Reluctant Bride (7 page)

“His profession is stealing. Heaven only knows how many he has picked up by now.”

“Surely not more than one dating back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth,” he countered. “I really ought to be getting on for Winchester.”

“My aunt is looking very chipper,” I pointed out. “She will be ready to travel.” She was revived enough to be joking with the doctor.

“She is a game old girl, is she not?” he answered, smiling toward the corner.

“Up to all the rigs. It would be a shame to deprive her of the chase.” He drew out his watch. I knew what was on his mind, but hoped to divert his attention till the doctor was through with Maisie.

“You are ruing your brother’s fate again, are you? He would be off on his wedding trip by now, I expect.”

“No need to pity him the honeymoon at least. I am going to pester the doctor into a hurry. He is making a career out of a sprained ankle. He’s had that bandage on and off a dozen times.

He walked across the room to do as he had said, but the fault was not all with the doctor. Maisie, certainly happy from an excess of wine, had developed an unusual flair for attention. It was too tight, then too loose, and when at length it was adjusted to her pleasure, she found she required a cane to assist her walking. Full weight caused the pulsating to set in again, or so she imagined.

“Oh, Maisie! I wish you had told us sooner. I could have run out and bought one while you were being tended. This will hold us up—and the Winchester coach will be getting in soon.”

Even as I spoke, Sir Edmund flew out the door, to return a minute later with a blackthorn walking stick purchased from a customer at the taproom. This he presented to my aunt with great ceremony, while he simultaneously looked at the clock on the wall and pulled her up from the chair. With Blount for a cane on her other side, she hobbled to the carriage without too much difficulty. We piled in, then it was my turn to delay us.

“Where is Mitzi?” I asked the driver, who had been charged with watching her.

“Lord love us, has that mutt sneaked off again?” he asked, scratching his head. “I’ve spent the past half hour chasing her all over town.”

“Leave her behind,” Blount suggested impatiently.

“Leave Mitzi?” I asked, astonished at his lack of sensitivity.

“We can pick her up on the way back,” Maisie told me.

“Pick her up where? She won’t stay here. Someone will steal her. I must find her.”

“I’ll wait in the carriage,” my aunt said. “My ankle is starting its pulsing again.

“Sir Edmund—if you would help me, it would go more quickly. I’ll go east, you go west,” I said, trying to entice him with a smile.

“Try that dirty-looking river down yonder,” Maisie advised us. “Mitzi loves water, the dirtier, the better.”

It was, unfortunately, true. I took the road to the river, while Sir Edmund, muttering under his breath, went the other way. Mitzi was enjoying a paddle out after a stick which some urchins were tossing for her when I found her. She came leaping toward me eagerly enough, shaking dirty water in all directions, with a deal of it landing on my good jonquil muslin. I grabbed her leash to hasten back to the carriage.

Sir Edmund had done precious little chasing. He stood drumming his fingers against the carriage door, looking at his watch. “You realize there is no possibility of meeting the stage, Lizzie?” he asked irritably.

As I was feeling culpable in the latest delay, I did not deem it the propitious moment to reprimand him for using my hated nickname.

“If we hurry, we might,” I replied, opening the door myself, as he made no motion of doing so.

“Just a minute!” He reached over my shoulder to push the door shut. “I am not sharing a carriage with a wet, smelly, bad-tempered bitch.”

“You want me to sit on the box?” I asked, though of course I knew he referred to Mitzi. I hoped I might joke her way inside.

He was more shocked than amused at my poor attempt at a jest, but not shocked enough to lose track of his intention. The dog was removed from my custody and handed up to the coachman, who was instructed to lose the mutt if he could.

Maisie was disgusted with me. “What will Edmund think of you?” she asked. Edmund was still outside the carriage, speaking to the driver.

“If a man cannot take a joke, I don’t care what he thinks of me.”

I did not think he heard, but as he sat stiff as a judge for full ten minutes once we finally got moving, I began to alter my opinion. He had heard all right, and was displeased.

Chapter 5

Our
first stop at Winchester was the coaching office to inquire whether the stage had come in. When we learned it had arrived a quarter of an hour before us, we questioned a few employees and loiterers for information regarding the green-jacketed man. We received two confirmations that such an individual had alit, but no clue as to his destination.

