Captain Burnside drove at a smart trot through the quiet streets, the following traffic from the ball dispersing at intervals. The darkness of the night was touched by the crescent moon’s limited light. Caroline and Annabelle exchanged dreamy comments about the ball and its magnificence, and about guests who had made impressions on them. Annabelle vowed she would beseech their parents to accustom themselves to her preference for England. Then, to please her sister, she said Mr Wingrove’s sociability had been all of civilized. Such a pleasant and personable gentleman could not fail to be a far better husband than Lord Clarence.
‘I will surely hope, sister, that he will offer for you, since you are affectionately attached to him. Charles and I agreed he has a degree of culture that would make the two of you happily compatible.’
Caroline sat up. ‘How dare he!’
‘Caroline?’ Annabelle was at her most demure.
‘I don’t require Captain Burnside to advise me on marital compatibility,’ said Caroline. ‘What does he know of such things? Or you?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Annabelle.
‘As for Mr Wingrove, it is ridiculous to suppose I see him as a husband. I do not. He is merely an agreeable friend.’
‘Well, dearest sister, Charles and I both declared there is no gentleman more agreeable. Charles regretted that he himself did not own such pleasant characteristics, though I think he shouldn’t be as modest as that.’
‘Modest?’ Caroline was finely sceptical. ‘Modest? Captain Burnside?’
‘He is adorable, don’t you think so?’ murmured Annabelle.
‘Oh, fiddle-de-dee,’ said Caroline. She sat up again. ‘Annabelle, don’t you dare fall in love with him.’
‘Goodness me, I—’
‘He is penniless except for his officer’s pay.’
‘Mercy, poor Charles,’ said Annabelle. ‘Oh, I do confess that wouldn’t suit me at all. But how sweet and kind you surely are, putting him up until he finds an apartment he can afford.’
The carriage was slowing. They were only a hundred yards from home. Out from a side street, four horsemen had emerged, spurring to block Captain Burnside. They were dark figures, black-cloaked and black-masked. The handsome thoroughfare was quiet, and there was no sight or sound of any night watch. Captain Burnside glimpsed long-barrelled pistols.
Sammy glimpsed them too. ‘Blind me, it’s flash nightingales, guv’nor,’ he gasped, ‘highway coves in the middle of London, and the ladies wearing a mint of sparklers.’
The masked horsemen came at them, pistols levelled. One man issued an order: ‘Pull up. Keep quiet. Get down.’
Captain Burnside had slowed, but had no intention of pulling up, not now.
He heard another man fling hissing words: ‘Damnation, there’s two on the box!’
The captain, convinced it would be fatal to stop, whipped up the pair. Well trained, and owning a great deal of mettle when a gallop was called for, the coach horses sprang forward and raced away. The barouche shuddered and jerked at the sudden, forceful pull, and inside Annabelle and Caroline floundered and gasped protests. The vehicle swept the horsemen aside as Captain Burnside burst through. A flurry of oaths and curses desecrated the warm summer night. The captain, surmising those pistols would not be fired, gave the horses their heads and they ran with the vigour and power of their kind, exulting in the exercise. They reached a surging gallop in quick time. The four horsemen, recovering, elected for pursuit.
‘Set up a hullabaloo, Sammy,’ said Captain Burnside crisply.
‘That I will, sir,’ said Sammy, and began to shout and bellow.
The captain made for the wide Strand, off which lay Bow Street and the headquarters of the Runners. The barouche travelled at alarming speed, and Caroline and Annabelle hung on to the handstraps for dear life.
‘What is happening?’ gasped Annabelle.
Caroline pulled down the window and shouted, ‘Captain Burnside! What are you about? Halt this carriage, do you hear?’
‘Hang on, Your Ladyship!’ called the captain.
Caroline heard Sammy bellowing. ‘Thieves! Flash coves! Highway nobblers!’
The horsemen were up with them. Caroline caught sight of the shadowy figure of one galloping alongside the box before he reached out and dug the barrel of his pistol in Captain Burnside’s ribs. The pair galloped on, their hoofbeats a drumming echo on the sanded road. The captain’s whip whistled and cracked, and the thong bit at the masked face of his assailant. He reeled in his saddle and dropped back.
