The Duke's Messenger (16 page)

But at least dear Rowland was not here to see to what undignified depths she was forced to descend merely in order to see him. Even as strong as was his devotion to her, she had the clear perception that he would not approve. He might even make objections, and she would not be overly surprised were he to forbid her to do aught but return to her bed. But he was not here, and to her surprise she found she was grateful for his absence. Now, setting her fiancé aside, she sent her thoughts in the direction of her next step.

At length — at long length — the light in the library went out. Time must have passed, for when she moved she was stiff from long inaction. Her feet were nigh frozen, and her hands, even though they had been sheltered by the cloak, were cold as well. But the light had gone out, and unless the count were sufficiently eccentric to lie in wait in the dark to protect his booty, the room was now empty.

She forced herself to remain still, giving him time enough to instruct his servant and to find his way to his bedroom. His quarters, from Mullins’ information, were on the second floor of this wing, above the salon, the dining room, and even the library. She devoted a moment to the intense hope that his bed was not directly above her. The slightest noise from the library might well alert a man lying awake on the floor above.

She waited. Finally, a light appeared in an upstairs window. She leaned out to observe and saw that only the windows at the far end of the wing were illuminated. The rooms, then, above the library would be unoccupied.

She stepped silent as a shadow to the library window.

*

The window was of the kind that in England was called casement. It was made in two panels, swinging outward from a joining in the center. The trick, she decided, was to push against one leaf in the hope of springing the lock.

She pushed against the window. It did not move. She pushed harder, and at last she felt it move beneath her palms. It gave slightly, but no more. She ran her hands up and down the center frame as far as she could reach, to find the exact location of the latch that held it, and pushed again, with no more success than before. She felt panic rising in her. She had to get into the library and retrieve the parcel. She had seen it on the desk. Suddenly the unwelcome thought came to her that perhaps the count had carried it with him when he went upstairs. In that case…

In that. case, she would know soon enough. Just now, she must get into the room. She glanced around once to see if she were still unobserved. It might come to smashing the glass, but that could not be accomplished without a certain regrettable sound in the night and ensuing alarums.

She pushed harder, with diligent concentration, at the window frame.

Her concentration played her false. She did not hear the soft footfall behind her. The first intimation that she was not quite alone came with a hand clamped without ceremony over her mouth and an arm around her waist, pinioning her to the body behind her.

If she had felt vicarious terror on behalf of various Clarissas and Julias and Evelinas, she now passed beyond even the extreme of terror.

Her scream died at birth. The effective gag allowed no sound to escape. She had been too noisy, the squint-eyed man had her in his iron grip, he would march her without ceremony to the count, and it would take more that Phrynie’s accomplished persuasion to get them all out of it…

The hand over her mouth smelled of soap, she thought with relief, as she bit hard into the finger that was handiest. At the same time, she kicked backward, wishing she wore her high-heeled slippers. A grunt in her ear told her that her heel had found its mark.

But her efforts were of no avail. The hard-muscled arm around her waist tightened and lifted her off the ground, so she had no purchase from which to kick again. Her attacker’s muffling hand gripped painfully, and she could only shake her head, ineffectually trying to escape from it. The voice in her ear spoke so softly it was hardly more than a breath in the night. But, to her infinite relief, it spoke in English.

“What are you doing, you little fool?”

She turned horrified eyes to him. “Reeves!” She sighed. “Thank heaven it’s you!”

He released her so quickly she nearly fell. “Miss Aspinall! But I thought…” He stopped short and continued in a calmer vein. “Sorry, I’m sure, miss. But you are wearing the maid’s cloak, and I didn’t know — didn’t recognize you. Miss.” Even in such distress of mind, she noticed again that Reeves frequently added the term of respect at the conclusion of whatever he wished to say, as though subservience did not come naturally to him.

He looked around the courtyard, slowly, deliberately. Then he turned to her and placed his lips next to her ear. His voice could not be heard a yard away. “No one’s watching us. Now, what are you doing here?”

As though it were the most ordinary thing in the world, she said, “Trying to-get through this window.”

He blinked. “For what purpose?” he demanded, intensely interested.

“To get back the — at least, to get back an
item
—
that
is mine.”

He did not waste time in futile questions. He said simply, “Stolen?”

When she nodded, he added, “I’m not surprised, the way you two have flitted across the countryside, carefree as birds of the air. I never saw such irresponsible…” He stopped short, making an obvious effort to control, if not his disgust, at least his tongue. “Miss,” he added woodenly. “Now if you please, step aside.”

Chapter Sixteen

Obediently she stepped to one side. Having relinquished with some relief the responsibility for opening the window to the coachman, whose talents seemed to embrace a wide range of activities, she looked carefully around the square. There was as yet no sign of movement. They were still undiscovered.

