Captain Rakehell Read online

  “Of course I do!” Teddy cried indignantly. “It’s why I was there! But now, thanks to you, I’m here instead!”

  “Just precisely where is here, by the way?” Earnshaw asked, glancing around him at the trees enclosing the glade and the wisps of ground fog drifting between them.

  “Regents Park. Madame suggested it. She also suggested rapiers—”

  “To avoid bringing the whole of Bow Street down on us, yes, I remember now. Something about the Runners keeping a watchful eye on her establishment for gentlemen who leave there with scores to settle.”

  “It was also Madame’s suggestion that we adjourn here straightaway, because the Runners periodically keep dawn watches at the usual fields.”

  “A wise woman, Madame,” sighed Earnshaw. “Well, I suppose we should get on with it then.”

  “Are you all right, now?” Teddy asked, as he helped his brother to his feet.

  “Other than being thoroughly soaked, I seem to be.”

  “Sorry, Lesley, but when mention of Amanda Gilbertson couldn’t rouse you from your stupor, I hadn’t any choice.”

  “Since I am now roused,” the Captain growled, “I’ll thank you not to mention the chit’s name until I contrive a way to make her cry off.”

  “I’ve thought of a way.” Teddy grinned and folded his arms. “Simply carve up Hawksley and bruit it about that it was your swordsmanship that left him looking like a Christmas goose.”

  “Think of another one,” Earnshaw suggested with a pointed glance. “I’ve no wish to see the inside of Newgate, thank you, and I’ve been to France.”

  A howl of outrage drew their attention to the opposite side of the glade, and to Lyndon and Forbes fleeing Sir Alex, who lurched to his feet spitting water and epithets.

  “I say, Hawksley!” Earnshaw called quietly. “You might recall the point of this is secrecy, so if you wouldn’t mind—stifle it!”

  “Right you are,” replied Sir Alex, as he shook the water off himself. “A moment and I’ll be with you.”

  “At your leisure.”

  “Perhaps,” Teddy suggested brightly, “your not showing up at mother’s ball tonight will put Amanda off.”

  “Doubtful.” Carefully, Captain Earnshaw wiped the blade of his rapier on his buff-colored pantaloons. “If she’s been out—how many Seasons did you say?”

  “Three.”

  “Three Seasons, then, with no offers, she’s undoubtedly desperate.” He stepped closer to the lantern to examine the rapier, the tallowy light streaking his still-wet raven hair with blue highlights. “Tell the truth, Teddy. How ugly did she grow up to be?”

  “Not very,” he lied, hiding the grin on his face behind a hastily cupped hand. “And she’s had offers, Lesley. One that I know of—perhaps even two.”

  “Why the devil did Lord Hampton refuse them?” A lock of hair fell over the captain’s drawn-together eyebrows as he ran the flat of his thumb lightly up the edge of the blade.

  “According to Andrew he didn’t—it was Amanda.”

  “For heaven’s sake why?” Earnshaw asked mildly, as he took several practice cuts.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Is that so?”

  The rapier flashed in the backwash of the lantern and came to rest with its tip just pricking Teddy’s neckcloth. Despite the grin on his face, the boy swallowed hard.

  “Since you ask so politely, then,” he said, lying baldly as he eased the unresisting blade away from his throat. “According to Andrew, Amanda is holding fast to the attachment she formed for you in childhood.”

  “Teddy.” Earnshaw said threateningly, bringing the tip of the rapier again to his throat.

  “I swear it’s the truth, Lesley. On our father’s grave I swear it.”

  He made the vow knowing that their father, the Master of every Jackanapes ever born, would forgive him; and that the lie was the very least Lesley deserved for depriving him of his luscious redhead.

  “Oh, dear God,” Earnshaw sighed, the rapier going limp in his hand.

  “I’d sooner you killed me now,” Teddy said, stepping in font of the wilted blade, “as let on to Amanda that I’ve told you. I gave Andrew my word I wouldn’t, you know.”

  “I won’t betray you, Teddy,” Earnshaw said soberly, frowning as he resheathed his blade, “Damn and blast! I could have sworn she loathed me.”

  “Oh, no!” Teddy assured him quickly. “You should have seen her, Lesley, when we read in the Dispatches that the Second had captured an Eagle. Why, her breast nearly burst with pride! Amanda is convinced you secured the standard singlehandedly.”

