Discreet Young Gentleman (11 page)

a certain amount of innocence since making your acquaintance."

"Well, if you ever want to lose a little more..."

"Shut up. What on earth do they do together?"

"Women with women?" Rob again tilted his head skyward, shading his eyes with one hand as he watched a falcon circle above the cathedral. "How would I know? I'm not all that clear on what they do with men."

"You've never been with a woman? Not even once?"

"No."

"Then how do you know you wouldn't like it?"

Rob sat up and looked at him, dark eyes sparkling. "Well, you've never been with a man. How do you know you wouldn't like that?"

Dean could feel his shoulders tighten, and a betraying heat spread up from his neck. "I'm not—it's not that I ever—but—" He broke off, wrapping his arms around his knees.

"Oho," Rob crowed. "That's a rather guilty expression, my Lord Carwick."

His face got even hotter. "There was this boy at school." "There frequently is, from what I've heard. Go on—how far did it go?"

"Well, not very! We didn't—I mean, we... Oh, hell." Dean laughed. It was a relief to tell someone. "Just touched each other some, with a bit of rubbing together. We didn't even like each other that much. He'd torment me mercilessly all day: calling me names, kicking me, stealing my sweets, stomping my books into the mud. That sort of thing. But almost every night, as soon as the lights were out, there he'd be, crawling under the covers again."

"So I'd have better luck with you if I kicked you more?" Rob leaned toward him, grinning.

Dean put up a hand, palm out. "I'm sure it's good for business to keep your flirting skills in practice," he said primly. "But I do wish you wouldn't waste them on me. I do have a fiancée, you know. Or I will as soon as we get to Bath and clear this whole mess up."

"Miss Lewis. Will you tell me about her? I like romantic stories." Rob sounded wistful, and Dean shifted uncomfortably.

"Maybe later. Come on, we should get back on the road. We've wasted enough time as it is."

Rob got to his feet with grace and extended a long-fingered hand to help Dean up.

His grasp was warm, and strong. "The weather's beautiful, and the days are still long.

We'll make it up."

Dean hesitated. "Then we have time for a quick bite to eat before we go. Climbing up here made me hungry, and we can hardly leave Gloucester without seeing the New Inn."

"A new inn? And I thought you were showing me all the historical sites."

Dean smiled. "Not that new. Lady Jane Grey was staying there when she was proclaimed queen. And...you'll never guess."

Rob grinned. "She haunts the place still?"

"Of course she does."

The New Inn was impressively old, built around a central medieval courtyard that had seen a century's use before Queen Jane began her nine-days reign there in 1553.

Located in Northgate Street, the establishment bustled with trade from the London-Gloucester coach route. Still, the landlady, Mrs. Austin, took the time to show them around the inn. A hearty older woman with carefully-arranged white curls, she must have told her stories a thousand times, but her voice was colored with the enjoyment of a good tale.

"This here is the Queen's Suite," she said, her voice low and thrilling, as she opened a door on one of the upstairs galleries surrounding the courtyard. "Many a guest has seen the young lass herself, passing through the bed chamber all in her robes and crown, her head bent with the weight of it."

The room's wooden panels were dark with age and had been snacked upon by worms in the not too recent past, but it was easy to imagine their former grandeur. "I wish we could stay," Dean said, looking up at the ceiling. Or maybe he didn't wish it.

The roof was low for modern tastes—Dean could have reached up and easily touched one of the heavy beams framing it—and it was all too easy to imagine Lady Jane's panic as her world closed in on her. He shifted his attention to a portrait of the young queen hanging on the wall, a poor reproduction of one he'd seen in London. "How old was she?"

Rob stretched out a finger, gently brushing the painted face. "Fifteen when she became queen, sixteen when they executed her."

"Good lord." Dean shivered. "Imagine your fate sealed at such a young age."

"Yes." The other man's voice sounded flat, and Dean remembered that Rob had been just fifteen when his uncle had caught him kissing another boy, and set his own future in motion.

"Rob..." But his companion was already deep in discussion with Mrs. Austin, her white curls bobbing as she threw herself into another tale.

