The Fugitive Heiress (27 page)

The window was filthy, but there was no curtain and she could see well enough. She looked in upon a taproom lit by candles in wall sconces. Directly opposite, Tiffany slumped against the chimney corner of a large oak settle. Catheryn could see her face dimly, but the rest of her was just a blob through the dirty window. She heard Lawrence and the fellow who held Teddy talking, but Lawrence was out of sight and their words were muffled. Tiffany said something, sounding frightened, but Catheryn couldn’t make out her words either. This would never do. She ducked down below the window, crept to the front stoop, and pushed the door open, hoping it would not squeak. It was as silent as though freshly soaped, but she did not pause to wonder why. She found herself in a dark hallway, and when she neared the taproom door, Teddy’s voice came clearly.

“You just wait till my brother gets hold of you, Mr. Lawrence! He’ll fix your wagon!”

“’Ere now, Jimmy, you ain’t got no more of these coves acomin’, I ’ope!” It was an elderly voice. Certainly not the coachman, she thought. “This b’ain’t no posh postin’ ’ouse. ’Sides, I don’t want no part of it!” Catheryn was wondering if the voice might belong to the coachman after all, when a second unfamiliar voice recommended that the speaker stop jawing and think what to do. There were three men in the room!

“Never mind, Uncle.” That was Lawrence. “We can’t stay here. That’s clear enough. Someone’s likely to come looking for the boy. We’ll move along. Duff, mind that brat. Uncle Jig can let him go once we’ve got away.”

“’Ere now!” the elderly voice protested. “Ye can’t leave ’im ’ere! Ye’ll ’ave t’ busies all over me ken!”

“Put a sock in it, Uncle Jig. The boy will be my message bearer. Nobody will bother you. All he has to do is tell Dambroke Tiffany and I are married.” Catheryn gasped. “By the time the lad gets to the Park, we will be.” She relaxed again.

“I’ll never marry you!”

“Don’t be childish, Tiffany. You will.” His tone was lazy, even amused. “Hurry it up, Duff. We’ve got to move.”

Catheryn squared her shoulders and pushed the door wide, making as grand an entrance, she thought, as the duchess must have made at her ball. “Good evening, Mr. Lawrence,” she said calmly, silently congratulating herself on her poise. “Don’t you think this charade has gone far enough?”

“Good God! Miss Westering!”

“As you see, sir. Now be so kind as to release Lady Tiffany and the boy. You must see your plan has failed.”

“I’m damned if I will,” Lawrence retorted angrily.

Tiffany let out a squeal of surprise and Teddy laughed excitedly. “Good for you, Cathy! That’s one in the eye!”

Catheryn ignored them, keeping her steady gaze upon Lawrence. “I’m very much afraid you are damned if you don’t, sir,” she replied equably. “Dambroke will be here shortly, probably with a number of men. It will go ill with you if he finds his sister trussed up like a Christmas goose.” She glanced at Tiffany, who was wrapped in a dirty blanket.

Lawrence shrugged his shoulders angrily, defiantly. “Thank you for the warning,” he growled. “We’ll see he don’t find us here. You perhaps. The boy. But not us.”

“’Ere Jimmy!” The old man’s voice was shrill. “T’mort says a ruddy flash cove’s bearin’ down wi’ a ruddy posse, and ye say I’m t’ stay ’ere! Not ruddy likely!”

“As you wish, Uncle Jig. Leave the place for a few days. No one among your thieving customers will miss you.” Catheryn thought of the well-soaped hinges of the front door and wondered if Lawrence had not given an accurate description of the clientele. Since no one seemed disposed to release Tiffany, she moved to do so herself. But Lawrence’s tone changed sharply from derision to command when he noted her purpose. “Here you! Getaway from her!”

“Nonsense, Mr. Lawrence,” she said without turning. “You must see that you cannot succeed in this villainy.”

“It is not nonsense, Miss Westering,” he grated. Something in his tone or, perhaps, a look in Tiffany’s eyes caused Catheryn to glance back at him and then to go very still. Mr. Lawrence did have a pistol. It was firmly gripped in his right hand and leveled at a point somewhere between Miss Westering’s neck and her high waistline. She shivered. “Just so, my dear. I am held to be a better than average marksman, you know. Though no one,” he added unnecessarily, “could miss at this range. Tie her up, Duff.”

“Begging yer pardon, sir,” that rascal replied, “but we ain’t got no more rope. Used the last bit on the lad there.”

“Then get more, dolthead! We must get out of here!”

