The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (64 page)

The laughter that sprang to everyone's lips was immediately stifled when the temple—the entire structure: base, pillars, and vaulted roof—slowly began to rise from the ground.

Immediately the temple was the cynosure of all eyes. Motioning for silence, Kevin got down on all fours to inspect the three-foot-high opening that had been revealed. He saw at once that the temple had been constructed atop a circular iron platform with a center iron pillar that operated on some intricate springlike mechanism. "Well, I'll be damned for a dolt, how could it have been otherwise?" he exclaimed in excited but hushed tones.

Signaling to Willie to hand over his dueling pistols, one to Jared and one to himself, the two men slowly lowered themselves by way of a ladder propped against one side of the exposed hole, and dropped into the flambeaux-lit tunnel.

"There has to be a vent somewhere nearby, or these wouldn't be burning," Jared whispered sagely.

Their pistols cocked and their bodies crouched in preparedness for anything, they pivoted about, noticing that the tunnels were a good twelve feet high and, just to add a modicum of spice to the game, branched off in four different directions from the central area in which they now stood.

Kevin grinned at his friend. "Toss a coin?"

While Bo and the servants waited above ground, armed to the teeth with rakes, the two men made a systematic search of the first three tunnels.

One led to a large square room the robbers had used to store their pilfered cargo.

A second wound round and about for some distance, with several rooms cut out on either side, ending at a blank wall that Kevin supposed to be somewhere underneath the stables.

"How so?" questioned Jared.

Holding a fine lace handkerchief to his delicate nostrils, Kevin suggested his friend take a deep breath.

"Oh, yes. Quite so." Jared grimaced, wrinkling his own aristocratic nose.

Further investigation disclosed a stone ring at the left side of the tunnel, which when pulled caused the seemingly solid wall to draw back a few inches until the old and uncared-for mechanism stuck fast. Peering through the crack, Kevin could see the main tack room of the stables, where just then one of the newly hired underfootmen was engaging in a lively round of slap and tickle with a very willing housemaid.

"Whoops! Wrong door," Rawlings drawled, withdrawing his face from the opening.

The third tunnel also seemed to rise upward a bit along its length, ending at last at a heavy iron door which, once the ring beside it was pulled, slid open easily on freshly oiled hinges, revealing the interior of The Hall's wine cellars.

"This has got to be the way our midnight intruder entered so easily," Kevin told Jared, "and it will be the very first to be stoutly bolted from the inside."

That left one tunnel unexplored. "Isn't that always the way of it?" Kevin quipped irrepressively as they set off once more. Knowing that the spy was surely behind one of the half–dozen doors that lined that last damp corridor, the men trod warily, pistols at the ready.

By the process of elimination, one by one they ruled out all but the last door on the left. Silently they positioned themselves against the wall on either side of the door, and then, at a signal from Jared, Kevin wheeled and kicked open the door with one well-aimed foot.

The door flew inward to bang loudly on the earthen wall as, pistol at the ready, Kevin leapt into the breach.

"Mon Dieu!"
shrieked the rudely wakened, slight blonde man lying on the small cot as he blinked at the sight of the intruders.

Noting the three empty wine bottles, from The Hall's cellars no less, and the haggard, rumpled condition of their prisoner, Kevin and Jared apologized insincerely for the disturbance before bustling the now-groaning Frenchman down the corridor and up the rickety ladder to the surface.

"Lock this piece of offal in the oast house and come back here prepared to do a little carpentry work. We have some exits to seal before tonight," Kevin ordered as Willie, chuckling over his own joke, prepared to "frog-march the Froggie" to the empty hop kiln.

That done, Bo, vexed to have been left out of the fray, said rather huffily, "Could have gone with the ladies. Nothing to do here."

"Oh, really?" Kevin quipped, winking at Jared. "And here I'd been hoping I could rely on you to figure out, now that Lyle has so providentially got the temple up for us, exactly how we might get it
down
again."

Bo smiled, pushed up his jacket cuffs, and set to work.

#

"It's coming on to dark, but it's still too soon for our robbers to show their faces. What happens if the ladies return before we can set our plan in motion?" Jared asked with a worried frown as the three men strolled toward the maze.