They took a meal downstairs in the public room, part of a wing that had been added since the dawn of the current century. The larger scale of the room and profusion of windows were refreshing

after the medieval closeness of the Queen's Suite in the gallery upstairs, and the food well prepared. Dean nibbled on his second drumstick while the landlady, who had taken a shine to Rob, told him about other hauntings in the vicinity.

"Oh, and don't forget the Amberley Inn, down on Minchinhampton Common."

Mrs. Austin refilled their pewter mugs with a sound local ale. "They hanged young Tom Long there at the Cross, and his sweetheart waiting for him back at the inn all unknowing. On moonlit nights he comes back there to see her, the landlord's daughter."

"Hanged him?" No gentle nudge this time; Rob kicked Dean sharply under the table to forestall an incipient snicker. "And what did poor Tom do to deserve that?"

"A highwayman he was, but his Bess would have reformed him, if he'd lived long enough," the woman said comfortably.

"A highwayman," Dean muttered. "Hell and damnation, I suppose we'll have to.

Erich's been heading down the Bristol road, and was then going to cut back east for Bath, but if we head a bit southeast instead and go down through Tetbury and Chippenham it'll be about the same in the end. It's a shorter route but the roads aren't as good. Madam? Could we make Minchinhampton Common tonight?"

"Oh, aye. It's not more than ten—well, twelve, say—miles. Certainly no more than fifteen."

"Fifteen is pushing it," Rob said. "Never mind, we should just stick to the better roads anyway."

"Nay, twelve is more like it," Mrs. Austin said. "It's just a mile or two south of Stroud. Even if you walked you'd likely make that before full dark."

Rob didn't say anything, but his face radiated hope. It really wasn't such a hard decision to make.

"All right," Dean said. "We'll drop in on young Tom tonight, and stay over at the Amberley. But tomorrow, I swear—we'll be on the road at dawn and won't stop until the horses drop dead from exhaustion."

Chapter Ten

The ginger-hackled gent?" Frances, the serving girl at the Black Bear in Tewkesbury, widened her eyes at the proffered sovereign. "That's his lordship the Earl of Carwick, miss—ma'am." It was hard to tell the woman's age beneath her grey veil.

Odd, that. Not that it didn't make sense for a woman to go about veiled, especially if she were traveling alone, but this lady took her privacy especially seriously. Perhaps she was dreadfully scarred, or marked by the Devil with a harelip. She peered intently, but to her disappointment couldn't make out any noticeable deformity beneath the veil.

"What can you tell me about them?" Not many clues in her careful speech.

"Oh, a fine gentleman he is, and Mr. Black as well—not so high in the instep that they can't spare a kind word, either of them." She grinned. "Lookers, too, if you ask me."

The woman's stillness was uncanny. "I need to know where they're going. Can you help me?"

Frances wrinkled her brow. "Gloucester? Yes, they said they would stop in Gloucester for lunch, ma'am, so they must be going well beyond that. Or they'd wait, and eat when they got there, see?"

The grey lady nodded. "That makes sense."

"It's just a coach-and-pair they've got, though, so I wouldn't think they'd get beyond Cambridge or Dursley tonight. If they stick to the Bristol road, that is."

"Thank you." The woman in grey bowed, a loosening in her frame indicating relief.

"That's the first solid lead I've had all day." She rubbed discreetly at her back. "You're certain? The verger at the cathedral sent me on a wild goose chase to Bredon Hill."

Frances smiled in sympathy. "Aye, ma'am. I'm sure of it." But why was this woman looking for an earl? Her clothes didn't seem to place her in such high company, but a lady traveling alone might try to disguise her rank. Maybe it was that nice Mr. Black she was after—a face like that you'd follow to the ends of the earth. It was none of her business, but she had to ask. "Pardon me, ma'am, but why would you be interested in them?"

At first Frances thought the woman wasn't going to answer, but after a moment a sigh stirred the grey veil. "It's a family matter, and not one I care to share with strangers. But thank you for your help. I do appreciate it."

After the woman in grey had left the Black Bear, Frances turned the gold coin over and over in her palm, thoughtfully. Whose family, and what matter?

Chapter Eleven

Erich!" Dean started to lean out the coach window, pulling back abruptly to avoid banging his head on a branch. He

raised his voice instead. "Wo the hell sind wir?" "Fast da, fast da," the coachman yelled back. "He says we're almost there," Dean translated. Rob yawned. "Good."