‘Thieves!’ shouted Sammy. ‘Bow Street, we’re a’coming! Wake up, you Runners!’
The cursing horsemen pulled up. They turned and rode away, fast. Captain Burnside brought the barouche to a halt. He got down, leaving Sammy with the reins, and Sammy gentled the excited pair.
‘Lady Caroline?’ Captain Burnside appeared at the open window.
‘Sir,’ said Caroline, breathless but valiant, ‘why has it been necessary to drive like a madman and to wake up the whole of London?’
Faces and lighted candles at the windows of houses offered proof that her question, allowing for exaggeration, was quite justified.
‘We suffered a small alarm, no more,’ said the captain.
‘Small? Small?’ Annabelle found her voice. ‘I thought the carriage would overturn and break our bones. Charles, I’m in need of smelling salts for the first time in my life.’
‘So sorry, sweet girl,’ murmured the captain, and Caroline compressed her lips at the endearment.
‘Explain,’ she demanded.
‘We encountered a footpad or two. They’re now dispersed. Sammy has a capital pair of lungs. Are you badly shaken up?’
‘Captain Burnside,’ said Caroline, ‘I have been shaken up, I have been shaken about, and I have been shaken from head to foot. Sir, did you say footpads?’
‘Much to my regret.’ The captain shook his head in sorrow. ‘What is London coming to?’
‘They were riding horses, were they not?’ asked Caroline.
‘Damn me, so they were,’ said the captain, as if that fact had only just occurred to him. ‘There’s a devilish development for you, footpads on horseback in the Strand. But all is well now, Lady Caroline, and I’ll drive you home at a pace you’ll find gentle and soothing.’
He was being evasive, but as people in night attire were peering from open doors, Caroline let it go for the moment.
‘Yes, please take us home,’ she said.
A thickset man in a neckerchief and bulky coat, and carrying a stout stick, appeared at Captain Burnside’s elbow. ‘What’s to do, eh, what’s to do?’ he asked.
‘Ah, you’re a Bow Street officer?’ enquired Captain Burnside.
‘That I am, day and night I am, and werry conscientious, sir. So hearing what I did hear, I says to myself, hello and what’s a-goin’ on here? And what is a-goin’ on here?’
‘We’re on our way home from Lady Chesterfield’s ball,’ said the captain. ‘This is Lady Clarence Percival. Our pair suffered a fright, but they’ve quietened down now.’
‘Ah, hosses is nervous critturs,’ said the Bow Street Runner, ‘and werry like to shy at the flutter of a pigeon’s ving.’ Through the window, he regarded Caroline in the dim interior of the coach. It was not so dark that he was not at once aware of magnificence. ‘Vell, them critturs of yours be standin’ quiet enough now, as this gentleman and officer has pointed out, m’lady. So seeing there’s no trouble requiring of my assistance, I’ll see you safe on your way, then noses and fingers von’t have anything to point at and can go back indoors.’
‘Thank you, Officer,’ said Caroline. ‘Goodnight.’
Captain Burnside returned to the box, took the reins from Sammy and set the pair in motion. He chose an alternative route back to the house. Sammy kept alert watch, but there were no signs of the aggressive highwaymen. The captain doubted they were highwaymen. Being the professional he was, he felt the intended hold-up was of a highly suspect kind. No gentlemen of the road would venture into a salubrious quarter of London flourishing their pistols between three and four in the morning. They might be found haggling with greasy fences in the dim taverns of the riverside stewpots, but they did not carry on their trade in the residential areas inhabited by the quality. Their pickings came from travellers on the post-chaise highways.
The captain could only surmise that the four masked men had been engaged on a venture of a different kind. Something clicked in his active mind. Cumberland. Now why had Britain’s dark prince offered to drive Lady Caroline and her party home? He would know she would be using her own carriage. Annabelle had confirmed this, and had also told Cumberland that he, Captain Burnside, would be driving. She had not mentioned Sammy would be in attendance. Something else clicked, something relating to an involuntary hiss of words.
Damnation, there’s two on the box!
That related, quite clearly, to information that had been wrong. That, in turn, pointed to a prearranged ambush. The masked men had expected to see only himself on the box. Which fact led directly back to Cumberland and the information innocently given him by Annabelle. And what could be further surmised from that? The possibility, for some reason, that Cumberland was darkly interested not only in himself, but in Caroline and Annabelle too. He himself, of course, might certainly have been found suspect by Cumberland, but Caroline and Annabelle? Absurd.
