Lady Sherry and the Highwayman (7 page)

Sir Christopher enjoyed these cozy family dinners and prided himself that he could take part as well in the conversation of the ladies as that of the courtroom. “Hah!” he exclaimed, and regarded his sister with a fond eye. “Sly puss! Playing hard to get!”

Lady Sherry started. She had been thinking of Lord Viccars and lamenting her tendency to greet his most casual utterance with high fidgets. Even if Lavinia did not so frequently point out the man high standing in the marriage mart, Sherry would have guessed that he was considered to be prodigious eligible. Why he’d set his sights on her, she could not imagine.
If
he had set his sights on her, and he hadn’t changed his mind.

“Air-dreaming again,” observed Sir Christopher tolerantly. “I know how it is. Why, when Livvy and I was courting—”

“Nothing of the sort!” If Sherry was forced to listen one more time to an account of her brother’s extremely dull pursuit of Lavinia, she would not be held accountable for her actions. Especially if Lavinia, as was her wont, giggled and simpered throughout. “I was not playing hard to get. I merely forgot. You know how sadly absentminded I can be.”

Sir Christopher knew that his sister wasn’t one to relish being teased and so nobly refrained from anything other than an additional chuckle and one more “Sly puss!” Truth be told, he didn’t see why Lavinia attached so much importance to Viccars’s courtship. If Sherry wished to have him, then she would; and if she didn’t wish to, then she would not; and whichever way she chose to leap made no nevermind. Sir Christopher was sincerely fond of his sister and somewhat in awe of her literary abilities, and also a little remorseful that he’d left their mother to her care while he pursued his own career. “After today Viccars must also know that you are absentminded. I’ll warrant he don’t mind.”

Did he not? Sherry didn’t know. The entire topic was as painful to her as a sore tooth and as impossible to overlook. Throughout this interminable meal, she had been teasing herself with thoughts of his lordship and with a foolish wish that she could be more in the common way.

Common sense intervened.  She could no more change her nature than a zebra could its stripes. And perhaps, just perhaps, if Sherry had been more skilled in the art of flirtation, she would not have created nine of the most popular, and gruesome, gothic novels to occupy a place of honor on any library shelf. Perhaps, if Lord Viccars were not around to confuse her, she would have less trouble with the tenth. The very notion caused a queer little ache in the vicinity of her heart. Or perhaps it was the pea soup, which tasted suspiciously like some ingredient in it had gone off.

“You should not encourage her,” murmured Lavinia, resentful of the attention Sherry was being given. “If Sherris is left unattached much longer, it will be nigh impossible to arrange a suitable match. You know as well as I, my love, that marriage is an experience no woman should be denied.”

Sir Christopher was a straightforward soul, unaware of shades of meaning and malicious nuances. He thought only, in response to his wife’s speech, that marriage was an experience he was glad
he
had not been denied. Naturally he wished equal bliss for his sister. “Aye,” he murmured, oblivious to Sherry’s indignant expression, as he gazed dotingly upon his spouse. If the wretched table were not so long, he would have expressed his appreciation of the wedded state by patting Lavinia’s plump little hand. Or by kissing her pretty cheek. Sir Christopher pushed away his untimely impulses and concentrated on his roast beef.

Sir Christopher was aware that all was not as well as it should have been within his household. He was also aware that this circumstance had to do with the relationship between his sister and his wife. Lavinia was a vision in cream-colored silk trimmed with knots of ribbon. For a moment, he marveled anew that so exalted a creature should stoop so low as to enter into a marriage with him. Sir Christopher turned his attention to Sherry, who looked very nice in pale blue muslin trimmed with a narrow flounce.

Alas, the vision of loveliness created by the ladies was marred by the circumstance that they were contemplating each other as if at any moment they might come to blows. Sir Christopher realized belatedly that Sherry might resent Lavinia’s comments on her spinster state. He wished that she would not. He also wished that Lavinia could be persuaded from making such comments in Sherry’s hearing. Not that he would ever accuse his beloved wife of nagging. And even if she did sometimes come perilously close to that description, Sir Christopher could not doubt that she meant it for the best.

He cleared his throat, thus reminding his womenfolk that glaring daggers at each other across the dining table was not
comme il faut.
Lavinia lowered her gaze to the saltcellar, and Sherry stared at her flounder as if in it she might read the meaning of life.