Uncle Jig diffidently suggested there might be a bit of string or the like in the kitchen. Duff dumped Teddy onto the settle beside Tiffany and went with the old man to look, while Lawrence kept the pistol steadily aimed at Catheryn.

“Don’t think for a moment that I should hesitate, Miss Westering,” he advised smoothly. “I shouldn’t have to kill you, you know. A simple wound would keep you out of my way and delay his lordship as well.”

“What on earth do you hope to accomplish, sir?”

“Wealth, my dear. You must know her ladyship’s quite an heiress. After I’ve compromised her reputation by that most effective of means, even Dambroke will insist upon our marriage.” Catheryn nodded. Certainly marriage would be the only acceptable course if Lawrence succeeded. However, she still had a card or two up her elegant sleeve, possibly even an ace. “Once she marries me—and you will marry me,” Lawrence went on in a grim aside to Tiffany, “all that lovely money….” He gestured expressively and sighed with complacency.

“… will still be controlled by Lord Dambroke,” Catheryn finished for him. “He does control her fortune, you know, sir.”

“Don’t take me for a fool, girl! His guardianship ends with her marriage. Anyone knows that! Once she marries me, I shall have complete control of her fortune.”

“It’s no use, Catheryn,” Tiffany interposed dismally. “I explained the situation to this idiotish man myself. He knows Richard must relinquish when I marry.”

“But you were wrong, Tiffany dear.” Catheryn kept her tone pacific, not knowing how the younger girl would react. “Dambroke told me himself. You accused him of something or other during one of your quarrels. I don’t remember the details of it, what he said they were anyway, but when you flung it in his teeth that you knew he would lose control when you marry, he left it at that. He does control though—I believe the expression is ‘at his discretion’—until you are twenty-five, whether you marry or not. So you see, sir….”

He did not see. He regarded her, in fact, with a good deal of suspicion and roared at his henchmen to get a move on with the damned rope. “It isn’t true,” he insisted. “You’re making that up, and even if you’re not, Dambroke will fork over the dibs. He won’t want his pampered little sister living in squalor for eight years. Or perhaps I ought to consider ransom as a better choice,” he added with a black scowl. “He’d pay handsomely, I daresay. Maybe more for the three of you.” Catheryn felt a chill and clenched her teeth. Surely he wouldn’t hold them all captive! He grinned suddenly. “That pierced your armor, didn’t it, Miss High-and-Mighty. It might be interesting to watch you squirm, but not interesting enough to give up the grand prize. I’m willing to wait.” Catheryn looked up sharply. “Ah, you get my meaning. Unless I marry her, you see, I have naught to look forward to but poverty. I’ve no wealthy relatives that matter. But when I marry Tiffany it will come—in the long run perhaps—but it will come. Oh, yes, ma’am, I can wait!”

Catheryn sighed. “I do not think you can know Lord Dambroke very well.” She grimaced as the man called Duff, coming unheralded from behind, yanked her arms together tightly behind her back. Evidently he had found a piece of rope. The old man seemed to have disappeared. Catheryn sighed elaborately and, with effort, kept her voice conversational. “You will, if you are silly enough to force the Lady Tiffany to marry you, only find that you have given Dambroke reason to make her an instant widow. And, likewise, I believe he would arrange for your disposal rather than part with a penny’s ransom, sir. He’s a bit of a pinch-purse, as I’m certain her ladyship must have mentioned once or twice.” Pausing, she noted with satisfaction that the shot had gone home. Tiffany had surely complained to him of Dambroke’s miserliness more than once.

“Your best recourse, Mr. Lawrence, would be to leave now without her. Dambroke may still want to kill you, of course.” She shook her head sadly at such waste. “But at least you would travel unencumbered and, therefore, have better odds of escaping him.” Lawrence’s face reddened, and he looked about to sputter again. Duff, on the other hand, having finished binding her wrists, had moved closer to his leader and seemed to be listening intently. Catheryn went on with a little smile, trying to keep her mind off the unwavering pistol in the meantime. “There is also, of course, Captain Varling. A gentleman,” she mused, “a very easygoing gentleman, for the most part. But I do think he will not take kindly to your designs upon the Lady Tiffany or her fortune. If I am not mistaken, he sets great store by her happiness and has designs of his own. Her fortune matches his, you see, so much better than it matches yours, Mr. Lawrence. You interfere, sir, and I’m afraid the captain will be displeased.”

Tiffany’s eyes were expressive and Catheryn, catching a glimpse of them, was relieved that her ladyship was sensible enough for once to keep still.

