Pale Moon Rider (9 page)

Could a man who had outfoxed and outmaneuvered the king’s men for all these years manage to slip through the teeth of a trap one more time? She was certain Roth would plan for every possible contingency, but …

What if the legendary Captain Starlight could actually steal the gems? The suite was worth over fifty thousand pounds, and with that much money she and Finn could take Antoine far away from Roth and his false warrants.

They could go to
America
. To
New Orleans
. Her father had been there just after the American revolution and …

Her breath fogged the glass pane and she placed her fingertips over the dampness. She was not staring at the moon anymore. Her gaze had been drawn to the reflected glare of candlelight that originated inside the dressing room. She had deliberately left the door ajar to let some of the light spill into the darkened bedroom, but over the course of the past few moments, the gap had grown narrower and narrower, the movement gradual enough for her to have credited it to an errant draft pushing the door slowly closed. Now, however, with only inches of light to go, she knew the door was being pushed by something far more ominous than a ghostly current of air. Something … someone was standing beside the door deliberately cutting off the light and plunging the room into darkness again.

The skin across her breasts tightened and a fine spray of gooseflesh rippled up her arms. She turned and searched the shadows, but they were too dark and her eyes too disbelieving to discern more than a vague shape against the wall.

It was not possible. She had imagined him only a moment ago galloping free across the open fields, yet there was no mistaking the configuration of the tricorn and the multi-collared greatcoat. And no mistaking the silver scrollwork on the brace of snaphaunce pistols that were leveled at her chest.

CHAPTER FIVE

“
Y
ou!” she gasped.

“Don’t be frightened, mam’selle. I am not here to harm you.”

It was hardly a reassuring statement with the two pistols glinting in the moonlight. She needed a moment to catch hold of her wits. “Then … may I ask why you are here?”

“I wanted to know a little more about you. It isn’t every night I am stopped on the road and hired to commit a robbery.”

“But … h—how did you find me? And”—she glanced at the window and could not remember any vines or latticework attached to the outside walls—“and how did you get in here?”

“I followed the coach,” he said simply. “And there is a rather convenient drainpipe running down the wall beside your window. As to how I knew which room was yours, well … that was sheer guesswork on my part, but the sudden appearance of candlelight made for a good start.”

Renée felt a strange sensation flowing down her body, as if there were rivulets of water sliding over her skin, and she glanced down, startled into realizing the skimpy state of her dress. She had not retied the bows on her chemise and where it gaped open in front, the valley between her breasts was visible, laid bare almost to the waist. Where the linen had been splashed with water, it clung to her skin, clearly revealing the shape of everything not already glowing white in the moonlight. The lower edge of the hem barely reached the tops of her thighs to safeguard her modesty, and below that, her legs gleamed pale and translucent against the shadows. As casually as she could, she pulled the halves of her chemise together.

“I was not expecting guests. May I at least put on my robe?”

“I was actually enjoying the view. But if it would make you feel more comfortable, by all means do so.”

She had to pass through the shaft of moonlight to retrieve the garment, with every step under the vigilant eye of the highwayman, and to her credit, she was able to accomplish it without tripping over her feet. Roth had certainly not planned for this contingency. Who, indeed, would have expected such audacity?

When the robe was belted snugly about her waist, she turned and stared into the barrels of the guns again.

“Are they absolutely necessary, m’sieur? As you must have clearly seen, I have no weapons.”

There was another pause, followed by a soft, husky laugh as he tucked the snaphaunces beneath his coat. “I would not be too sure of that, mam’selle.”

His laughter caused another flush of warm sensations to ripple through her body, and she pointed at the night-stand. “May I light the candle again?”

“No. I like it fine the way it is.”

“That you should know me, but I not know you?”

“An unfortunate necessity in my profession.”

For the second time that night, she found herself asking, “You do not trust me?”

“No.” After a pause he added, “Is there any reason why I should?”

“I have hired you to commit a crime,” she said slowl
y. “Does that not make me
un complice
?”

“An accomplice? Only if you stand up in court and confess that you hired me. Otherwise it is your word against mine—if I am caught—and my word, I’m afraid, does not carry much weight with the local magistrates these days.”

The wash of warm prickles she experienced this time went all the way to her knees, leaving them perilously unsteady. “Do you have any objections if I sit down?”

“As it happens, I was going to invite you to do just that.”

The only available seat, aside from the bed, put her directly in the beam of moonlight and she recognized the disadvantage at once. If she thought about it, of course, there was not much about this unplanned meeting that was not appallingly to her disadvantage. She was alone in her bedroom, in her bedclothes, with an armed and dangerous man who thrived on flaunting convention. Rape, she imagined, would likely not strain the dictums of his conscience, nor would the use of violence to get what he wanted.

With the skirt of her wrapper belling softly behind her, she went back to the window and took a seat, noting that he moved as well, guarding against the possibility of any reflected light betraying his features.

“And so, m’sieur, have you thought about our arrangement and reconsidered?”

“Have you?”

“No,” she said calmly. “I have not changed my mind. If anything, I am even more determined to see this thing done and leave this
England
of yours far behind.”

“You dislike our country, mam’selle?”

“I have found nothing here to commend it, m’sieur. The weather is foul, the people stare and whisper and act as if I am here to steal the food off their plates.”

“You do not seem to be lacking too much in the way of creature comforts. Harwood House is not exactly a stew.”

“
Que signifie-t-il...
stew?” she asked with a frown.
"It is food, is it not?"

