The Confessions of a Duchess (38 page)

“My own sister!” Sir Montague mourned. “What did I do to deserve such thankless siblings? And Miss Lister, a viper in women’s clothing!” His expression dissolved into malevolence. “And
your
wife, Dexter! Your
cousin,
Miles! She escapes the tax through marriage and then she has the downright audacity to lead those women in their worst outrage yet!” He mopped his brow on his sleeve.

Dexter’s lips twitched. “Upon my word, you are beset, Monty. What have my wife, Miss Lister and your own sister done now?”

“My wine cellar!” Sir Montague wailed. “They called it vineage and claimed there is an ancient tax that obliges me to share a quarter of my wine with the villagers in honor of Saint Anand, the patron saint of wine merchants. As though those peasants could begin to appreciate my cellar. The waste of it! They took my claret! They took my champagne!

Elizabeth showed them where to find it, Miss Lister helped to carry it out to the carriage and Mrs. Anstruther drove off with it not ten minutes back!”

“Good lord,” Miles said, aghast. “But your cellar was the only reason I dined here, Monty!”

“I fear the ladies of Fortune’s Folly have gone too far this time,” Dexter said.

“Quite right, Dexter,” Sir Montague said, nodding virtuously. He suddenly seemed a great deal more animated. “If I don’t get my wine back I shall call the constable.”

“There’s nothing for it, then,” Dexter said. “I will have to deal with Laura myself.

Leave it to me, Monty.” He grabbed Miles’s arm and hustled him out of the room. “There’s only one way to do this,” he said, pausing in the doorway to the stables. “May I take your horse, Miles? Mine’s tired and not up to the task in hand.” Miles raised his brows. “With pleasure, old chap, but what are you—”

“And your pistol,” Dexter said.

“A pistol,” Miles repeated. He looked at Dexter, who looked back at him completely blankly. A smile started in Miles’s eyes. “Ah…You do know that highway robbery and abduction are capital crimes, Dexter?” he said.

“I do know,” Dexter said. He grinned suddenly. “Just give me the damned pistol, Miles, and I will be on my way. And should anyone ask you, you know nothing of any matter of highway robbery.”

“My memory becomes ever more faulty by the day,” Miles said ruefully. He slapped Dexter on the shoulder. “Good luck, old fellow. I’ll go and administer some port to Monty—assuming he has any left!”

THE CARRIAGE THAT Laura had hired from the Morris Clown Inn ground slowly along the twisty Yorkshire road and she sat back against the seat to the accompanying chink of Sir Montague Fortune’s wine bottles. The incursion into Sir Monty’s wine cellar had gone rather well, she thought, and she had been scrupulous to take only a quarter of his stocks though she rather suspected from his reaction that she had taken the best quarter. Certainly Sir Monty had been beside himself, wailing and wringing his hands and demanding that his servants stop them—at which point Lady Elizabeth had countermanded his orders and the poor servants had not known what to do.

Laura smiled. She rather thought that the villagers of Fortune’s Folly would enjoy Sir Montague’s fine wines. And they had been within their rights to take it. Well, they had been almost within their rights. Sir Montague was meant to
give
the wine to the village under the ancient laws, so technically she had robbed him of it since he had not offered it freely…. Laura shifted a little uncomfortably. She had promised Dexter that her days of righting the injustices of the rich against the poor were over but this was straying perilously close to the line. Dexter would hardly approve. Technically she had committed a crime. It was the reason that she had sent Alice and Elizabeth on ahead to tell the villagers the wine was coming. She did not want them to be accused of the robbery itself and suffer any penalties under the law. That would be her responsibility alone.

She sighed. No indeed, Dexter would not approve. Her behavior scarcely fitted his idea of conduct becoming to a sensible wife. It was fortunate he did not know what she had done or their fledgling reconciliation would be in big trouble. If he came back and found that the constable had her under arrest in Skipton Jail for theft he would very likely hang her himself. Laura shivered and looked out the window to distract herself. She might jest about it, in her own mind as much as she had to the other ladies, but she did not think she could bear to lose Dexter again.

