At the Highwayman's Pleasure Read online

‘Surely between you and the two men on the box, you could overpower him?’

  The farmer immediately shrank back farther into his corner.

  ‘Not if he’s armed,’ he declared, a note of alarm in his voice.

  ‘He’s coming over,’ hissed Betty. ‘Oh, lordy!’

  She clutched at Charity’s sleeve as the door was wrenched open and the stranger said jovially, ‘Well, now, let’s be seein’ who we have in here. If ye’d care to step down, ladies and gentleman!’

  The farmer’s wife whimpered and shrank back against her husband as the lamplight glinted on the pistol being waved towards them. With a little tut of exasperation, Charity climbed out, sharply adjuring Betty not to dawdle. The farmer and his wife followed suit and soon they were all four of them standing on the open road, with the winter wind blowing around them. She glanced towards the box, where the driver and guard were sitting with their hands clasped above their heads.

  ‘Will that be everyone?’

  ‘Unless there is someone hiding under the seat,’ retorted Charity, rubbing her cold hands together. ‘If you intend to rob us then please get on with it so we may be on our way.’

  The man’s face was in shadow, but she could feel his eyes upon her. Now that she was closer to him she could see the deeper black of a mask covering his upper face. It did not need Betty’s little gasp of dismay to tell her that drawing attention to herself was not the wisest thing to do.

  ‘And who might you be, ma’am, to be making demands?’

  ‘That is none of your business.’

  ‘Ah, well, now, beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but I have to disagree with you.’ He waved the pistol. His voice was still cheerful, but there was no mistaking the note of steel in his tone or the menacing gesture. She drew herself up.

  ‘I am Mrs Weston.’

  ‘The devil you are!’ He stepped a little closer and she had the impression that she was being scrutinised very carefully. ‘You’ll be on your way to Beringham, then?’

  ‘I have no business in Beringham.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, I am going to Allingford.’ She hesitated. ‘To the theatre. I am an actress.’ She held out her reticule. ‘Here, if you are going to rob us, take it!’

  She saw the flash of white as he grinned. ‘No, I don’t think I will. ’Tis a charitable mood I’m in this evening.’

  ‘Are ye not going to rob us, then?’ The farmer goggled at him.

  ‘I am not. I’ve decided I’ll not take your purse, nor the ornament that’s a-twinkling on your lady wife. Get ye back into the carriage...ah, except you, ma’am.’

  Charity’s heart lurched as he addressed her. Not for the world would she show her fear, and she said with creditable assurance, ‘I have nothing for you.’

  ‘Oh, but I think you have.’

  Betty stepped up, crying, ‘You’ll not touch my mistress!’

  Charity caught her arm. ‘Hush, Betty.’

  The pistol waved ominously.

  ‘Send your maid back to the carriage with the others, Mrs Weston.’

  ‘Do as he says, Betty.’ Charity held her maid’s eye and put her hand up, her fingers touching the discreet pearl head of the hatpin that held her bonnet in place. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

  She saw the understanding in the older woman’s eyes and with a grim little nod Betty walked away, leaving Charity alone with the highwayman.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he told her. ‘I’ll take that fancy brooch you have pinned to your coat.’

  It was a small cameo and of no particular value. Charity supposed he would present it to his sweetheart and found the idea did not please her. He reached out his hand to pluck the brooch from her breast and she forced herself to keep still while his fingers fumbled with the catch, but after a moment, and with a huff of exasperation, she brushed his hands aside.

  ‘Here, let me.’ She unfastened the cameo and held it out to him. ‘There, take it. Now may I go?’

  ‘Not just yet, lady.’

  He stepped closer and she was enveloped in his shadow. Charity was a tall woman, but he towered over her, the caped greatcoat making his shoulders impossibly broad. A tremor ran through her, but she told herself he was only a man, and in her profession she had dealt with many such situations.

  She said calmly, ‘Surely you will not attack me here, in front of everyone.’

  He laughed, and again she saw that flash of white teeth.

  ‘Attack? Faith, me darlin’, that suggests you ain’t willing.’

