Page 8 of Escape of the Highwayman (Escape #3)

He shouldn’t, of course, but he did not seem to have a choice. He was weaker than one of those tiny kittens.

“I’ll come back later,” she said. “I don’t know how much later because we’re having guests for dinner.” She wrinkled her nose, and he gathered she did not look forward to the party. “One of them is a justice of the peace, so you must lie particularly low.”

He could not see a problem with that. Standing up was the hard part. Besides, her presence had calmed him. He didn’t mind the pain, and he was so very tired...

***

H ORRACE BLACK HAD FEW illusions about himself.

He knew he was clever and quick, and he had turned his father’s modest wealth into a fortune by those qualities, plus a good deal of hard work.

He was also attractive to women, and he did not waste time on wondering futilely if their liking stemmed from his person or his money. In truth, he didn’t much care.

Thanks to his father, he had a decent education and could speak the king’s English. This did not make him a gentleman, and it never would. But the next generation might aspire, if he chose his bride with care.

This was what had drawn him to Ellscombe House.

Aware of his limitations, he knew the gentry was a likelier prospect than the aristocracy, and after a meeting with Mr. Dunwoody had spilled into an amiable dinner and an invitation to stay at his country home for a couple of weeks, Horrace had jumped at the chance.

He could smell an ulterior motive a mile away, and Dunwoody clearly had one.

Horrace was willing to play. He knew to a penny Dunwoody’s income, debts and expenditure.

He knew he had a wife, a student son at Oxford, and an unmarried daughter at home who was unlikely to have the pleasure of a London Season.

In short, the Dunwoodys needed money, and Horrace needed a gently born bride. They could do business.

Laura Dunwoody was a pleasant, unexceptionable girl, and he still had every intention of marrying her and founding his dynasty.

Still, he was much more intrigued by Chloe Barclay, Viscount Lessing’s daughter.

Miss Chloe did not look down her nose at him, but nor did she accept his views as a lady was supposed to.

He did not want an annoyingly opinionated wife to annoy him in private and embarrass him in public.

Yet he found, as the Dunwoodys’ carriage bowled along the country lanes to Lessing Place, that he looked forward to seeing her again.

Horrace could not help being observant. He was surprised to find Lord Lessing’s seat in a worse state of neglect than Ellscombe.

Not that one would know from the opulent entrance hall or the gracious staircase, or the lovely drawing room.

But he noticed that the new carpet stretched no further along the gallery which looked inexplicably dull beyond the double doors of the drawing room.

Lord Lessing did not bank with Black’s. But it seemed he too was short of funds. Interesting. Could that be the reason for the dinner invitation that had seemed to surprise Mrs. Dunwoody?

Lord and Lady Lessing welcomed everyone with civility as well as friendliness.

Horrace was presented to a stripling of an heir who could not have been more than sixteen years old, and a disapproving sister, the eldest Miss Barclay, to whom he barely managed to bow before he met the slightly uncertain gaze of Miss Chloe.

At a nudge from her mother, Chloe offered her hand, which he bowed over with perfect correctness. “A pleasure to see you again, Miss Chloe.”

“And our youngest daughter, Miss Celia Barclay...”

In the time it took him to bow to Celia, Chloe had grasped Laura Dunwoody by the arm and borne her off to a corner. That was when it struck him that Lessing did have a plan. Not just to borrow money, but to create a more permanent alliance through his daughter.

It made Horrace want to laugh. Who could have imagined he would be courted by two well born families at once?

People who would never have invited him to spend time with their sons during school holidays and who would pretend not to know his parents, were now eager to throw their daughters at him for a few thousand pounds.

Well, several thousand, he imagined.

Either way, it was possible. He did not need to marry the squire’s daughter. He could have the viscount’s...if he was prepared to tame her.

He found himself seated on the sofa, where presumably Chloe had been meant to join him, and still might do so when her conclave with Laura was over. He wondered if they were talking about him, and if so, what they were saying.

A glass of sherry was pressed into his hand, while small talk passed between the older people. The heir, young Richard Barclay was arguing over something with Celia. Politely, Horrace turned to the person seated nearest him, the eldest Miss Barclay.

“Do you live mostly in the country, Miss Barclay?” he asked civilly.

“Lessing is my home,” she replied distantly. “But I have spent several months in London over the years.”

“Then you enjoy the best of both town and country,” he suggested, and received no reply. “I live in London myself. But I have been thinking of acquiring a country property too.”

Again, she did not answer by more than a disdainful twitch of her upper lip, implying she was not remotely interested in where or how he lived. Although this was more how he expected to be treated by the aristocracy, he found it rankled.

“On the other hand,” he said, “I have found Town people to be better mannered. Do you not?”

