Pale Moon Rider (21 page)

“Mam’selle,” he said, his voice a reverent whisper.

She willed her legs to carry her forward as far as the chair and was not quite there when the man at the server cursed through a nasal whine and started rubbing at a speck of fat that had splashed on his cuff.

“Blast it, anyway! The devil take whoever left the sodding spoon at such an angle. Look here, now. A sleeve ruined and the hour not yet gone ten.”

Roth cast a droll glance in his direction. “And you already in your third costume this morning.”

“The gray I selected initially was decidedly too pale for the weather. The brown did not show well with these boots, and the black was simply a travesty. Threads loose everywhere. A pucker in the seam, no less. Had I been given more warning of your arrival—” The chastisement was left to hang in the air as he turned around and tipped his head smartly to acknowledge Renée’s presence for the first time. “Mam’selle. You must excuse our boorish behavior. I, for one, was roused quite before any civil hour and ordered into a coach without benefit of a biscuit or tea—both of which, I might add, I was in dire need of to combat an entirely sleepless night. Demmed tooth, if you must know. Refused to give me any peace, not even when I attempted to chew a clove. Blast me if I wasn’t getting quite desperate enough to send my man out to the river to catch a frog that I might bind it to the top of my head.”

A noticeably prolonged silence stretched until Vincent’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Why in God’s name would you tie a frog to your head?”

“Why, I have it on very good authority it takes the pain of a toothache—or a megrim headache—instantly away.”

Renée felt her heart drop lower in her chest, felt the beating slow to a near deathly halt. Luckily hers was not the only startled gaze that followed the gentleman as he carried his plate around to the far side of the table, for as he walked, he continued to expound upon the medicinal properties of frogs and toads.

She was, in the end, thankful for the long-windedness of his dissertation, for the distraction it caused around the table gave her time to at least partially recover from yet another shock.

Not that there had been anything immediately familiar about him. If she had passed him in the street she might never have taken a second look. Nor would she have ever associated such a prim and prancing fop with the darkly handsome, broodingly dangerous man she had last seen exiting her bedroom window.

It was the way he had said “mam’selle” that had sent a spray of gooseflesh down her arms. The pronunciation was distinct and softly slurred in a way no two men could duplicate. Here was Captain Starlight, her phantom
midnight
lover who had left her with the indelible impression of gleaming muscles, raw power, and unquestionable masculinity.

In the garish sunlight of the breakfast room, Tyrone’s jaw was still chiseled and lean, but his complexion had been lightened by cosmetics, the brows dulled by chalk. His hair—that gloriously unruly mane of dark waves— was confined beneath a wig dominated by a series of manicured sausages from the temples to the ears. Even his eyes, so large and bold and thrillingly seductive in the half-light, were kept in a pretentious squint so that she could not immediately discern their color a table’s width away.

What was he doing here? Why was he with Roth and Vincent? Why, in the name of all the saints, was he staring at her, smiling a simpering smile as if he was seeking her approval for something he had said?

In a mild panic she looked around the table, coming perilously close to suffering asphyxia herself as one by one the other pairs of eyes in the room turned to stare at her.

“You do not have to answer that, of course,” Roth mused. “Endless pontifications on the merits of frogs and other such inane incidentals have become a common, if somewhat tiresome, affliction some of us must endure for the sake of working together in harmony. But, alas, I do not believe you have had the pleasure of making this gentleman’s acquaintance. Mademoiselle Renée d’Anton, I have the … honor of presenting Mr. Tyrone Hart, Esquire.”

Later she would swear that his steps were minced as he came around the end of the table again to execute a graciously low bow over her hand.

“Mam’selle,” he said, brushing his lips over the backs of her fingers. “While the pleasure and the honor is all mine, I assure you, the weight of shocking incivility may be credited solely to these two gentlemen. What is more, if they find it inane of me to point out the total unreasonableness of being roused at such an ungodly hour, well, it is to the further default of their own characters. I expect we have quite unsettled you by appearing like a band of pillaging vagabonds at your breakfast table, and without so much as a card delivered beforehand by way of warning. I beg you accept my apologies, mam’selle. I should never have countenanced such behavior had I discerned their intentions ahead of time.”

Though the words sounded stilted and were delivered in a petulant tone, Renée had recovered enough of her wits to sense the apology was sincere, meant to convey the fact that he was as ill at ease with the situation as she. His eyes, when she dared look into them, came briefly out of their squint, and she imagined she could see in their clear gray depths the encouragement she needed to regain control over the wild beating of her heart.

“There is no need to apologize, m’sieur,” she said quietly, determined to keep her voice from breaking. “I am sure it could not be helped.”

Something flickered briefly in his eyes—was it relief or admiration? A moment later he executed another, less flamboyant bow and returned to his seat. As she watched him retreat, her fingers throbbed, and she realized there had been an ungovernable tautness in his grip. He had been wound as tightly as a spring beneath the calm facade, not at all certain what her reaction was going to be.

Knowing this, knowing she was not alone in her confusion and panic, she was able to hold her trembling hands folded in her lap, and even to muster a polite smile as she turned to Vincent.

“You must forgive my own lack of manners, m’sieur, for we were not expecting you until week’s end.”

“I had business in
Warwick
. It brought me away from
London
sooner than expected.”

“I see.” She moistened her lips. “And my uncle?”

“I am told Lord Paxton’s gout has flared up again,” Roth provided, “giving him an excuse to remove himself from the emergency House debates, so it should not surprise you to see him as early as tomorrow or the day after.”

