The Duke's Messenger (20 page)

She felt a pang of regret that she was not holding his head. Dropping it would not have been a salutary experience for him, but it would certainly have relieved her own feelings.

She stood up and glared down at him. “Stupid? I am not quite so stupid that I did not manage to rout your attackers. I wish you will not regret your words, but I sadly fear you will.”

Her retort fell on unconscious ears.

She hurried to her aunt. “We’ve been ordered to go to safety in the next town,” she said briskly. “I think we must hurry. Already I see that the brutes are hovering — just out of pistol range.”

“How shall we accomplish this flight?” said her aunt drily. “Walk? In these boots? It may have escaped your notice that our coachman is unable to drive.”

“Serves him right,” said Nell with spirit. “I shall drive. I’ve driven a team many times.”

“I devoutly hope,” said Phrynie piously, “that you drive better than your father.”

With a wisp of humor, Nell assured her, “Oh, yes, I do. Our old coachman taught me.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Hurry, Aunt. We’ve got to get that — that
thing
—
to
a safe place. They won’t hurt Reeves anymore, I think, as long as he doesh’t have the parcel.”

She would have left Potter to stay with the supine victim, but she could not order him to risk his life. She gathered up the reins, saw that Phrynie had bundled Mullins and herself with scant ceremony into the coach, and — trying to remember all that old Haines, the Aspinall coachman, had taught her — whipped up the team.

The chariot, containing the parcel and leaving the man behind, moved swiftly down the road.

Chapter Nineteen

The next town was only a short distance down the track. The inn appeared, Phrynie was relieved to note, to be better than average. Nell drove the coach through the gates into the cobbled yard, to the amazement of the two ostlers who came running from the stables.

Nell’s German was rudimentary, but she was able to understand the constant repetition of
Fraulein
and
Pferd
, and knew that her arrival on the box of an English traveling chariot would be an event soon entering legend.

Phrynie emerged from the interior of the coach. “Nell, a superb job. Now perhaps you will explain to me how it came about that we left my servant lying badly injured on the road while we ourselves fled to safety?”

“Aunt, I must go back. They may have killed him.”

“Don’t fly up into the boughs, Nell. Of course you must return to rescue him. Why we did not see to that small task while we were on the spot eludes my understanding. But of course I am sure you will make all clear. After we eat.”

“Aunt, I cannot take time to eat. I couldn’t swallow a morsel.”

Phrynie turned to the landlord, suddenly standing at her elbow. “You understand English? Good. I shall require two of your best bedrooms, a private sitting room, and a hot nuncheon served at once.”

“
Verstandlich
,
gnadige
fräu
.”

“And brandy, at once.”

“Aunt — I wish a cart, and horses. I must go back without a moment’s delay.”

“First the brandy,” Phrynie ordered, “and then the cart.”

Phrynie was quite properly anxious that Nell be restored in spirit before setting out to rescue the coachman. However, she realized, after Nell had unthinkingly gulped down the fiery liquor, that a restoration in spirit was not necessarily identical with the imbibing of
spirits
.

Nell drank the small glass of
Branntwein
in
two swallows and said, with a suddenly expansive wave of the hand, “Now the cart. And horses, of course, and where is Potter?”

“Nell, do you think…?” ventured Phrynie.

“Of course, I do. Nearly every day. And now I think I must go get Reeves. Dear Reeves.”

“Good God, child, you’re drunk!”

“Don’t believe it for a minute. I feel just fine. I want my cart, that is all. Pray, Aunt, do you obtain my cart for me. I shall need straw in it, for dear Reeves may be badly injured.”

Or dead, more likely, thought Phrynie, guilt like a pall weighing her down. “I shall get Potter.”

Nell had lost her sense of time. Indeed, she was almost euphoric as reality tilted and slid away from her. Phrynie was in two minds. Reeves must be rescued, there was no question about that. And since, as they had left the scene in what was no less than a mad rout, Nell had mentioned the urgent need to safeguard the parcel, someone must stay here in the inn for the same purpose.

And Nell, in her present condition, might easily give away diamonds, sapphires, and the future well-being of the British government.

Mullins, of course, was worse than useless.

