Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (15 page)

She hesitated in front of the mirror, searching her image for flaws, raking over each part of her spur-of-the-moment plan. Knowing that once she committed herself, and stepped through the doors of her father’s house, there would be no turning back.
 

No telling herself that it was all a lark or silly mistake.

 
It was not a mistake. It was the very rightest thing she could possibly do.
 

She looped the bright tartan sash of her father’s sword belt over her head and across her chest, and pulled on the leather gauntlets. And there in the mirror was a complete and perfect highwayman. Rakish, and daring. Ready to dare greatly. Ready come what may.

If only Strathcairn could see her now—what would he think? Would he still think she was magnificent? Or would her deception be abhorrent to him?

Most likely abhorrent.

But she wasn’t going to let Strathcairn’s inconvenient scruples stop her, because he need never know.
 

With one last tug on the broad brim of her hat, Quince finished her preparations—fetching a satchel in which to hide the mask and plume and sash once she was done.
 

With the house quiet of both family and servants, it was easy to sneak unseen across the meticulous garden into the silent stables. It was child’s play to tiptoe into the tack room to stealthily retrieve her father’s saddle and bridle, and the work of a moment to slip into her mare’s stall unobserved by the lone, dozing lad left to watch over the place while the coachman and grooms were still out, idling in the yard of the Queensbury mansion, waiting for Lord Winthrop and his family party.

All of her father’s horses were coal-dark Thoroughbred and Warmblood crosses, matched to draw the glossy black town carriage in style. And since her mare, Piper, was meant to be a spare should one of the four carriage horses come up lame, she, too, had almost no distinguishable markings beyond a dash of white at her rear fetlocks. And that Quince was able to quickly cover with a pinch of bootblack.

And then there was nothing left for her to do but walk the mare out into the close, cinch the saddle girth tight, and mount astride.

Quince swung herself up and into the saddle, and—

Oh, holy hoof claps. It had been a long time since Quince had ridden astride, and her mare wasn’t used to having a rider with legs on both sides of the saddle either—Piper jibed and shied to the left so strongly Quince feared she was going to come to muddy grief right there on the cobbled close before she ever had a chance to stand and deliver.

Quince took a firmer grasp of the rein despite her slick palms, and set the poor animal down the close at a smart trot, before their clattering antics on the cobbles could wake the stable lad. And if Piper were going to throw her off, best the mare do it now, when she wouldn’t have so far to walk home.

 
But she didn’t end up in the gutter—the two of them sorted themselves out soon enough, helped by the fact that Quince quickly adjusted the fall of the sword sheath so it didn’t ride against the mare’s flank. For her own part, Quince liked the feeling of surety and control of having two feet in the stirrups. Tonight of all nights, she was going to need all the extra control she could get.

The Digbys’s estate, Fairleith Manor, stood in wooded seclusion some five miles north of the city proper, off the shore road along the edge of the Firth of Forth. Which meant that Quince had to chance taking the more heavily used Leith Walk to head northeast before she could reach the more countrified lanes to skirt north around the edges of the town. Her plan, should she encounter anyone along the way who might inquire after the strange manner of her dress, was to say that she had been at a masquerade in the city. To pretend, in fact, that she was Strathcairn.

Since the idea for her larcenous masquerade came from him, it was only right that he be included.
 

But with or without Strathcairn, her bravado could not overcome her nervy uneasiness—the only time she met with a rider coming toward her from a distance, she hid herself behind a hedgerow, quickly dismounting and concealing herself in the warm shadow of the mare’s neck, until he had safely passed.

Even with such an interruption, it seemed no time at all before she reached the cool wood that hid Fairleith Manor from the coast road. The moon was still high in the night sky, warming the cool dark of the forest with a sheen of golden light. With luck, she would rob Sir Harry, have the mare back in her father’s stables, and herself safely back in bed within the hour, long before the revels of the masquerade had drawn to an end.

But first, she had to be successful. And to be successful, she had to think like a highwayman.
 

Accordingly, she chose a secluded spot at the bottom of a rise, where the rolling wood opened up just enough to let the moonlight illuminate the road, but where that road was also so narrow it would be impossible for the coach to turn or run. And she ensured it would be impossible by rooting about in the undergrowth for a few minutes until she found a suitable limb, downed in a recent storm, and dragged it out into the middle of the road at the far edge of the pool of moonlight, where it formed a natural barricade.
 

Everything was set so the carriage would stop.

All Quince had to do was sit tight and wait for it to arrive.

Only she couldn’t. It was impossible. She was far too nervy to sit, listening to the thumping of her heart in her ears, while her mare fell to dozing beneath her. So Quince practiced her ploy, urging her mare back and forth between the concealment of the trees and the open road three times, rehearsing the path she would take, counting the eight paces that would take her to the exact right spot at the exact right time to be seen and stop the coach.
 

And still the road remained empty.

Patience was a virtue she did not normally possess. She could not quiet her mind, or still her body, and her nerves communicated themselves to her mare—poor Piper shifted just as restlessly, her ears flicking backward and forward in alert annoyance.

“It will all be over soon,” Quince whispered. If everything went according to plan. If Sir Harry acted according to his custom, and left the revels earlier than most. If she had the nerve.

And then it was too late for second thoughts—the first faint jangling of harness, and the rhythmic clomp of hooves could be heard closing the distance, though it was suddenly hard to hear anything over the thunderous pounding of her own heart.

Quince had to adjust her reins through hands that had suddenly gone nerveless, slick and damp within the confines of the leather gloves, so she decided to loop the belt of the reins around under her right thigh so she could keep her hands free for the guns, and her mouth free to give orders.

