Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (14 page)

It was fate. Fate that had put such an outrageous idea into her head. Fate that put Strathcairn’s guns in her hands. Fate that sent Plum busybodying her way into the garden to break them apart.
 

And Quince decided she was too smart to ignore fate.
 

Or too stupid.

Because it was an entirely irrational idea. A daft, dangerous idea. But an outrageous, audacious idea that set off a thrill of excitement so strong, her breath felt tight with unholy, addictive anticipation.
 

And she knew that once the idea had taken up lodging in her head, she would not be able to resist the temptation.

She could not resist hefting the absolutely cracking pair of matched Manton patent dueling pistols in her hands—trying them out for size. They were heavy but beautifully balanced, with long octagonal barrels set in polished and checkered walnut. The perfect weapons for holding up a coach.

But whose coach?

The name came to her in an instant—Sir Harry Digby, a man whose name and reputation were well-known to her, but whom she had never met.

Aye. She would learn from her mistakes, and take great care not to repeat them—she would choose
from whom
she stole with the utmost care.
 

Sir Harry and Lady Digby were an older, steady couple, not given to fits of drama. Nor were they connected to the government or judiciary in any way—all it would take was for her to rob some judge or former magistrate, and the full crushing weight of the law would come down upon her head. And around her neck.

Nay. Sir Harry and his lady wife were known for their genial temperaments, their success in prize monies won running their horses on the sands at Leith, and Lady Digby’s superb collection of family pearls. But most importantly, Sir Harry was known as an inveterate, habitual gambler, who most often won—very often from her own father. According to Papa, Sir Harry liked to start early and take the first few pots, and so could be relied upon to be one of the first to leave the masquerade. He liked to head for his estate several miles out of the town as soon as he had won a hand or three, and had a purse full of coin.

A purse full enough to feed a family of five for far longer than a fortnight.

Aye. Sir Harry was perfect.
 

And so would she be. She would take only the purse—not the pearls, which would have to be fenced—this very night, when the moon was full, the weather was balmy, and the full heat of the idea was still burning like a beacon in her brain.

She would give herself no time to think, to turn prudent and turn back.

She, wee Quince Winthrop, Edinburgh’s most thoughtless flibbertigibbet, would rob the lucky man blind.
 

And she needed to begin immediately. There was no time like the present—the full moon was already rising in the cloudless sky to the east of the city, providing the perfect light to be riding the roads. She needed to prepare—horse, route, costume, guns. Immediately.

First, the guns. She could not hope to conceal them on her body in her present costume, so she stashed them carefully in the hedge before she pushed her way through the shrubbery. “Plum?” Quince ran to catch up with her sister, who had already given up, and started to return up the lawn.

Her sister whirled around, shepherdess’s crook and all. “Quince! I knew you were out here. What were you doing?”

The best defense was always an offense. “I might ask the same question of you.”

“I came looking for you.” Plum peered toward the shrubbery from whence Quince had come. “Are you alone?”

“Not anymore.” Quince linked her elbow with her sister’s. “I’m with you.”

Plum wasn’t so easily turned from her point. “What were you doing out here alone?”

“I came out to get some fresh air, but despite that, I’ve developed the most intolerable megrim.” She stopped Plum at the edge of the torch-lit terrace. “I think I had best go home.”

“Are you sure?” While not exactly convinced, Plum was at least concerned. “Do you want me to get Mama for you?”

“Nay.” The last thing she wanted was for her sharp-eyed Mama to get a good look at her no-doubt flushed cheeks. Or worse, to send anyone home with her. “Just tell her I’ve gone home.”

“What about the marquess?”

Quince tried to play her metaphorical cards close to her chest. “What about him?”

“Quince, really.” Plum all but stamped her shepherdess’s crook on the ground in frustration. “It’s obvious you’re mad about him. Just as he is for you.” Plum glanced briefly around the terrace, and lowered her voice. “I saw him in the ballroom, looking for you. And I saw you come out here with him.”

“So you followed.” Her sister was worse than a shepherdess—she was more of a sheepdog in the manger.

“Only after you’d been out here too long. Mama had begun to look around.” Her sister let out an exasperated sigh. “Honestly, Quince. Disappearing into dark gardens? I don’t want to interfere, but you’re out of your depth with the marquess.”

Plum wasn’t the only one exasperated. Quince was more than a little tired of Plum’s constant jealousy. “And you wouldn’t be?”

“Quince.” Plum turned her name into a scold. “Don’t be daft. No matter what you think, I’m not jealous. I’ve purposefully tried to throw you two together—maneuvering him to escort you the other day. I know you like nothing more than a challenge, but I’m beginning to fear that the Marquess of Cairn is too much of a challenge—too polished, too much of a politician. He’d make anyone, including me, but most especially
you
, a dreadful husband. And you’d make him a dreadful wife.”