“I can take care of Varling!” Lawrence sputtered. “I can take care of his bloody lordship, too, girl! You think you are so clever! I know what you’re up to. Don’t think for a moment that I don’t! You’ll try whatever you can to convince me to hare off and leave the lot of you right here. Which makes me wonder very much about his bloody lordship. Now I come to think of it….” He paused, studying her bland countenance with deep mistrust. “Yes, sir, now I think of it, where is he? If he’s coming, which I doubt, what are you doing here, Miss Clever Westering? It’s all havey-cavey, if you ask me. Dambroke would never have allowed a female to follow us if he’d known about it. Even I know him well enough to know that much. You’ve been bluffing, Miss Clever Westering. Not even a very good bluff, either. I’ll wager Dambroke don’t know a damned thing about all this yet.”

“You lose, Lawrence.” The words, uttered softly but with an edge of steel, were followed immediately by the explosion of a pistol. Lawrence’s weapon spun away out of his hand and across the floor, coming to rest with a grating smack against the hearthstone. Lawrence grabbed his bleeding hand in an attempt to stanch both pain and flow, and turned furiously to face Lord Dambroke.

T
HE EARL STOOD IN
the doorway, legs spread, a smoking pistol already shifted to his left hand, its primed and cocked mate securely in his right. He looked, Catheryn thought, for all the world like an Elizabethan buccaneer must have looked; though Edmund Caston, appearing behind him, rather spoiled the effect with his air of solid, prosaic competence.

“I must say, my friend,” Dambroke went on in that same hard tone to Lawrence, “you do ask appropriate questions. I should like very much to hear the answers to several of them before we’re any of us much older.” He let his uncompromising gaze drift toward Catheryn.

“You come in good time, my lord,” she said, feeling somewhat like a character in a play—hopefully one by Shakespeare rather than Sheridan. One did hope for a shred of dignity. And why must her heart choose this of all times to thud against her ribs? She inhaled slowly, willing herself to be calm, telling herself that it was only a reaction to the dreadful experience she had just gone through and not to the fury in his lordship’s steely blue eyes.

Dambroke did not answer her but moved aside to allow Edmund, likewise and to Catheryn’s astonishment brandishing a pistol, to pass into the room. “Release them, Caston.” His voice was crisp as he gestured toward the captives. “You there!” he snapped at the coachman, once more hovering near Miss Westering. “Move away from her at once!” Cringing, the man did as he was told, and Catheryn soon felt Edmund’s strong fingers dealing with the knots. She watched Dambroke.

“Are you all right, Miss Westering?” he asked when she began to rub feeling back into her hands. His glance was brief, but his expression caused her to moisten her lips. She was saved the necessity of answering by the clatter of booted and spurred feet across the kitchen floor heralding the rather boisterous entrance of Captain Varling and Lord Thomas, dragging the hapless and vociferously reluctant Uncle Jig between them.

“Ho there, Dickon! What’s the ruckus?” Varling exclaimed after a swift visual search assured him of Lady Tiffany’s safety. “Look what we’ve got! Led us a chase through yon woods, but we brought him to earth all right and tight. What now?” He saw Caston about to release Tiffany and abruptly relinquished his hold on the old man. “Here, Caston! I’ll do that. Tend to the boy.” He knelt in front of Tiffany. “Are you all right, my lady?” Catheryn watched, thinking that, though his concern was much like Dambroke’s, his attitude was completely different, so gentle, so thoughtful. She looked again at the earl, mentally shaking her head at herself. Definitely getting in over your head, my girl, she mused contentedly.

With a gesture from Dambroke, Mr. Lawrence and Duff sat down on a bench under the window, and the earl lowered his pistols, at the same time ordering Lord Thomas to keep an eye on the scoundrels. Thomas gave the old man a push, and he joined the others. Neither Tiffany nor Teddy had made a sound except for a slight squeal from her ladyship when the pistol discharged. Both had simply stared wide-eyed at their brother. Now, as Varling freed her, Tiffany began to respond to his anxious questions in a low murmur.

“If that’s an explanation for this imbroglio, Tony, we’d all like to hear it, if you don’t mind,” Dambroke barked.

Varling, his expression sober now, got up from his half-kneeling position beside Tiffany and turned to face the earl. “It’s as we speculated back at the Park, my lord,” he said quietly but with an odd touch of formality and a withering glance of contempt at the three men on the bench. “She had a note and thought it from me—one of my stupid jests. Idiotic child.” He glanced at her fondly. Dambroke’s mouth began to develop recognizably mulish lines at the corners, but the captain persevered. “Her ladyship got out to the carriage and those two ruffians,” indicating Lawrence and Duff, “just bundled her in. Made a neat job of it, too, since they must have pulled it off under the very noses of Clairdon’s link boys.”