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“Well done,” Nicola said with icy sarcasm. “You have managed to capture an unarmed woman.”
“No woman is unarmed,” the man returned, his mouth quirking up into a smile. He dismounted in a smooth muscular sweep and stepped forward, making a formal bow to Nicola.
The man was tall and well-built in his dark clothes, a figure of power and even grace. Watching him, Nicola felt an unaccustomed quiver dart through her. Most of his face was covered with a soft dark mask, only the square jaw and chin visible, and a neat black goatee and mustache further disguised those features. But there was no way to conceal the clean-cut, compelling lines of his face—or the wide, firm mouth, now curved in a mocking smile. White, even teeth flashed in the darkness as he straightened and moved toward her, reaching up to help her down. His black-gloved hand closed around hers, neatly pulling her the last step down to the ground. He continued to hold her hand for a moment, his eyes boring into hers.
Nicola raised one eyebrow disdainfully. “Let me go.”
“Oh, I will, my lady, I will.”
In the dark night, his eyes were utterly black—soulless eyes, Nicola thought a little breathlessly. She could not tear her own gaze away from them. His hand tightened fractionally on hers. Then he released her.
“But you must pay a toll first, for passing through my lands.”
“Your lands?” Nicola curled her hands into fists, struggling to keep her voice cool and slightly amused despite the strange torrent of sensations that was rushing through her. She made a show of glancing around. “But I thought we were on Exmoor property.”
“In a legal sense.”
“What other sense is there?”
“One of right. Does not the land belong to those who live upon it?”
“A radical notion. And you, I take it, claim to be the representative of ‘the people’?”
He gave an expressive shrug of his shoulders, a more genuine smile parting his lips. “Who better?”
“Most of the people I know who live upon this land would not consider a thief a proper representative of themselves.”
“You wound me, my lady. I had hoped we could be…civil.” There was a faint caressing note in his low voice.
Once again something stirred in Nicola’s abdomen, shocking her. “It is difficult to be civil when one is being threatened.”
“Threatened?” He raised his hands in a gesture betokening innocence. “My lady, you shock me. I have made no threat to you.”
“It is implicit, is it not, in stopping my carriage and demanding money?” She glanced around significantly at the men waiting silently on horseback, watching their exchange. “Why else are these men pointing guns at us?”
One of the men let out a soft grunt. “I am afraid she has you there, my friend.”
This voice, too, came in the crisp accents of the upper class, and Nicola glanced in his direction, surprised. “What is this?” she asked, suddenly suspicious. “A group of town swells on a lark?”
The man who had just spoken chuckled, but the man before her said grimly, “No, my lady, it is no lark. It is business. So let us get down to it. Your purse, please.”
“Of course.” Nicola jerked open the drawstrings of her reticule and held it open to him.
He reached inside and deftly withdrew the leather money purse, gently bouncing it in his palm as if to measure its weight. “Ah, you do not travel lightly. A bonus for me.”
“I suppose you want my jewelry, too,” Nicola snapped, pulling off her gloves to reveal the two simple silver rings that adorned her fingers. If she exposed such valuables, he would not go searching for anything hidden. And she could not let him take the token she wore on a chain beneath her dress. It was worth very little, of course—except to her—but this obnoxious fellow would probably take it just to spite her.
“I am afraid I wear no bracelets or necklaces,” she continued. “I rarely travel wearing jewelry.”
“Mmm. I find it is usually carried on a journey rather than worn,” he said, his tone amused, and made a gesture toward the carriage. Two of the men dismounted and swarmed up on the roof of the carriage, jumping down triumphantly a moment later, carrying Nicola’s traveling jewel case and a small square strongbox, which they proceeded to stow on their mounts.
Nicola hid her relief at the thief’s acceptance of her statement. He stripped off his own gloves and took her hand in one of his, and Nicola jumped at the contact. His hand was hard and warm, and as he slid the rings from her fingers with his other hand, her breath caught in her throat.
She glanced up and found him looking down at her enigmatically, the faintly jeering expression gone from his mouth, his eyes black and fathomless. Nicola jerked her hand from his.
“Now,” she said bitingly, “if you are finished, I would like to be on my way.”
“No. I am not quite finished,” he replied. “There is one more item I would steal from you.”
