at the Castle.

“’E’s too short to be the Marquess of Cairn,” the other numptie commented. “Tho’ he do look a bit like ’im.”

“
Non
. Enough talk.”

“Gie ’em yer purses, ye gammy gits.” The driver took his part seriously, and seconded her instruction with enough force that the young men complied immediately, tossing their purses straight to Quince, who had her hands too full of guns to catch them.
 

But the suede bags clinked enticingly as they landed in the soft grass on the other side of the wall, fueling another rush of satisfaction through her veins.
 

“Excellent.” She nodded her plumed hat approvingly. “That weel be all, good sirs,” she said to the drunken gits, gesturing them back into the coach. “Whip up your team, man, and be gone!”

The driver needed no further instruction, and was speeding his coach away before his unlucky passengers had even fully closed the door behind them.
 

Quince jumped down, and snatched up the purses in a trice, immediately stuffing them into her waistcoat, before seeking out Piper, grazing under the dark cover of the trees.
 

The heady thrill of victory was twice as potent now, and in order to exercise the intoxication from her veins, she led Piper across the churchyard to the door of Saint Cuthbert’s, and immediately stuffed the two purses through the slit in the doors without even looking at their contents.
 

It was a fitting end to her night, which had started out for one purpose, but been diverted to another—that unholy throttle of satisfaction from having dared and done it, and bested someone. It was mad and dangerous and addictive, and she knew in that moment that clearing Strathcairn’s good name had only been an excuse to scratch her secret itch.

It wasn’t the most sterling of characteristics in a lass—or anyone for that matter—but there you had it. And it was too hard to be good even
most
of the time.

It was time to go home, and only home. Her exercise for the rest of the evening would be to keep herself from going back up to the New Town to throw pebbles at Strathcairn’s windows.
 

She busied herself switching out her highwayman’s garb for the nondescript coat and cap she had appropriated from her father’s stable, and stripped the saddle from the mare, rubbing the sweat from her flanks with dry grass, before heading homeward through the dark woods at the base of the Castle cliffs.
 

Hide in plain sight, she had learned in her years of pilfering, and so she would tonight, pulling the stable boy’s cap low over her eyes and the saddle over her shoulder. She led the mare onto the narrow twisted cobbles of the Tod’s Close stretching up toward Castlehill Street, and into the wake of an ox cart trundling through the Lawn Market.
 

Not a soul gave a stable boy and his charge so much as a second glance—her only companion, besides the mare, was the warm satisfaction of knowing she had done right, both by Strathcairn in clearing his name, and by the vicar.
 

She would not push the boundaries of her luck by going up to the New Town and throwing pebbles at Strathcairn’s window, no matter how badly she wanted to. She would have the patience she had counseled of him, and would wait for everything she wanted to come back to her.

He came two nights later, just as she hoped he would. Because Mama—and Papa, too, she supposed, though Papa didn’t have anything to do with the preparations that were proceeding at a fever pitch—was holding Winthrop House’s annual summer ball. Just as she did every year on the first of August, when Edinburgh society swelled with English peers heading north to their otherwise vacant highland estates for the shooting. Which would mean plentiful pickings for her. If she were still stealing snuffboxes and vinaigrettes.
 

Which she was not.

Not with Strathcairn, still looking for his petty thief, as well as the mysterious French highwayman. The broadsheets and newspapers had been full of the tales of the dashing foreign fellow, with each new version growing more and more fanciful and exaggerated in the re-telling. By the end of the week, the highwayman had become a giant of at least seven feet tall, riding a pitch black, flying stallion, whose hooves struck sparks out of the bare earth.

It was all so pleasingly ridiculous. Which was exceedingly gratifying, as it gave her the pleasure of doing right by Strathcairn while she was doing wrong. The only trouble was that she couldn’t share her triumph with him—she couldn’t share it with anybody. And by jimble, the temptation was nearly killing her.
 

What she needed to assuage the itchy feeling was a nice slow bout of hard kissing.
 

With Strathcairn. At the ball.

So in order to ensure that she would get what she wished for, Quince surrendered herself to Plum, and let her older sister save her from fashion and social ignominy. And while the white muslin chemise dress Plum chose was the current height of fashion for young ladies, and would doubtless be seen on any number of other girls, Plum knew just how to make it unique by adding a bright blazing sash of apricot silk gazar at the waist, loaning her sister delicate coral ear bobs, and pinning exquisite Euphorbia blooms fresh from Papa’s glass house into Quince’s elegantly curled hair. The effect was every bit as subtle and enchanting as Quince could have wished.

Tonight she would not blend in to the wallpaper.

“Why Quince, you look quite lovely.” Her mother complimented her when she came downstairs. “Where is your sister?”

“Taking care of her own toilette now that she has finished mine.”

“I hope you thanked her.” Mama swept her along down the corridor toward the east wing of the house, where the ball was to be held in the spacious orangery “Now, the gardeners should have seen to the removal of the majority of your father’s specimen trees from the orangery, but I need you to remind Railey to see that the gardens are illuminated with torches. The night promises to be mild, and while there is still a good portion of a moon, your father will want our guests to be able to stroll the gardens. So—” She looked at Quince as if her very presence had brought something to mind.

“Aye?”

Her mother gave her a level stare. “And tell Hobbs that we will need to have the extra footmen stationed throughout the garden to discourage any untoward or lengthy trysting in the dark shrubbery at the far end.”