Her Ladyship's Companion Page 8

  At Giles’s sarcastic voice Red Scarf broke out of his trance. His eyes tore from Robbie and dazedly focused on Giles. If it had not been ridiculous, Melissa could almost have believed some sort of appeal rested in them.

  Giles studied the assailant intently. His voice was heavy with authority. “You will relieve us of our money, such as it is, and go on your way.” He spoke slowly and emphatically. “There’s no need to hurt any of us. It would be very unwise of you to do so, I promise you.”

  Blue Scarf, bored no doubt with the continued contemplation of an elderly coachman, a small coach boy, and two horses, edged closer and began muttering at his companion.

  The gun lowered to Robbie’s chest and wavered a bit.

  Suddenly Giles caught Edgar’s arm as the young man launched himself forward. Anna spilled onto the floor of the barouche.

  “Stop, you fool!” Giles hissed furiously. He swept Edgar back to his seat with a wide swing of his arm. “Stay still!”

  Red Scarf grunted, gripping the gun tightly. Everyone sat paralyzed. Time was suspended. Blue Scarf said something angrily that Melissa didn’t catch. She thought she saw Red Scarf’s finger tighten on the trigger. The gun was pointed at Robbie’s heart.

  The carriage might have been empty, save for Robbie, for all the attention the robber gave the others. His eyes were fixed glassily on Robbie’s red head and pale, freckled face.

  Beneath the concealing wrappings Melissa could see the robber’s lips moving silently. She was overcome with a sense of dread. Surely no man, however great a villain, would do harm to a boy. And why would he want to? But the rifle continued to point in Robbie’s direction. Moving by instinct, not reason, she slowly, second by dragging second, drew the boy closer to her. She moved her own body in front of him, in line with the gun. There was no sound in the barouche but the noise of Anna’s sobs coming up from the floor.

  With Robbie hidden behind her, Melissa glared defiantly at the robber. Her angry eyes locked with his. Her mind hammered out at him silently: I won’t let you hurt him.

  The moment passed. The gun wavered. The red-scarved robber slouched on his horse. It was as if a balloon were slowly losing air. All the menace leaked out of him. When he spoke again, it was in a low voice full of tiredness. “Git to it then, milor’. Let’s ‘ave the money at least.”

  Blue Scarf moved closer, snarling, “What are ye wasting time ver? Git it over wif and git away, ye vhule.”

  “Le’ me be!” Red Scarf hissed back. “Er do it yerself if yer so eager ver it.” Giles still watched him intently, but the pistol was no longer held at alert. Anna, apparently noticing at last how dusty the coach floor was, scrambled up onto the seat to do her crying.

  “Put ’er in ’ere,” the robber directed, pulling a crumpled cap from his pocket and tossing it into Edgar’s lap.

  Giles spoke, calm and unhurried. “You’ll find us poor pigeons for your plucking. My secretary, as I’m sure he’d tell you if he felt less belligerent, receives a very indifferent wage. My aunt’s companion is no richer. The children are wealthy but, alas, incapable of carrying their broad acres suspended about their necks.” Carefully he withdrew a purse from the pocket of his waistcoat and dropped it into the cap. “I hope this purse is fat enough to make it worth your valuable time.”

  “Yer watch also, milor’.”

  “Yes. How remiss of me,” Giles murmured, drawing it forth from another pocket.

  Above the crossed scarf the man eyed the other passengers with suspicion. He was all business, singling out; Melissa. “You, pretty leddy? What? No rings, no pretty gauds?”

  Melissa managed to answer, in a voice that didn’t shake, “No. I’m afraid a companion’s salary doesn’t run to such things.” She spread her unadorned hands in illustration. She was relieved when he searched beyond her.

  “An’ the yeng gent’man? Come naugh, a watch at least?” Edgar, without speaking, pulled forth his watch. Contemptuously he dug down deep and added a few coins of little value to the collection.

  The robber caught sight of the rings on Anna’s fingers when she brought her hands up to shield her face from the sight of him. “I’ll ’ave those rings, too, vrom the weeping gel.” His voice had a faint undertone of injured pride. “Ne need to carry on zho, gel. I’m not goin’ to lay a vhinger on ye.”

