The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (63 page)

"How very gratifying, infant," Kevin interrupted, bowing.

"Don't interrupt! I'm not finished. So thinking, I gave Harry my word you'd help him discover his thieves in return for his help in trapping the spy. Now that I'm completely assured you're innocent, as your role of deceiver was meant only to hoax and beguile your innocent wife into divulging information that might lead you to the spy, I can only wonder: would you have gone so far as to declare undying love for me to gain the information you desired? I'm telling you about this meeting so that, perhaps, this matter as well can be settled once and for all. I'm convinced this farce of yours—your so-public displays of affection—must be quite wearing on you even though you've doubtless had years of experience with this sort of ingratiating cajolery."

There, she congratulated herself, she had really said that quite well. Bunny should be quite proud of her. She'd even used a few big words.
Ingratiating
, for one,
cajolery
for another. Yes, Bunny must be proud. She was even rather proud of herself.

Her husband bowed deeply from the waist in acknowledgement, knowing now was not the time to try to convince Gilly she'd misjudged both his motives and his emotions. Still more angry than he would like, for precisely what reason he was not quite sure, he thanked her stiffly and turned to leave without issuing a single word in his own defense.

"One more thing," Gilly called after him, now rather drunk with a sense of power that helped her to hide her heartbreak, "I'm going with you tonight."

"The devil you are," Kevin countered as he began to retrace his steps, his eyes two chips of pale blue ice.

It seemed the battle was to be joined again unless a cooler head was allowed to prevail. "What a great piece of nonsense, my lady," Miss Roseberry intervened hurriedly, before any blood was spilled. "Any time now that drought I gave you should begin to do its work. The recipe is a family secret handed down these many years and I will not divulge its contents. I will, however, tell you that it is at least three parts laudanum. By nine of the clock tonight you, my fine young miss, will have been already asleep at least two hours."

"Bunny, how could you!" Gilly exclaimed, horror-struck. "I can't let this—this London
dandy
meet Harry and the rest alone. For one thing, he'd be a good hour late because he had trouble with his cravat. Besides that, anyone with a ha'porth of brains can see he's not the sort of man to be trusted with chasing down thieves and spies. Why, Harry would rather lug the womanish Willstone with him than drag a posturing fop like Kevin along on a man's job. He'd only be in the way," she ended with a disdainful sniff that showed how well and truly she believed her husband's outward displays of laziness and soft living—all his hard work this last month and more on the estate not standing as proof he could hold his own in a fight against a one-legged pigeon.

"Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth is the edge of one's own wife's tongue as she puts forth her opinion of her husband's manhood," bemoaned Kevin, his voice fairly dripping sarcasm as he wisely decided to reassume his foppish mask. He had come too close to losing his temper completely, a thing he rarely did, as Kevin Rawlings in a temper was a sight to make brave men blanch in fear. "Wife, you disturb my peace."

Miss Roseberry fought to restrain her irate charge. "Good!" Gilly screeched, leaning forward as her dresser kept tight hold on her elbows. "Then my life has not been in vain."

As Kevin tried once more to quit the room, Gilly called after him, "At least take Jared and Bo with you. And Willie. And—and Lyle and Fitch!"

An irrepressible chuckle escaped Kevin's lips as he turned to grin at her. "Lyle and Fitch? Whatever for? I may be just another effeminate, ineffectual, posturing London dandy, but at least I can be relied upon as possessing some little bit of sense. Those two couldn't be counted on to even find their way to the stables before Boxing Day."

"I'm going with you!" Gilly vehemently declared one more time to his departing back, her fears for Kevin's safety outstripping her anger at the man for using her to learn about Harry, as well as for not letting her in on the secret about the spy lurking, as it were, right under their noses.

Yet when the hour for the meeting drew near, and Kevin and his two friends walked down the path leading to the stables, Gilly was not with them. Miss Roseberry's estimation of her draught's power was not overly ambitious. Gilly, in opposition to all her struggles to the contrary, was deeply asleep and not hound to waken much before the rising of the sun.

#

"Stop that!" Kevin hissed angrily. "You're thrashing about like a dog in a fit, and making enough racket to raise the dead."