The jangle of the harness grew louder and louder, until a pair of white horses seemed to evolve from the shadows into the moonlight, drawing an open landau with a single ancient coachman up front, and Lord and Lady Digby nodding with sleep at the back.
 

The horses knew their job better than the driver, and the whole of the equipage was rolling to a slow stop some thirty feet in front of the makeshift barricade before the old coachman seemed to realize something lay in his path.

And then he turned to find her eight paces away, just as she had rehearsed.

Without knowing exactly how she had gotten there, Quince set straight to the business, tossing back the domino’s cape, drawing the first pistol staunchly from her belt, and pointing it directly at the old coachman’s heart.

And nothing happened—the old man just sat there on the box, gaping at her.

As the strange moment extended itself, the weight of the gun made her arm wobble rather too much for the picture of a professional highwayman that Quince had intended to present. She had also intended to say something cool and clever, but her throat closed itself up tighter than a dowager’s purse.

Faced with the continued threat of her pistol, the coachman finally broke the silence. “Ain’t you supposed to say stand and deliver?”

“Don’t have to, do I?” She tried to push her voice low, but her mouth was so dry, and her voice strangled the words, and instead of sounding manly, which is what she had intended, she somehow sounded rather French.
 

Which was a monstrously good idea. “You understand me alreadee. Your choice,
cher Monsieur
—your monee, or your life.”

As the coachman probably had little money, he wisely chose his life, slowly pushing his hands into the air.

“I thank you,
Monsieur
. But you may drop the reins, first,
mon vieux
. Care-fully.” It was a safe enough command—both because her schoolroom French seemed to be rising to the occasion, and because there was nowhere for the horses to bolt with the branches across the road. “Keep your hands where I can see zem, eef you please.”

Sir Harry chose that moment to shake himself awake. “What goes here, Rackham? Why are we—” His voice gave out the moment he saw her.
 

Quince gave him what she hoped was a courteous, courtly nod of introduction. “As your good coachman Rackham tells mee,
Monsieur
, zee custom of your country is to ask you to stand and dee-liver. And so
mon vieux
milord, I ask you to do just zat. Stand down from your coach, keeping your hands all the times where I can see zem.”

Sir Harry seemed at first too stupid to accommodate her request—he gaped at her. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Zee meaning is zat you shall be robbed, good sir. Out of zee coach,” she repeated her command for good measure. “Eef you may be counted upon to keep your Engleesh manners, zen we will all get along swimmingly, and no one shall be hurt.”

“By God. I’m not English, I’m Scots. But if you—”

She drew her second pistol with a flourish, and aimed it squarely at his greying head. “I have no quarrel wiss your God, milord. Nor wiss you, eef you will be so good as to hand over your purse.”

Sir Harry clambered down from the coach with such ill grace that he woke his lady, who had the good sense, or good terror, to stay mute while her husband emptied his pockets of a few assorted coins, throwing them to the ground at the mare’s feet.

She marked the fall of the coins before she slid her glance back to Sir Harry. She hoped her smile looked as riled and rude as she felt. “Milord, I pray you would not insult me wiss your leettle copper pennies. I will take zem, you may be sure, but I also detect a purse, and a rahzer fat one at zat, disturbing zee cut of your plain, ill-fitted Engleesh coat. I will take it, eef you please. Eef only to ameliorate zee offense you make to fashion.”

“Damn your head.”
 

But the purse with his evening’s winnings chinked gratifyingly as he pulled it from his waistcoat pocket.

“Excellent. You may hold zat zere, for zee moment.” Quince kept her eyes constantly roving between the three of them—the coachman, Sir Harry, and his lady. “And now we arrive at your most compliant and silent ladee.”

“But I have no money,” Lady Digby dithered. “And… And I don’t think I could stand for the life of me.”

Quince nodded her head regally, letting the playacting go to her head, and throwing her well-planned caution to the night wind. “You may sit and deliver,
Madame
, eef it please you, so long as you deliver to me zose most ancient and becoming pearls.”

“My pearls!” The woman threw a hand across her bosom as if blocking Quince’s view of them might deter their loss.
 

It would not.
 

Quince decided it was an opportune moment to cock back the hammers of her guns—the menacing metallic click serving rather effectively as her answer. Though she also prayed that at such a distance, neither Sir Harry, nor his coachman, could tell that the guns were not actually loaded.
 

She added a soupçon of threat to her tone. “Your pearls,
Madame
.” In the past, Quince had always shied well away from taking items of jewelry. Trading in gems was too far out of her—and Jeannie and Charlie’s—experience and understanding. But she was playing a different game now, and in for a penny, in for a pearl. The luminous beads would be easy enough to unstring, and sell at some later date, when the furor had died down—when Strathcairn was gone away to Cairn.
 

Or better yet, months from now, in the autumn when he had safely taken his inconvenient scruples back to London. Aye. And then perhaps she would send the jewels to Amsterdam. There were plenty of merchant houses in Edinburgh who traded across the North Sea, and would take any sort of small cargo without asking too many questions. Her father often traded plants, bulbs and seeds with botanists all across the globe, with no one the wiser as to what was in his packages.

Aye. And while she was convincing herself that the pearls were safe enough to take, she took another look at the diamond and pearl ear bobs swinging from the lady’s thin lobes. And the emerald cravat pin adorning his lordship’s lacy jabot.
 

“And because you have discommoded me by making me wait, I will take all of zee jewels—earbobs, brooch, and pin of zee cravat.” She punctuated her words by pointing to each item in question with the barrel of her gun.