Sir Christopher passed so many hours among rogues and ruffians, saw so much human misery parade before him, that he preferred to be surrounded by happy faces at home. He cast about in his mind for a topic that might amuse the ladies and earn him their smiles. “That highwayman fellow,” he offered, thereby inadvertently curtailing what little remained of his sister’s appetite. “Captain Toby. He escaped hanging today by a hairsbreadth.”

How should one react? How to appear as if one didn’t already know? Sherry opened her eyes wide and forced her mouth to form an astonished 0. Her fingers dug into her fork.

Fortunately, no one was paying heed to Sherry, or else they would have wondered why she looked so very queer. “Escaped!” gasped Lavinia. Though she may have been the daughter of a duke, Lavinia enjoyed a thrilling
on-dit
as well as anyone. “But how?”

Sir Christopher was delighted by the sparkle of interest in his wife’s blue eyes. “No one can say for certain. There was a rowdy-do—a regular riot, in point of fact. Store windows were broken and heaven knows how many heads. It’s a miracle that no one was killed.”

“But Captain Toby!” Lavinia wasn’t concerned with who had and had not been injured in the fracas. “He escaped, you said?”

“Aye, he escaped. Some fool of a doxy—er, unfortunate female—whisked him away. The whole thing was planned, I make no doubt.” Sir Christopher glanced at his sister, who was as noticeably silent as his wife was vocal. “Her hair was supposedly the color of yours, puss.”

This intelligence inspired Lady Sherry to almost drop her fork. “Oh,” she said and contemplated her barely touched plate.

Sir Christopher reached for his wineglass. He was not feeling especially in charity with his womenfolk. Was he not trying his utmost to draw Sherry out of the dumps? And she could only offer him monosyllables in response. As for Lavinia, her reaction to the news of the highwayman’s escape pleased him little more. Foolish perhaps, but it caused Sir Christopher distress to realize his wife’s genteel eye could be caught by a handsome rogue.

“He won’t be on the loose for long. A most rigorous inquiry is underway. Handbills and posters with his description, as well as what we know of the woman who helped him escape, will be circulated. We’ll find the scoundrel, and when we do he won’t be given a second chance to avoid his just fate.”

The woman who helped him escape? Those words echoed ominously in Lady Sherry’s mind. She wondered how detailed a description of the lady in question was already in possession of Bow Street. “Is this hue and cry not a trifle harsh?” she asked as silent servants set out clean glasses and dessert plates, knives and forks and fringed napkins, decanters of sherry and claret and port. “The man has already gone once to the gallows.”

“Aye, and missed his own hanging.” Sir Christopher contemplated the large plate of fruit on the table before him, his attention wavering between peaches and grapes and cherries, figs and plums. “He won’t escape again.” He picked up his fork and speared a lush plum. “The law is not to be trifled with, by God.”

Lady Sherry had no desire to trifle with the law, to have anything at all to do with the law, in fact. She feared it was a matter in which she was not to be given a great deal of choice. “What about the woman?” she murmured.

Sir Christopher stared blankly at his sister over the top of the plum. “What woman?” he asked. “Oh, the dox—er, unfortunate female. It depends. Perhaps she’ll be transported. Or maybe she’ll hang. You may be certain that she won’t go unpunished. Here, puss, you aren’t ill, are you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

So Sherry had, and it was her own, dangling from a gibbet alongside a certain green-eyed highwayman. She could hardly explain this vision to her law-upholding brother. “It’s nothing,” she murmured. “Merely a touch of the sun.”

“Ah, yes,” murmured Lavinia as she indicated to Sir Christopher that he should apply his fringed napkin to the plum juice on his chin. “Sherris was out earlier today. My dear, you told us nothing of all this excitement! I suppose you didn’t know. What a pity. Since you were so taken with the rogue as to put him in a book, you might have enjoyed being at hand to see his escape.”

Sherry could not bypass this opportunity. She opened her eyes wide. “You were so similarly taken with him, dear Lavinia, that you’re forever after me to read what I have written about him. As for your suggestion, frankly I am shocked! Surely you realize that for a lady to be present at a hanging is hardly proper. Especially an unmarried lady like myself.”

