Vanity Page 4

  “Will I set the table now, sir?” Tab popped her head around the door. “The mistress says dinner’s aspoiling.”

  “Then you’d best bring it up without delay,” Lord Nick responded. “I don’t fancy the rough edge of Bessie’s tongue.”

  “No, sir,” Tab said feelingly, hastening to the round table with a tray of linen, cutlery, and glasses. Task completed, she glanced at Octavia, still huddled over the fire. “Will I take miss’s clothes to be dried?”

  “If you please, Tabitha.” Octavia answered her before the highwayman could reply. “As soon as they’re dry, bring them back.”

  “Yes, miss.” Tab gathered up the clothes and hurried out.

  “You’ll not need them again today,” Lord Nick observed, going back to the window. “It’s almost full dark, and the storm shows no sign of abating.”

  “I’m not remaining here,” Octavia said flatly.

  The highwayman merely shrugged. There was no point arguing the toss; the facts spoke for themselves, and she’d have to accept the realities soon enough.

  Bessie, Tabitha, and the landlord arrived in a solemn procession, bearing laden trays and, in the latter’s case, two bottles of burgundy that he placed on the table before reverently drawing the corks.

  Octavia sniffed hungrily as Bessie lifted the lid of the tureen of oyster soup and began to ladle the contents into two deep pewter bowls.

  “Will ye carve the mutton yourself, Nick, or shall Ben come back to do it for ye?”

  “I’ll carve, thank you, Bessie.” Lord Nick came to the table. He took a sip of the burgundy that Ben had poured into a glass and nodded his appreciation. “Where’ve you been keeping this one, Ben?”

  The landlord’s ruddy color deepened. “I’ve a few bottles left, Nick. It’s by way of thankin’ ye.”

  “No need, Ben, no need. They were my friends too.”

  The two men looked at each other with the same quiet intensity Octavia had noticed before, then nodded in unison, and Ben backed out of the chamber. Bessie cast a final glance over the table and the steaming leg of mutton on the sideboard; then she waved Tabitha from the room, turning to follow her.

  At the door she paused. “She’ll be lyin’ with ye, then?” She inclined her head in Octavia’s direction, the gesture contemptuous and hostile.

  “Aye,” the highwayman said shortly. Bessie left, closing the door with a sharp click.

  Octavia stood immobile, stunned by her own powerlessness. She was trapped in this place, at the mercy of this man and his friends.

  “Before you start heaping abuse upon my head again, Miss Morgan …” Lord Nick held up an arresting hand. “This is no place for a woman to He alone.”

  “Before you robbed me, sir, I had sufficient funds to pay my own way,” Octavia declared, finding her voice and relieved to hear that she sounded much stronger than she felt.

  “We have an interesting morality here,” he observed. “Come to the table before the soup cools…. To what extent can it be said that a robber can ethically be guilty of robbing a robber?”

  Octavia followed her nose to the table, too hungry to fight enticement. “Clearly you’ve never heard of honor among thieves, Lord Nick.”

  “On the contrary …” He held out a chair for her, then reached into his pocket and dropped the lambskin pouch onto the table beside her. “You will find that I’ve simply retrieved my own property, Miss Morgan.”

  Octavia had not yet had the opportunity to examine the proceeds of her morning’s work. She weighed the pouch in her hand, for the moment forgetting both her hunger and the dark, swirling currents of frustration and apprehension. If she had money, she could leave this place. She could hire a carriage to take her back to London. She could hire a bedchamber until the storm died. She would not be dependent on the mercy and whim of the highwayman.

  She could even pay for her own dinner. She laid the pouch beside her place again and calmly picked up her spoon.

  “The Royal Oak,” the highwayman said, picking up his own spoon, once again reading her mind with uncanny accuracy, “does not cater to stray travelers. There are no bedchambers available for hire.”

  She looked up sharply. “How could that be?”

  “Other trades are plied here.” He cut into a loaf of barley bread and passed her a slice on the end of the knife, that little mocking smile playing over his lips. “The business we conduct at the Royal Oak is best kept to ourselves, Miss Morgan.”

