скачать книгу бесплатно
‘What would you say to another arrangement? You run along and I will keep your big friend. I will even give you a pound for him. You could buy two better highwaymen at the price—’
He was cut off as a bullet tore through the squabs, inches from his head. He had to hold himself back from returning the compliment, with more extreme effects. He kept his arm firm despite the heat of sudden rage that surged through him.
‘I don’t sell out my friends,’ she bit out.
Her voice shook slightly as she swiftly pulled another pistol from her saddle and cocked it. He saw her arm waver again as she raised it. She was tiring, he realised, his calm returning. He had tested her and he should be happy that she had exceeded his expectations.
‘Miss, now be good and take yerself off, as the gentleman said,’ the giant said from the floor, surprising them all.
Michael decided to cut to the chase before they got into further unnecessary arguments.
‘All right, enough nonsense. You, man, get up and step back. The three of us are going to have a little talk.’
The giant hauled himself up and groggily stepped back onto the road. Michael stepped down after him. He knew it was a risk, but he had a feeling he understood the parameters of this particular game. As he descended, he noticed the mangled remains of his coachman’s rifle that lay on the road and his brows rose in appreciation. So that shot had not been mere luck.
‘Higgins, unhook a lamp for me and back on the coach with you. And, McCabe—I want you to pull up the road some twenty yards and wait for me there.’
‘My lord?’ The coachman faltered.
‘I believe I was clear, was I not?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ When he employed that tone his men knew it was best to act swiftly and without argument.
With a lamp in one hand and his pistol in the other, Michael faced his assailants. He surveyed the woman first. She had lowered her firearm and was resting it on the pommel of her saddle. In the lamplight he caught the glint of light-coloured eyes above a black kerchief. He bent to set the lamp carefully at their feet and noticed something else. A small dark puddle on the ground just by her horse. The giant noticed it at the same moment.
‘You’re hit, miss!’ he exclaimed.
‘Not hit. Grazed. I am perfectly fine.’
Michael stared at the rider. Up close he could see she was smaller than he had expected. And she had sat there holding him marked throughout this whole episode with a bullet wound. His resolve grew. This could prove extremely interesting.
‘You should see a doctor,’ he said mildly.
‘Of your offering? Make sure we go healthy to the gallows? No, I thank you. What the devil do you want?’ The veneer of politeness faded and he could hear the edge of pain in her voice. He decided to move quickly to his proposal before she fell off her horse. He had much rather they depart under their own steam.
‘I have no intention of seeing you to the gallows. In fact, I have a business proposition for you, young woman. I would like to offer you a job at a government institution I help operate and where I believe your particular skills may be...useful. It is all above board, if that has any appeal. And with good pay. Twenty pounds a month to start with and more if you prove suitable.’
* * *
Sari stared down at the madman standing before them. Now she knew what they meant when they said ‘mad as a lord’. Or was it ‘drunk as a lord’? And yet he had hardly appeared mad or foxed.
It had seemed endless, but the whole affair had probably not lasted more than a few minutes. The numbing throb of pain in her arm told her she would pay a price for her bravado in holding her ground. This man had knocked out George and taken his shot with a speed that had completely taken her off guard. If it were not for George’s relic of a firearm, they would both either be dead or be on their way to the local magistrate. The thought sent a chill through her. Not merely for them, but for her brother Charlie.
From her limited experience, she’d thought of all aristocrats as indolent—men more concerned with cravats than with fighting skills. This man was probably an officer from the wars. Trust her to hold up someone of his calibre.
She inspected him more carefully. Until now she had focused on him so intently she had hardly registered anything about him apart from the most crucial facts such as his firm aim. Now she could see he was tall, a few inches short of George’s six and a half feet. In the half-darkness she could only make out the main lines of his sharply cut features. The lamp at their feet accentuated deep-set eyes, a tight mouth and clearly defined chin and cheekbones. She tried to lock all of those into one image, but it escaped her. She knew she was tiring. The throb had spread to her fingers and deep into her chest. She wished he would go so she could get home and lie down.
But a job, above board, with good pay. Offered by a man, a lord according to his servants, whom they had just tried to rob and whose carriage now sported a bullet hole courtesy of her pistol. He was clearly demented. She decided to humour him. Anything to get rid of him.
‘It sounds most appealing...my lord,’ she added as a slightly mocking afterthought.
Ignoring the nervous movement of her gun, he reached into the pocket of his coat.
‘This is my card. I am usually in during the early morning. And you may bring your...friend here if you feel the need for protection,’ he offered drily.
