Twenty
Snip! It took just a moment of fumbling before the first ringlet fell to the floor. Tessie winced as Tallows hacked at it. The knife, sharp from its grinding, needed to slice into a hundred silken strands. Tessie’s hair was abundant, gloriously so. Still, despite the tears that stung her eyes, the deed was done. The first twist lay forlornly on the stone floor. Tallows chuckled. That should make his lordship scarper up from London! With a great wad of notes, too, he should reckon.
“There, I do be afeared Lord What’s-Is-Name will be alarmed! Wait still, missy, for I still ’ave the other to do.”
Tessie said nothing as Tallows bent to pick up the curl. He laid the knife upon the table as he did so. The single moment Tessie had been waiting for! She leaped from the chair and grabbed the knife. Tallows whisked around suddenly and Tessie kicked him. Yes, it is very sad to report this, for it was in a most unmaidenly site, and Tallows yelled with a mixture of pain and outright fury. The bonds were on the floor again, for Tessie’s hands were free.
Now was the moment she’d planned for—the perfect moment to lunge the knife into Tallows’s back. He was still bent over, doubled in pain and fury. Tessie hesitated. Then she rushed to the door, frantically fiddling with the handle. She couldn’t do it. She simply could not. It was one thing shooting a person in the foot, quite another stabbing him in the back. The door was not locked—Tallows had just come in from outside—but her panic made the dark timber stick, and she was holding the knife, of course.
Tallows, behind her, was grabbing at her skirts. She tried her best to keep calm, but panic enveloped her blindly. Tallows grew closer, his scrawny arm pulling at her waist in an impossible grip. Ridiculous, really, for a man so spindly. He grabbed at the knife. Tessie refused to release it, fury and despair making her stubborn. Tallows tugged at her arm; then, in a single moment of triumph, he eased the knife from her hand and pushed her back onto the floor.
“I’ll cut orf all ya flamin’ curls for that! Silly bleedin’ wench!” He drew closer menacingly, his blade raised almost above his head in triumph. Tessie wondered how she could have been such an addlepated gape seed not to have stabbed when she could have. She watched Tallows carefully for a false move. She still had on her boots. She could do serious damage with those if only she were given the chance! But Tallows would be more careful, on his guard, now.
She heard a rustling outside. It was almost past dusk, past the moment where she could just run and find the village path. She could still scream though, and if for some happy reason there was a person outside, he or she would surely hear. It was her last and only chance, for Tallows was approaching her fiercely, and she doubted whether he would stop at one curl or even ten. She did not like to think what he might stop at.
She had not thought, while she was concentrating on escape, that Tallows would harm her. She was his only means to a ransom. But it was not just ransom Tallows required but revenge. She realized that now as he tugged at the first skein of her glorious, bountiful, ridiculously curly, long locks.
The rustling became more pronounced. Even Tallows released his grip a little and listened. Boot prints against pebbles. Stealthy, but audible if one happened to be praying for such a miracle. Tallows had not been, of course, but he was as alert as Tessie, though the ale made his reflexes less sharp.
Miss Hampstead opened her mouth and screamed. It was not so much a scream, precisely, as a blood-curdling shriek. Taken by surprise, Tallows started, then dropped the blade. He lunged toward her to stop her mouth—by God, he would gag her this time!—when there was a familiar report of gunshot. Tallows sank almost instantly to the ground, moaning in pain, and a great deal more Tessie could not understand. Just as well, for it was all most unsuitable for a lady’s ears.
All this happened in the mere fraction of a moment, no more than a few simple heartbeats.
Above Tallows, Tessie still, for some incomprehensible reason, screamed. Perhaps in shock, she was hardly aware of her redemption.
“You may stop that caterwauling now, I believe.”
The voice from the door was both mocking and amused. Tessie stopped, openmouthed, her heart fluttering so wildly, it was impossible to know whether it was from fright or from sheer, unmitigated relief.
It was neither, of course, for her heart continued to flutter long after the gentleman had stepped inside, had eyed his surroundings, had had the temerity to kiss her pretty little lips long and well—but neither long nor well enough—and hand her back her precious pistol.
“This is yours, I believe.”
“You found it!”
“I did, and your hapless little bonnet—you should really stop wearing feathers, it is a shocking waste—and your glove. Not the other, I am afraid.”