Dean leaned cautiously out the window again. "Hell and damnation. These blasted country roads. You'd think we could see better with the full moon, but these lanes are so narrow and overgrown it's almost pitch—" The sentence ended in a cry as the carriage jolted heavily to the left with a sickening snap, almost overturning. Rob slid into him with bruising force, and it took a minute for them to untangle themselves and ascertain there was no serious injury before they could begin to see what had happened.

"Erich! Are you all—hell!—bist du—?" The uppermost door of the crazily-tilting coach opened, and a figure appeared in silhouette.

"Straßenräuber!" the coachman hissed.

"The highwayman?" Dean looked at Rob—what he could see of him, anyway. "Er ist gut, and so am I, but—" "Nein! Es sind zwei—"

"Oh, blast," Rob said, his voice unsteady. "My lord, I think we're being robbed."

"That's right, lads!" came a voice from behind Erich. "Out of the coach, now."

With Erich's help, they climbed from the disabled carriage, its rear axle snapped by the deep hole dug into the road at its darkest turn. The highwaymen—there were two of them—herded the other three men into the moonlight. They didn't look a thing like Rob's rather more romantic interpretation, being much dirtier and more disreputable in looks, with only ragged kerchiefs tied over the lower parts of their faces for disguise.

"All right, Coachie. You fetch the luggage from the coach. Anything funny and your passengers here get it."

Erich just stared, frozen, horrified gaze fastened on the highwayman's pistol.

"He doesn't speak English," Dean said quickly. "Let me tell him what you just said."

"Think I'm stupid? No secret messages, now." He turned to Erich. "You.. .fetch..

.luggage. Trunks? Bags?" The second man's gun was steady on them while the first pantomimed what he wanted. Erich, trembling hands raised, nodded comprehension.

The coachman's terror was the last straw. "This is not happening," Dean said under his breath. He assessed their relative position: the gunman was standing in front of the coach facing them, but keeping half his attention on his assistant, who was overseeing Erich's effort with the luggage. It was a fairly tight grouping, no more than eight feet separating any of them. A quick step, a flying tackle... "Rob," he whispered. "We can take them. I'll go for the one on the right, you get the other one. On the count of—"

"Are you mad?"

"We can do it," Dean insisted, keeping his tone low. "I overcame you, after all."

"Dean." Rob's voice sounded on the veriest edge of inappropriate laughter. "I think their guns are loaded."

"That's right." They had caught the attention of the taller of the two robbers, who now cocked his pistol for emphasis. He moved close enough to press the barrel to the center of Dean's chest. "Care to take your chances now?"

"Don't. Please." Rob said softly. "He won't try anything, I swear it."

Just beyond them, the second miscreant had retrieved their valises from the shaking coachman and was busy transferring the contents into his own saddle bags.

They took everything, except for the Quarterly and the small English/German dictionary Dean used for communicating with Erich. "Books?" one of the highwaymen snorted, flinging them aside. "What's the use of those?"

Among the items of clothing the robbers were stuffing, willy-nilly, into their bags, a length of ribbon shone pale in the moonlight. Dean stiffened, paralyzed with misery.

Rob followed his glance and was quick to step forward.

"That piece of ribbon—it's no good to you. Please?"

The highwayman scowled. "We're taking the lot, and you just shut up about it."

"Please," Rob said again. "It's a token. Haven't you ever had a sweetheart?"

"She'll give you another. Now, let's have the watch and ring, Romeo."

Rob stood his ground. "Her father changed his mind—there's to be no wedding now. That ribbon is all that's left."

"Oh for Christ's sake—take the fucking ribbon." The highwayman shook it free of the shirt it was tangled in, and dropped it. "Now Ginger, I'll have your watch, too."

While Dean handed over his valuables, Rob scooped up the faded blue ribbon from the road and tucked it into his sleeve.

The robbers finished with their luggage, then looked around, apparently searching for something else to take. "Nice satin," the heavyset man said, fingering the fabric of Dean's waistcoat and shooting a glance at Rob's. "Take 'em off, gents."

Funny, but getting undressed at gunpoint was much different in reality than in one's dreams. Dean's hands shook as he unbuttoned the desired garment and handed it over. He held his breath, but the miscreants were uninterested in the rest of their clothes.