“Out of doors with you, Nell. I can’t think why I was such a fool to give you brandy.”

The fresh air did wonders for Nell. There was a nasty moment when the world danced dizzily around her and her stomach suffered a mighty quake, but she weathered the crisis. She turned, somewhat chastened, to her aunt and said, “I really must go back.”

Phrynie agreed. “But Potter will go with you. And an ostler from the inn also, for if you — have to lift —” She almost had said
dead
body
but altered her words. “Lift dead weight, you will need two men.”

Nell, after what seemed an eternity, whipped up the cart horses and maneuvered the vehicle out of the gates and turned it in the direction from which they had arrived. The cart was small, but the straw that bottomed it was fresh. The landlord had offered the loan of two blankets and the ostler, Hans. Potter, torn between the shame of his cowardice and his wish to render Miss Nell whatever service she needed, slumped beside her on the hard wooden seat.

The brandy had, in the way of strong spirits, lifted her for the moment and then fled, leaving her in a condition lower than even that moment when she saw Reeves slump to his knees, held up by two of the band that had ambushed them.

The horses she drove now were the sorriest nags she had seen. Even the Aspinall farm animals were of better quality. She plied the whip she had borrowed from the Sanford chariot but to no avail. She must simply hold her impatience in check, for the horses could not even break into a trot. She dared not think of what they would find ahead of them. Reeves dead, Reeves dragged away and thrown into the ditch, Reeves carried off never to be seen again…

This line of speculation she could not abide. Instead, she turned her thoughts to the half hour just past. She had left Reeves as angry as she had been since Tom locked her in her room so she would not follow him to an exhibition of fisticuffs at Halstead. She had at that time an intense longing to see a pair called Gully and the Chicken, expecting to see a monstrous example of poultry.

Reeves had called her stupid. All women are stupid; there was no mistaking the burden of that explosive cry. She did not believe his harsh words were the product of pain and injury. After all, he had kept his head enough to order the parcel to safety.

Stupid, was she? Not quite too hen-witted to manage the four restless horses and drive the chariot to the nearest town! Not so unintelligent that she could not mount this rescue operation! She meditated for a few pleasurable moments, forming scalding phrases that she would pour down on the hapless head of the coachman — and gasped with fear that he was mortally injured. Fearing only that she would never, in that case, be able to point out to him his manifold mistakes.

That way, too, was not to be thought of.

Instead, she checked over the arrangements she had made. Once again she had borrowed Mullins’ cloak. In place of her own ornate bonnet of burgundy velvet, with ruching in a paler shade lining the brim, she pulled up the hood of the rough woolen garment and hid her curls. Her disguise was eminently suitable for the occasion. It would be witless to appear in her proper person, for the villains would rob her, hold her for ransom, or simply use her and toss her broken body in the ditch.

Her only hope, as she saw it, of finding Reeves and bringing him back in the cart was to appear as innocuous as possible. She would approach the site as a simple farm girl. Only when faced with actual peril would she flourish the pistol, now secured in her belt beneath the enveloping brown cloak.

Reeves had insulted her marksmanship, which, she thought more than likely, was as good as his. She had practiced many hours under her father’s tutelage as well as old Crouch’s, the Aspinall game warden. She could shoot a playing card out of a man’s hand at fifty paces. And Reeves had shouted, “Don’t shoot me!” Some day she would pay him off for that. And the next moment her anger dissolved, to be replaced by the desperate hope that he would survive long enough to suffer her revenge.

She nursed her grudge as they retraced their journey. If she did not remain angry with him, she would be cast into a blue-deviled mood that would do neither of them any good. She would need all her wits about her. First, she planned to rescue him. And then she would explain to him precisely how abhorrently arrogant and wrong-minded he was.

The horses, meanwhile, could not be persuaded to more than a sedate walk. The journey in the chariot had taken no more than ten minutes, but the return covered more than half an hour. They moved along in silence. Potter was awed by the events just past, and by Miss Nell’s clear contempt for him. Wrapped in misery, there was no way he could explain what had happened to his courage, for he did not himself know. It was only that everything was so strange, even the words folk said, and he longed with all his heart to be back
in
London, where he knew what was what.

