Vanity (18 page)

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Octavia returned. “It seems to me that if I hadn’t been, you might be lying with a bullet in your head at this point.”

“Possibly. I’ll take it into account, but I can’t promise that my gratitude for your sharp eyes will weigh too heavily in the scale. I have little tolerance for interference in my affairs.”

He turned his horse onto the heath away from the road before Octavia could respond. “Follow me closely. Peter will stick to Lucifer’s tail without too much guidance.” He dug his heels into the silver’s sides, and the horse broke into a gallop, a pale shape fast disappearing into the darkness.

Peter, without instruction, galloped after him. Octavia concentrated on keeping her seat over the rough, frozen ground, which the horse negotiated with the sure-footed expertise of prior knowledge.

A sliver of moon appeared between scudding clouds, throwing a cold, pale light over the black figure of the highwayman, sparking off his mount’s shimmering silver coat. All around, trees and scrawny bushes rattled in the wind, dark hunched shapes across the flat ground.

Octavia had no idea where they were going as they plunged farther into the heath, leaving the road to fires and warm beds and mugs of mulled sack far behind. She had no idea of the time, except that the moon, when it showed itself, was high. How many hours ago had she been locked in a lustful tangle of limbs with the man riding ahead of her? A man who now seemed a frightening stranger leading her through an alien landscape that only he understood. A man she had agreed to partner in a diabolical enterprise of fraud and thievery and seduction. An agreement that in this cold, dark hour of the night struck her as insane.

Lucifer wheeled to the right and galloped down a small hill. Peter followed, and at the bottom Octavia found herself on a narrow, rutted country lane. She heaved a sigh of relief at this return to some semblance of the ordinary world, but Lucifer’s pace didn’t slow and Peter galloped stolidly in his wake. They rode through a night-closed hamlet and approached a tiny stone cottage standing by itself some half a mile farther along the lane. A light glowed in the downstairs window.

Lucifer slowed and turned to the back of the cottage,
where he trotted without hesitation through the open door of a long, low outbuilding. Peter followed, and Octavia found herself in a dark stable, the frigid air heavy with the sweet scent of hay.

“All well, Nick?” Ben’s voice spoke out of the darkness. Octavia jumped, totally disoriented. Where in the hell were they?

“Lord of ’ell!” Ben exclaimed softly, making out the second rider behind Lord Nick. “’Ow d’she get ’ere?”

“Good question.” Rupert swung off Lucifer. “And one I intend to have answered in short order.” He lifted the leather satchel down from the saddle, and his teeth flashed white in the dark as he grinned. “Morris is worth his weight in gold, Bern.”

“Fat pickin’s, then?” Ben took Lucifer’s bridle.

“Oh, yes, I believe so.” Rupert slung the satchel over his shoulder and came over to Peter. “I’ll leave you to bed down Peter, Miss Morgan. Ben has made preparations for only one horse, but Peter is no less deserving than Lucifer. You’ll find a pitchfork and hay in the corner. Put him in the end stall and rub him down well, then throw a horse blanket over him before you leave. He mustn’t get chilled.” With that he strolled out of the stable, whistling between his teeth.

Octavia accepted her responsibility with a shrug. If the highwayman expected her to react with irritation to his orders, he would be disappointed. She swung herself down. “Can’t we have a lantern in here, Ben?”

“No,” was the uncompromising response.

Clearly not a man willing to engage in companionable discourse while they worked. Octavia peered around, her eyes gradually growing accustomed to the gloom. “Come on, Peter.” She led the horse to the end stall, listening to Ben talking to Lucifer as he unsaddled him.

Peter went into the stall with his customary equability, dipping his head for her to remove the halter. She forked hay into his manger and looked for something to rub him down with.

“Is there a cloth or a currycomb, Ben?”

“Over yonder.”

