Virginia Henley (41 page)

Nick knew he must leave. If it was Eaton, he could not take the risk of being recognized by him. But if he was right, the knowledge he had just gained would be worth far more to him than anything he could win at the tables. He put on his cape and tricorn and stepped out into the night. He heard the distant rumble of thunder in the west and was thankful that the rain had moved off. He crossed the road and stood in the recessed doorway of the building opposite, prepared for a long vigil. Nick had no choice; he had to prove to himself that the man he had seen in the striking red gown was indeed John Eaton. If he was a
habitué
of the infamous Mollies’ Club, Nick knew he would hold the upper hand.

His wait turned out to be shorter than anticipated. Within the hour, Joan came out of the club, escorted by the burly doorman. The black leather satchel she carried obviously held her winnings, and Nick assumed her escort would be armed. He held his breath, half expecting a carriage to draw up and whisk them away. When the pair walked briskly to the corner, his spirits soared. He willed them to turn the corner and make their way to number 10 Jermyn Street. When they were out of sight he controlled his impatience by counting to two hundred before he stepped from the doorway to follow them. He kept a safe distance behind the queer-looking couple, not actually believing his good fortune until Joan entered her town house and her vigilant escort departed.

As Nick watched the lights go on upstairs, his gut ached from holding in his laughter.
What a bloody sight for sore eyes!
He dared not let himself picture Joan as she readied herself for bed. Instead, he focused on the task that lay ahead, estimating that it would be at least an hour before everyone in the household was safely asleep. As Nick sauntered off to retrieve his horse, he hoped his saddlebags would accommodate the files he intended to steal from John Eaton’s coach.

* * *

When Nick returned to Jermyn Street, he found the house in darkness. He slid from the saddle, garbed in black from head to foot. The white shirt was in his saddlebag, and the black leather mask covered his face completely. He tethered his mount to a tree and with great stealth made his way to the back of the house.

Judas Iscariot! The bloody coach is gone!
He leaned against the wall in disbelief as his brain strove to make sense of it. It took only a minute to realize that Eaton must have gone upstairs to change his clothes, then left for Slough tonight. He untethered Satin and stroked his hand along her withers. “Come, my beauty, we have our work cut out for us.”

Nick mounted, removed his mask so it would not impede his vision, and rode along Piccadilly, hoping to catch a glimpse of Eaton’s coach. There were not many mounted riders out tonight because of the wet weather, but the carriage traffic was heavy and didn’t thin out until Kensington. Nick rode all the way to Chiswick before he singled out a lumbering coach ahead of him that could be the one he sought. “Now, if yonder contraption turns onto the Great West Road, I think we’ve got our man.”

They rode head-on into the rain, which obliterated his view of the coach, but suddenly a flash of lightning lit up the sky, and Nick’s mouth curved in a sardonic smile as he saw the coachman turn his horses onto the Great West Road. “The trick now, my beauty, is to get to Hounslow before them.”

As he galloped after the coach, amused that the rumbling wheels and booming thunder masked the clatter of his horse’s hooves, it all felt strangely inevitable to Nicholas, as if it were preordained. It almost seemed as if he had done it all before, perhaps in another lifetime. The words of an ancient rhyme ran through his head:

Nicholas knew exactly where on the wild heath the coach must turn from the Great West Road onto the Bath Road. It was the only way to Slough. And, thanks to his ancestor’s journal with its detailed sketches of Hounslow, he knew precisely which black spot best suited his plan. He headed into a wooded stretch at the side of the road and, allowing his mare to set her own pace, guided her in a wide arc that put him ahead of the coach. Once he was back on the road, he urged her into a full gallop and did not draw rein until they reached the crest of Shooter’s Hill. The area was heavily treed on both sides of the road, providing perfect cover.

He slid from the saddle and tethered Satin to a tree. The woods were littered with fallen oak branches, which he dragged onto the road at its steepest incline. They were not substantial enough to impede a heavy coach, but Nick knew the pair of coach horses would shy in panic at the unexpected barrier. He quickly remounted, and as he waited beneath a sheltering oak, he calmly donned his mask, withdrew his pistols from their holsters, and made sure that their flashpans were filled with dry powder.

Nicholas heard the pounding hooves and clattering wheels long before he saw the faint yellow light of the coach lamps. In this weather they did little to illuminate the road or aid the coachman in any way; they were, however, most helpful to the man who silently tracked the progress of the coach. He waited with infinite patience, aware of the slow, steady thud of his heart. Nicholas experienced no fear; he was merely righting a wrong. He was not the thief—Eaton was.

The coach rumbled along, passed through muddy Dog’s Hollow, then slowed as it started up the incline of Shooter’s Hill. Suddenly the carriage horses encountered the branches. They whinnied in fear and reared up, straining in their traces to avoid the strange objects that lay in their path. The coachman cursed and dragged on the brake. “Whoa! Whoa there!” The coach swayed then lurched to a halt. The driver threw aside the reins, jumped down from his seat, and grabbed the leader’s bridle.

The coach door swung open. “What the hell are you about man? Why did you stop?” Eaton’s arrogant voice demanded from within.

“Nothin’ to worry about, sir. Just some branches the storm brought down.”

“Then get them cleared away, you fool!”

The masked rider smiled with satisfaction as the glow of the coach lamps showed him that the driver had left his flintlock musket up on the box. Nick raised his pistols and, with his knees, guided his horse to the open coach door.
“Stand down!”

The voice—deep, demanding, and dangerous—brooked no disobedience. John Eaton looked down the twelve-inch pistol barrels and knew he had no choice but to obey. The coachman jerked upright when he heard the command, a branch still clutched in his hand. The highwayman silently motioned with his pistol, and the hapless driver dropped the branch and joined his master beside the coach.