“A
lso another name for a
brothel. A place where strumpets sell their wares to the highest bidder.”

There was a serrated edge of sarcasm to his voice, and it sent yet another rush of nervous flutters through her body. That he knew the name of the manor came as no surprise; Roth had said the highwayman was familiar with the parish. It stood to reason, then, if he knew the name of the house, he most assuredly knew who owned it.

She ran the tip of her tongue across her lips to moisten them.

“Perhaps to you it looks respectable, but the rooms, the furniture, the bedding always smell of mould and mustiness. There are beetles in the kitchen and mice in the walls; the windows are cracked and the wind howls through at night bringing in the rain and dampness. My toes, my fingers have not been warm since leaving
Calais
.”

She realized too late it was a shockingly guileless invitation for him to inspect the slender and very bare feet that peeked out from beneath the hem of her wrapper. She held her breath a moment, wondering as she did, if Finn had returned from the stables yet and if so, would he hear the low murmur of their voices as he passed by her door? With her visitor’s next words, however, she forgot her feet, forgot Finn, forgot everything but the two cocked pistols that were no less a threat for not being visible.

“Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places for heat and succour. The Fox and Hound, for instance, is hardly where one might expect to find such creature comforts … unless of course, you stopped there seeking a more immediate form of heated gratification.”

Renée stared at the shadow within the shadow and felt the blood drain to her feet out of sheer foolishness this time. If he had followed her home, it was only logical to assume he had seen her stop at the inn. And if he was but a fraction as clever and resourceful a thief as he was reputed to be, he would undoubtedly have discovered why she had stopped and who she had met.

Though she willed herself not to react outwardly, inwardly she was one thudding heartbeat after another. She wanted desperately to bolt for the door, but she knew she would never make it. Similarly, she wanted to look anywhere but at the looming shadow in the corner, but she could not seem to tear her eyes away from him. She dared not. He was waiting for her response and if she gave him the wrong one she was quite certain his reaction would be swift and violent. The warning he had given her on the hillside came back to her in a rush, and she knew it to be true: He would not hesitate to wring her neck if he thought she was lying to him.

“You seem to have gone to a good deal of trouble, m’sieur, just to refuse me my request.”

“Only fair, since you seem to have gone through a good deal of trouble to make it. And like you, I prefer to communicate any information I have—good or bad—face to face.”

It was an odd time to do so, with her heart pounding and ice flowing through her veins, but she thought of the jungle cat again. Sleek, black, and deadly, it had prowled constantly from one end of his cage to the other just hoping for some sign of weakness in the bars, some flamboyant indiscretion on the part of the onlookers that would bring one within range of the razor sharp claws.

“You are referring, of course, to my meeting with Colonel Roth,” she said quietly. “No doubt you are curious to know what we discussed.”

The silence stretched past half a minute, then a minute. She was suffocatingly aware of his intense scrutiny, and somewhere in the pit of her stomach, butterflies were starting to beat their wings and fly in panicked circles.

“Do go on, mam’selle,” Tyrone invited quietly. “You have my full attention.”

She bit her lip nervously before she complied. “We discussed you, of course. He is quite obsessed with the idea of capturing you. In fact it—it was his idea that I meet with you tonight. Everything,” she admitted, “the robbery, everything was his idea in the beginning. He ordered me to ride out tonight, as he had on the three previous nights, with instructions for me to make contact, to appeal to your mercenary nature, or, if need be, your— your ’cavalier sense of self-indulgence’—those were his exact words—whichever I thought would be more likely to succeed in winning you over to my cause.”

Renée saw the seemingly casual movement as he folded his arms across his chest and propped a shoulder against the wall. “Dare I ask which one you felt was more
apropos?”

“To be perfectly honest, m’sieur: neither. Almost everything I told y
ou was the truth.”

“Almost?”

What she said next, the sound of the words themselves coming out of her mouth, was as strange and startling to her as if she were sitting at a distance, hearing someone else speak. The idea, the outrageous notion, had been there all along, lurking at the back of her mind, but to actually
say
the words, and to say them with such astonishing confidence …

“What I did not tell you, m’sieur, was that although the colonel may think he is being clever and cunning using me this way, it is I who hope to be able to turn this trap he wishes to set for
you
… against
him.”

Again he said nothing through a long, throbbing pause, and somewhere out in the darkness a dog began to bay at the moon. It was a hollow and mournful howl laden with scorn for all of man’s more foolish machinations, prime among them being the thought that Renée d’Anton could place her fate, and very likely her life, in the hands of a thief, a murderer, a phantom of the mist.

Tyrone Hart was not a man given to overt displays of emotion. He prided himself, for that matter, on his ability to show absolutely no reaction whatsoever, be it rage, contempt, hatred … or surprise. In this instance, however, he was grateful for the darkness, for he was certain his eyes had widened and his jaw had gone slack and his face had warmed a shade or two beyond ruddy.

He had come to confront her about her meeting with Roth at the inn, but he had not expected her to admit it so casually, nor to neatly turn the tables by suggesting it was her intention all along to double-cross the colonel.

If
Dudley
had been standing there to give him advice, Tyrone suspected it would be to climb out the window and ride away without looking back, and frankly, he could think of no logical reason not to do exactly that. It had not required a smack in the head with an iron pan to figure out the French minx had been part of some elaborate trap from the outset—for the two thousand pound reward if nothing else. Equally obvious to him was the likelihood that the jewels did not exist and that the coach she wanted him to stop would be carrying a swarm of eager Coventry Volunteers with their muskets primed and loaded.