"Sorry," came Bo's strangled reply. "Cramp—in m'leg."

"Oh, good grief," sighed the Earl, shifting a bit in his cramped position behind a boulder to rub at his friend's tightly knotted calf. "There you are, Bo, right as a trivet. Now let's see if you can stay quiet for more than five minutes, shall we? I swear, Bo. First you're thirsty, then you're cold, and now—"

"Hush!" admonished the third member of their small party.

"What's forward, Jared?" Kevin whispered, wheeling on his toes to look over the top of the boulder, his eyes narrowed as he sought to pierce the darkness along the shoreline.

There was the sound of softly running feet coming up behind him, and then Harry was crouched beside him. "They be a'comin' soon now, yer lordship, iffen you were right."

"Are your men all in position?"

"Aye, that they are. But I still say we take 'em now."

"And I still beg to disagree with you, my dear fellow. You landed your goods last night, and as I was with you and able to observe the amount of time it took you to stow that great mountain of cargo, it's obvious to me that these thieves you swear are making off with what's yours can't move the cargo very far in one night without risking detection."

"That's right, mate," Jared added under his breath. "And don't forget the spy. He's one fish we're not about to let slip through our fingers."

The spy had come aboard Harry's tub from the cutter they met far out in the Straits the previous evening, right along with the kegs of brandy, casks of cinnamon, and bolts of silk. Kevin, dressed in rough black garments, his face disguised with brass blacking, had watched as the man made preparations to spend what was left of the night in the caves with a bolt of paper-wrapped silk as his pillow. Everyone felt the spy, who was unquestionably the same man who showed the thieves where to pick up the smugglers' cargo, would then travel to London at night, finding protection and camouflage amid the rough crowd of thieving overlanders.

Now that dark had come once more, Kevin and the rest had taken cover in the rocks and long grass outside and above the caves, to await the thieves. While Harry was all primed for a fight right there alongside the sea, Kevin had ruled that they would be better served to observe the thieves and follow them, undoubtedly ending up by locating the secret hiding place the thieves used to store the cargo and prepare it for overland shipment.

After that it would be a simple matter of returning to the spot one more time the following night and apprehending the gang, the spy, and, Kevin devoutly hoped, the "gentleman" genius behind the whole dirty business.

Another half-hour passed in tense silence before the sound of jingling harness came to their ears. Within moments two dozen and one men (Kevin counted them for the sake of accuracy) passed by the crouching observers, just a few feet on the other side of the boulder, and descended the hill to the mouth of the cave. The man in the lead, a small, slim shape in the darkness, took up a position near the entrance and, with hand signals and a few soft French curses, admonished the gang to put their backs into it.

The cargo was first transferred to the top of the hill and then loaded onto donkeys. Following a discreet distance behind, Kevin and his band kept the small caravan in sight until, to everyone's amazement, the donkeys were led onto Hall property and brought to a halt at the rear of the two-acre Troy Town maze.

One by one the donkeys were relieved of their burdens, and the cargo was carried inside the maze. When all the kegs, crates, and bundles had been moved, the two dozen men and their pack animals moved off, followed by two of Harry's men.

The twenty-fifth man did not reappear. "Where's our little French friend?" Jared questioned , puzzled.

"No place to hide," Bo commented. "None."

Jared was on his feet, brushing twigs from his clothing.

"Could he have left by another pathway, do you think?"

"Could have. No reason though. Closer to The Hall. Dashed silly move, if you ask me," reasoned Bo, the man most familiar with the construction of the maze.

Kevin convinced everyone there was nothing else for them to do that night and suggested they reconvene in the morning, at which time they could make a thorough search of the maze.

As the three men walked back to The Hall, Jared asked, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Kevin turned to face Lord Storm. "That would depend on what you're thinking. You have two options open to you, I believe, especially if our friend Harry's suspicious eye-shiftings in my direction are to be considered. One, the thieves have discovered an entrance into Sylvester's underground warren. Or, two, that I am indeed behind this whole nefarious scheme and our French spy is, at this very moment, taking brandy in the Long Library."