He moved to hand her the card, then with a glance at the rigid way she was now holding herself he handed it to George, who took it promptly.
‘I am quite serious about this. If, however, you decide not to accept my offer, I hope you have memorised the coat of arms on my carriage as I would rather not run into you two again.’
The smile he gave them made Sari’s hand clamp on to her pistol more firmly. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but it was unequivocally a warning.
* * *
‘What on earth were you doing? What if they had killed you?’ Alicia demanded as he re-entered the carriage.
Michael gave her a reassuring hug and settled back into the relative warmth of the carriage. He didn’t envy the poor devils. Highway robbery was cold work.
‘I do not think they were intent on blood.’
‘Not...not intent on blood? What on earth is that then?’ She indicated the hole by his head.
‘That, my dear, is ventilation,’ he said lightly, but he relented as she began to splutter. ‘It was a good foot from my head, as it was meant to be. I thought them quite...interesting. I merely wanted to find out more. And you still have Mama’s brooch, which, if you do not mind, I will put in a nice deep safe at my bank.’
Alicia turned away with a huff, her beauty marred by the petulant moue on her lips. She had not even been ten years old when he had left to join the army and he sometimes felt he didn’t really know her. He sighed and turned his mind to the two highway robbers. It was about time the Institute recruited a woman. He would discuss it with Anderson when they met for their game of chess the following day. His lips curved in anticipation of his friend’s response. Poor Anderson.
Chapter Two (#ulink_077a849f-0a61-502a-92aa-af3072d60090)
‘By all that’s holy, Michael, you were lucky to have escaped with your lives!’
Michael frowned ruefully across the chessboard. He had tried to keep the story to the barest minimum, but perhaps it was the fact that Alicia had been with him in the carriage that had shocked Anderson. He was well aware that his mild-mannered friend was becoming increasingly enamoured of his spoiled little sister. Under other circumstances he would have been delighted at the connection. John St John Moncrieff Anderson, or Sinjun to his friends, was possibly the best man he knew, but his sweet temper might not be the best match for Alicia’s wilful nature.
He and Anderson had been friends since going up to Eton as children and they had both served in the army, though in very different capacities. Anderson had been one of Field Marshal Wellington’s aides-de-camp, and while he had witnessed much of the carnage of war at the great commander’s side, unlike Michael he had not participated in its bloodier aspects. It was precisely for this reason that Wellington, aware of the connection between them, had asked Michael to take a role in setting up the ‘Institute’ for the War Office.
‘I’ve been campaigning for thirty years now, Crayle, and I’ve no stomach for another war,’ Wellington had told Michael. ‘You know what I mean more than Anderson would. He’s a good man and one of the best minds for organisation I’ve had the pleasure to work with, but I need someone on the spot who knows what it means to get over rough ground as lightly as possible. I know you have other fish to fry now you’ve decommissioned, but this new venture needs everything you learned with the Ninety-Fifths. You’ve always been able to get your men to follow you into the mouth of hell, the devil knows how, and some of the men you’ll be recruiting won’t be easy to manage. Will you do it?’
Faced with this direct approach, Michael had found it impossible to say no. He sympathised with Wellington’s wish to avoid future wars more than he would have admitted to the commander he admired so much. He was still paying a heavy price for going into those mouths of hell, as Wellington had called them. The thought of being responsible for other men’s lives again, and the inevitability of failing them, was something he preferred not to contemplate. The nightmares had mostly faded, but not the memories. He had consoled himself with the thought that this was a substantially different battlefield.
He shook off these thoughts and inspected the chessboard. Apparently Anderson had been even more distracted than he.
‘Pay attention,’ he remonstrated. ‘You just left your poor bishop completely exposed.’
‘Never mind the bishop! You might have been killed!’
‘For heaven’s sake, Sinjun. I told you they had no intention of shooting anyone. They were damn amateurs.’
‘It didn’t sound so amateurish to me.’
‘Not in execution, perhaps, but I would have heard, and so would you, if there was a woman highway robber on the North Road. They cannot have been at it long.’
‘Well, from what you said, she was not the one who was supposed to be doing the talking. For all we know she may have been at it for years...’
‘Unlikely, but still, that is beside the point. We both agreed after the Varenne incident that you could use some females at the Institute. She is perfect for our troop of spies.’
‘Agents, not spies,’ Anderson corrected absently as he withdrew his bishop. ‘And I was thinking along the lines of an actress available for the odd job and so were you. What the devil will we do with a female criminal?’