  Making a noise in his throat, the captain forked his hands through his hair and turned away.

  “Frankly, Lesley,” Teddy went on blithely, “I can’t think of a single thing that would turn Amanda’s affections. She’s quite convinced that you are the handsomest, bravest cove that ever—”

  “What’d you say?” Earnshaw interrupted, spinning sharply on one heel.

  “I said I can’t think of a single—”

  “No, no — tell me again what Amanda thinks.”

  “I said she thinks you’re the handsomest, bravest—”

  “That’s it!” The captain grinned and clasped his brother’s shoulders. “Bless you, Teddy! You’ve saved me from a parson’s mousetrap!”

  “I have?” He asked blankly. “How’d I do that?”

  “Very well, Earnshaw!” Hawksley called gruffly. “Ready when you are!”

  “Just coming!” The captain gave Teddy an affectionate jostle. “Later, lad.”

  Perplexed, Teddy hurried to keep pace with Lesley as he strode, whistling under his breath, toward the lanterns lighting the middle of the glade. Lyndon had withdrawn to one of the sidelines, where he sat on the water keg to keep watch. Forbes, who’d come down in the coach with Teddy and Smithers, followed from the far side of the glade behind his cousin Hawksley.

  “Here we are then, Alex.” Earnshaw stopped a few paces short of his opponent. “I’ll give you one last chance to recant.”

  “Not much point since we’re already out here,” Hawksley replied, as he drew his rapier. “But I’ll say this much—you’re going to be a busy fellow, Lesley, if you call out everyone who dubs Charles His Dottiness.”

  “I think not.” The captain grinned, taking his blade in hand and squaring off on Hawksley. “Once word gets round of how easily I sliced you up for beefsteak, I’m sure the term will fall out of fashion.”

  “Oh ho!” Sir Alex laughed, taking his stance. “Brave words!”

  “Am I supposed to be doing something?” Teddy asked, the gleam in his brother’s eyes making him nervous.

  “Just keep out of the way,” Earnshaw replied, his gaze fixed intently on Hawksley, as the slightly taller but much heavier man began to circle him.

  “Don’t have to tell me twice,” Forbes said, catching Teddy’s elbow and drawing him clear of the lanterns.

  “I’ll give you first strike, Alex,” the captain offered, wincing a bit as he shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet and felt the muscles in his left leg tighten.

  “First and last,” replied Hawksley, feinting, and then following with a deft inside thrust.

  Just as deftly, Earnshaw deflected it and countered with a lightning quick stroke that sliced Sir Alex’s left sleeve near the shoulder. Hawksley glanced down at the blood staining his linen and tightened his grip on his rapier.

  “Thought you’d be rusty, Lesley.”

  “Think again, Alex.”

  More cautiously this time, Hawksley circled, looking for a weakness. Earnshaw’s pulse was thudding with excitement so loudly inside his head that he didn’t hear his brother’s shout, wasn’t aware that he’d even spoken until Sir Alex lowered his blade and glanced toward the sideline. The captain turned then, as Teddy and Forbes and Smithers came pelting toward them.

  “Runners!” Teddy cried. “Three of them, working their way this direction!”

  “D
amn!” Earnshaw spat, more disappointed than alarmed, as he sheathed his rapier. “We’ll have to finish this another time, Alex.”

  “So we will, Lesley.” Hawksley, too, put away his rapier, then said to Forbes, “Stay with your chums, lad, and get yourselves back to your coach quick as you can.”

  “Come on!” Teddy cried urgently, tugging at his brother’s arm. “They’re coming!”

  Though he wasn’t overly concerned—Bow Street rarely made trouble over duels between gentlemen—Earnshaw allowed Teddy to pull him into a limping run toward the stand of elms where he and Hawksley had left their horses. As they entered the trees, a gruff voice called from the far side of the dense copse: “You there! Hold!”

  “The bloody hell I will!” Earnshaw shouted back. In answer, there came the snap and rustle of heavy feet moving rapidly toward them through the wood.

  “Damn buggers have us surrounded!” Hawksley cried, his voice ringing with outrage, as he untied and mounted his bay gelding.

  “Go, Lesley!” Teddy urged, pushing his brother toward his prancing, excited black.