Tessie did not care about her glove, for Nicholas was regarding her lips again, rather as though they were an interesting curiosity. Miss Hampstead hoped they were interesting enough, though Tallows still needed some attention. Her eyes must have flickered to the villain, for Nick finally allowed his gaze to wander to that quarter, too.
“I think he needs some help. He is losing blood. . . .”
Nicholas picked up a curl. “Did he do this?”
“Yes, it is nothing. Nick, he is an unscrupulous villain, but he needs attention.”
“It is not blood he should lose, but a tooth. By God, let him just sit up and I will give him attention!”
Tessie laughed. Such ferocity! So different from the cool, languid, mocking man she had met. Over nothing more dire than a whisper of a curl too. Almost she could hope . . .
Tallows sunk into a swoon. Nicholas cursed, then drew some water to revive him. He stripped the man to his shirtsleeves to expose the bloody shoulder.
“He will live, but Cal should fetch a doctor. Then a magistrate. Can you help me bind him?”
“I don’t want none of your bleedin’ bindin’s, Lord Whatsit!”
Tallows, reviving, was too annoyed to hold his tongue. Nicholas raised his brows as he bound the wrists firmly, then drew out an elegant silver bottle of French Madeira.
“A terrible waste, but I rather feel it is best if he fell into a stupor. At least until the magistrate arrives.”
Expertly, he forced the drink down Tallows’s stubborn lips. Stubborn, that is, until he had had his first taste. After that it was sheer simplicity. Tallows downed every last drop with nothing but a satisfied belch.
“A somewhat inept criminal, I find.”
“Yes. Why do I have the strangest sense of déjà vu?”
“Perhaps because we seem destined to tie up criminals, you and I.”
Tessie nodded. Perhaps it was relief, but she felt rather weak at that careless phrase, “you and I.”
“Inept, but a terrifying criminal nonetheless.” Nicholas regarded Tessie keenly. She nodded.
“Yes. I thought he might—”
Nick interrupted. He placed a finger over Miss Hampstead’s mouth.
“Not terrifying for you, but for me. I thought I might lose you.” Lord Nicholas Cathgar regarded Tessie meaningfully. Her heart did several quick somersaults. It was perfectly impossible not to look as though she was desperate to be kissed. She was, of course, only how utterly shameless to allow him to guess!
So she fiddled with her pistol—a hideous crime, one Grandfather Hampstead would have sent her to bed with no tea for a week over—and fussed over Tallows.
“Perhaps we should stay with him.”
“Indeed we should not! I have better things to do! And by the bye, though I hesitate to mention it, I did reload the pistol as a precaution. . . .”
Too late! The report was deafening. Fortunately, since Nick ducked, it did no more harm than damage one of the cracked walls.
“You are a menace!”
“Good God, I could have killed you!”
“I think we can effectively say I have now scotched my debt of honor to you, Miss Hampstead. You saved my life, but I have just returned the favor with interest. You dashed nearly killed me.”
Nicholas’s tone was hard. Tessie’s happiness evaporated with the last rays of the sun. It was suddenly dark and cold.
“Do you agree?”
What could she say? Tessie could, in fact, say nothing. She was too choked with tears. So she nodded. At least, she thought, she still had pride.
“Your reputation is still perfectly intact and you are not ruined, Miss Hampstead. No tattle has ever reached my ears regarding your progress to London. Since then, you have been the honored—and chaperoned—guest of my mother and my sisters. No possible blame can attach itself to you. The fact that you have chosen to spend your time sewing a great pile of impossible-looking ball gowns is no one’s concern but your own.”
“You are right. I thank you. My respectability is restored.” So why did Tessie feel so miserable? Why was there a big lump in her throat, so large she found it difficult to swallow?
Nicholas relented.
“Step out with me, Tessie. I think I can hear Cal now.”
His ears, acute as always, had not misled him. It was Cal, with a widening grin when he noticed Tessie trailing the earl. His grin widened even farther when he heard a quick account of events.
“Orl right and tight, guv! I will whip off to the old sawbones quick as a trivet, then off on to Mr. Townsend wot is magistrate of these parts. Sure ye’ll not be comin’?” he offered generously.
Nick dryly remarked that he was perfectly certain. He had a great deal more important matter to bother with.
“What can be more important that securing a kidnapper and a Luddite charged with treason?”
“Step into this gentle night, Tessie, and I shall tell you.”
Nicholas’s tone was clipped, offering no immediate confidences. His hand negligently twisted Tessie’s curl. She had no idea how he had come by it.
