Swept Away (23 page)

Neither Anna nor her aunt had allowed for the speed with which Lucille Althorpe had gleefully hastened to Colonel Ramsey with the information that her husband’s brother had been hiding at Widdicombe House. As soon as Stanley had driven her home that morning, she had pleaded a migraine and taken to her bed, insisting she wanted nothing more than darkness and utter quiet. A note had been delivered to the rectory during the night concerning the condition of one of his parishioners and Stanley, having been told by his brother and Florence, and again by a swanning Lucille that the best thing for him to do was to go about his business as usual, he did exactly that. The moment his carriage pulled out of the drive, the fair Lucille had her shawl and bonnet on and was hurrying out the rear door.

It took Lucille well over an hour to reach the barracks at the North Fort where Ramsey had taken a temporary office. There were five other people waiting in the anteroom to see him when she walked up to the young adjutant and gave her name. He was polite enough in directing her to take a seat, which was instantly made available by one of the gentlemen, but she merely stared at the adjutant, her pale blue eyes shimmering with tears, and was ushered amidst a flurry of sincere apologies, into Colonel Ramsey’s office.

Less than ten minutes later, Ramsey was shouting orders to muster the guards and an armed detachment was immediately dispatched to Widdicombe House. At almost the same instant, a courier was arriving from the toll house with the report that shots had been exchanged with a man matching the description of Emory Althorpe. He had escaped, but the guards had chased him back into the vicinity of the coastal plain and were confident he was now trapped somewhere between the villages of Paignton and Torquay. Copies of the warrant with Emory’s face were distributed among the rest of the garrison and they were sent out by pairs, threes, and groups of six to scour the roads and turnpike leading out of all three towns.

Ramsey, who prided himself on the network of spies he had created in the two short weeks he had been in the area, was also informed as a matter of due course, that the berline belonging to Winston Perry, Lord Barrimore had been seen on the road to Widdicombe House with the marquis and another gentleman identified as Anthony Fairchilde, Viscount Ormont
on board. It had returned along the same route an hour later carrying an additional passenger, Miss Annaleah Fairchilde, the viscount’s sister.

“She was the one,” Lucille had insisted excitedly. “She was the one who was throwing herself in the rogue’s arms last night and kissing him as if it was neither the first nor the last time! I dare say if anyone knows where he is now, or where he is going, it will be her--if, indeed, it is not already part of her plans to meet up with him wherever that may be!”

“Surely you are not suggesting that the daughter of Percival Fairchilde is involved in some way with the Bonapartists?”

Lucille expelled an audibly impatient breath. “My dear Colonel Ramsey, I am telling you only that they did not kiss like strangers. Had the little glances and sly smiles they stole throughout the entire evening not been enough of an indication of familiarity, I had occasion to require a glass of warm milk later that night and saw Emory Althorpe emerging from Miss Fairchilde’s bedroom! Her bedroom! And he was without coat or boots!”

Rupert Ramsey needed no further convincing. He called for his coach and gave orders for a patrol to ride on ahead and detain the marquis’s berline until all three occupants could be questioned. As it happened, with the muddy condition of the roads, the heavy congestion of traffic, and the time it took for the larger vehicle to maneuver its way to the hotel in Torquay, Colonel Ramsey was alighting and adjusting the wrinkles in his jacket just as a tall fellow with a bandage around his head--not an unusual sight in an area that boasted a busy naval hospital--was vanishing through the trees with a lovely young woman on his arm.

“The hell you say!” had been Anthony’s reaction when Colonel Ramsey had explained the reason for their delay. “Annaleah made no mention of any criminal being harbored on the premises, nor would she tolerate his presence if there was one! As for her having any prior knowledge of the fellow, I can assure you she has not so much as clapped eyes on him before, much less engaged in any manner of prolonged communications.”

“By aiding and abetting the Corsican general in his escape from Elba. By whisking him away to France to meet and lead an army of loyalists on a path of death and destruction. And by landing here, in Torbay, days before the prisoner is slated to arrive so that he might organize and implement a second attempt to free the bastard and carry him to safety in the Americas where God only knows what manner of war and havoc would be wrought in his despotic quest to conquer the world!”

Droplets of spittle had flown from Ramsey’s lips in his zeal, several of which had landed on the front of Anthony’s lapel. The latter looked down in disgust and with greatly exaggerated care, removed a handkerchief from his cuff and blotted them dry.

“My sister would not even know how to go about making the acquaintance of a man engaged in the activities you describe, and in the event she did so--by purely accidental means, I assure you--she would most likely faint dead away from the shock. She is a very proper, very genteel, extremely cultured young lady for whom such weighty matters as politics, war, and the intrigues you describe would be as distasteful as walking through dung. She would no sooner give the time of day to a bounder like Emory Althorpe than she would to a common guttersnipe. And if you doubt me, sir, you can ask her yourself. She is waiting outside, no doubt as impatient as Barrimore and I to remove ourselves from this rarefied air of fish heads and villainy.”

Barrimore had contributed nothing to this point, nor would Ramsey, his fervor notwithstanding, dare to interrogate such an important member of the peerage. He was also wise enough not to relate what Lucille had said about seeing Althorpe embracing or paying late night visits to Miss Fairchilde’s bedchamber, not in the presence of a man said to be one of the finest duellists in England.

“Yes,” the marquis said at that point, flexing the long fingers in his hands as if the conversation was beginning to irritate him. “Let us ask Miss Fairchilde if she has any knowledge of any desperate criminals, and then I really must insist we be on our way.”