  “And leave you to face a pack of Runners?” Stumbling against his horse, Earnshaw caught hold of the saddle but refused to mount. “Not likely!”

  “What can they do to me if you aren’t here?” Teddy unlashed the reins securing his brother’s stallion to a stout sapling and shoved them into his hands. “And think what mother will do if she finds out about this!”

  “He’s right,” Hawksley agreed. “Without our presence to incriminate them, the lads will be safe enough.”

  He dug his heels into the bay’s flanks, then, and the gelding leaped away. Earnshaw’s stallion tried to bolt with him, and while the captain fumbled to gather his reins and steady the ready-to-run thoroughbred, Teddy grabbed his left boot heel and tossed him into the saddle. Taken off guard, Earnshaw had no choice but to catch the stirrups and snatch the bit out of Lucifer’s teeth to keep him from rearing.

  “Meet me at mother’s house,” Teddy told him, “in the stables. I’ll bring you a change of clothes.”

  “Too late,” Earnshaw replied, looking over the stallion’s ears at the three figures striding into the lantern-lit glade. “Bright as daylight out there, they’ll see me for sure.”

  “My mask from Madame Sophia’s!” Teddy cried, jumping up and down and trying to pluck it out of Lesley’s waistcoat. “Put it on! Quickly!”

  In an effort to calm his brother and Lucifer, who were both just this side of apoplexy, Earnshaw took the leathers in his teeth, drew out the mask and tied it around his head. As he did so, Teddy backed away from the stallion, drew back his arm and slapped him as hard as he could on the rump.

  Snorting and laying back his ears, Lucifer sprang half-up on his hind legs, then shot out of the trees at a full gallop. The Runners crossing the glade gave way as the stallion thundered toward them flinging clods of turf from under his hooves.

  As he turned to duck into the trees, Teddy cast a last glance at Lucifer galloping his brother to safety. At the sight of Lesley rising from his saddle to stand in his stirrups, he began to laugh. And then he began to run.

  Chapter Three

  Warm as the early evening had been, by midnight it was decidedly chilly in the upper reaches of the beech tree. Andrew gallantly gave Amanda his coat, but the thin, satin-lined evening jacket was little protection against the damp in the thick fog gathering at the foot of the old tree.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Amanda whispered, her teeth chattering in her brother’s ear. “I could stay here and keep watch on Jack and Harry while you go for help.”

  “No, Mandy,” Andrew whispered sternly. “I will not leave you unprotected.”

  “I’ll be perfectly safe up here—”

  “No,” Andrew repeated. “It’ll be soon now, I think. If I were the thief, I’d strike while the guests were dining.”

  Almost as he spoke the words, the music drifting from the house stopped, signaling that supper had been announced. A rustle in the shrubbery and a few guttural words exchanged by Harry and Jack confirmed the veracity of Andrew’s statement.

  “We should climb lower,” Amanda whispered, “so we can see their faces.”

  “We’ll do no such thing.”

  “But how will we be able to identify them?”

  “Identifying them is not our responsibility.”

  “Then whose is it, I should like to know?”

  “‘Ere now, what’s that?” Jack growled, the bushes snapping loudly. “You ‘ear somethin’, ‘Arry?”

  Andrew froze, but Amanda didn’t. Seizing the opportunity, she caught an overhead branch and used it to swing herself around the trunk to the opposite side of the tree. Too late, Andrew heard the telltale whisper of her satin skirts. He twisted on the limb to catch her, just as the last torn inch of the hem of her gown slipped out of his reach.

  “There it is a’gin,” Jack said, his tone low and wary. “You ‘ear anythin’, ‘Arry?”

  “Jus’ th’ wind, Jack, murmurin’ in that big ol’ tree.”

  “Th’ wind ain’t blowin’, ya idget.”

  “It ain’t?”

  A thump and howl came from the bushes, as Andrew inched around the trunk and saw Amanda, standing sure-footed on a thick limb several feet below him. As he watched her, she leaned cautiously forward and caught the trailing end of her gown. Drawing the skirt up between her legs, she tucked it into her waist sash.

  Andrew groaned silently. He’d seen his sister secure her skirts thus hundreds of times, usually before flinging herself astraddle onto her pony, climbing into the loft of the barn at Hampton Hall, or wading into the creek. Heaven only knew what she was preparing for now, but whatever it was, it was his duty—as it always had been—to save her from herself. Sighing, he climbed after her.