Nicola raised her brows questioningly. His hands gripped her shoulders, and she sucked in a startled breath. A dark flame flashed to life in his eyes, and he pulled her to him, his mouth coming down on hers.
Nicola stiffened in outrage. His lips moved against hers, soft and seductive, searing her with their heat. Involuntarily, she went limp, her body suddenly hot and liquid. Wild, turbulent emotions bubbled through her, surprising and disturbing her as much as his insolent action had. Nicola was a beautiful woman, with a petite but curvaceous body, thick pale-gold hair and wide, dark-lashed eyes. She was accustomed to men being attracted to her, even to their making improper advances. But she was not accustomed to feeling such a response herself.
He released her as abruptly as he had seized her. His eyes flashed in the darkness, and Nicola was certain he had been aware of the way she had melted inside. Hot anger surged through her, and she reached up and slapped him sharply.
Everyone went still and silent around them, frozen in a tableau. Nicola faced him, certain that he would punish her for what she had done, but too furious to care. The man gazed at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
Finally he drawled, “My lady.” Then, sketching a bow toward her, he turned and fluidly remounted his horse. He wheeled and vanished into the darkness, followed by his men.
Nicola watched him leave. Her lips burned from his kiss, and every nerve in her body seemed to be standing on end. Anger roiled inside her, making her tremble. The problem was, she didn’t know whether she was more furious at the highwayman because the wretch had had the audacity to kiss her—or at herself for the way she has responded to his kiss.
“DAMN HIS IMPUDENCE!” The Earl of Exmoor slammed his fist down onto the closest thing to him, a small table of knickknacks that shook and rattled at the blow. He was a tall man, as all the Montfords were, and looked younger than his nearly fifty years. His hair was brown, graying at the temples, and his sharp features were generally considered adequately handsome. Today, however, they were distorted with rage.
Predictably, he had been furious when Nicola arrived and told him of the highwaymen waylaying her carriage. He had been striding up and down the length of the drawing room for the past few minutes, his face red and fists knotted. His wife, Deborah, had watched him with pale-faced anxiety, Nicola with a poorly suppressed dislike.
“Attacking my very own carriage!” Richard continued, disbelief warring with rage. “The effrontery of the man!”
“I would say that effrontery is something that man is not lacking,” Nicola pointed out with cool amusement.
The Earl ignored her. “I’ll have the coachman’s head for this.”
“It was not his fault,” Nicola pointed out. “They had dragged a cut tree across the road. He could hardly have ruined his horses on it, even if the horses had not balked.”
“What about the groom?” Richard swung around, pinning her with his piercing gaze. “I specifically put him up there beside the coachman with a gun to ward off such an attack. But he not only didn’t fire a shot, he gave them his weapon!”
“I don’t know what else you could expect. There were at least six men surrounding the coach. If he had fired it, both he and the coachman would have been dead in an instant. And then where would I have been? It would scarcely be doing their duty to leave me stranded and unprotected in the middle of the road, would it?”
Richard snorted. “Lot of protection they were.”
“Well, I am here and unharmed, with nothing worse lost than a few jewels and some coins.”
“I must say,” her brother-in-law said resentfully, “you seem rather blasé about the whole affair.”
“I am happy to be alive. For a few moments there, I was certain that I would be killed.”
“Yes. Thank heavens you got here safe and well,” Deborah put in, reaching out a hand to her sister.
Nicola moved nearer to Deborah and closed her own hand around Deborah’s.
The Earl regarded the two women sourly. “Well, I am glad that you can regard it so lightly. But it is something I cannot ignore. It is a blatant insult to me.”
“Oh, really, Richard! I am the one who was attacked!”
“You were traveling under my protection. It is a slap in my face. That blackguard is as good as saying that my protection is worthless. He clearly did it to humiliate me.” He smiled grimly. “Well, this time the chap will find out that he has gone too far. I won’t rest until I have his head on a pike. Thank heavens I had already sent for a Bow Street Runner. As soon as he gets here, I’ll set him on this. Then that scoundrel will learn that he has been tweaking the wrong man.”
It was typical, Nicola thought, that Richard would be much more concerned over the presumed insult to himself than he would be over his passenger’s safety. She glanced at her sister, wondering if Deborah was still so blinded by love for the man that she did not see how cold and self-centered he was.