  ‘Indeed? Well, I—’

  Her words were cut off as he reached out and dragged her to him. She found herself pinioned against his chest, one arm like an iron band around her shoulders. She looked up to protest and at that moment his head swooped down and he kissed her.

  Through luck or expertise his mouth found hers immediately and her senses reeled from that first, electric touch. She could not move and he continued to kiss her, his tongue plundering her mouth and causing such a rush of sensation through her body that it was impossible to resist him. The stubble on his face grazed her skin but she hardly noticed, her mind spinning with such irrelevant thoughts as the fact that he did not smell of dirt and horses. Instead her head was filled with a succession of scents. First there had been the unmistakable smell of leather and the wool of his greatcoat, but when he pulled her closer she recognised the pleasant tang of soap and lemons, spices and clean linen. As his tongue explored her mouth her bones dissolved and hot arrows of pleasure drove deep into her body. The sensations were new and unnerving. She wanted to cling to him, to push herself against that hard, male body.

  Time stopped. She was his prisoner, fighting her own desire to kiss him back rather than struggling against his embrace, and when he finally raised his head she was strangely disappointed. She remained in his arms, unable to move and staring up at him. Her eyes had grown more accustomed to the darkness and she could make out his features a little better beneath the shadow of his hat. The smiling mouth and lean cheeks, the strong lines of his jaw that ran down to the cleft of his chin, the hawkish nose and most of all those dark, dark eyes, gleaming at her through the slits of his mask.

  ‘Mmm,’ he murmured, soft as a sigh. ‘Heavenly.’

  Charity had forgotten her surroundings, the icy wind that was even now scattering tiny flakes of snow over them, the fact that he was a stranger. She had even forgotten that he was a highwayman, until he raised his head and barked out an order to the coachman and guard.

  ‘Keep yer hands on yer heads, me fine friends.’

  His rough warning brought her back to reality. She pushed him away—no, he did not move, it was she who stepped back, hiding the trembling of her hands by vigorously shaking out her skirts. A glance behind her showed the coach still standing on the road, the driver and guard still sitting motionless on the box and the white faces of the passengers visible at the coach windows. It could only have been a minute that had passed, maybe two, yet Charity felt as if something momentous had occurred. She gave herself a mental shake. Good heavens, it was only a kiss, and she had been kissed before, but never had it had such an effect.

  It was the excitement, she told herself sternly. Fear set your nerves on edge and made you feel the experience all the more keenly.

  The highwayman was holding out his hand to her.

  ‘Having exacted my price from you, madam, you are now free to go on your way.’

  Silently she took his hand and let him help her back into the carriage. He closed the door and she saw the glint of amusement in his eyes as he touched the barrel of the pistol to his hat brim in a mock salute. He stepped back and glanced up at the box.

  ‘Now, me lads, I’ll thank you to sit where you are a while longer.’

  He whistled and the black horse trotted up to him. Charity no
ted the athletic way he leaped up into the saddle and galloped away, leaving everyone in a shocked, immobile silence.

  As the hoofbeats faded, the spell was broken. The farmer began to rage about the impudence of such rascals while his wife fell back in her seat, fanning herself vigorously and declaring she could feel a seizure coming on. Betty muttered up a prayer of thanks and the guard clambered down to retrieve his shotgun and to ask if the passengers were all right.

  ‘All right? Of course we are not all right!’ shouted the farmer. ‘What’re you about, to let one rascally knave with a popgun cause us all such terror? Look! Look at my wife. Right terrified, she is. ’Tis a disgrace, I tell ’ee. One man on the road and all you can do is drop your gun!’

  ‘Aye, I dropped it right enough,’ replied the guard, affronted. ‘He were threatenin’ to shoot me head off.’

  ‘So you let ’im get away with daylight robbery!’

  ‘As I recall, he didn’t take anything o’ yours,’ the guard retorted.

  ‘He stole the mail,’ countered the farmer’s wife.

  ‘And he assaulted my mistress,’ added Betty.

  ‘Which is why I came to enquire if she was hurt.’ The guard turned his attention to Charity. ‘Well, ma’am? Have you suffered any injury?’