“It will be best for you to see to your aunt’s comfort while I go and make more inquiries,” Sir Edmund decided. “We’ll hire a parlor at the inn and order some wine.”

“Let her sober up from the last onslaught of wine before you order more,” I suggested. We were not accustomed to drinking so much wine throughout the day.

“My head is aching. I wouldn’t mind a lie down,” Maisie told him.

“How is the ankle? Still pulsating?” he inquired.

“No, now it’s my head that’s banging like a hammer.” The wine—definitely she had drunk too much wine.

I saw no necessity to sit and watch Maisie snore off her tipple. “I shall go with you,” I told Sir Edmund.

“I have no idea where my inquiries might lead me. It is possible I may end up at some haunts where a lady would not be comfortable,” he objected.

“Very well, then I shall go alone to the less objectionable spots. I can visit the pawn shops.”

“Alone?” he asked, blinking in disapproval.

“No, with Mitzi.”

“It is early yet to start visiting pawn shops. The man has hardly had time to lay your necklace on the shelf. I planned to go to a few inns, step into the taprooms, take a quick walk down the street. The coach has only been in a quarter of an hour. He might be just walking around to get the kinks out of his legs after the trip.”

“Your itinerary does not sound too disreputable for a lady. I could wait in the inn lobbies while you enter the taprooms.”

He hesitated only a moment. When he spoke, it came out it was Mitzi’s company he objected to, and not my own. I do not mention it on every page, but when Mitzi was in our company, she was making a terrific nuisance of herself, growling and hissing at Sir Edmund, for whom she had an infinite contempt.

“I’ll leave her behind,” I offered. “I was only taking her along to replace you. I mean . . .”

“Thank you,” he said, his lips thinning noticeably. He went to the desk to hire the room for Maisie. We helped her upstairs, left Mitzi with her and went out into the street.

Our search was not fruitful. Sir Edmund, if I have not mentioned it, was a tall man, with legs approximately three feet long. He moved them very fast,
with no concern for a companion hampered by flopping skirts and legs twelve inches shorter than his own. I fairly ran down one side of the main street and up the other. If I uttered a word of objection, I would be invited to retire to the inn. I regained my breath when we began making inquiries at all the possible stops of a pickpocket. It was possible for me to stand or sit in a lobby, depending on the quality of the establishment visited, while Blount made his inquiries.

A moss green jacket is not at all a stylish thing; gentlemen wear a blue one; farmers and workers wear all colors, but a surprising number of green jackets turned up on the street to attract our attention that day. A dozen times we made a useless dart across the road or into a shop, lured by a green outfit.

“We should have got a closer description of him. We don’t know whether he is tall or short, what sort of a hat he wears—nothing but the jacket and the walleye,” I repined. “Colonel Fortescue probably left a perfectly accurate description of him, too, as he was so thoughtful as to run back to the inn and inform the innkeeper of the man’s destination.”

“Maisie saw him. He’s a small fellow, both short and thin, spindly shanked, she called him.” Blount’s conversation was never what one would call dulcet-toned. When the colonel’s name arose, it became even more brusque. Maisie hinted it was because I was forever singing the fellow’s praises, but I only mentioned him at appropriate moments, no matter how often I
thought
of him.

After we had been searching for over an hour, I suggested our man, whom we had nicknamed Greenie in order to refer to him briefly, had had time to sell the diamonds. “Let us begin checking the pawn shops now. There is a sign across the road.” We hastened across to the sign of the three globes, just as the proprietor walked out the door and turned the key in the lock, his day’s business done. We asked him about Greenie, but he shook his head disinterestedly.

“I didn’t see anyone like that,” he said, strolling off towards a tavern.

“He wouldn’t tell us if he had bought them. He knows perfectly well they are stolen,” I said. “If Greenie is a regular pickpocket, he probably has a man who handles his wares for him. A fence they call it, I believe.”

“That is possible. I’ll have to find my way to the wrong side of town tonight, and begin making discreet inquiries.”