But, looking at Deborah’s pinched, pale face, Nicola quickly dropped all thoughts of Richard or of the attack. “Enough of this talk,” she said crisply, going to her sister. “Deborah is obviously tired and needs to go to bed.”
Her sister cast a grateful smile in her direction, though she demurred, “No, I am all right, really.”
“Nonsense. It is quite clear that you are dead on your feet. Come along, I will take you up. Richard,” Nicola said, casting him a perfunctory nod, “if you will excuse us…?”
Richard bowed back, barely sparing a glance for his wife. “Of course. I need to go out to question the coachman. Good night, Deborah. Nicola.” He hesitated, then added with a wry twist of his mouth, “We are pleased to have you visit. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
He left the room, and Nicola took her sister’s arm and helped her up from her chair. They began to walk to the stairs. Deborah cast an anxious look toward the front door, through which Richard had disappeared.
“I do hope Richard will not be too harsh on the coachman. I—he would not be unkind normally, of course. It is just that this highwayman has him so upset.”
“I could see that.”
“It is because the man plagues Richard, you see. He—I know it sounds odd, but he seems to particularly delight in stealing from Richard. Tenants’ payments, the shipments to and from the mines—I cannot tell you how many times those wagons have been stopped. Even in broad daylight. It is as if he were thumbing his nose at Richard.”
“It makes sense. Richard is the largest landowner around here. It would stand to reason that much of the money the man takes would be from him.”
“Oh, he stops other things—other carriages, the mail coach sometimes. But it is Richard who has been hit the hardest. It has cut deeply into his profits from the tin mines. Richard has been nearly beside himself. I think what bothers him the most is that ‘The Gentleman,’ as they call him, has evaded capture so easily. He comes out of nowhere and then melts back into the night. Richard has sent men out looking for his hiding place, but they have found nothing. He has put extra guards on the wagons and his carriage, but it doesn’t stop him, just as it didn’t tonight. And no one will come forward with any information about him. Even the miners and farmers who work for Exmoor claim to have no knowledge of the man. Do you think that is possible?”
“I don’t know. It does seem somewhat unlikely that no one would know anything about him.”
“Usually the people in the village seem to know about everything. Richard says they are deceiving him. Hiding the man’s whereabouts from him. For some odd reason, the highwayman seems to almost be some sort of hero to the local people.”
Having seen the fit of rage that Richard had pitched about the theft and the way he had blamed first the coachman, then the guard, Nicola could well believe that Richard’s employees and tenants told him little. She had never seen Richard be anything but arrogant, even with his peers. With those he considered his inferiors, he was doubtless far worse. She suspected that the people around here were probably secretly pleased that the highwayman was harassing the Earl of Exmoor.
“What do you know about this highwayman?” Nicola asked, trying to keep her voice casual. “He seems an odd sort to be a thief. He spoke as well as you or I. And so did one of the other men.”
Deborah nodded. “That is why they call him The Gentleman.” They had reached the top of the stairs, and Deborah paused for a moment to catch her breath. “That and his manners. He is reputed to be invariably polite, especially to ladies, and it is said that he has not harmed anyone that he has stopped. He stopped the vicar once at night when he was going to the side of a dying man, and he didn’t take a farthing from him, just apologized for stopping him when he saw who he was—and sent him on his way.”
“Indeed.” Nicola did not tell her that the man’s behavior toward her tonight could scarcely be characterized as polite. Not, of course, that he had actually harmed her, but that kiss…well, it had been an insult, an effrontery.
“No one knows where he came from,” Deborah added. “He started only a few months ago.”
“It seems an odd place to choose. Thieves usually operate closer to London or on a main thoroughfare, not out in the country. How do you suppose he came to this pass? Do you think he really was gently born? A son who disgraced his family and was disowned?”
“Or a wastrel who squandered his fortune,” Deborah offered. “That is the theory that the vicar’s wife proposes. Or perhaps he was merely someone who was well-educated but poor, a tutor or a fencing master, or someone of that sort.”
“A tutor?” Nicola couldn’t suppress a giggle. “A history scholar who takes to the highways?”