They walked in silence, stopping only to untether Bess, who waited quietly but whinnied on seeing both his lordship and Tessie restored to her.
“Can you ride astride?”
Tessie was taken aback by the question. “Of course I can. Grandfather Hampstead . . .”
The earl grinned. “I might have known. Grandfather Hampstead. The fount of all wisdom! Hop on up. It will be quicker if we both mount.”
So Tessie, unwilling to disoblige Nick, and also rather pleased—in a thoroughly unmaidenly kind of way—to be so intimate with him, obediently mounted and put aside the fear that this would probably be the last moments of their great adventure. After that, she supposed, it would be off to Hampstead Oaks, to wait out the time before she came into her small inheritance. She would—could—think of none of that now. Her body was too close to Nick’s to permit any other thought. She closed her eyes, dreaming that this short moment would last forever.
It didn’t. She found herself in a clearing, close by the troublesome ditch. His lordship dismounted and bade her do the same.
“See that post? That scoundrel turned it so it pointed here, toward the ditch. Step in. I should like you to see something.”
Tessie, curious, dismounted with ease and trod gingerly over the grass. Nick was already in the ditch. Sitting, getting his town breeches dirtier yet. Mystifying. Tessie stepped closer, and felt a strong arm pull her toward him so that she tumbled, for the second time, into that long and deceptive grass. She was but inches away from Nick, and her traitorous heart started thudding quite ridiculously, for he had made his intentions perfectly plain. There was nothing between them now.
Then why was Nick looking at her like that, with his mouth so tantalizingly close? Why had he shifted his body so that it almost towered over hers? Why did he kiss her like he did, oh so excruciatingly slowly . . . ?
He stopped. “Tess.” The words were low and heart-stoppingly gentle.
“I love you. Can you hear me? I love you. I have ever since, I think, I saw you eat the strawberry trifle. Or maybe it was the cod’s eye. Your revulsion, I mean.” There was a peculiar, quirkish gleam in his eye, a bittersweet smile upon those masculine lips.
“Why did you not tell me?”
“Because I am a clothead! Or so my mother tells me, along with several other uncomplimentary terms! I thought you knew, Tessie. I was certain you felt the same attraction as I, the same passion, I could feel it. I naturally assumed you knew the other too. I couldn’t love you more, Tessie. Not if you were the most untroublesome creature in all of England.”
“Which I am not!” Tessie laughed. “Nicholas Cathgar, you have made me quite sick with misery!”
“Well, I shall now rectify that by making you quite the most dizzyingly happy young female. Yes, in all of the world. I can do that, you know.”
“Coxcomb!” But Tessie’s eyes were bright with happiness.
“Shrew! By the bye, how many gowns did you think you needed?”
Tessie gasped. “They were for me?”
“Of course. What other young lady is precisely the same measurements, height, tastes . . . oh, you must have known!”
“Not a thing, only that your bride had consumption.”
“Consumption?” Now it was Nick’s turn to stare.
“Yes. Consumption. Your mama, I am sorry to say, is a most undiscriminating liar!”
“But an extraordinarily bad one if that is all she could come up with! You look dreadfully woebegone, as usual, all covered in grime and hatless, but to say you are consumptive. . . well, now, that is the outside of enough! You are beautiful, a rarity, my brave little Tessie!”
“Could you possibly tell me the bit about loving me again?”
Nick grinned. “I suppose I shall have to get used to saying it a dozen times a day! If I don’t, Joseph shall leave my service, Mama will have my hide, and a brood of nosy sisters will pester on about it in countless letters that I have to frank—”
“Gracious! They didn’t!”
“They did indeed. Apparently, you have stolen many a heart, Miss Theresa Hampstead!”
“Only yours.”
“Stuff and nonsense! What about Christopher Lambert? What about poor Lord Alberkirky? He shall be our best man, by the way. Recommended to me a very interesting stable for sale. Had to forgive him, after that.”
Tessie’s eyes grew wide, “A stable?”
“Yes, close to the village of Greenford. Hampstead Oaks, you know.”
“You bought my stables?”
“Indeed. A wedding gift to you. Pebbles is already safely installed at my London residence. I infer your silence is happiness, not outrage?”
Tessie laughed. “How could it be? When it is the most thoughtful, glorious gift ever! I could hardly bear thinking of losing those horses. It has been a sad time.”
“It shall not be anymore. You shall have your presentation at Carlton House, and I have been meddling, I am afraid.”