  Anna began to fumble frantically with her rings. A minor form of vanity led her to buy her rings a size too small, and she was unable to squeeze them past her knuckles. It was Edgar, at a sign from Giles, who did it for her, pulling off the rings, adding them to the booty, and handing the cap back to the robber. He was so furious by this time that his hands shook noticeably as he did so.

  The cap containing the valuables was pushed heedlessly into a pocket as Red Scarf looked again at Robbie. But he made no move to threaten the boy further. Shaking his head regretfully, he kicked his horse into the necessary velocity and trotted off.

  His companion, before joining him, glared venomously at them all, spat eloquently upon the ground, and cursed. Then he spurred to catch up. He was already pawing at Red Scarf’s pocket before they vanished from sight over the hill.

  Edgar immediately burst from the carriage and leaped to the ground. He pushed aside the driver’s boy, jumped to the tack, and began loosening the straps. The carriage horses, offended, stopped cropping docilely and began to back in their harness.

  “Just what the devil do you think you’re doing?” Giles demanded as he stepped down from the barouche. He went in a deliberate fashion to the near horse and stroked its withers soothingly. “Tighten up on the rein there a bit, Darby,” he ordered the elderly groom. “That’s right.”

  “But, sir, you’re letting them get away!” Edgar cried passionately, his voice high with vexation.

  “Whereas you intend to give chase single-handed on a carriage horse?” Giles questioned sardonically. “With one pistol against two rifles, in country you don’t know, leaving the ladies alone here in Darby’s charge in case the ruffians feel like circling back again?”

  Edgar flushed. “We can’t just let them get away with it, sir.”

  “I have no intention,” Giles said grimly, “of letting them get away with anything. But this is neither the time nor the place for such pursuit. I beg you to restrain your laudable but misplaced enthusiasm.”

  Edgar protested hotly, “You could have stopped them. You had a gun. Why didn’t you shoot him when you had the chance?”

  “Quite possibly because I had no wish to sit and watch his companion shoot you, or the ladies, or Robbie, while I paused to reload. Besides,” Giles added thoughtfully, “a crude shooting would dispose of these yokels, but it would leave too many questions unanswered in my mind.”

  “Questions, Mr. Tarsin?” Melissa queried, leaning out of the carriage. Anna lay weakly sniveling, crumpled against the seat cushions. Melissa wasn’t charitable enough to go to her aid, but she wished Harold had accompanied them. He had a sympathetic, caressing manner with Anna that would have quieted her in no time.

  The junior coachman busied himself by rolling aside the log that blocked the road. “Let’s get underway,” Giles announced. “I’ve no wish to remain sitting in this extremely inhospitable neighborhood a moment longer than we must.”

  He folded the pistol carefully back into his coat and stowed the coat away safely behind the seat again. “Yes, Miss Rivenwood,” he said thoughtfully, “I have several unanswered questions in my mind. For instance, what were these desperate characters doing on a deserted country road? This is hardly Hampstead Heath. To my certain knowledge this particular stretch connects only two impoverished country towns. Yet we were ambushed. Don’t you find it curious?”

  “I find the whole business curious,” Melissa said frankly. “Somehow being robbed was very different from what I’d imagined it’d be.”

  “A most atypical robbery,” Giles agreed.

  “In broad daylight. Surely that’s not customary. And such very inexperienced robbers. Do you
suppose they could have been Luddites, somebody with a political grudge?”

  “There’s little unrest locally,” Giles said. “They didn’t look like tinners—like miners. They were farmers, I think, and a far cry from the political malcontents I’m familiar with. I’d be inclined to suspect a practical joke except—”

  Edgar pulled himself up into the high coach and was sufficiently beside himself to interrupt his employer in mid-sentence. “How can you sit there talking about a practical joke when these men have been pointing a gun at your head?” he demanded incredulously. “Aren’t you even angry? Don’t you plan to do anything at all?”

  Giles looked slightly amused. “Possibly I’m more used to the idea of men pointing guns at me than you are. You are correct in one thing, though. I’m not going to forget the fact that they were also pointing guns at the rest of you.”