Deborah grinned, too. “That does seem a little absurd. Richard says that he is merely a ‘damned actor’ who has learned how to ape his betters.” She sighed. “And perhaps he is. No doubt we make him seem a more romantic figure than he is.”
“No doubt.” Nicola remembered the touch of his hand on hers, the searing pressure of his lips, and a shiver ran through her.
“I am sorry.” Deborah, holding her arm, felt the faint tremor, and she turned toward her, frowning in concern. “I should not be speaking so lightly of him when you have just had such a dreadful experience. It must have been awful.”
Nicola smiled. “I am all right. No doubt you remember that I am not a very sensitive woman. I rarely have the vapors.”
“But meeting a ruthless criminal would cause even you to feel some qualms, no doubt. Let us not speak of it any longer.”
Deborah had come to a stop outside a door, and now she turned the knob. “This is your room. Mine is right next door.” She motioned to the next door down the hall. “I hope you like it,” she continued. “If there is anything that you need, just let me know.”
The room beyond the door was spacious and well furnished, with two sets of windows upon the back wall, the heavy drapes now drawn to close out the night. A fire had been banked in the fireplace, and an oil lamp burned low on the bedside table. A maid was running a warming pan between the sheets as they came in, and she curtsied and left the room.
“It’s lovely,” Nicola said, looking around the room.
Deborah smiled. “I am so glad you like it. It has quite a lovely view during the day—the garden below and the moor rising in the distance.”
“I am sure it is beautiful.”
“Come see my room,” Deborah urged, taking her hand and leading her out of the bedroom and down the hall.
Deborah’s bedroom turned out to be quite similar to the room she had allotted to Nicola—spacious and attractive, it was a very feminine room, full of ruffles and frills, with no sign of masculine occupancy anywhere, not even a pair of men’s boots against the wall or a shaving stand. It did not surprise Nicola that the Earl and his Countess had separate sleeping quarters; it was quite common among the aristocracy. However, it did strike Nicola as a trifle odd that there was no sign of even Richard’s occasional presence.
Nicola glanced at her sister, who was happily talking about her plans to put the baby’s crib beside her bed and a cot for the nurse in the dressing room once the baby was born. She wondered if Deborah still loved Richard as she had when she married him, or if she had come over the years to see him for what he really was.
Deborah sighed, still looking at the spot where the baby’s crib would stand, and Nicola could see the fear and sorrow mingling in her face. No doubt she was remembering the other babies whom she had hoped to place there.
“I am sure it will be a wonderful arrangement,” Nicola said quickly, going to her sister and putting her arm around Deborah’s shoulders. “And the baby will love it.”
“Really?”
Nicola knew that her sister was actually asking for reassurance that this baby would not meet the fate that its siblings had. So Nicola smiled at Deborah, putting every ounce of confidence she possessed into her expression. “Of course. You’ll see. Now, you must not worry. That will not help the baby at all.”
“I know. That is what everyone says. But it is so hard when—”
“Naturally. But rest assured that I am here, and I will help you. If there are problems with running the household or anything else, I will take care of them. You know what a bossy soul I am.”
Her sister smiled and relaxed a little against Nicola, and Nicola knew that the ingrained habit of a younger sister to depend on an older one had worked its magic.
“It is so wonderful to have you here,” Deborah said, and there was such a sad, yearning look on her face that Nicola felt guilty that she had avoided visiting her for so long. “I—I know you and I disagreed on—a number of things. But we can put that behind us now, can’t we?”
“Of course we can.” Nicola knew that it had never been her differences with Deborah that had kept her out of this house. It was Richard—and the things that he had done ten years ago. “Let us not worry about that. All that need concern us is your health.”
“I am tired,” Deborah admitted. “I seem to have so little energy these days. And the morning sickness is much worse this time.” She brightened, smiling at her sister. “But the doctor says that is a good sign, that it means this is a healthy baby, not like the others.”
“Doubtless he is right,” Nicola replied, even though she personally thought doctors were often woefully ignorant. It was one of her many opinions that made others in London Society term her “eccentric”—or worse. “And I am sure he told you that you needed to get plenty of rest, as well, didn’t he?”
Deborah agreed, smiling. “Yes.”
“Then let me ring for your maid to help you undress so that you can go to bed.”