With this unkind comment, to which Lavinia could think of no suitably cutting rejoinder, the meal came to an end. Even Sir Christopher could manufacture no oil to pour on waters as troubled as these. Lavinia retired to the drawing room in a huff, there to sulk over her coffee cup until her spouse joined her and teased her into a better humor with pretty compliments. Sherry, meanwhile, appropriated the claret and withdrew, explaining to the startled servant from whose fingers she snatched the decanter that she had a touch of the headache, which nothing but water and wine would cure, and leaving him to report to his fellow footman—who confided it to the butler, who in turn conveyed the news to Lady Childe herself—that Lady Sherry was on the way to becoming as great a secret tippler as her adopted aunt.

Happily unaware that she was about to be damned as a drunkard as well as an old maid, Sherry climbed the stairs to her book room. Her emotions were in turmoil. She was furious with Lavinia for discussing her unwed status in that odious, condescending way—and that there was truth in Lavinia’s remarks didn’t make them easier to bear.

Lavinia, however, was the least of Sherry’s problems at this juncture. The highwayman had been seen riding off with a red-haired female. If he were somehow trailed to this house—

Sherry quailed at the vision of herself being tried at the sessions at the Old Bailey on an indictment of conspiring at a condemned criminal’s escape. She quailed, also, at the thought of what such a scandal would do to her brother’s good name, and was horrified that her rash action might put his reputation in jeopardy.

Obviously, the only reasonable course of action now was to go to Sir Christopher and make a clean breast of the affair. Sherry was sadly lacking in courage, alas. Even if her brother were able to prevent her incarceration in Newgate, he would doubtless tell Lavinia of Sherry’s folly, and Lavinia would in turn tell Lord Viccars. Anticipation of Lord Viccars’s resultant revulsion of feeling cheered her little more.

Then there was the thought of the highwayman himself.  She had been trying for what seemed an eternity not to think of what might be going on abovestairs, lest some guilty admission slip from her careless lips or her thoughts be read. Sherry thrust her key into the lock, glanced up and down the hallway to make sure she was not observed. This was a strange hour to visit her book room; she normally courted her muse much earlier in the day.

Sherry opened the door, backed into the room, then turned—and found herself staring down the muzzle of a pistol for the second time that day. This time the pistol was clutched by no highwayman but by Aunt Tulliver instead. Behind her, Sherry glimpsed Captain Toby stretched out on the settee, looking unnervingly like a corpse on view, as did Prinny, who was stretched out on the floor beside the sofa, or at least as corpselike as was possible for a dog so obese. Prinny opened his eyes and observed Sherry, toward whom he nourished a grudge so severe that he closed his eyes again without so much as a welcoming twitch of his plumed tail.

Tully lowered the pistol. “Stab me! I’d just closed my eyes for a minute and then the door opened— Well, I don’t mind admitting I thought I was done for! Come to think of it, you was almost done for yourself. I could have put a hole in you as easy as winking, and even you couldn’t hold it against me under the circumstance.”

“I’m sorry.” Sherry was stricken with guilt by the sight of Aunt Tulliver, wig awry, clutching at her chest.

Was there no one of her acquaintance whom Sherry had not mistreated this horrid day? She walked across the room, looked down on the unconscious highwayman and the bloodstained bandage wrapped around his leg. “He looks so very pale.”

“So would you look pale if you’d just had a bullet dug out of you.” Aunt Tulliver adjusted a pillow behind the highwayman’s head and picked up a bowl of bloody water and rags. The room stank of the gin with which she’d rendered him sufficiently senseless to probe for the bullet in his leg.
Her
gin, in point of fact, from her private stock; for though Tully might have a taste for most alcoholic beverages, she preferred that fiery liquor known commonly as Strip-Me-Naked or Blue Ruin.

Lady Sherry looked worried, as well she might. The highwayman, and the book room, was no reassuring sight. But Tully knew a fair bit about medicine, due to the circumstance of having nursed three spouses through illnesses that proved fatal (though that was not her fault) and to the additional fact of having a very inquiring mind. Tully was curious about everything from the mating habits of cuckoos to the latest scandals of the
haut
ton
and claimed to see a distinct similarity between the two; she was interested in medicine, and in anatomy in general, and was not so very old that this scoundrel’s well-knit anatomy did not strike her as very interesting indeed.