“Meddling?”
“That is why I took so long to chase after you, my little baggage. I have been meddling in your affairs. Hampstead Oaks should be restored to its former glory by the summer. I met most of your tenants and dismissed Lawson, your land agent. I cannot swear he was stealing your profits but I suspect it. He was also consuming far too liberally of your grandfather’s best burgundy when I came upon him.”
“I hope you grabbed a couple of bottles for yourself, then. Excellent stuff!”
“You may gift them to me. I do not grab, Miss Hampstead.”
What a pity, thought Tessie as she batted her lashes like a hopeless little hoyden. Nicholas’s eyes sparkled, but he said nothing, merely pushing her back gently into the soil.
“My ensemble must be quite a sight!”
“It always is, Miss Hampstead! Thank God Mama did not stint on your wardrobe. The future Countess Cathgar must be impeccable, you know.”
Tessie groaned. “Oh, my God, it will take me a century to finish those clothes! I have lost more blood pricking myself with pins than I ever did out hunting, or shooting, or fishing, even, with Grandfather!”
Nicholas laughed, then kissed her nose, which she found very pleasant indeed.
“That shall naturally have to be remedied, of course.”
“How?” Tessie was curious but not particularly worried. The only thing that worried her just then was that Nick’s arm was free rather than cradling the nape of her neck. She rectified this situation boldly, which caused the earl to grin rather wickedly. She liked that grin—it suited his scar.
“How?” Nicholas echoed her. He traced his fingers over her lips. “How very elementary, my dear Theresa! We shall consign the whole goddamn lot to Madame Fanchon!”
To which Miss Tessie made no further comment other than to mention accessories like bonnets.
“Milliners,” murmured Nick.
“Gloves.”
“God, I don’t know! Miss Peeples of Bond Street! Now let me kiss you quiet, for heaven’s sake, and don’t you dare mention fans, lace, clocked stockings, or corsetry to me again. You shall have them all.”
Nick punctuated this remark with a gesture that Tessie found quite extraordinarily pleasant, though she was sure it was one Finchie—dear old Finchie, who was now Mrs. Moreton—would disapprove.
She mentioned this, between sighs of bliss, to her betrothed.
Nicholas nodded. “She is very right. It gets wickeder yet, I am afraid. You need a chaperone.”
“No, I don’t!”
“Yes, you do!”
“I do not, I tell you!”
Lord Nicholas Cathgar attempted something very salacious indeed. Tessie gasped, then blushed furiously. Nick, his breathing somewhat harder, looked smug.
“I am right, am I not?”
“Damn you, yes, but only until I am safely wed, and only because you are, you are . . .”
“A rag-mannered rogue?”
“I was going to say too devastatingly magnificent for your own good, but rag-mannered will do me fine.”
Nick laughed. “Let me help you out of this ditch. I have a better idea.”
“Better than a chaperone?”
“Much better.”
“You are not going to be all horribly . . . chivalrous, are you?”
“Certainly not! I have not waited all this time in direst agony to be chaste, my dear Miss Tessie!”
“What, then?”
“We are going straight back to the huntsman’s cottage.”
“To the villain?”
“No, to Cal.”
“To Cal?”
Tessie could do nothing more but echo the earl dumbly. She had no notion whatsoever about what he was on about.
“Yes. He should be arriving back soon. With the magistrate.”
And still Miss Hampstead, renowned for her quick wit, eyed her love blankly.
“What a goose you are, Tessie! It is taking you an age to figure out what I figured in just a minute!”
“If you do not stop talking in riddles, my lord, I shall not answer for the consequences.”
“Ah, that hot little temper of yours. I must learn to mind it. The point, my love, is that Cal is returning with Mr. Townsend.”
“Yes?”
“I do not believe he will think it amiss, my love, to marry us. After all, you are ruined again. You are out with a gentleman—and might I say, a notorious rake—past dark. There is hardly even a moon to redeem you.”
“How humbling. You say he will marry us?”
“I do not see why not. I posted the banns the day I paid you your wretched ten thousand pounds.”
Tessie gasped. “Nicholas Cathgar, you are the outside of enough!”
But Nicholas only laughed. He had grown used, he thought, to Tessie’s scolding. Fortunately, he thought he knew quite precisely how to silence her. He tested out his theory almost at once.
The silence grew wonderfully, scandalously long. Nicholas Cathgar, as always, had been perfectly right.