This sounded highly exciting. I knew I would not be allowed to accompany him on so degrading an errand unless I came up with an extraordinary plan. While I schemed, wishing I had a set of livery or a boy’s outfit to slip into, Sir Edmund turned his blighting eyes on me and shook his head. “Forget it, Miss Braden. I will be going alone. We’ll have dinner now, to allow me an early start.”

We had worked our way back close to our inn. I was hungry enough to welcome the thought of dinner, and venturesome enough to continue plotting how I might get myself included in the night’s work. I was sent upstairs to see if Maisie wished to come down to dinner, or we should eat above-stairs with her. She was sufficiently bored with her incarceration that she would tackle the stairs, with the aid of her walking stick and a strong arm from Sir Edmund. No fancy dressing was possible, with our trunks at Devizes, but as Blount hired a private parlor, it did not matter. Mitzi was left behind in the room, highly pleased with the arrangement.

“I'll bring something up for her after dinner. I shall have to take her for a walk too, before she is shut in for the night,” I mentioned.

“I cannot imagine why any sane person goes traveling with a dog,” Edmund said curtly.

I opened my lips to make some excuse, but he was no longer heeding me. His eyes had wandered down to the bottom of the stairs. His expression was one of such lively delight I had not a doubt in the world I would see a green jacket below us, in the lobby. I followed his line of gaze, to view not a walleyed man, but a very buxom female in a low-cut gown, casting a provocative smile in his direction.

Lightskirts are finding their way into even the better class of public inn these days. This one was enough to ruin the reputation of the place, to say nothing of its clients’ morals. She was a sultry-eyed, raven-haired hussy, giving wanton encouragement to every scarecrow in the place. Certainly nothing else but a member of the muslin company. She was accompanied by an elderly female, who was posing as a chaperone, which was only a ruse to get herself inside the door. They would never have let this one in unaccompanied. The two of them were entering a private parlor, and taking their sweet time to do it too, as the response from Blount was so very promising for business.

I had not taken him for a lecher. That breed of male is usually much more amusing. His manners were businesslike, brusque to the point of rudeness. Then too he professed moral opinions on such matters as thievery, to say nothing of his virulent misogamy. After the female’s door had closed, he stood staring at the wooden panels with a bemused look on his face.

“Shall we continue on, or would you like to make a closer examination of the door?” I asked politely.

His head jerked quickly toward me. “A pretty woman,” he remarked, trying to make it sound casual. “I shouldn’t be surprised if she is an actress.”

“I took her profession for something older. The world’s oldest, in fact.”

He busied himself holding the door for us, to obviate replying. While he ordered up his raw meat, Maisie and I settled on tastier fare. “No dead birds for me tonight,” I decided, running an eye down the long menu. “I shall begin with dead fish instead.”

Maisie t’sked in annoyance, and ordered an exact replica of my own dinner, despite Sir Edmund’s remonstrances that what we both needed was a nice, rare piece of beefsteak. The only variation in our host’s repast was that he switched to wine from ale. He was careful to warn them how to sear his meat. The blood oozed just as he liked when he put his knife into it. By a careful rearrangement of the flower vase on our table, I was able to conceal this disgusting spectacle from my eyes. Over dinner, we outlined to Maisie what had occupied us earlier, and our lack of success.

“Sir Edmund is going to visit criminal haunts tonight, to try to find the fence,” I explained.

We did not dally over our meal. There was never a chance to dally over anything, with Blount forever pulling out his watch and urging us to eat up. Before I had finished scalding my interior by trying to drink the boiling coffee, Edmund was pushing back his chair, outlining that he must be off to the wrong side of town.

“I must walk Mitzi now, and beg a scrap of meat from the kitchen for her.”

“You cannot go out alone. It is nearly dark,” he informed me. “I'll have one of the inn boys walk her for you.”

“There is time to walk her a block up and down the main street before dark. I am not likely to be accosted on the main street of Winchester.”

“Very well, if you
insist,
I shall have to accompany you,” he told me, his hackles rising.

“Don't be ridiculous. I always do this when we are traveling.”

“You never took Mitzi away from home before,” Maisie pointed out, with hateful and unnecessary accuracy.