“Reeves…” she breathed.

He jerked his head in a gesture of silence, and she subsided again. He was doing something she could not see to the center joining of the two-leaved window. She would ask him sometime to show her his trick with it, because who knew when she might need to have such knowledge, literally at her fingertips?

Not that she had plans to burgle every residence she came upon, but she seemed to have entered a dreamlike state, standing to one side while Reeves took charge, a state in which all things were not only possible but even likely. She seemed to have taken a giant stride beyond the well-brought-up young lady of quality who properly shunned all knowledge of the ways of the lower classes and occupied herself only with her embroideries and her amusements.

In this altered state of mind, it did not seem in the least out of the ordinary for her and her coachman to be standing outside a nobleman’s residence somewhere in France, in the dead of night, attempting to force an illegal entry through a window of her host’s house.

Attempting to force the window was no longer true. Under Reeves’s deft manipulations, the window sprang open with a sound no louder than a sigh.

Again he bent to her ear and whispered, “It’s open. Now how can I serve you next?”

“No need to be sarcastic, Reeves. If the window is open, naturally I should like to get inside the room.”

“Can I retrieve your — item, I think you called it — for you?”

Haughtily and entirely illogically, she whispered back, “No, thank you. I must not shirk my responsibility.” Then, realizing how ungrateful she must seem, she began to apologize.

He put his hand again over her mouth, this time gently. “Not a word,” he told her. “We’re not out of this yet.”

It seemed to her that his conspiratorial
we
was quite the most comforting sound she could have heard at this point. She could not have borne it had he turned, abandoning both the open window and her, to return to the stables.

He removed his hand. Peering through the window, he said, “Seems to be empty. Where is the item in question?”

“Just there on the table. Let me —”

He glanced swiftly around the courtyard. Satisfied they had not been discovered, he picked her up in his arms and without apparent effort swung her through the window and set her down inside. In a moment, he stood beside her, pulling the windows shut behind him.

“Do these curtains close? Yes, they do. Here’s a candle. Shall I light it?”

“The firelight is enough. Truly, Reeves, you did not have to come in too. I’ll just get the parcel…” Her voice trembled and died away.

“What is it?”

“It’s gone! The parcel was right here on the table.”

He eyed her without favor. “It sprouted legs, I must assume, and walked away. Does it have much of a start on us?”

“I’m in no mood for your kind of frivolity, Reeves.”

“Frivolity!” He seemed in danger of raising his voice incautiously. With a visible effort, he restrained his censure. “Just tell me, if you please, why the parcel — on which you obviously set store — should be found here on the table, rather than in your quarters upstairs?” His fierce glare was clear to her, even in the faint light from the embers in the grate. He took a deep steadying breath and with an effort added, “Miss.”

She was in two minds about the wisdom of confiding in her aunt’s coachman. He was an unknown quantity, and she did not entirely trust a man who alternated oddly between a low dialect and a speech that would have been at home even at Clarence House. On the other hand, she would not now be standing illicitly in the count’s library had he not come to her aid.

She opened her lips to make some sort of quick explanation, being sadly hampered by the need to keep her voice all but inaudible, when he gestured sharply. “Someone’s coming!” he whispered urgently. “Where does that door lead?”

Without an unnecessary word, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him after her through the door into the empty, dark salon.

“It’s the count coming back — “

“Hush!” The admonition was only a hissed breath in her ear, but she was instantly obedient.

Their situation, she realized, was precarious in the extreme. If the sound Reeves had heard was indeed the count returning, he would in all likelihood find the open window and suspect that the intruders were still in the building. He would rouse his staff, they would search the house, and without question would find both Miss Aspinall and the coachman, and…

She did not doubt that the count was capable, not only of thievery of small items like the parcel, but also of meting out condign punishment on the spot. Now for the first time, Mr. Haveney’s instructions to his young messenger began to ring true. “Grave consequences,” he had threatened, would ensue upon disobedience of his orders. But she was certain that the man could not have foreseen these present and very dismaying circumstances.

She must have made a slight unhappy sound, for Reeves, standing beside her in the dark room, put his arm around her and drew her close. She could feel his strength surrounding her, the warmth of him flowing into her. Suddenly she was visited by a wanton feeling — she did not care whether they were caught, as long as Reeves did not leave her.

That betrayal was of only a moment’s duration. She stifled such an unworthy thought, but she did not move away from him. What harm could it do to gain the comfort she badly needed — just for a moment?

“It’s that servant,” Reeves whispered. “With the squint.”

“Not the count?”

“See for yourself.” He indicated the long line of light that outlined the door to the library, which he had prudently left ajar.

She put her eye to the crack. She could see the servant looking suspiciously around the room. It was obvious that they had made some noise in getting the window open and climbing over the sill. He was just now turning away from the window. There had been nothing for him to see, and his suspicions were allayed.

