Page 3 of Escape of the Highwayman (Escape #3)

L ord Lessing surprised Chloe the following morning by tracking her down to the stables where the kitchen cat seemed to have chosen to give birth to her kittens.

She had made a nest of straw in a quiet corner, and was pacing restlessly about the stable, weaving under the half doors of the various stalls while the horses watched her warily, and then coming back to her nest for Chloe to stroke her.

“Going to drive over to Ellscombe House,” Papa said on discovering his middle daughter kneeling beside the cat’s straw bed. “Have a word with Dunwoody about this dashed highwayman. You had better come with me.”

“I?” Chloe said, startled by the unprecedented honour.

“You can do the pretty with the ladies while I talk to Dunwoody.” He frowned, as if seeing her for the first time. “You’ve got straw in your hair and that cannot be your best morning dress. It’s covered in mud.”

Well, it had rained last night and some of the paths were muddy.

As though annoyed by Papa’s disapproving tone, the cat sat back on its haunches and jumped onto the wide shelf above the stalls, where hay and oats were stored.

Chloe rose to her feet. The cat’s lying-in did not appear to be as imminent as she had thought. “Should I change?”

“Yes!”

A mere fifteen minutes later, in the same walking dress as yesterday, she sat beside her father in the ancient carriage emblazoned with the Lessing coat of arms as it bowled down the drive and turned up the road toward Ellscombe.

Papa often looked worried but although he did not speak much on the journey, he seemed to be more hopeful and genial than usual.

No doubt he was secretly as intrigued as Richard and George by the gentlemanly highwayman who had paid Chloe’s account to the cruel bird man— though he deserved fining rather than paying.

Papa did not disagree with her on that, though she suspected he was not actually listening.

At Ellscomeb House they were admitted at once and shown straight to the drawing room by Bridge, the ancient butler.

There, they found Mrs. Dunwoody and Laura busy about their needlework.

Mr. Black was present, too, deep in a newspaper held up in front of him, though he lowered it immediately they were announced.

“Lord Lessing and Miss Chloe, ma’am.”

Needlework was abandoned and everyone rose in surprised welcome.

“Bring tea,” Mrs. Dunwoody commanded, and Bridge the old butler creaked out a bow and departed.

“Well, I shall be happy to join you for one cup,” Papa said graciously, shaking hands with Mr. Black. “Is Dunwoody not at home?”

“Oh, he is busy with the constables and a Bow Street runner, would you believe,” Mrs. Dunwoody said with a gesture of distaste. “The downside of a magistrate’s position!”

“Ah. I particularly wanted to see him.”

“They are all up in arms over this highwayman,” Mrs. Dunwoody said disparagingly. “I’ve told Mr. Dunwoody the man is long gone, but they will insist on looking.”

“Ah, it is that very subject on which I wished to consult him,” Papa said.

“Bridge will make sure he knows you are here,” Mrs. Dunwoody assured him.

When everyone sat down again, Chloe was surprised to find Mr. Black beside her on the sofa.

“So,” he said, smiling, “how did all those urchins prevail upon you to give them tea and cake yesterday?”

Chloe, who would have preferred to join in the more general conversation—largely speculation about the highwayman—said vaguely, “Oh, it has become something of a habit when they do something particularly good.”

“And what particularly good deed did they perform yesterday?” Amusement twinkled in his eyes, though it was the kind of superior amusement—that of an adult indulging a child’s whims—that she disliked.

“They stopped a bird-seller cramming lots of wild birds into a single cage.”

“And how did they do that?” Mr. Black enquired.

“By freeing the birds, of course.”

Mr. Black frowned. “Ruining his livelihood. They should be thrashed.”

“They should not,” Chloe said stoutly. “He was in the wrong and he was well paid for his cruelty!”

For a moment, Mr. Black seemed taken aback by her vehemence, though he might just have been unused to a female voicing an opinion contrary to a man’s.

It was, everyone told her, a failing of Chloe’s.

But the smile came quickly back to his eyes, and this time there was nothing supercilious about it.

She liked him better for that but was at once distracted by her father issuing an unprecedented invitation.

Normally, his lordship left all social matters in the capable hands of his wife. So his words to Mrs. Dunwoody took her by surprise.

“Come over for dinner tomorrow evening. We can play cards after, if you like, and have the young ladies entertain us. My wife will send over a note.”

“That would be charming,” Mrs. Dunwoody said at once, though to Chloe, she didn’t look entirely happy.

Chloe glanced at Laura for a clue and found her old friend glaring at her.