  The scrape of his foot on a branch above her alerted Amanda to his approach. Flinging a glare at him, she swung herself one limb lower. Andrew held up a hand to reassure her, then wedged himself into the crotch she’d just vacated.

  “No lower,” he hissed, and she nodded.

  Gauging they were still a good fifteen feet or so from the steaming ground—and hoping it would be a safe enough distance—Andrew turned his attention to the Duchess of Braxton’s mansion. He heard Jack and Harry’s accomplice before he saw him, and realized as the figure stepped into the backwash of the lights blazing from the house, that the dull clanking he’d heard came from the sack thrown over the man’s left shoulder. He realized, too, that the angle of his approach would bring him directly beneath the beech tree, where Amanda’s slippers and the lantern still lay on the ground. Andrew caught and held his breath.

  So did Amanda, but for an entirely different reason. Noble as she thought Andy was for putting her safety above apprehending these criminals, she had no intention of allowing them to escape. She, too, had realized that the thief hurrying across the garden must pass directly beneath them to reach the gate in the wall where Harry and Jack awaited him. She intended to drop out of the tree onto his head, which, of course, would give Andy no choice but to jump after her to save her from these desperate men.

  Not that she thought they were—at least not Jack and Harry—but she’d chosen not to argue the point with Andy. If she’d learned nothing else in the three luckless Seasons since her come out, Amanda had learned that gentlemen didn’t like being made fools of by females.

  Almost running now, the sack flung over his shoulder making an awful racket, the thief drew within ten feet of the beech tree. Her heart pounding and her palms nervously damp, Amanda gripped the limb upon which she crouched.

  “Hallo, Smythe!” Jack called from the shrubbery. “S’that you?”

  “Who else you expectin’? Prinney ‘imself?” Smythe replied, as he drew nearer to Amanda and she wiggled closer to the edge of the limb.

  Just as she gathered herself to jump, Smythe tripped and fell face-first on the spongy, muddy grass. The sack spilled off his shoulder, slid down the short slop
e of ground to the garden wall, and came to rest there with a clunk.

  What luck! He’s already down, Amanda thought, all I have to do is hold him there. But as she let go of the limb to jump, Andrew caught a handful of his coat and held her fast.

  “Andy!” She gasped, trying to twist herself free. “We can catch them if—”

  Slipping his right arm up and under hers, Andrew clapped his hand over his sister’s mouth, and wrapped his left arm half around the beech trunk. “We could also catch a knife in the ribs,” he hissed in her ear.

  “‘Ere, Smythe!” Jack called. “What’s ‘appened?”

  “I tripped on somethin’,” Smythe replied, feeling the ground around him as he reared back on his heels. “Git over ‘ere wi’ th’ lamp.”

  There was a flare of light in the bushes, which faded suddenly—probably as Jack slipped a hood over the lantern, Andrew guessed—then the scrape of heavy boots on stone. Two figures, dimly outlined in the half light, clambered over the wall. The larger one bent to retrieve the sack, flung it with a clank over his shoulder, then joined his two fellows under the tree.

  “What’s this?” Smythe said, as he got to his feet and stepped closer to the shrouded lantern. “Lift th’ shade a bit, Jack.”

  Andrew groaned as a thin beam of light fell on Amanda’s muddy shoe, and the gold braid trim on the sleeve of the peacock blue Braxton livery worn by Smythe. But that’s all he saw, for the light was too feeble to illuminate the thieves’ faces.

  “A ladies’ slipper!” Jack exclaimed. “What you s ‘pose it’s doin’ ‘ere?”

  Harry stepped closer to have a look, stumbled, and bumped into Jack.

  “‘Arry, you idget!”

  “Look, Jack!” Harry bent down and came up with Amanda’s other shoe. “‘Ere’s th’ other ‘un!”

  “Gimme that.” Smythe snatched it away from him and held the slippers close to the lantern. “It’s a matched pair, all right. One could be a cast off, er lost, but the two of ‘em …”

  Slowly, he raised his face to the beech tree. It was too dark to make out his features, and Andrew, who tightened his grip on Amanda as she began to tremble, prayed it was also too dark for Smythe to see them.