“Deliver up your goods.”
Nick half cocked both weapons.

Eaton pulled a large valise from the coach and threw it to the road. It was not the leather satchel that held his winnings.

“Deliver
all
your goods.” Nick took aim at Eaton’s head.

With great reluctance, Eaton reached beneath the seat and drew out the bag that held the money. “You’ll not get away with this!”

“Are you threatening me?” The question was low, deadly.

Eaton threw the bag on the road beside the first.

“You!” Nick addressed the driver. “I said
everything
!”

When the man hurriedly reached inside the coach for the metal box of files that sat on the floor, Eaton protested, “No, the rest are just personal papers of use only to me.”

The coachman slid the box onto the road with care, never taking his eyes from the cocked pistols. Eaton dared not protest further.

“Now start walking.”
The voice was implacable.

Before they were twenty-five yards down the road, Nicholas was transferring the papers and documents to his saddlebags. He secured the leather satchel to his saddlebow, then dragged the valise and empty file box behind the trunk of a sheltering oak. Nick mounted, but before he set his heels to Satin’s flanks, he fired a warning shot, then disappeared into the dark, wet night.

Nick was less than two miles from Hatton Hall. Unfortunately, so was John Eaton, and Nick guessed that would be his destination, once he and his driver returned to their coach. Like a black phantom in his billowing cape, he rode into the wind, never slowing his pace until he reached the Hatton stables. He led his mare into a box stall at the back of the stables and covered her with a horse blanket. He lit a shuttered stable lamp, then brushed aside the piles of straw that concealed the fact that half of the wooden floor was a hinged door. Within minutes, both horse and rider had disappeared into the tunnel that led to Hatton Hall’s cellars.

When they reached the far end, under the ancient foundations, Nick relieved Satin of both saddlebags and Eaton’s leather satchel. Then he removed her saddle with its holsters that held his pistols. He gave her a rubdown with his once-white shirt then covered her again with the warm horse blanket. He scratched her ears and murmured affectionately, “I couldn’t have done it without you, my beauty.”

After Nick tended his horse, he proceeded to make himself more comfortable. He removed some of his wet garments, then sat on the floor with his back propped against the wall. He set the lantern down beside him, opened his saddlebags, and began to carefully examine the files he had stolen from Eaton’s coach.

 

Within the hour, John Eaton was pounding on the front door of Hatton Hall. Mr. Burke threw on his clothes and went to answer the urgent summons. He immediately recognized Henry Hatton’s cousin and with a puzzled frown inquired, “May I help you, Mr. Eaton?”

“It would help if you stopped blocking the doorway.” He pushed his way past Burke. “I demand to see Hatton immediately.”

“Lord Hatton is indisposed, sir; he retired early.”

“He will be more than indisposed when he sees that I have followed him to his lair! An hour ago, my coach was robbed by a highwayman not two miles from this hall! Get Hatton now!”

“As you wish, sir, but I assure you that Lord Hatton has been at home all evening.” The long-suffering Mr. Burke went to inform Christopher that he had an irate visitor who demanded his presence.

Kit Hatton, garbed in a hastily donned bedrobe, descended the stairs and followed Mr. Burke to the entrance hall. “What the devil is this nonsense about being robbed? There’ve been no highwaymen riding the heath for a decade!”

The sight of Christopher Hatton, fresh from his bed, nursing not only a bruised face but a debilitating hangover, did much to allay Eaton’s suspicions. “I tell you my coach was held up and I was robbed! We went straight to the inn at Hounslow, asking them to summon the authorities, but they refused to do anything before morning.”

“The Cock and Bull Inn?” Kit snorted. “ ’Tis a hotbed for criminal activities. Most likely their cockfight was canceled because of the storm and your coach was robbed by a disgruntled gambler desperate for money.”

“Summon a groom to stable my coach horses. My driver and I will stay here for the night and inform the authorities in the morning.”

“I have no bloody grooms, thanks to you, Eaton! You have one hell of a nerve, arriving here in the middle of the night, throwing your orders about as if you own the place!”

“I shall own the place soon, Hatton. Surely it hasn’t slipped your whiskey-soaked brain that I hold two outstanding loans on Hatton Hall, which are due at the end of this month?”

“Then I suggest you continue your ill-fated journey to Slough and return at the end of the month,” Kit replied with exquisitely polite sarcasm. “Show him out, Mr. Burke.”

Eaton once again took out his temper on his coachman. “The bloody highwayman would be lying dead out on the heath, if you’d done the job I pay you for! Before we go, I intend to have a look inside Hatton’s stables. A wet horse is all the evidence I need to return tomorrow with the authorities and lay criminal charges.”

The driver climbed down from his box, his weapon belatedly clutched in his hand, and followed Eaton through the courtyard to the stables. Inside, they groped about for a lantern, finally found one, then had the devil’s own time lighting it. The yellow glow from the lamp showed them that the huge stables held only three animals. Renegade occupied the first stall, and Eaton ordered his driver to examine the high-spirited black who was moving about restlessly.

“Dry as a bone, sir. Never so much as had his nose outside all day.” The coachman took a look at the pair of chestnut carriage horses and the phaeton. “These cattle are dry too, along with the rig. They’d have mud splattered up to their arseholes if any of ’em had traversed Hounslow Heath on a night like this.”

“Well, there’s nothing further we can learn here tonight. No doubt the brigand was being protected by the owner of the inn. I shall demand the names of all the patrons who were there tonight. Get me home, and don’t spare your whip on the horses!”