Yonder where? She looked around and found a torn strip of blanket hanging from a hook. She used it on Peter as he munched contentedly on his hay. He was a big horse and she had to stand on tiptoe to reach his back. Her arms were aching when she was finished, sweat beading her forehead despite the cold. Ben had finished with Lucifer long before and had banged out of the stable with the curt instruction that she should make sure the door was bolted behind her when she left. She’d controlled the urge to consign him and his incivility to the devil and concentrated on finishing her task.

She found a horse blanket thrown over the gate to the stall and tossed it over the horse, who whickered softly and nuzzled her shoulder. “At least you’re friendly, old fellow,” she murmured against his velvety nose. Then she braced herself to face what awaited her in the cottage.

A flicker of candlelight showed in the single window at the rear of the building. She pushed open the door and entered a square room that took up the entire ground floor. A narrow wooden staircase rose from the corner.

Rupert was sitting in a wooden rocker before a blazing fire, his booted feet resting on the fender. Ben sat in the rocker’s twin beside him. Both men nursed pewter tankards, from which rose an aromatic steam. A copper pan simmered fragrantly on the hob.

Octavia stood uncertainly at the door.

“Close the door, Miss Morgan, it’s not midsummer.”

Her lips tightened and she kicked the door shut with her heel. She was now as chilled as she’d been heated with her stable exertions. The two chairs, a table, and two stools provided the only furniture in the room, and yet it seemed a haven of warmth and comfort with the golden glow of the oil lamp on the table and the red spurting fire in the hearth.

Resolutely, she walked over to the fire and bent to warm her hands. “Lord Nick and Lucifer,” she commented casually. “Quite a combination, sir.”

“Do you think so?” he said with a careless shrug.

“A devil’s combination to tempt the fates,” she said. “A highwayman who rides a white horse.”

“One must spice one’s life a little,” he said, keeping his eyes on the fire. “You seem to understand the pleasures of courting danger, Miss Morgan.”

“On the contrary, sir. I don’t believe in taking foolhardy risks with my neck.”

“Ah.” He looked across at her then, that little mocking smile playing over his lips. “And what do you think you’ve risked this evening, my dear Octavia?”

“Not my neck,” she snapped back.

He leaned back in the chair, rocking himself gently with one foot on the fender. “No, your
neck’s
in no danger from me.”

Ben chuckled into his tankard, and Octavia regarded him with undisguised dislike. “Must we have this conversation in company?”

“Oh, Ben isn’t company …
you
are,” Rupert declared. “Ben is supposed to be here. You, on the other hand, are not.”

“Ben didn’t save you from a bullet tonight.”

“There is that.” He appeared to give this some judicious thought.

“Looks like she’s bin’ raidin’ yer wardrobe, Nick,” Ben observed. “I niver seen the like!” He chuckled again and buried his nose in his tankard.

“Good God!” For the first time Rupert took in Octavia’s garb beneath her cloak. “Are those my britches you’re wearing? If ’wearing’ is the right word for whatever you’ve done to them.”

“I could hardly ride astride in a gown,” she retorted. “I would have asked if you hadn’t sneaked out like a snake in the grass.”

“I hardly consider going about my private business to be sneaking like a snake,” he declared. “And compared with making free with my clothes and my horse, it seems positively saintly behavior.”

Nonplussed, Octavia shifted the angle of the subject.
“You knew that satchel would be in the coach. What’s in it?”

“Rent rolls,” Rupert said readily, stretching his feet to the fire. “The Earl of Gifford’s rent rolls. He’s a stingy bastard, rich as Croesus. He won’t notice the loss except in his mean-spirited soul.”

“And that man who came to the Royal Oak earlier? Morris … he told you about it?”

“Precisely.” Rupert smiled lazily. “Morris spends a lot of his time in the taprooms around the heath. He keeps his ear to the ground to good purpose and overheard the earl’s steward trying to persuade his traveling companions to stay at the Bell and Book overnight, since he didn’t wish to risk his precious cargo to the heath at midnight. Madam Cornelia, however, insisted on reaching town tonight.” He shrugged. “So what could the poor fellow do? I’m convinced the dear lady was
very
persuasive.”