Everything here was topsy-turvy.
Bitte
, for instance, sounded ominous in his ears, and yet it was a kindly word in meaning. How could you get along, Potter demanded of himself, when nothing was what you’d expect?

Now, Nell pulled the horses to a slower pace. The road held a slight curve here, and just beyond was the place of the ambush. Along the inner edge of the curve stood a small coppice of spindly trees, growing in a low place that Potter would have bet gold would be flooded in the spring. At least at home it would, but who knew even how spring rains behaved in this forsaken land?

Nell peered through the leafless branches of the saplings, examining the road beyond the curve. “Best not to come full tilt on the place,” she murmured to Potter, “as though we could with this pair. We must not let the thieves have the advantage.”

Potter breathed more easily at his mistress’s mild tone. She was not angry with him. His courage came rampaging back.

Nell saw, then, a shapeless darkness on the road ahead. There he was. She did not know she had held her breath until it came out in a gust of relief. He had not been removed, dead or not.
There
he
was
!

But he was not as he was. There were other men, moving in inexplicable ways around him. “Potter,” she said tightly, “what are they doing?”

Potter peered in his turn through the obstructing branches. “Dunno, miss, but it don’t look good.”

She turned her horses to the right, off the road. “Do you come with me, Potter. I may need you.”

Eagerly he jumped down from the wooden seat. He was brave as a lion, he again told himself, as he wound the reins around a sprig of a bush at the side of the road and followed Nell.

Nell was in the van. The sight that met her eyes chilled her down to the bone. Reeves seemed to dangle between two men. They too had a wagon, for it stood beyond them a short distance. There were saddled horses too, which indicated that she could not hope to outrun them in her farm cart, even supposing she had enough foresight to turn the cart before they left it. She paused long enough to perceive details. Each of the two men held an arm of the coachman, trying to get him on his feet. He slumped limply between them, his head lolling on his chest.

Her way was clear before her. The time for action had come. She took her pistol from her belt, and with a word to Potter, ran forward.

Potter, formerly brave as a lion, now realized he was a very small lion. Although his spirit charged ahead with Miss Nell, his feet were unalterably slow to follow.

Nell drove ahead to the attack. “What are you doing?” she screeched. “Let him go! I’ll shoot the first man —”

She stopped and steadied the gun with both hands. Whether she would indeed have shot either of them was never to be decided. The two men, clearly members of the local peasantry, were startled out of their wits by the sight of the young Amazon aiming a large weapon with a muzzle like a cannon. They did not make the mistake that Reeves had made. They recognized from Nell’s firm stance, the gun steady in her hands, the ferocious competence in her eyes, that this was not the first time she had held a pistol. They dropped Reeves out of hand and backed away, their hands in the air.

“
Bitte!
”

“Go on!” she cried, gesturing with the gun. “Get right away!” She believed they did not understand her and searched her wits for an appropriate German word. None occurred to her.

She stepped toward the fallen coachman, her eyes still warningly on his assailants. “Leave him alone! You’ve killed him!”

She did not hear Potter’s strangled cry of warning behind her. It would have done no good, had she heard, for there was no time to act.

She realized, too late, that the two who had been manhandling Reeves were not alone and was deftly caught from behind. Her assailant’s free hand snaked down her arm to catch her wrist, pointing the gun harmlessly toward the open fields beyond. She managed an abortive kick backward before she was lifted off the ground.

The pressure tightened on her wrist, and she dropped the gun. The villain’s hand then clamped roughly over her mouth. The sudden silence told her she had been screaming the heavens down. Without so much as thinking, she promptly sank her teeth into the fingers muffling her screams. That will show him!

The sudden pain caused the unknown man to relax his hold on her waist, and she felt the hard ground beneath her feet. Instantly she kicked backward. The sharp heel of her carriage boot caught him hard on the shin. Gratified by his grunt of pain, she kicked him again.

She writhed in her captor’s arms. He held her painfully tight, and she redoubled her efforts to escape. She bit his finger again, hard, and this time he tore his hand away. She would be free in a moment…

He gave vent to an out-and-out curse — and she gasped in disbelief.

The curse, surprisingly, was in English. But the voice! That voice she knew, the voice that was the last she had expected to hear, especially here, and particularly now.