The road straightened out and the carriage picked up speed, rattling toward the village. The turnpike road took a much longer route than the path along the river, but it was the only way that Laura had thought she could transport the wine into Fortune’s Folly.

They were cutting through a narrow gorge where the fells pressed close on either side. The sun had long since dipped behind the hills and the air was cold and a winter blue, full of shadows.

“Stand!”

Laura jumped violently at the shouted command. She could barely believe it. The Dales had been largely free of highway robbery in the last few years and to stage a holdup so close to the village was absolute madness. The hired carriage slewed across the road and the horses plunged in the shafts. The wine bottles clanked together in their crates and for a moment Laura was afraid they would break. She soon realized that the coachman and groom from the Morris Clown Inn were no heroes. They had not been paid well enough even to think of resistance. The coachman slowed the horses to a standstill and the groom kept prudently quiet.

Someone wrenched open the door of the coach. The cold evening air poured in, making Laura shiver. She realized that she had never been held up on the road before. At any other time the thought might have made her laugh to think that she, the infamous Glory, was the victim of highway robbery. Now she shuddered. It was frightening. She fumbled in her reticule for the tiny pearl-handled pistol she always carried.

“I’ve got a pistol,” she began, “and I know how to use it.” There was a man in the doorway, mounted on a black horse, cloaked in black, too, a pistol considerably larger than hers in his hand. His shadow looked huge and threatening against the darkening sky. She looked up at his face and her head spun.

It was Dexter.

Her heart started to beat in long, hard strokes. Her mind refused to accept the evidence of her eyes. Dexter would
never, ever
hold up a coach. Dexter would not dream of breaking the law. Dexter would not—

She saw him smile though his eyes were cold. The gun in his hand moved slightly. “I suggest you put that toy of yours down unless you want it shot from your hand,” he said.

Looking into his eyes and seeing the unyielding purpose there, Laura actually started to believe him. She wondered wildly if the discovery of her latest outrage had turned his mind.

“What are you
doing
—” she started to say, but Dexter grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the carriage without another word. One of his arms was brutally hard about her waist as he lifted her up into the saddle in front of him. He gestured with the pistol toward the coachman.

“Drive on to the village. They will be expecting you.” He reached in and grabbed half a dozen bottles of champagne out of the coach, stowing them deftly in the saddlebags.

“I’ll take these and I’ll take the lady, too. Get going.” The coachman met Laura’s eyes for a second, his expression furtive and guilty before it slid away. He picked up the reins and the carriage started to move. Dexter dug his heels into the horse’s side and they turned away, up a track that led out onto the fells. The sky had clouded over and the first few flakes of snow were starting to drift down. Dexter did not speak. Laura tried to turn around to look up into his face but his arms tightened about her, pulling her back against the hardness of his chest.

“Dexter, what are you doing?” Laura asked breathlessly. “This is abduction and highway robbery. When they get back they will call out the constable.”

“Sir Montague will have done that already,” Dexter said, his voice hard. “He wants his wine back.”

Laura caught her breath. So that was why he was angry. She had been right. He had been to Fortune Hall and he knew the whole story of what she had done. He was appalled that she had gone back to what he saw as her old ways. He would think she had betrayed his trust yet again. With her disregard for convention and her insistence on doing what she thought was right, she was the very opposite of everything he had always wanted in a wife.

Yet that did not quite explain what he was doing abducting her from a carriage and stealing Sir Montague’s champagne into the bargain.

“Dexter,” she said, thoroughly confused now, “I don’t understand. You are too rational to do this. It’s madness! And it’s dangerous. Even if it is not illegal for a man to abduct his own wife—and if I had my way it
would
be—you threatened those men at gunpoint. You stole Sir Monty’s champagne! You could be arrested and your career will be in shreds. Let us go home and talk about this sensibly.”

“Save your breath, Laura,” Dexter said. “I have realized at long last that the very last thing I need is to be
sensible
.” He said the word through his teeth. “And if you object to being abducted by your husband then you should have thought of that before you decided to break the law!”