Kevin grinned and reassured his friends. "Harrow will take care of that little problem for us. I understand one of the off-leaders will come up lame about, let's see—" he pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time, "ten minutes ago. Harrow assured me he wouldn't be drawing up in front of The Hall much before nine, and Rice is to then greet our wives with the happy fact that we three have gone off to help one of the tenants deliver a calf."

"Good man, Harrow. Good idea too," Bo said, huffing and puffing to keep up with the long strides of his taller friends. "Don't like birthings above half, though. Messy business."

The men met Harry and his fellow smugglers outside the most direct entrance to the center of the maze, and before too much longer Kevin had given his instructions and positioned everyone inside the maze in what he believed the best possible deployment of his forces.

When night came shortly afterwards the dark was almost total, there being only minimal light from the waxing moon that hung in a silver crescent high in the sky amongst some few stars.

Almost as if conjured up by some magician, the robbers suddenly appeared in the center of the maze. One of their number walked straight for the temple and began probing about the pillars, looking for the trigger to the mechanism that would raise the structure.

When he had tried his luck with three pillars without any success, another robber stomped to his side cursing, "Blast you for a cow-thumbed fool, O'Keefe, step away. We haven't all night."

"Blister me if it ain't Glynis," Bo whispered, aghast.

Sure enough it was Glynis, and as she pushed O'Keefe away, her position as leader of the group was firmly established by the way he and the rest of the men allowed her to take the initiative.

Now it was Glynis who went from pillar to pillar in an increasingly frantic pursuit of the trigger. "The damned thing is jammed," she swore at last, having pushed at the base of each pillar at least twice. "O'Keefe, you brainless dolt. What did you do to this thing last night? I should have known better than to trust you to do even one thing right, bacon-brained twit that you are."

A few of the robbers had joined Glynis beside the temple, all of them trying their luck at getting the thing to open. "You're positively brilliant, Bo," Kevin murmured to the man crouched beside him behind a stone bench. "It certainly was simpler to lock the whole thing up right and tight that way than to take the time to block all the exits. Now pass the word—we move in on my signal."

With the robbers all intent on finding a way to reach their booty—at least those not arguing amongst themselves as to whether they would derive the most pleasure from beating Rory senseless or from merely slitting him gut to gizzard with a sharp knife—it was doubtful they would notice Kevin's group until they were completely surrounded.

"Stubble it, you unwashed curs," Glynis rasped as she flung her cap on the ground in disgust, allowing her golden curls to cascade down her back. "You're screeching fair loud enough to raise the dead."

Her words couldn't have been more prophetic. Just as she finished speaking, a hideously groaned
"Oh-h–h-h!"
reached their ears from somewhere in the shrubbery, followed hard by another, even more agonizingly moaned
"Ah-h-h-h!"
that emanated from the opposite side of the clearing.

"Oh-h-h-h,"
; the first sound was repeated, this time louder, and with gathering force.
"Who...dares...disturb...my...peace?"
the disembodied voice asked despairingly.

"Ah-h-h-h!"
the second voice answered.
"Who dares? Who dares?"

"Not me!" One of Harry's men (the poor soul stationed closest to the second voice) shouted as he jumped to his feet and took himself off, crashing through the hedges like the Hounds of Hell were after him.

Two humanlike shapes seemed to float into the clearing from different pathways, the forms covered from head to toe in filmy white draperies that seemed to clothe bodies devoid of any real substance.

"I'll throttle the pair of them," Kevin gritted out from between clenched teeth, running a distracted hand through his carefully arranged blonde locks. "I will, Jared, I swear to God, I will."

But Jared, possibly because he had been married longer and was more accustomed to the mad starts adventurous women like his wife and Gilly were prone to go off on, and possibly because he, too, had a rather perverse sense of humor, was so busy choking on silent laughter he could only shake his head and push Kevin back down as he tried to rise.

The robbers huddled together like frightened sheep as Gilly and Amanda—for there was no doubt in either Kevin or Jared's minds as to the identity of the specters just now prancing about the perimeter of the clearing like demented gazelles—moaned and groaned and issued threats of vengeance.