Her head finally jerked round at that. He kept his expression civilly interested in her response, but it was clear that she knew exactly what he meant, for colour seeped into her beautiful face. Yes, she was more beautiful than her sister, Chloe, but considerably less attractive.

The local vicar and his family was announced at that point and Horrace rose to his feet to be presented to them too.

The vicar, Mr. Hurst appeared to be a vague, academic sort of man, and his wife, a managing kind of female. The sons, who looked as if they might be amusing company, were too young to be terribly interested in Horrace, although they made him feel old by calling him sir .

When everyone sat down again, he found himself with Lord Lessing while the young people had banded together in a group. Lord Lessing conversed about hunting, which Horrace knew nothing about, and offered to take him out on horseback to view the beauties of the local scenery.

Horrace thanked him, though his horsemanship was doubtful and his appreciation of the country very new and uncertain.

He found his eyes straying to Chloe and Laura, still side-by-side, though Laura looked unhappy and Chloe was clearly thinking of something else as she smiled at the banter of the others.

There was a dreamy quality about her eyes that was not, somehow, very restful.

He could still choose Laura, polite, submissive and comfortable, all the things the other girl was not, despite the respect she happily showed her elders.

He was certain when he was asked to take Chloe in to dinner that Lord and Lady Lessing were matchmaking.

***

C HLOE’S CONVERSATION with Laura had been less than satisfactory.

“I suspect,” she said at the outset, “that our parents are all trying to marry Mr. Black off to one of us. If we cooperate with each other, we might just avoid the dreaded offer, although since he is staying in your house you will be less able to elude him. You could spend most of your days over here with us.” Although there was the highwayman to consider first.

Laura stared at her. “Are you telling me you don’t want to marry him? What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing,” Chloe said honestly. “I’d probably quite like him if my father wasn’t trying to sell me to him. Apart from his views of birds and thrashing children,” she added, scowling. “And I suppose he is quite old.”

“He is not yet forty.”

Chloe peered at her. “Do you want to marry him, Laura?”

“I will do as my father bids me. He has all our best interests at heart. But there is no point in thinking about it. We cannot compete with Lord Lessing.”

“Then don’t. If you’re sure he is what you want.”

“You consider yourself too far above him?” Laura’s nostrils flared, rather like her mother’s when she disapproved.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want to marry anyone, and I certainly don’t want to be sold.”

“Like me?” Laura asked with entirely false sweetness.

“Oh, the devil, Laura, I did not mean it that way! I don’t wish to be married, that is all. Think about it, and let’s not quarrel.”

There was no time for more, since his lordship was scowling at them, and the vicar had just arrived.

Inevitably, despite her faint hope of being partnered with one of the Hurst boys, she was escorted in to dinner by Mr. Black.

But although she disagreed with him on many points, she found she actually quite enjoyed her lively conversation with him.

He seemed more amused than outraged when she contradicted him, but he never steered the conversation back to safer, duller channels.

All the same, she was glad when the meal came to an end and she and the other ladies followed her mother from the room.

“Well? What do you think of him?” Mama all but whispered in a moment of privacy while they were distant enough from everyone else.

“Who?” Chloe asked, since she had been thinking about the highwayman.

“Mr. Black. The man you were sitting beside for the last two hours.”

“It’s not one of Papa’s better notions,” Chloe said cautiously. “We should not suit.”

“You don’t know that. It was thought your father and I should not suit either, and yet we are very comfortable together.”

Comfortable was not really how Chloe would have described them, but that was her parents’ business. Chloe herself dreamed of more. She wanted love.

“Sacrifices have to be made, Chloe,” the viscountess said. “For one’s family.”

Chloe’s gaze flew to her mother’s face. She felt doubly stricken, by her own selfishness and by the death of her dreams. This was the real world...

Her mother rammed the point home. “And it would hardly be such a sacrifice to be a wealthy married woman.”

Not for you... But even that was unfair. Chloe had no idea of her mother’s youthful dreams or what it had cost her to marry Papa. One made the best of the hand one was dealt. One might rail against it, but one obeyed, for the sake of family. And it wasn’t as if Chloe wanted to marry anyone else.

She tried to pull herself out of the foolish mood by joining in the conversation, but the evening now seemed interminable.

The gentlemen did not linger long over their wine but joined the ladies after less than half an hour.

The young ladies took it in turns to entertain on the pianoforte, though Chloe, worrying about the highwayman, had no idea what she played.

Certainly no one objected when she stopped and gave her place to Celia.

But finally, their guests departed. Chloe, crossing her fingers that the noise and disruption at the stables had not disturbed the highwayman, said good night and retreated to her room.

What if the highwayman was delirious and called out?

What if he died up there while she was pacing her bedchamber, waiting for the opportunity to steal out of the house?

Well, if anyone saw her, she had the excuse of Molly and the kittens. Seizing her shawl and the lamp, she hurried from the room.