  His expressionless eyes traveled to where Robbie, subdued, was gripping Melissa’s hand. “I won’t forgive the man responsible for this when I find him.”

  The coach jolted forward, and they were on their way again. Giles leaned back and closed his eyes. “Do stop crying, Anna,” he pleaded languidly. “A red face clashes violently with pink muslin. Don’t you agree, Edgar?”

  The sound of unbridled sobbing ceased as if by magic.

  Chapter 9

  ... where so much wealth is invested in one little boy. Besides Vinton Manor and the surrounding farms there are extensive properties in London and ...

  Excerpt from the letter of Melissa Rivenwood to Cecilia Luffington, July 30, 1818

  “...so Jack took the giant’s treasure and bought new dresses for his cousin and his great-aunt and a gold watch for his uncle and had clean slate roofs put on all the houses in the village and had a new well dug for the churchyard.” Melissa took a deep breath and concluded, “And everyone lived happily ever after. And that’s the true and completely factual story as reported by the Times.”

  Robbie grinned. “It seems to me Nanny used to tell a slightly different story.”

  “The old-fashioned account. This is the updated, improved version.”

  “Planting magic beans by the latest scientific methods? Really, Miss Rivenwood.”

  Melissa smiled back at him. But in truth, she was more worried about Robbie than she liked to admit. It showed in the tiny crease between her eyebrows. Since the attack upon their carriage that morning the boy had been much too quiet, his skinny body tense as a stretched bowstring. Where was all the exuberance that nightly rocked the schoolroom, driving poor old Nanny Babcock to distraction?

  Melissa smoothed the linen sheets and searched for the right words. “Is something bothering you, Robbie?” she ventured at last. “I don’t mean to pry. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.”

  Robbie looked at her steadily, a surprisingly mature and shrewd regard.

  “I don’t say I can be of any help, you understand,” Melissa continued, “but sometimes just talking about it helps.”

  “Talking won’t help,” Robbie said. Melissa was shocked by the bitterness in his voice. “I’ve tried talking to Uncle Giles.”

  “I... I see,” Melissa replied rather helplessly, not seeing at all.

  “I told him, and he didn’t believe me.” Robbie’s voice held an overlying tone of outrage. He was stung by the unfairness of it all.

  “I can’t promise to believe one way or the other,” Melissa said. “I can promise to listen. I’ll try to believe you.”

  Robbie chewed his lip. Worry and uncertainty were out of place on a snub-nosed freckled face. Something was gnawing at the child, and Melissa’s heart ached to help. What juvenile peccadillo was worthy of all this?

  At last he spoke hesitantly. “This morning, when the man pointed his gun into the coach ...”

  “Yes,” Melissa prompted.

  “At me, you know.”

  “Yes.” Melissa waited. No more came. “If you’re afraid, Robbie, that’s no great thing to be ashamed of. It’s natural that—”

  “No!” He cut her off quickly. “It’s not that. I’m not afraid because we were robbed. I’m not,” he said with infinite masculine scorn, “like Anna.” He scowled blankly at the wall behind her. “Those men didn’t come to rob us. They came to kill me. Then they changed their minds and went away without doing it.”

  Melissa’s eyes widened in consternation. Sudden as a drenching of cold water the thought swept into her mind: That’s exactly what I thought. When he pointed the gun at Robbie, that’s just what I feared.

  Robbie threw the covers off and sat up in bed and grabbed hold of her hand, words spilling out of him all at once. “Please, Miss Rivenwood. Don’t close up on me. Listen. It was in his eyes. When he looked at me. He wasn’t interested in the money, not really.”

  “Robbie ...”

  “That’s not all. When the other man came up and they were talking together, I heard him say, ‘Shoot the boy.’ I could hear it clearly. That’s what he said.”

  “It was all muffled, Robbie. They were whispering. And the dialect is so thick here.”

  “It’s not dialect to me, Miss Rivenwood. I’m a Cornishman.”

  The poor little boy. No wonder he’d been so stiff and miserable all day. What a dreadful thing to believe.

  In the cooler moments after the robbery, a little common sense had put her own fears to rest. But a seven-year-old. How could he be expected to reason things out as an adult would? He was talking himself into all sorts of things.