The tea arrived, under the old butler’s supervision. “The master requests,” Bridge added, “that his lordship and Miss Chloe step into his study for a moment, when it is convenient.”

It was a day, it seemed, for unusual behaviour.

Chloe could think of no reason Mr. Dunwoody would wish to see her, unless the bird seller had been complaining, which would be outrageous considering how well he had been paid.

While Chloe had spent all her allowance and had nothing left.

She cast a somewhat guilty glance at her father, whom she had not yet informed of this detail.

There was no time to speak to Laura, for Papa did not linger over his tea. Having repeated his dinner invitation for tomorrow evening, he rose and took his leave, sweeping Chloe out of the room and across the hall to Mr. Dunwoody’s study.

Here they found their host in company with one of the familiar parish constables and a man in a red waistcoat whom Chloe recognized all too easily as one of the highwayman’s pursuers.

Worse, he clearly recognized her, for his eyes narrowed and he stood up very straight.

“This fellow’s name is Dance,” Mr. Dunwoody said, after shaking hands with his lordship and smiling at Chloe in an apologetic sort of a way which did little to calm her unease.

“He is from Bow Street in London and pursuing an infamous highwayman who seems to have stopped in Greater Lessing yesterday.”

“So I heard,” Papa said. “Came to ask you the truth of it.”

“I wish I could tell you! It’s Dance here who knows all about the fellow. Eh, Dance?”

The Bow Street runner bowed respectfully enough but kept his gaze on Chloe. “I’m just wondering what you know, miss.”

“About the highwayman?” Chloe said in surprise. “Why, nothing.”

“Really? And yet I have witnesses who say you spoke to him.”

“Well, I did not,” Chloe said indignantly. “I don’t think he even spoke to me. If you are referring to the man who galloped his horse through the market, he just appeared while I was having an altercation with the bird seller.”

“And what was that altercation about?”

Chloe lifted her chin. “I bought his birds and freed them, and he demanded an exorbitant price. The fellow you call a highwayman prevented him from poking me in the chest in the rudest way imaginable.”

“Oh, did he?” Papa exclaimed. “I’ll have the fellow’s license!”

“You need a license to be a highwayman?” Chloe said innocently.

Papa’s lips twitched.

“Why did the highwayman do that?” asked Dance.

“I really don’t know,” Chloe said. “Perhaps he felt sorry for me or dislikes bullies. I did not have time to thank him, for he simply slapped a banknote into the seller’s hand and walked off again. I think he had seen you with his horse.”

“Hmm.” Dance looked sceptical. “So you never saw this man before?”

“Nor since,” Chloe replied.

“Do you know his name?”

“Certainly not. No, wait, I did hear him tell you that his name is Xanthippos Bear.”

Dance’s eyes narrowed. “And how exactly did you come to hear that?”

“Why, because I followed him to pay him back for whatever he had given the bird seller.” Well, she had meant to ask his name and direction so that Papa could pay him back, but she had no intention of saying so at this point.

“And did you?” Dance asked.

“Did I what?”

“Pay the highwayman back?”

“Why no, he rode off through the market before I got to him.”

“And have you heard from him since?”

“Of course not!” Chloe exclaimed.

“Are you—” Dance began with some belligerence, only to be interrupted by Papa who had close limits to his patience.

“That’s enough,” he said, glaring at the runner. “I won’t have my daughter badgered as though she were some kind of common criminal. She has told you the facts of the matter. Now go and catch the dashed highwayman before he causes any more trouble.”

Dance looked somewhat chagrined and might not have backed down even then if Dunwoody had not glared at him too and jerked his head toward the back of the room.

“Sorry, Lessing,” Mr. Dunwoody said. “I understand he’s a good man and only oversteps in his eagerness to do his duty. He doesn’t have the benefit of having known Miss Chloe from her cradle.”

“Well,” Papa said, allowing himself to be mollified. “Hope we’ll see you for dinner tomorrow.”

“Oh?” Dunwoody said. “Ladies up to something, are they?”

“Aren’t they always?” Papa said blandly, which is when it struck Chloe, belatedly, that Papa himself was up to something.

“Papa,” she said, once they were sitting in the carriage on the return journey to Lessing Place, “why did you invite the Dunwoodys to dine?”

“They’re our neighbours,” he said. “Known them forever. They often dine with us.”

“Yes, but Mama invites them while you mutter about the expense.”

His lordship scowled. “I do not mutter. And in this case, I believe the expense is justified.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody being such old friends.”

“Precisely.”

“Will you invite the vicar’s family, too?”

“Never thought of it,” Papa said without much interest. “Up to your mother.”