  Charity was reliving the memory of being imprisoned in those strong arms and her lips still burned from the highwayman’s kiss, but she would never admit that to a soul.

  ‘N-no, I am a little shaken, but I am not hurt.’

  ‘The rascal stole your brooch, Miss—’

  ‘Hush, Betty. It was a mere trinket.’ She turned to the guard. ‘Please, it is not important. Let us get on.’

  The guard seemed satisfied with that. He nodded.

  ‘Then we’ll be on our way. We’re stopping at Beringham to change horses, so we will report the incident then.’

  He closed the door and the carriage rocked as he climbed back onto the box beside the driver.

  ‘Aye, and I’ll be reporting this to the mail company,’ muttered the farmer as they set off again. ‘Never seen the like, a guard and driver made to look no-how by a lone horseman—why, between the three of us we could have taken him!’

  ‘That’s just what my mistress sug—’

  Charity dug her maid in the ribs. She summoned up a bright smile.

  ‘Well, I for one am glad we came off so lightly. I pray we will have no more excitement before we reach our destination.’

  * * *

  Her prayers were answered, and the short journey into Beringham was uneventful. The passengers were invited to go into the inn while the constable was summoned.

  After the chilly carriage, the sight of the inn’s blazing fire was very cheering, and when the landlord had supplied them all with a cup of hot coffee, even the farmer’s mood improved. The local constable turned out to be a stolid individual called Rigg who painstakingly wrote everything down, explaining that the magistrate would want to have all the details reported to him. Once the guard and driver had given their version of events, he turned to the passengers. Charity glanced at the clock. They should have been at Allingford by now, but the delay could not be helped, so she stifled her impatience and gave her attention to the matter in hand.

  ‘He got down off his horse and ordered you all out o’ the coach, you say?’ The constable looked at his notes. ‘So you had a chance to get a good look at the fellow, eh?’

  The farmer shook his head. ‘Nay, ’twere too dark to see out by then.’

  ‘That’s true,’ affirmed Betty. ‘And he soon ordered us all back inside, except Mrs Weston.’

  ‘Weston?’ The constable looked up, all attention. ‘Mrs Weston, you say? Are you—?’

  ‘I am an actress.’ She smiled to atone for interrupting him. ‘Mrs Weston is my stage name.’

  The farmer’s wife sniffed, her earlier smiles replaced now with a more haughty stare.

  ‘Ah, I see.’ The constable looked even more interested in that. ‘You’ll be on your way to Allingford, then.’ He added, with something like a sigh, ‘We have no theatre in Beringham.’

  ‘Nor any other entertainment,’ grumbled the farmer. ‘Even the inns ain’t what they was.’

  ‘But she was closest to the villain,’ put in the farmer’s wife, ignoring her husband. ‘In his arms, she was, and he was makin’ free with her—’

  ‘I beg your pardon, but it was no such thing,’ declared Betty, bristling in defence of her mistress. ‘He ravished her, quite against her will.’

  Charity blushed and shook her head at the bemused constable.

  ‘He stole a cheap brooch, that is all.’

  ‘And he kissed her, too!’ cried the farmer’s wife in outraged accents.

  ‘Very understandable, ma’am, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ returned the officer of the law, then coloured to the tips of his ears.

  ‘It means she saw him better than the rest of us,’ said the farmer. ‘Right tall fellow, he was.’

  ‘Ma’am?’ The constable turned his eyes towards Charity, who shrugged.

  ‘I would not have said he was that tall. About medium height, I think.’

  ‘Bigger, surely,’ argued the farmer’s wife. ‘He towered over you!’

  Charity remembered it only too well, but she shook her head now.

  ‘I was cowering a little.’

  It was a lie. She had felt no fear in her encounter with the highwayman. There had been anger, yes, and excitement, but she had never felt afraid of him. The farmer’s wife was continuing.

  ‘A big man, all in black and astride a great black ’oss. And he had right broad shoulders.’

  Charity remembered him coming close, the feeling that he was enveloping her in his shadow.

