A Regency Virgin's Undoing. Christine Merrill

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СКАЧАТЬ said, feeling even worse than before. If she’d taken the man’s last groat to catch her sister, she could hardly fault him if they failed.

      ‘I thought I had sufficient funds as well,’ he said. ‘But now that I have brought us to the middle of nowhere, I find that my purse is still in my pocket, but its contents are gone.’ His brows knit and the darkness of his expression was truly fearsome. She braced herself, ready to bear the brunt of the inevitable tirade.

      Instead, he turned it inwards upon himself. ‘I have only myself to blame for our circumstances. Like a fool, I left my coat behind in the mail coach, as I helped to push. And that grudge-bearing, bacon-fed cit went through my pockets and helped himself to it. Now I am reduced to picking through a lady’s reticule and letting you grovel for pennies in a coach yard.’ He looked to her again, obviously pained by the confession. ‘I am sorry, Lady Drusilla. I have failed you.’

      She felt a rush of sympathy. After all he had done to get her this far, she was amazed that he would think so harshly of himself. ‘You most certainly have not failed me,’ she said. ‘We have simply hit another difficulty and must take the time to examine our options. What do you suggest?’

      ‘As I see it, we have two alternatives. We return to the place we left and find the man responsible.’

      ‘And what good would that do us? He would likely deny that he had taken anything.’

      ‘At first, perhaps. But all the same, I would give him a thrashing that would shake the coins from his pockets.’ His cold smile and the glint in his eye said that the experience would be the most emotionally satisfying option and the one he favoured.

      ‘Mr Hendricks!’ Drusilla said sharply. ‘Attend, please. To return to find the thief would put my goal quite out of reach. If I have come this far, I do not wish to turn back without some satisfaction. Is there no other way to get to Scotland?’

      Now, he was staring at her in silence, as though she were a piece in the puzzle that he could not quite seem to make fit. He did not immediately answer and she repeated, ‘Mr Hendricks?’

      ‘I am thinking,’ he said, a little too sharply for a servant, and then corrected his tone before responding. ‘There is another way, if you are dead set on continuing. We will press northwards as we have been doing and ride this change of horses to the end. We will be forced to sleep rough. We will take the shilling in your hand to buy some bread and cheese for our supper. But after that, we will have to beg or steal what we need for sustenance.’ He looked heartily sorry that he could not do better. ‘I fear it is not what you are accustomed to. But the only other alternative I can offer is to admit defeat and appeal to your father for help.’

      ‘And that is precisely what I will not do.’ She stood straight again, remembering that she was the daughter of a duke and not some slouching farm boy. Then she wiped the muddy coin and handed it back to Hendricks along with his handkerchief. ‘Take this and buy us some dinner, so that we might set off again.’ She glanced up the road at the dust of the retreating carriage, focusing all her anger and frustration on it, longing for revenge. And then an idea occurred to her. ‘And if you hurry I think there is a way that we might solve all our problems, given a little darkness and a little luck.’

Chapter Eight

      ‘This is mad, you know.’ Mr Hendricks spoke in the same soft voice he used on those times when he managed to remember that she employed him.

      ‘You have told me that on several occasions already.’

      ‘I did not think one more would make a difference,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘But if there was even the smallest chance, then I had to try. When I suggested we steal to survive, this was not at all what I was intending. I meant that we would take only what was necessary. A loaf from a farmer’s window sill, perhaps.’

      ‘Which would leave the poor family there with nothing to eat,’ she said. ‘Does it not diminish the hurt to all concerned if we steal from someone who lives a life of excess?’

      ‘Perhaps that is true, in theory. But you are not discussing some distant and romantic utopia. You are asking me to rob a coach on a modern highway. I believe, my lady, that you have confused me with some idealised combination of Robin Hood and Dick Turpin.’

      ‘Just as you have confused me with a character in a Drury Lane comedy,’ she snapped back, ‘and persuaded me to traipse halfway across England in your cast-off clothing.’ His tone annoyed her, for it was no longer mild subservience. There was a distinct air of derision. And it was just another example of the way those around her had no trouble leading her into jeopardy with their outrageous plans, then resisting when she offered an equally outrageous plan of her own.

      ‘If you mean to rob every farm between here and Scotland, we will never reach our destination. Rather than stealing one loaf at a time, we could take a single purse from someone who can afford a closed carriage and have more than enough gold to finish the trip. In the eyes of the Lord, the latter is far worse.’

      ‘It is to be my misfortune that you were reading the story of the widow’s mite,’ he said. ‘I should have taken that book from you when I had a chance.’

      ‘If you had, my opinion now would be the same,’ she snapped back. ‘I have no desire to spend a week sleeping in barns and munching on stolen bread and green apples.’ Although, were she honest, the prospect of being forced to sleep in the wilderness, huddled against Mr Hendricks for warmth, had a certain appeal to her.

      ‘I am sorry, my lady, if all that I can offer you is not to your liking.’ There was a surprising bitterness in the way he said her title, as though it were caught in his teeth.

      ‘And I am sorry if you do not like the position you have been engaged to perform.’ She gave him her cruellest smile and let the words be an equally bitter reminder for him, as well as herself, that her present condition was nothing more than a colossal inconvenience.

      ‘Begging your pardon, my lady.’ He offered a false bow and tugged his forelock. ‘I will not forget my place again.’

      The soft blond hair falling in his eye gave her the sudden and inappropriate impulse to smooth it back with her fingers. She ignored it and said, ‘Your apology is accepted. Now, about the matter of the coach robbery …’

      ‘Which I cannot in any way condone.’

      She huffed in disgust. ‘Your weak resolve had been duly noted. And I dismiss it. The occupants of the vehicle we will be stopping are unworthy of your sympathy. Char Deveral is a pampered, foolish girl of carefully cultivated prettiness, who would leave a full purse on the ground rather than soil her hands picking it out of the mud.’

      Or a coin from a coach yard. The incident still stung, even now that her hands were clean. She had made Mr Hendricks ride the next miles hard and well off the road, until her anger had abated. But at least she was sure they had passed the carriage and could lie in wait for it.

      And now, even if she did not get to Priscilla in time, she would have her revenge for that muddy coin and for a host of other small tricks and social slights delivered over the years by Char and her friends. She smiled at the prospect. ‘I know her type well. They are always talking behind their hands at those not of their set, laughing at their own empty jokes, and despite all the warnings of those who know better, running off with men who are little better than servants, heedless of what it might to their reputations, СКАЧАТЬ