"No! Not you. Not our Kevin. Say it ain't so."

Jared clapped a reassuring arm about Bo's agitated shoulders. "Never fear, Bo. Kevin was only funning." Turning to the Earl, he admonished, "Now cut line, you rascal, before poor Bo here takes a fit. We all know the tunnels are the answer—even Harry. You did a bang-up job of convincing those men at that first meeting behind the stables that we had only their best interests at heart. Harry doesn't doubt you in particular; it's just the lifelong habit of doubting the entirety of the gentry. Not that I blame him overmuch."

By now they'd reached The Hall, and were in the large saloon being handed glasses by their host. "Thank you for your trust, Jared. You too, Bo," Kevin told them, saluting both men with his glass before taking a restorative sip of port. "As I see the thing, all that remains come daybreak is for us to locate the entrance to the tunnels, capture the spy, who is at the moment hiding out somewhere inside them, and then wait for the thieves to arrive tonight."

Kevin then outlined his plan for capturing the thieves. "We'll block all but the maze entrance to the tunnels, once we locate that and, from that one entry, the rest. With no where else to go, once the thieves reemerge from underground it will be a simple enough matter to herd them together and deliver them to the revenue officer in Hastings. Just think, Harry and his men may well find themselves to be local heroes."

They laughed at this vision of smugglers being praised by the authorities, but then sobered as Jared asked just how Kevin proposed to keep the women in ignorance of what was going forward. Lord knew keeping them in the dark just these two past days had been difficult enough.

"The devil fly away with all females! I forgot about them," Kevin groaned, his handsome face twisted into a grimace at the thought of the chaos Gilly and Amanda could cause if they were to get wind of their plans.

"Send 'em to the shops? Any ruins nearby to visit? Churches! Ladies love to see churches," Bo suggested hopefully. "Got to throw a rub in their way."

"It's worth a try, Jared," Kevin said hopefully. "God knows we have to invent some farradiddle with which to fob them off. I wonder," he leered evilly, "do you think ropes and gags might do the trick—or perhaps locking them in the cellars?"

Standing behind the drapes in the window embrasure, two dressing-gown-clad women rolled their eyes at each other and grinned.

It had been mere child's play to send the ladies off the next morning in the coach to view The Long Man of Wilmington at Alfriston, a scarce fifteen-mile journey, with the competent Harrow tooling the reins.

The three conspirators stood in the gravel drive, waving to their wives as they leaned out the side windows of the Delaney traveling coach and waved their hankies gaily back at them. Then, just as soon as the coach was out of sight around the bend, the men fell to slapping each other on the back, congratulating themselves on the successful routing of the one hitch in their Machiavellian scheme—their nosey-parker wives.

Then it was off to the maze; wary Willstone, sleepy Lyle and Fitch, and the feisty Willie tagging along behind carrying rakes, wooden poles, and an inlaid box containing Sylvester's prized dueling pistols.

Their search concentrated on the heart of the maze, the large open area that sported a miniature temple at its very center. Although Bo's small army of helpers had made great inroads on restoring the maze to its former glory, there had not been enough time to do more than scythe the long grasses in the clearing to a navigable height. Also, nothing had yet been done to refurbish the wooden pillars of the temple, which had once been artfully painted to resemble marble but now stood flaking and peeling and almost completely derelict.

"The grass, or should I say the weeds, are surely trampled enough to know that the robbers came this way," Kevin remarked in an undertone, "but where the devil did they disappear to? None but the one path shows any signs of being traveled."

Jared, who had been poking about the turf with his toe, looking for only Heaven knew what, muttered, "It's like they disappeared into thin air."

"Indeed." Bo nodded passionately. "Like Merlin. Poof! They're gone."

At Bo's words, Lyle and Fitch, never the bravest of men, turned to bolt from the area. In their haste to be gone they both turned at the same time, cannoning into each other with great force. The skinny Lyle bounced off the rotund Fitch and staggered backwards to careen against one of the temple pillars, which served in turn to send him reeling into Fitch's arms, the two ending in a crumpled heap on the ground.