Laura fell quiet. She could not quite believe what was happening, but her spirits had begun to revive despite the extraordinary nature of the situation. Dexter held her tightly and she could sense the tension still in him, but there was something else there, too; something of promise and even love, and at one point he turned his head slightly and his lips brushed her hair in a caress.

Neither of them spoke further as the horse picked its way along the track and began to descend toward the pinpricks of light in the village below. As they came into the yard of the Half Moon Inn, Dexter dismounted and lifted Laura down from the saddle, swinging her up into his arms rather than setting her on her feet. Laura was taken by surprise and wriggled like mad as he carried her over the threshold into the taproom beyond, which was packed to the rafters. There was absolute silence as they walked in. Laura was mortified.

“Put me down!” she huffed. “Everyone is looking!” She turned her burning face into his shoulder. “Dexter, put me down! You have punished me quite enough. Oh! My cousin Hester used to come here to pick men up. Everyone will think that I am the same!”

“Then they will be accustomed to this sort of thing,” Dexter said, holding her all the more tightly, “and since they are well acquainted with your antics as Glory, they will not be shocked, either.” He looked across at Josie Simmons, who was standing hands on hips, watching them.

“There’s a room free,” she said, jerking her head toward the stairs.

“Josie!” Laura almost shrieked. She caught sight of a thin man lurking behind Josie’s massive bulk. “Lenny! Are neither of you going to help?”

“Reckon he doesn’t need any help,” Josie said admiringly. “Good for you, Mr.

Anstruther. Never thought you had it in you. Thought you were too much of a stuffed shirt for this sort of business. Just goes to show.”

Dexter tossed Lenny a bottle of champagne. “Sir Montague’s finest,” he said.

“There’s more in the saddlebags.” He looked round the crowded taproom. “Enjoy it.”

“Dexter!” Laura protested.

Dexter grinned. “We don’t need it, sweetheart,” he said, heading for the stair.

Someone cheered.

Laura was even more infuriated to note that Dexter did not appear remotely out of breath as he carried her into the chamber above stairs, kicked the door shut and tossed her down into the middle of the big bed.

“Now,” he said, “at last we talk.”

“Are you angry with me?” Laura said. “I understand that you must disapprove about my reallocation of Sir Monty’s wine—”

“I don’t give a damn about Sir Monty’s wine,” Dexter said, interrupting her brutally,

“nor do I care about the Dames’ Tax, nor even my imminent arrest for highway robbery. At the moment all I care about is you, Laura.” He cast aside the black cloak and sat down beside her on the bed. He took her hands in his. She could feel the tension in him knotted so tight it felt almost unbearable. There was a pulse pounding in his jaw.

“I love you,” Dexter said. His expression eased as though he had let go of an intolerable burden. “There. At last I have said it. At last I have had the courage to admit it openly to you. I love you so much, Laura, I find there is not a single rational thought left in my head and for once I do not want there to be.”

“Love?” Laura whispered. Her mind was whirling, unable to accept what she was hearing. She tightened her grip on his hands, not quite believing, not wanting ever to let him go.

“It was wrong of me to force you into marriage in the first place,” Dexter said roughly. “I am sorry. I was hurt and angry that you had concealed the truth from me, and I wanted you—and Hattie—with me, but I went about it all the wrong way. I wanted to ensure that Hattie never had to endure the slights and the whispers that have haunted my family for years and that she grew up knowing who her father was. I could not
bear
for her to experience what I had endured, or that I should behave as irresponsibly as my father had behaved.”

Laura closed her eyes for a second. “I knew it was dreadfully painful for you,” she whispered, “and I would never have denied you the truth if I had not thought I was doing what was right for Hattie. I am so sorry, Dexter.”

Dexter shifted, drawing her a little closer. “I was always terrified of making the same mistakes my parents did,” he said. “They were forever swearing they were in love and behaving with such profligacy. They would come together and pledge undying devotion to one another and then they would quarrel and run off and find another lover and have a tempestuous affair.” He bowed his head. “I clung to order and logic because it was the only thing that seemed safe to me. And the only time I let go of it and indulged in the type of stormy love affair my parents had had, my world ended in chaos.”

“The time that I seduced you,” Laura said, “and then sent you away. My love, I am so very sorry.”