A quiet word with Annabelle was required.
The house having been safely reached, it was left to Sammy to stable the barouche and the horses. Caroline disappeared only moments after entering the house, and that left Captain Burnside with Annabelle in the drawing room. Annabelle was already over the alarm and whatever fright she may have suffered, and sank in tranquil languor into a chair.
‘Charles, such a beautiful ball,’ she murmured. ‘I have had an excess of delicious activity, and do declare I could have gone on until dawn. And never, since arriving in London, have I seen Caroline so happily engaged and so vivacious. Isn’t it a little mournful that a ball has to come to an end?’
‘It’s extremely mournful to young ladies, for whom ballrooms are designed, and in which I’ve no doubt you could all happily live.’ Captain Burnside mused. ‘Let me see, Annabelle, on the afternoon when you came flying and flushed from Cumberland’s house, had he upset you in any other way than trying to attempt kisses?’
‘Why do you ask that? You aren’t going to be in uncharitable consideration of the duke, are you?’
The captain, remarking that Annabelle had elected to make a study of her fingertips, said in his pleasantest fashion, ‘Not if it will distress you, although I realize you were upset. Did he perhaps say something hurtful?’
‘Charles, such a conversation is very dull after a ball.’ Annabelle plucked at her gown. She was suddenly uneasy. ‘Oh, I must tell you, I think,’ she said, and in the little rushing fashion of one eager to confide, she recounted the conversation she had overheard between Cumberland and his secretary, Mr Erzburger. ‘I vow it worried me,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘that some hot tea would be welcome.’
‘There are no servants up,’ said Annabelle, ‘and I cannot think myself how tea came to be relevant: I surely do feel the duke is mysterious in some of his ways, and much more of a concern than tea.’
‘But not as refreshing. I’ll go to the kitchen and prepare a pot.’
‘But I don’t need refreshing, I need to go to bed,’ protested Annabelle, ‘and you are being very cool about the duke, you surely are. Nor have you said a word about those footpads and the dreadful alarm they put us in.’
‘Oh, everything outside the ball and your enjoyment of it, Annabelle, is all of insignificant.’
‘Oh, yes, who could deny it?’ breathed Annabelle. ‘Where is Caroline? Has she gone up?’
‘I have no idea,’ said the captain, ‘but should she appear, tell her I’ve taken the liberty of using the kitchen to make some tea.’
‘Tea at this time?’ Annabelle laughed softly. Having confided her worry to Charles, she was free of it. ‘How funny you are.’
‘Captain Burnside, what are you doing?’ Caroline, still a figure of splendour and showing no hint of tiredness, swept into the kitchen.
‘At this precise moment, marm, I am pouring boiling water into the kitchen teapot,’ said Captain Burnside. ‘I trust your staff will forgive my use of the available facilities.’
‘Sometimes, I think you quite mad. On this occasion, I think you quite commonsensical. Tea sounds perfect. I hope you will allow me to share the pot. I’m of the opinion that simply going to bed after a ball isn’t the most exciting thing.’
Caroline paused to make a thoughtful observation of her hireling. He seemed entirely at his ease, his military jacket unbuttoned, his attention concentrated on making the tea. ‘I must congratulate you on your behaviour and performance tonight. Apart from your brief excursion into folly with Lady Chesterfield’s niece, you were faultless. I’m quite certain Annabelle thought you the perfect escort, and she spent very little time casting her eyes in search of Cumberland. She sang your praises with enthusiasm.’ Caroline paused again, needing to choose her words carefully. ‘So I must ask you, Captain Burnside, are you now able to tell me that Annabelle is no longer in danger of throwing herself into bed with Cumberland? Have you, in fact, completed your mission for me by seducing Annabelle from Cumberland’s arms into your own?’
Captain Burnside poured the tea. He slid one cup and saucer over the surface of the long kitchen table until it was within reach of her hand. They stood on opposite sides of the table, his expression deferential, hers slightly challenging.
‘There’s lemon there, marm,’ he said. ‘Ah – did you say seducing?’