"Grab them!
Grab
them, you spineless ninnies!" Glynis shrieked as the two "specters" reached into the folds of their garments and extracted small bags filled with a powder they then began to fling about the dumbfounded robbers heads as if they were damsels scattering rose petals on May Day. "They aren't ghosts, they're only...only...
Ah-choo!"

Glynis's sneeze was only the first, as the powder being sprinkled so lavishly also reached other nostrils, and soon the entire clearing was echoing and reechoing to the resounding sneezes and sputtering coughs of two dozen (minus one) tearful, staggering robbers.

"Now!"
Kevin shouted to alert Harry's men, before he himself raced into the clearing. He was quickly followed by Jared, Bo, Harry—and no one else.

The rest of the smugglers, unfortunately being as susceptible to Gilly and Amanda's histrionics as the robbers, had taken to their heels soon after their friend, leaving the four men more than a little shorthanded.

Not that it mattered, as Bo was overheard to say later when he recounted the evening to his interested wife; for it had been mere child's play to round up the hapless robbers and hold them at pistol-point until Harry's cohorts belatedly located their courage and returned to lend a hand.

Gilly shed her white cloak, revealing her flour–whitened face to her astonished audience, and boldly strode up to Glynis, looking the fuming woman up and down while grinning from ear to ear. "My, my, my, Glynis," she then clucked ruminatingly. "We did agree you looked your best in black, didn't we? Odd thing about that, though," she pressed on devilishly. "I don't believe those breeches are quite your style—as you're just a tad too overpadded in your ass–ets."

Amanda pushed back the hood of her white satin cloak and, while using the hem of her skirt to wipe the flour from her own face, boldly joined her sister-in-crime. "Now, now, Gilly dear," she admonished with a giggle. "you mustn't offend Miss O'Keefe's tender, er,
sensibilities.
You know what a shy young miss she is."

"Damme if yer two ain't a pair o'cards," Harry declared with a bit of awe. "Rare handfuls, the both of 'em. Pity ya, actually, yer lordships. Wouldn't want my Mary runnin' rigs like these two, beggin' yer pardon and all. Sved us a bit of fightin'and mayhap shootin' though, didn't they?"

By now the robbers had been neatly tied together like a string of pack animals, and were ready to be led off to Hastings.

"Gentlemen, there are three nails, three very small nails actually, holding the temple locked in place," Kevin told the smugglers who were awaiting his orders. "If, after depositing your prisoners with the proper authorities—remember, you came upon them by chance, along the coast, but several of them got away with, unfortunately, their cargo—you were to find your way clear to return here and
remove
this same trio of small nails, and if the cargo now residing in the tunnel has suddenly disappeared by morning? Well," he ended, smiling, "I can see no reason to worry my head further on the entire subject, can you?"

At this statement there arose a rousing cheer for that "bang-up gentleman," the Earl. Harry quickly promised, winking earnestly, "I ken keep my chaffer shut, m'lord. Mum's the word, right?"

The robbers were then herded, still coughing and sniffling, off to the lockup in Hastings.

That left Rory and Glynis still to be dealt with as, considering the gravity of their crime of treason, sterner punishment was called for.

"I never dreamed Rory was the traitor," Gilly commented, eying the two prisoners now standing dejectedly beside the temple.

"See why. Not enough in his cockloft," soothed Bo, patting her on the shoulder. "Fella's revolting, actually. Sweaty palms, y'know. Never trusted him."

"Sweaty palms? That's one way of reasoning it out, I suppose. And, combined with your past judgments, it gives you a perfect score on character assessment, Bo," Kevin pointed out before his humor seemed to disappear entirely as he advanced purposefully on his wife. "But as for you, woman—how did you manage to hoodwink us all and show up here tonight?"

Gilly ignored his tone and replied sweetly, "Did you know, husband, that Harrow mounted Amanda on her first pony? My goodness yes. Dear man, he's known her since babyhood. Fair worships her actually, and would do most anything for her."

Jared turned to his wife, who was just then striking a pose that could have been titled "Sweet Innocence Unveiled," and declared, "You never went to Alfriston, did you sweetings? Tell me, just how far did you get?"