He did not at once leave the room, however. He bent to stir up the embers of the fire and scatter them safely in the grate. The light in the room faded abruptly, and, satisfied, he went out into the hall, closing the door behind him.

She was impatient to finish her mission. Only Reeves’s powerful arm held her immobile for what seemed a long, long time.

“Best be sure,” he whispered, “that the fellow hasn’t forgotten something.”

“But he may come in here!”

“If he does,” said Reeves in a matter-of-fact tone, “we will simply step back into the library.”

They waited in silence until he deemed it safe to return to the search. This time they moved even more stealthily than before. Even whispers sounded raucous in the quietness.

In the faint light, she could see Reeves’s gesture. His lips moved in the unmistakable question, “How big?” His outstretched hands measured an invisible object a yard across. She brought his hands together to approximate the size of the mysterious parcel — that same parcel that, having it to do again, she would not have touched with a bumboat pole.

She pointed to the table, indicating where she had last seen what she had described to Reeves as her item. He moved like a shadow to the side of the table nearest the window. The count, she mimed, had sat in that very chair, when she had first seen him from outside.

Reeves took the count’s place and examined the table. To his left and right were shallow drawers. Taking infinite care to avoid any sound, he inched open the drawers. The first was empty, but the second was not. The parcel, no real attempt to conceal it having been made, was there.

She pounced on it. Hiding it in the folds of her cloak, she stepped to the window. Her sole thought was to run back to her room, secrete the parcel, and stand guard over it until the morning. She had her hand on the sill before she turned back to Reeves with a question in her eyes. She would have spoken, but he signaled her again to silence.

He swept the room with an encompassing glance. He paused for a moment at the table, setting one drawer just slightly open and closing another firmly. Satisfied that all was as it had been, he came to her.

“I’ll go first.”

On the ground he turned back, picked her up as though she were a fluff of thistledown, and set her beside him on the ground. She watched while he closed the window soundlessly, although of course he could not lock it.

It occurred to her that her aunt’s mysterious coachman was far too accomplished in what she could only term questionable skills. He had opened the window easily, had ears like a cat, and displayed a certain skill in concealment. It would be most ungrateful to question him, she decided, for after all, without such Newgate knowledge she would not now have the parcel safely in hand.

She was so relieved at the successful progress of their mission that she was hardly aware that Reeves, holding her elbow, carefully guided her out of the concealing shrubbery and across the graveled walk to the door by which she had come. He grunted with approval when he saw that she had ensured her return by placing the rock in the doorway.

“Thank you, Reeves,” she said, turning to him at the door. “I do not know quite what I would have done without your help.” It occurred to her that she had said much the same thing to him once before, when Stuston was hurt.

“You’re not safely in yet.” He seemed by this time to have forgotten any expression proper from servant to mistress. He took her arm and drew her inside the narrow passageway. It was much darker than before, she thought, and realized that the stars had furnished ample light for her adventure.

Reeves pulled the door close behind him. “Wait till your eyes get accustomed to the darkness.” He was standing very close to her in the hallway. She could feel his breath warm on her cheek.

The clean lavender scent of his soap seemed heady in the confined space. Somewhere before she had breathed in the spicy aroma of a man’s shaving soap and thought it an Elysian scent. She could not now remember whose person had carried that fragrance. She was aware now only of the vibrant masculinity of the man who had come out of the darkness to rescue her.

Stirred by an emotion she did not understand, she faltered. “I should…”

Whatever she would have said was lost forever. The coachman placed his hands unerringly on her shoulders and pulled her to him. One hand cupped her chin and lifted it. She felt, in the most reproachable and delightful way, his lips moving gently on hers. She told herself that to permit such conduct from a coachman was scandalous, yet…

For one breath, she felt in him a gathering together, and with quivering curiosity she waited for what must come next. But, to her regret, he let her go.

“Now I must get you upstairs. Careful, don’t stumble, or we’ll make a great racket and set the household about our ears.”

His arm around her waist, they reached the top of the stairs without incident. The door Mullins had closed — a lifetime earlier this evening — opened easily onto the hallway, dimly lit by a wall torch halfway along its length.

“Reeves?”

“Don’t worry.” He smiled down at her. “I am no gossip.”

“I didn’t think so. But — “

“Don’t worry,” he repeated. “I shall not care to tell the count to his face that he is a thief. But I do think it appropriate to make an early start in the morning. Perhaps even before the count arrives at his desk?”

“Oh, yes.”

He touched her cheek with one finger. His voice was tender, as he said softly, “Good night. Sleep well.”

She turned and took one step toward her room, where Phrynie waited. She heard behind her one last word from her coachman, uttered in a tone that quivered with quiet amusement. “Miss.”