‘I did, sir.’ Caroline dropped a slice of lemon into her tea. ‘What other word serves as well? Annabelle has just gone up to bed. On the way, she informed me she adored you. Therefore, answer me, have you won her?’ Her calm voice suffered vibrations as she added, ‘If so, then you must leave this house immediately after breakfast. That is what was agreed.’
‘Ah,’ said Captain Burnside.
‘That is hardly an answer,’ said Caroline, ‘or even a comment. I wish to know, I must know, if Annabelle has transferred her infatuation to you. Do not attempt to make a secret of it, sir, while you worm your way deeper into her affections. So answer me: yes or no.’
‘Then I must answer no,’ said the captain, at which Caroline did not berate him for his lack of success. She sat down at the table, poured her tea from the cup into the saucer, lifted it with both hands and sipped thirstily at it.
‘So, you have failed,’ she said. ‘Her declared adoration of you is an affectation?’
‘Failed?’ said the captain, and he sat down too. He gulped down tea from his cup. ‘Assure you, marm, the game ain’t yet been played to a finish. But there it is, danger from Cumberland still lurks. There’s still a possibility he’ll contrive to bring the sweet girl into his bed.’
‘You promised me that such a possibility would never become a fact,’ said Caroline. ‘What are you about, sir? Are you playing a different kind of game? I have been speaking to Sammy, and I declare the incident on the way home was wrongly described by you as a small alarm. That four masked horsemen, all brandishing pistols, demanded you halt the carriage, that you get down and keep quiet, do not amount to anything small, Captain Burnside.’
‘I’d no wish to frighten you, marm—’
‘I have said you may call me Caroline.’
‘I’d no wish to frighten you, dear lady, but since Sammy has painted the alarm in full for you, I must agree with you that Annabelle should be placed out of Cumberland’s reach.’
Caroline gave him a critical look. ‘Agree with me? But I’ve said no such thing.’
‘Oh, I made a loose interpretation of your remark that possibility must not become fact,’ said the captain airily. ‘I think a move to your country estate, Great Wivenden, would be just the thing. In London, Annabelle is permanently within reach of Cumberland. I don’t doubt you both are. One wonders, indeed, if he came close to carrying off both of you tonight. He’s bold enough to have attempted it.’
Caroline’s eyes opened wide in utter astonishment. ‘That is absurd,’ she said. ‘Not even Cumberland would dare to kidnap or abduct us.’
‘Cumberland is a man of strong passions, marm, and would dare much to bring you to his bed. It ain’t too impudent of me, I hope, to suggest you’re among London’s most beautiful women. Faith and the angels, your magnificence and Annabelle’s virgin sweetness are enough to provoke a prince of Cumberland’s ilk into bedding both of you, willy-nilly.’
Caroline could not take him seriously. Laughter glimmered in her eyes. The ball had been a delight, reawakening her love of music and dancing, and no matter that the hour was well advanced, she did not want to go to bed.
‘What a curious mood you are in, Captain Burnside,’ she said. ‘Pray tell me, is my magnificence to be preferred to Annabelle’s virgin sweetness, or vice versa?’
‘By Cumberland?’ enquired the captain, remarking her resilience and staying power.
‘I don’t think you incapable of answering up for yourself,’ said Caroline.
‘Wisdom and the terms of our contract caution me against that. Would you care, dear lady, for more tea?’
‘Thank you, yes. Tea is a stimulant, isn’t it?’
‘I ain’t supposing four o’clock in the morning is the right time for a stimulant, and perhaps I should see you to your bed.’
‘I can see myself to bed, sir,’ said Caroline, undisguisedly animated. ‘Be so kind as to refill my cup.’
Captain Burnside refilled both cups. The brown-walled kitchen might have made a hollow chamber for their voices had not the echoes wandered around the multitude of hanging pots and pans and been lost in them.
‘It shall be Great Wivenden, then, for you and Annabelle?’ he said.
‘You are persisting in the absurd. You are suggesting Annabelle and I need to flee?’
‘I am insisting,’ said the captain.
Caroline stared at him in disbelief. ‘Insisting?’ she said.
‘I must.’
‘Am I dreaming?’ she asked, her chin up.
‘It ain’t the moment to indulge in dreams, marm, but to remove yourselves from Cumberland’s reach.’