‘The same thing we do with the male criminals. Train her and use her.’
‘They are not all criminals!’ Anderson protested. ‘And...hell, between setting up the Glasgow office and taking care of that business in Birmingham we’re too busy and shorthanded to deal with new recruits anyway. And now we find out from the Foreign Office that two Austrian mercenaries are apparently on their way to London. You yourself said that finding out what they plan to do here is a top priority.’
‘Any more information from the Foreign Office or from the ports?’ Michael glanced up from his inspection of the intricately carved wooden pieces.
‘None. Stimpson assured me he has his best Austrian contacts on alert for information, but all we know is that they are being sent on behalf of one of Metternich’s closest friends and that they are to receive their orders from someone in London. And he said it was the merest chance they found out even that much. Apparently someone is being very careful.’
‘I don’t like it. Junger and Frey are the best, or the worst, of their lot. We need to find out why Metternich is sending particularly vicious mercenaries onto English soil and who they are working with here. I came across Junger’s work in France once and it wasn’t pretty. The thought that they might even now be in London... We need to find out what they are here for. And who on our side of the channel is paying their shot.’
‘Well, you see why we can’t be distracted just now,’ Anderson said, almost imploringly.
‘Well, with any luck, she won’t show up,’ Michael said reassuringly and drained his port. ‘Come, it is no fun winning when your mind isn’t on the game. We need to leave anyway or we’ll be late for our meeting with Castlereagh.’
Anderson stood up swiftly, clearly happy to dismiss the thought of being saddled with a female highway robber.
* * *
Sari would have been happy to dismiss the idea as well, but the throbbing of the bullet graze to her arm was a constant reminder. George, too, had become uncharacteristically obdurate. He had placed the lord’s card prominently on the single table in the seedy rooms they could barely afford at the poorer edge of Islington and for two days she had done little but stare at the stark black letters proclaiming ‘Michael Julian D’Alency Alistair, Viscount Northbrook, Earl of Crayle, of Grosvenor Square, London’. The name had begun to take on a singsong quality in her mind. It was madness, she told herself. They would probably find it was a hoax at best, a trap at worst.
George had disagreed. Two evenings after their failed escapade, he had come home from his job at the hostelry and had sat with her and his wife, Mina, at the table as they mended their well-worn clothes to the accompanying noise from the tavern next door.
‘I’ve done some asking, miss, and he’s solid. I know it’s not what your ma would have liked, but she never thought we’d find ourselves in such a tangle, neither.’
Sari felt the familiar mix of guilt and panic rise up in her again like a sickness. She let her throbbing arm rest for a moment before picking up another shirt from the pile.
‘If only Papa had lived, we might still have been able to earn enough to get by.’
‘Aye, and I’m sorry Mr Trevor’s gone, but he never was the same after your ma passed. I’ve as much reason as anyone to be grateful to him and your ma for taking me in all those years ago, but I call a spade a spade and he had no business leaving the work and the worry to you all those years while he drank himself and his money under every night. He should have at least seen you married and then you might have had a husband’s helping hand with Charlie.’
She smiled somewhat crookedly.
‘To be fair, he did try when we returned to England after Mama died. We have it on excellent authority that I’m not marriage material.’
Mina snipped a thread and reached for another pair of socks from the pile before her.
‘Mrs Ruscombe and her kind are no authority you should be listening to, Miss Sari,’ she said in her soft voice. ‘Now put that down and let your arm have a rest, do.’
Sari shrugged and laid down her sewing thankfully. ‘Everyone else listened. Hector certainly did.’
‘Moresby was a weak young fool,’ George said roughly. ‘And your father was an even greater fool for not taking him to account for shying off instead of having at you for not being more ladylike like your ma.’
She flinched. Even four years later, the memory of that confrontation still hurt.
‘It wasn’t completely his fault. He was...still upset about Mama.’
Mina, usually taciturn, surprised her by looking up with unaccustomed fire in her brown eyes.
‘Don’t wrap it in clean linen, Miss Sari. He was dead drunk most days and nights and feeling sorry for himself. If anyone had the right to feel sorry for themselves over your ma’s passing, it was you, miss. I’m as grateful as any for what your pa did for my George, but it was the outside of enough watching him neglect his duties and you having to do all them translations when it should have been him all along. You are more a lady than that snooty Mrs Ruscombe ever was, even when you was in breeches and going on about politics and the like with your pa’s cronies in the desert. Your ma knew that well enough. No one knows better than me she wanted back to her life in England, but I know she was prouder of you and Master Charlie than of anything on this sainted earth and never regretted a moment of what she had with you two. And if that Mr Moresby was fool enough to have his mind made up for him by the likes of Mrs Ruscombe, well, good riddance, I say. So!’ she finished, plunging her needle into the pincushion with alarming violence.