Octavia was too intent on making sense of the night’s work to smile. “But why didn’t you take anything from that ghastly woman and her husband?”

Rupert shook his head. “It wasn’t necessary. One mustn’t be greedy. There’s enough in that satchel to furnish you with a court wardrobe, my dear, even down to a pair of shoes with emerald-studded heels and diamond buckles.”

“Eh … what’s that?” Ben demanded, emerging from his own languid trance with a jerk. “She’s in yer keepin’ then, Nick?”

“No, I am not!” Octavia declared, her eyes flashing tawny fire. “We are embarked upon a joint enterprise. Isn’t that so, my lord?”

Rupert laughed. “Yes, it is, my dear Octavia. There’s no need to look daggers at me. Your integrity is in no way under challenge. But I’ll give you one word of advice. Ben is the best friend a man could ever wish for, and in this joint enterprise you may need him as much as I. Best you remember that.”

“In that case, best
he
understands the true situation,” Octavia said tightly. “I am in no way beholden to you, Lord Rupert.”

“Only as far as a pair of britches, a shirt, and a horse,” he murmured. “Do you care for some milk punch?”

It was such an abrupt change of subject Octavia merely blinked, although her stomach lurched with anticipation at the thought.

Rupert gestured indolently to the simmering pan on the hob. “Help yourself. You’ll find a tankard in the cupboard beside the mantel.”

Octavia wasted no more time in pursuing contentious issues. If the highwayman was prepared to let bygones be bygones, then the least she could do was follow suit. She found the tankard and filled it with the creamy, fragrant contents of the pan. She hitched a stool over with her foot and sat down almost in the fireplace in her eagerness to get to the heat. The first sip made her knees weak. Someone knew how to make a milk punch to fell a grown man. The second sent her head spinning.

The two men behind her rocked placidly, sipping from their own tankards. The room began to lose its contours in the most delicious way, and the creeping languor started in her toes and inched upward, turning muscle and sinew to butter. She swayed on her stool, smiling into the fire, taking another sip from the tankard. She swayed and leaned backward, finding a pair of legs perfectly positioned as a back rest; a pair of knees perfectly positioned to receive her head. A hand moved through her hair in a languid stroking motion that blended with the warm, smudgy feeling in her belly as she drained the tankard.

“Such a busy night for a meddlesome little girl,” the highwayman stated, a rich laugh in his voice. Vaguely, Octavia felt she should protest such a statement, but she could find neither words nor energy—any more than she could resist when she was pulled upward by her armpits and suddenly found herself dangling face down, sleepily gazing at the earthen floor.

The highwayman’s shoulder moved beneath her belly as he mounted the narrow staircase. It was cold as they left the fire, and she murmured in faint protest, but then she was lying down, sinking into feathers and smothered in
quilts, a great weight of them, and the cold air became a warm seal around her body. Hands were on her, deftly stripping her naked under the covers so the cold air didn’t touch her exposed skin.

Vaguely she was aware of him sliding in beside her, his bare skin chilled by its brief exposure to the frigid air. She curled against him, sharing her own warmth as she fell asleep, her nose pressed to the now warm naked back, his scent invading her dreams.

“S
triking woman that Lady Warwick.” The Duke of Gosford came to stand beside his son-in-law. He took an overly
generous
pinch of
snuff
and sneezed copiously into his handkerchief. “’Tis to be hoped the committee don’t blackball her for such an appearance. Takes some nerve to appear in public like that.”

“Almack’s is not the court.” His son-in-law didn’t lower his eyeglass as he offered this curt comment. The duke had correctly guessed that Philip Wyndham was staring at the lady who’d just entered the ballroom at Almack’s on the arm of her husband.

The three elegant salons at the assembly rooms were thronged with those fortunate members of the Upper Ten Thousand to be approved for membership by the fourteen-member committee of ladies whose draconian rules ensured that three quarters of London’s nobility knocked in vain for admission. Among that powdered, painted, elaborately coiffured crowd at this subscription ball, Lady Warwick’s appearance was remarkable.