“Is it true,” Hart inquired, dabbing his mouth with the napkin, “there is nothing but squabbling and bickering going on in political circles these days? I have heard that Fox stands on one side of the floor demanding our armies be brought home from
France
, while Mr. William Pitt has braced himself on the other insisting we must dispatch our navy to the
Mediterranean
at once before this upstart Napoleon takes all of
Italy
and seriously threatens our trading routes.”

“I would not have guessed you to be political, sir,” Vincent declared. “Or to give a fig’s ass what our armies do.”

“I’ll have you know, sir, I care very much indeed, and am in complete agreement with Mr. Pitt.”

Even Roth looked surprised. “You condone our making war on two fronts? Of leaving our coastlines vulnerable to attack while the navy is sent off to defend a strip of land a thousand miles away?”

“Not just the land, dear chap. He who commands
Italy
, commands the
Mediterranean
, and I would condone anything that would preclude the necessity of doing without our
India
trade for any length of time. Can you imagine not being able to procure the most basic staples? Why, at the very least we could expect to fall an entire year out of fashion for every shipload of silks waylaid by some devilish French blockade. I swear it is enough of a travesty to discover we are already lagging far behind the Italians and Spaniards in their quality of lace and silver. You need only look here, at this flounce”—he thumbed the cuff of lace that jutted from his coat sleeve—“made not ten miles from here and so unremarkable in quality and character as to verge on an embarrassment.” He clucked his tongue in disdain and this time, in the absolute silence that followed, Renée could hear little more than the sound of her own blood rushing past her ears.

Vincent glared at Roth. “Is this absolutely necessary?”

“I’m afraid so, especially if we expect to have any success in our efforts to capture Captain Starlight. To date, we have not had many volunteers in that respect, and it would be foolish to refuse even a modicum of expertise if offered.”

Renée could not help the bewildered look she sent along the table this time, but Tyrone deferred again to Roth by way of a waved fork, indicating that his mouth was too full of buttered parsnips to offer an explanation.

“It appears I am once more guilty of the error of omission,” Roth sighed. “I neglected to mention Mr. Hart is our esteemed Surveyor of turnpikes, and to that end, with the possible exception of Starlight himself, there is no other man in the five parishes as familiar with every hill and dale, every patch of gorse and stretch of bog along every turnpike between here and
London
.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

R
enée’s sense of reality took another swift, unsettling spin. The Surveyor of turnpikes? The man in charge of designing, laying, and overseeing the construction and repair of roads throughout the parish was the same man who took apparent delight in robbing the travelers who used them?

The buzzing in her ears seemed to have grown louder as she turned to Roth. “I beg your pardon, m’sieur?”

“I said: You mentioned you had errands to run today. Nothing too urgent, I trust?”

“No.” She swallowed hard to clear her throat and sat a little straighter. “No, I—I had heard there was a fair in town today and thought Antoine would like to see it. He has not been feeling well these past few days and—”

“And you were intending to go alone? Without an escort?”

“Mrs. Pigeon would be with us. And Finn, of course.”

“Of course.” Roth’s smile was slow to form. “I only ask because there has been another incident.”

“A coach was waylaid on the Lutterworth turnpike early last evening,” Corporal Marlborough explained. “Some of the evidence indicates it may have been the work of Captain Starlight.”

“May
have been?” Roth arched a brow.

The young officer flushed. “There is some room to doubt he was the true culprit. The robbery was particularly brutal in nature and did not follow the pattern of any of his former outings.”

“In
your
opinion.”

“In m—my opinion, yes sir.”

“Which I do not recall soliciting.”

Marlborough
’s flush darkened and he sat stiffer in the chair.

“He viciously pistol-whipped one of the passengers,” Roth continued, “and shot another outright in the leg. All for a meager profit of three guineas and a cheap cravat pin.”

“How appalling,” Tyrone exclaimed. “Early evening, you say? Are we not even safe venturing forth for dinner or a social game of whist without having to fear being dented on the head?”

“I have increased the patrols,” Roth assured him. “Moreover, my men have been ordered to challenge their own fathers should they be found out at night without a reasonable explanation.”

“I was accosted last night myself,” Vincent grunted. “By a brigade of your overenthusiastic militiamen on the road to Berkswell.”

“Barely a company of ten men,” Roth countered wanly, “who were merely doing their duty. Had you troubled yourself to inform me you had arrived in Coventry early, it might have spared you the inconvenience of being brought to headquarters, where I, as it happens, was already inundated with half a dozen
gentlemen
all proclaiming their innocence and outrage at being waylaid.”

“If you think I am going to account to you for every damned waking moment I am in this farmer’s market”— his gaze followed Roth’s as it flicked in Renée’s direction and the hand he had been about to slam on the table was withdrawn—“you have a deal of re-thinking to do.”

Roth only smiled. “Speaking of heads being dented”—he leaned forward and set a silver flask on the table in front of him—“you would not happen to know to whom this belongs, would you?”

Renée called upon every last ounce of will she possessed to keep her expression blank. She was still feeling faint from the corporal’s revelation that there had been another robbery—a brutal robbery—last night and wondering how to discreetly tear the cravat pin out of her chemise and fling it on the floor before it burned a hole in her skin. She did not need to be confronted with the silver flask Finn had left behind at the Fox and Hound Inn after knocking Roth over the head with the candlestick.

“If you do,” Roth was saying, “I should dearly like to return it to the owner with my compliments.”

“No,” she murmured. “I am afraid I do not recognize it, m’sieur.”

He tapped his badly gnawed fingertips on the silver and glanced thoughtfully in Antoine’s direction. “You boy? Do you recollect seeing it before?”