“I’d make anyone a dreadful wife.” It was the bare truth, though it was painful to admit it, both to herself, and especially to Plum. But though Quince had often enough lied to others, she had never lied to herself. She had made herself un-marriageable with her flippant tongue, her passionate contempt, and her compulsive stealing.
 

It all came back to the stealing.
 

So why not go all the way? Why not make it entirely worthwhile? Why not dare greatly?

But Plum surprised her by not agreeing—at least not entirely. “That’s not true. Or at least only partially true, and only because you never think about what you’re doing. You never have. You always rode too fast, and played too hard, and climbed too high, and you still do. You dash in headlong, never thinking about tomorrow, or what people will think.”

Another bare truth. Mostly. She didn’t care what people thought of her, but she did think about what she was doing. All the time. She was always planning, and thinking about tomorrow. Except at that very moment, when she was thinking, and planning, about tonight. “If Strathcairn asks after me—and I doubt he will.” He was too clever for anything so obvious. “Tell him the truth—that I’ve gone home.”
 

“But you can’t go alone. It’s not safe.”

“Of course I can.” Quince had never subscribed to the strictures that ladies ought never to venture out alone, and never walk anywhere they could be carried. “It’s only a few furlongs.”

“Quince.” Her sister laid a protective hand to her arm. “It’s nearly two miles.”

“And most of that is straight up Canongate. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll take a chair.” There were bound to be a raft of sedan chairs and their porters waiting along the street in front of the Queensbury mansion.

“It would. And get a link boy to light the way.” Plum produced a few coins from her purse. “The last thing Mama needs to worry about is you being held up by footpads.”

“Plum, the last thing that’s going to happen tonight is me getting held up by footpads. I can guarantee it.”

Chapter Eight
 

No one accosted her. No one paid her the least bit of attention. She walked home along the familiar streets with only Strathcairn’s heavy patent pistols for company, slapping against her thighs from deep inside the pockets of her evening cloak. Keeping time with her footfalls. Pressing their steel-barreled urgency upon her.
 

Adding weight to the arguments in her head.

She could do it. If only she dared. And dared greatly.

Robbing a coach wasn’t really that much different than the opportunistic pilfering of bits and bobs from a ballroom, was it? She had already made the moral compromise to take what wasn’t rightfully hers—why not make it a much more profitable compromise? She had tried to do good by stealth—now was as good a time as any for a more direct approach.

But did she really dare? Robbing a coach was a hanging offense. And even though there had not been a case against a highwayman in decades, Quince doubted the law had become any more lenient. If anything, the current attitudes were becoming more draconian, not less—Strathcairn’s presence in response to petty thievery was proof enough of the enduring rock-like immutability of the law.

But Strathcairn was safely masquerading the night away, and there were no troops of horse patrolling the roads. She would take great care, just as she always had, not to get caught. She would very careful, and would plan with both flexibility and precision. She would not give in to her fears, nor let them overwhelm her and make her stupid.

She could not afford to be stupid. The poor of the West Kirk Workhouse were counting upon her—people who had nothing, through no fault of their own. She would not let them down.

Quince stopped for a moment, closed her eyes, and pictured him—the scaffy lad in the street all those years ago—the raggedy child, the beggar boy who had started her off down the road of righteousness, and who had turned her itchy compulsion toward theft into a crusade.
 

She made herself remember his thin hands, and the over-wide look of his hopeful, ill-nourished eyes. Made herself remember what he had looked like, curled up on the cold pavement like an abandoned kitten, dead on the corner across from her father’s house in the gray morning light. Dead because they, who had the power to help him, had not. Dead because she, who had tried to help him, could not.
 

She had not tried hard enough.

But she was not an inexperienced sixteen-year-old now—she had backbone to spare.

Once Quince made up her mind, she did not pause, nor give herself even a moment to think on the enormity of what she was about to do. She ignored the cold shiver of warning chilling her skin, and set straight to it. Up into the attic trunks to dig out one of her father’s old, voluminous, black dominos, and an out-moded court suit of midnight velvet, with a matching, broad-brimmed beaver hat decorated with a wilted white plume. A dash down to the bottom of the dusty cabinet in his book room to retrieve his ceremonial court sword. And finally, a stop in her own room to don her rakish costume, and dust her face and hair ghostly white with rice powder.
 

The black suit and breeches made her feel strange and new and strong. Strange, because it was bizarre to see her legs walking beneath her. New, because the white mask and powdered hair pulled out in old-fashioned full curls flattened and hid her features so no one should be able to tell it was she. Strong, because with her height, and on horseback, no one should even be able to tell she wasn’t a man.

But she was still herself who had never done anything so bold or daring before, and her hands shook, spilling powder across her sleeve. It was one thing to plot highway robbery in theory, and another thing entirely to actually take to the roads—to take that first step out the door and into the night.