One of the hotel clerks was sent across to the park to find Annaleah, and when he returned more than ten minutes later to report that no one matching her description was to be found, it was Anthony who strode outside with a curse of impatience, and who came back after another fruitless search along the boardwalk to announce she had must have wandered into a nearby shop or cafe.

Ramsey dispatched his men to expand the search while Anthony and Barrimore each took a section of the boardwalk and followed it to the end. It was not until they began to question the occasional passer-by that a young man with a spyglass recalled seeing a lovely young woman dressed in blue standing alone by the iron fence. She had not remained alone for long, however. A tall, broad-shouldered gentleman in a black greatcoat--a wounded veteran, he had surmised because of the bandage covering half his face--had joined her in short order and led her off down the boardwalk.

“Led her off?” Anthony frowned.

“Well, yes. It seemed that way. He had her by the arm, as I recall.”

Ramsey had quickly taken a poster out of his pocket and unfolded it for the young man, who studied the sketched features a moment before holding his hand over half the face and nodding thoughtfully, admitting it
could
be the same gentleman.

Ramsey crumpled the sheet in his fist and looked wildly around the street. “He is here. By God he is here and I have him.”

“Are you forgetting he also has my sister!” Anthony hissed.

“I am not forgetting, sir. Nor am I discounting the possibility that the meeting was prearranged and she went with him willingly!”

“Sir! Sir!”

A pair of soldiers came running along the boardwalk, one of them carrying a blue silk bonnet with long dangling ribbons and a cream coloured veil. The other clutched in his hand a small gray leather shoe. Anthony, blanching as white as his collar, identified both as belonging to Annaleah.

“Found ‘em a few blocks from ‘ere, sir. Shoe were just lyin’ in the gutter, but we ‘ad an ‘ell of a time gettin’ the bonnet back; it were already on the head o’ one o’ the ‘ores struttin’ up an’ down the lane.”

“Did you say...a whore?”

“Aye. Down on Gropecuntlane. Brothels one end t’other. Girls don’t usually talk to sojers, but one o’ them, she were drunk as a newt an’ shouted she saw a gent carryin’ a proper lady over his shoulder, her kickin’ an’ squealin’ an’ the like. Said ‘ee looked like a pirate with ‘is ‘ead all wrapped up. Said it looked like ‘ee caught himself a bit o’ fancy lace t’ take on board ‘is ship wi’ ‘im, cuz ‘at’s where they was bound: t’ the wharfs.”

“Dear God,” Anthony whispered. “He has abducted Annaleah.”

“You will not get far with me, sir,” Annaleah was saying, “if that is your intention.”

Emory glanced up from lighting a pair of oil lamps and saw that she had once again sought refuge in a shadowy corner and was pressed as far away from him as possible without actually molding herself to the wall.

“You will be pleased to know that is not my intention at all.” He adjusted the wicks on both lamps, enlarging the circle of light each threw to its brightest peak. He left one on the side table and carried the other to a rickety washstand by the window where he stood for a moment gazing out at the street below. The sun was well below the distant promontory of Berry Head and the purplish haze of dusk was growing thicker by the minute. There was still a good deal of pedestrian traffic moving to and fro. Lamps were being lit over the doorways of taverns and brothels. They were a stone’s throw from the waterfront and the establishments here were frequented by fishermen, sailors, journeymen--thieves and rogues as well--who put in a long day of hard labor and wanted nothing more of an evening than to drink their ale and fondle a willing breast.

The inn was one of the ones Broom had named and the proprietor had extorted a celestial twenty pounds for the privilege for the use of a small, squalid room under the eaves.

Emory smiled faintly. “Actually, no. I was going to leave you here with this for company.” He picked up the haversack and from it withdrew a small leather-bound book. “I’m afraid I could not find a copy of
Romeo and Juliet
in your aunt’s library, but I thought
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
might prove equally engaging.”

He dragged the angled bandage off his head. He had tucked most of his hair beneath the linen binding and had to give it a vigorous raking with his fingers before it fell soft and thick around his collar again.

“Why, indeed,” he murmured. “Can you think of a better diversion in a town swollen with cutthroats and thieves than for a young and beautiful heiress to go missing? Within a couple of hours at most, every soldier and constable within five miles will be pulled off their other duties and ordered to search for you instead.”

“How very clever,” she said, staring at his broad back. “And what makes you think I will sit here calmly reading Shakespeare after you have gone? What makes you think I will not run out into the street at once and tell the constables exactly where to look?”

He leaned slightly to the side and pulled the heavy greatcoat off his shoulder. “I suppose I was not thinking clearly.”

“I suppose you were not,” she said slowly, the words fading as she watched him shrug his other arm free of the coat and toss the heavy garment on the bed. The upper half of his coat sleeve was stained around a long gash in the wool. When he took the jacket off, she realized the stain was red and the linen of his shirtsleeve was soaked with blood.

“Dear God,” she whispered. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing. A lucky shot. Barely a scratch.”

“You have been
shot
? You might have told me!”

“I did. I told you the guard at the toll house shot at me.”

“You did not say he hit you. Oh, dear gracious me!” This last exclamation brought her out of the shadows as he peeled down the sticky layer of linen and bared the damaged flesh beneath. The wound was, as he had said, not very deep but it had bled a good deal and ungluing the congealed bits of the torn sleeve caused it to start weeping again.

Anna searched around for a towel, but although the innkeeper had supplied a jug of brackish water and a chipped washbowl, it was apparently left up to the guest to provide his own toiletries. She spied the haversack and after rummaging through the contents, produced two handkerchiefs and a large square napkin that had been wrapped around some of Mildred’s biscuits.