  ‘His coat was very large,’ she said. ‘It had several capes on the shoulders, which gave the impression of width.’

  ‘Did you see his face, or his hair—did he wear a wig, perhaps?’

  ‘He never removed his hat. And he wore a mask, so I could not see his countenance.’

  That much was true. She could not even say with any certainty what colour his eyes had been, only that they were very dark and had bored into her, as if he could see into her very soul.

  ‘His horse, though—that should be easy to find.’ The coachman tapped out his pipe upon the hearth and set about refilling it. ‘It was a stallion, a great dark beast, pure black from mane to hoof.’

  ‘And he weren’t from around these parts,’ added the guard. ‘Irish, I do reckon.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed the farmer. ‘Definitely Irish, no mistaking that brogue.’

  Charity said nothing. She had spent her life working with actors and mimics and suspected that lilting Irish accent had been as false as the inflection she had adopted in London to make everyone think she had grown up south of the Thames. The landlord, who had been hovering by all the while, nodded sagely.

  ‘The Dark Rider. They say he comes from Dublin.’

  ‘Oh, Lord bless us!’ exclaimed the farmer’s wife, falling back in her chair. No one paid her any heed.

  ‘Nay, I thought it was Shannon,’ said the coachman, ‘But that’s who I guessed it might be. I’ve never seen him afore, though.’

  ‘The Dark Rider?’ asked Betty nervously.

  ‘Aye.’ The landlord nodded. ‘He’s been working the roads around Beringham for a year or so now. Robbed Absalom Keldy and his wife afore Christmas, he did.’

  ‘And I was told he took fifty guineas off Mr Hutton only last month,’ put in the coachman.

  The farmer snorted. ‘Well, he can take what he likes off Hutton, with my blessing. Self-serving old scoundrel that he is!’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed the landlord, ‘but the Dark Rider’s capricious, see. You never know what he will ta
ke. It might be no more than a kiss from a pretty woman, other times it’s a purse.’

  ‘He always takes the mailbag,’ added the constable, ‘although they turn up again at the roadside after he’s looked through ’em. Searching for money, I dare say, although who’d be foolish enough to send money in a letter, I don’t know.’

  The landlord winked at Charity. ‘He’s got the ladies around here all of a pother. They all wants to meet ’im. Many think he’s a gentleman in disguise, kicking up a lark.’

  ‘Gentleman or no, he’ll be dancing on the gibbet when he’s caught,’ growled the constable. ‘I think that’s all I needs for now, so you can be on your way.’ His unhurried gaze swept over the passengers. ‘You’d best tell me your direction, in case we needs to speak to you again, or to ask you to identify the culprit.’

  ‘Well, you’ll find us at Broad Ings Farm.’ The farmer’s buxom wife stood up and shook out her skirts. ‘And we’ve paid our fare to the next crossroads, so the quicker we get moving the better.’

  ‘And you, Mrs Weston?’

  Charity spread her hands.

  ‘I have no idea where I shall be living in Allingford, but you can always find me at the theatre.’

  They were ushered back to the coach. The driver was anxious to make up time and they rattled quickly through the darkness to the crossroads, where the farmer and his wife alighted, leaving Charity and her maid with the carriage to themselves.

  ‘Well, well, what a to-do, mistress! We should have been in Allingford three hours since.’

  ‘I know, Betty. I hope Hywel has a dinner put aside for us. All this excitement has given me an appetite.’

  Betty gave a disapproving sniff.

  ‘Don’t know how you can be thinking of food when you were ravished by that scoundrel! Still, it couldn’t have been that bad, since you didn’t have to make use of your hatpin, and I know full well that you’ve used it on more than one occasion when an admirer has been a bit too familiar.’

  Charity did not reply, but settled back in her corner and closed her eyes. To be truthful, she had not even thought of her hatpin when the highwayman had pulled her close. She had not thought of anything. She had known ladies in the audience to swoon at the sight of a particularly handsome actor, but had always considered them very silly beings. Now she could understand them a little better, for the powerful attraction she had felt for the audacious rascal had made her light-headed, and she had come very close to swooning herself.