George grinned appreciatively at his beloved’s outburst.
‘That’s right, love. You have at them.’
Sari wiped away the tears that had welled up. She hated crying, but she was just so tired. She knew George was right—she had to do something. George’s meagre pay as an ostler was barely enough to cover their living expenses and certainly not enough to continue to fund Charlie’s schooling. Whatever his commitment to her and Charlie, Sari knew it was not fair to expect George to support her and her brother indefinitely. The headmaster of Charlie’s school had agreed to give her more time to cover his fees ‘in consideration of Charles’s significant intellectual promise and personal integrity’. But he had made it clear there was a limit to his generosity and they were fast approaching it. There would be no choice now but to default. Charlie was old enough to work, but Sari felt sick at the thought of him having to give up his dreams. She knew he would never blame her, but she couldn’t stand failing him like this. She wanted so much for him.
It was not that she herself had not tried to find employment, but no one was willing to trust a mere woman with the translations her father had undertaken. Her claims that it had been she and not he who had actually done the work had been greeted with amused incredulity. And the employment agencies had been quick to point out that she had none of the skills required to be a governess—she could not sketch, or embroider, or play the harp or pianoforte. It appeared they shared Mrs Ruscombe’s doubts as to her suitability as a lady of quality.
It had been desperation bordering on lunacy that had made her suggest highway robbery as a means of survival. More proof that Mrs Ruscombe and her friends had probably been right about her—no matter if her parents had once been, she wasn’t quality. Certainly no young woman of quality would contemplate such an offer as the one made by this peculiar Lord Crayle. But twenty pounds a month seemed like a fortune to her after these lean years; it was more than most servants could make in an entire year and much, much more than she could ever dream of making as a governess. It would mean Charlie could stay at school and she could even afford to help Mina and George...
‘All right, George. You’re right. We’ll go to London tomorrow and hope our luck takes a turn for the better.’
George smiled.
‘It will, miss. I feel it in my bones.’
Chapter Three (#ulink_96ae0cb5-4667-5a3e-93cc-05ca9ddce126)
Lord Crayle had just sifted through his morning mail when his butler knocked gently at the library door.
‘Two...ah, individuals to see you, my lord,’ he announced calmly, staring at a point beyond Michael’s left shoulder, a clear indication that these visitors were slightly out of the ordinary, but that he was well accustomed to his lordship’s sometimes peculiar choice of guests.
Michael nodded absently.
‘Show them in, Pottle.’
At first Michael just stared at the couple that walked in, perplexed. If not for their relative sizes he might not have made the connection with his Hampstead Heath assailants. Michael was above average in height and breadth, but the man who stood crumpling his cloth hat nervously easily outstripped him.
Despite the giant’s size, it was the woman who captured his attention. At the moment she looked like a slightly dishevelled schoolmistress. Her pelisse was ridiculously outmoded and, contrary to convention, she had removed her simple straw bonnet and held it dangling by its ribbons. She might at one point have been wearing her hair in a bun, but the golden-brown hair appeared to have rebelled and unwound, and was now held back tenuously with a ribbon. It looked surprisingly lush against the drab grey pelisse and it framed an unusual, heart-shaped face with a determined chin. But her eyes were her most arresting feature. They were gently slanted beneath arched brows and a strange mixture of blue and green. Right now they were narrowed as she seemed to be caught between apprehension and nervous amusement.
Michael realised his guests were becoming increasingly uneasy at his silence and he waved them to the two chairs that faced his desk.
‘Please sit down. I trust your arm has healed?’ He turned to the woman, one brow cocked.
Something flashed in her eyes, but she smiled politely and took the seat he indicated.
‘Perfectly. I thank you for your concern.’
He ignored the slight sarcasm in her tones and focused on the voice. His memory had not deceived him. It was deep and cultured. Without the asperity it could be seductive. It was hard to reconcile her obviously high-bred tones and perfect posture with the highway robber who had placed a bullet a whisper away from his temple. But it was most definitely she and she was turning out to be better than he had expected.
‘Good. I am glad you decided to accept my offer. I admit I was not certain you would.’
‘We have accepted nothing yet, my lord. You were rather sketchy about the details...’