  “It may have sounded that way,” Melissa said carefully. “But I was closer, and I didn’t hear him say any such thing.”

  “You have to ask the maids to repeat things sometimes. That’s when they’re talking out loud in their best voice.”

  Melissa acknowledged the thrust. “Nobody else heard anything.”

  “Edgar and Anna are Londoners.”

  “Your uncle?”

  “Uncle Giles may not have heard.” Robbie’s eyes dropped. It was a weak point.

  “You might have made a mistake,” Melissa said gently. “As for the way he looked at you, and pointing the gun at you, I admit it scared me, too, at the time.” Thinking back, Melissa was rather ashamed of herself, pulling the boy behind her out of sight of the gun. Nothing is more foolish than heroics that don’t quite come off. “But it’s possible he may have known who you were and stared because he’d never seen an earl before. After all, he had to point the gun somewhere. He probably figured that with the gun on you none of us would dare attack.”

  Robbie looked contemptuous. “I’m not stupid. I can see that much.”

  There was one more really telling argument. Melissa didn’t like to overwhelm Robbie with superior logic, but this was a debate he didn’t want to win.

  “Robbie, even if for some reason the men wanted to kill you, even if that were true, they had no way of knowing you would be there. Do you see what I’m saying? Almost nobody in the whole world knew we were going to visit Lady Amelia. Just your family and a few people down in the stables, that’s all.”

  Robbie was so quiet the silence was almost tangible. Then, “You’re right, Miss Rivenwood.”

  Melissa had won, it seemed. But it brought Robbie no comfort.

  “But this isn’t the first time,” he added.

  “Not the first time?” Melissa repeated stupidly.

  “Not the first time somebody’s tried to kill me. They tried before. There was a fire. They spilled oil on the rug out in the schoolroom and locked the door behind them.”

  “That was an accident, Robbie. I wasn’t here, but I heard all about it.”

  “Miss Rivenwood,” the boy said with exaggerated patience, “I’m neither deaf nor an idiot. I know that everyone says it was an accident. But, you see, I have this advantage. I was here, right here in the bedroom, when the fire began. Do you think I wouldn’t have heard somebody knock a lamp over in the schoolroom? The door was open between here and the schoolroom, and it must be all of fifteen feet.”
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  “You were asleep.”

  “I was supposed to be asleep,” Robbie said crossly. “I wasn’t. I was awake, looking out the window over there.” He jerked his chin toward the pair of tall windows across the room. “I heard the door close, and then I smelled smoke. That lamp didn’t fall.”

  Melissa countered, “The lamp fell on a rug. There needn’t have been much noise.”

  “And if somebody had spilled lamp oil and laid the lamp beside it, there wouldn’t have been any noise whatever.”

  Melissa sighed in exasperation. “Robbie, it’s possible, I suppose, but there’s not a shred of proof.”

  “Here’s some proof for you. Nobody ever comes into the schoolroom after I’m in bed except Nanny. She was away that night.”

  “Miss Coburn probably came in to check on you. As a matter of fact, she might well have been the one who knocked the lamp over.”

  “She wasn’t that interested in me,” Robbie said cynically. “Besides, who do you think I was watching out the window?”

  “Oh.”

  “Coburn used to meet somebody at the lake by the bridge to the summerhouse.”

  “Miss Coburn,” Melissa said, correcting him automatically.

  Robbie, very rightly, ignored this. “She used to put on her good blue dress and disappear for hours. I guess she thought she was being sneaky or something. Anyway, she wasn’t anywhere near here when the fire started.”

  “One of the servants then.”

  “Who? Polly? Betty? Do you think I wouldn’t know if they were lying?”

  “It’s not evidence. It’s not proof, Robbie. To say that somebody did that on purpose ... That’s a terrible accusation to make without proof.”

  “I have proof,” Robbie snapped.

  “What proof?”

  Robbie hesitated.

  “Go ahead. You’ve told me everything up to this point.”

  Robbie took a deep breath. “After the fire they let me go back to the schoolroom to look. They didn’t want to, but I had to see what happened to my things.”

  Melissa reflected that Robbie was in the habit of getting his own way a bit more than was good for him.