‘Oh,’ breathed Caroline, ‘how has this change in our relationship come about? I am now expected to take orders from you, to do what you tell me to?’
‘Why, of course not, marm,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘but if you could make preparations to leave tomorrow with Annabelle—’
‘I will not, sir! You are above yourself.’
‘You’ll probably take a late breakfast, in which case you could leave after that.’
Caroline really did not know whether to laugh at him or retaliate. There was a natural feminine urge to rebuke, but just as natural an urge to laugh.
‘Ridiculous man,’ she said. ‘I have said I won’t leave, and I shan’t.’
‘Then I must tell you of a conversation Annabelle overheard. That is, part of a conversation.’ Captain Burnside repeated Annabelle’s account of the dialogue between Cumberland and his secretary Erzburger, which seemed to concern a person being held secure by Erzburger, and the secretary’s strange reference to the importance of silence. It was, said the captain, an unhappy fact that Annabelle was certain Cumberland knew she had overheard this.
‘Oh,’ said Caroline in changed mood.
‘There, marm, you’ll concede the advisability of you and Annabelle leaving London? Cumberland is bound to believe Annabelle has confided in you, and to contrive in some unpleasant way to ensure silence in both of you. Perhaps the intended hold-up was an attempt at abduction. I’d say, from what Annabelle overheard, that Cumberland’s engaged in one of his devilish plots. Great Wivenden will be far safer than London.’
Caroline, now worried, said, ‘I see. Yes, very well. We will leave tomorrow, all three of us.’
‘I’m unable to accompany you myself …’
‘Captain Burnside,’ she said firmly, ‘you are still under commission to me, and I command your attendance. I declare myself roundly opposed to any specious argument from you, and under the circumstances, why, sir, it’s your duty to protect Annabelle.’
‘Quite so,’ said the captain, finishing his stimulating tea, ‘but I’ve one or two matters in hand of a distinctly pressing kind. Be assured, however, that I’ll follow later. In the meantime, I’ll arrange for a friend of mine to escort you and Annabelle to Sussex and to remain with you until I arrive. He’s a commendable gentleman, sharp as a needle, and as handy with his dabs as with a pistol.’
‘A cut-throat?’ said Caroline, disliking very much her hireling’s intention to desert her, however temporarily. ‘We are to be placed in the care of a cut-throat?’
‘He ain’t a cut-throat, dear lady, but a merry young gentleman full of stuff, and renowned for his chivalry.’
Caroline did laugh then. Sarcastically. ‘I am to believe you own friends of a chivalrous kind?’ she said.
‘Life has its pleasanter surprises,’ said the captain, as suave and bland as ever. ‘Now, I recommend you retire. It’s almost morning. I must go out myself, to catch my friend before his day begins and puts him out of my reach.’
‘You are going out now?’ asked Caroline.
‘In a little while. Much the best thing, the situation being what it is.’
‘I trust,’ she said a little bitterly, ‘that during your absence we shan’t be murdered in our beds.’
‘Come, Lady Caroline, it ain’t going to be as bad as that. I care excessively for your sweet sister, and won’t lack to ensure her safety. Now I must go and change.’
They both rose from the table. Caroline showed a slight flush.
‘Your excessive care for my sister is not preventing you placing her and myself in the hands of an escort we do not know,’ she said. ‘And if you remain in London, are you not putting yourself at risk? I have told you how dangerous Cumberland is.’ Her lashes dropped and her voice became a little unsteady. ‘You have shown many times that there is good in you, that you are not wholly worthless, and I – I should be distressed if anything truly unpleasant happened to you on my account, or Annabelle’s.’
‘Dear lady,’ he said quite gently, ‘I care excessively for both of you, and you have my word I’ll take no risks, for I’m set on seeing Cumberland don’t get the better of us. Allow me to go about my business, which is to do with ensuring your safety.’
‘If I must, then I must,’ said Caroline, but with some reluctance. She was worried, inexplicably, about his own safety.
‘Is it possible you could use one of your tenants’ cottages instead of your manor?’ he asked. ‘That would put you even more safely out of Cumberland’s reach.’
‘I cannot believe we are truly in that kind of danger,’ she said, ‘but I see you are sure we are. Yes, there is a cottage just fallen vacant, and we can use that.’
‘Do so, Lady Caroline, and tell no one.’