  “A den of thieves,” she said bitterly. “Why?” She dropped her spoon in her sudden vehemence. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “A whim,” he responded, dipping bread into his soup. “You intrigued me … I’m not usually taken advantage of … and besides …” He smiled lazily. “I had thought, once we’d settled our business, we might come to some arrangement for a pleasant evening.”

  Octavia’s fingers closed around the stem of her wineglass. “I trust you’ve now had second thoughts, sir.”

  He shrugged. “I confess I hadn’t expected that you’d still be in possession of your maidenhead.”

  “And now that you know differently?” she asked tautly.

  “Oh, I daresay I can live with the disappointment,” he responded carelessly, pushing back his chair. “May I carve you some mutton?”

  “But why, then, did you tell Bessie I would lie with you?”

  “Because you will not keep your maidenhead for more than five minutes, Miss Morgan, if you do not,” he said with a touch of impatience. “I thought I had explained that.”

  “So I’m to trust you?”

  “I don’t see that you have much choice, my dear.” He placed a laden platter before her. “Eat your dinner, Miss Morgan. You’ll sleep all the better for a full stomach.”

  Chapter 3

  Miss Morgan’s appetite was undiminished by her present circumstances, the highwayman reflected in some amusement, carving another slice of mutton for her as she heaped roast potatoes onto her platter and reached for the bowl of onion sauce.

  Her countenance was now delicately tinged with pink from the warmth and the food and wine. While she offered no conversational sallies, she seemed relaxed for the first time since she’d crossed his path that morning, as if she’d come to some acceptance of her situation.

  Such a woman would not be picking pockets at Tyburn for the fun of it. He sipped his wine, regarding her closely through half-closed eyes. Presumably she was no stranger to hunger and cold, despite the elegant gown and the smooth white hands that didn’t look as if they’d ever performed a menial task.

  He’d first taken her for an occupant of one of the exclusive nunneries around Covent Garden. Mrs. Goadsby’s for instance, where clients were ruthlessly vetted by the abbess, and the young ladies educated and cared for like the most precious daughters of any noble house. In such establishments one could find many a young woman of elegant appearance waiting for a rich protector, or even a husband, and many an aristocratic rake had been lost to the artful wiles of such a genteel seductress.

  It was by no means unheard of for such a lady to take her place at court without causing so much as a raised eyebrow. He thought of Elizabeth Armistead, who had recently graduated from Mrs. Goadsby’s into the arms of the Prince of Wales, her past very much a thing of the past.

  For his own part, though, he’d be chary of marrying such a one. A man would be imagining a pair of cuckold’s horns at every turn, the highwayman reflected. His gaze rested on the serenely beautiful countenance opposite him—such innocent beauty concealing the talents of a successful thief and the devil only knew what else. He’d already seen evidence of a murderous temper. She and Philip … what a pair they would make.

  His long fingers idly stroking around the rim of his glass suddenly stilled as the idea rose fully formed in his mind. He sat quietly, allowing it to grow and spread its wings. His most brilliant inspirations came to him in this way and had done so since childhood. He knew to leave his mind free rein to examine potential proble
ms, discard certain possibilities until lighting upon the perfectly plotted arrangement.

  A slow smile spread over his face, but his eyes were terrifying in their icy detachment. It would work. But how to sell such a scheme to a woman who didn’t seem to fit any recognizable mold? What motives would capture her? She was to some extent an adventuress and maybe, therefore, open to a profitable venture. But was she a free agent?

  “Tell me …” He broke the silence so suddenly that she jumped, spilling ruby drops from the wineglass she was carrying to her lips. “Tell me why you happen to be working the crowd at Tyburn.”

  Octavia frowned, dabbing at the stain on the pristine-white cloth with her napkin. She’d been rather surprised he hadn’t posed the question earlier. “I haven’t been educated to earn my living in the conventional ways.” She forked another potato from the dish.

  “But why would it be necessary for you to do so?” Obligingly he pushed the bowl of cabbage toward her. She nodded her thanks and took a large spoonful onto her plate.

  “For the same reason I imagine you ride the highways,” she responded. “One must eat. One must put a roof over one’s head. And in my case I have a father to care for.”

  Lord Nick leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle. “Forgive me, but why is the father not providing for the daughter?”

  “I don’t consider that your business, sir,” she replied icily.

  “No, it’s not.” He leaned forward to refill their glasses. “Nevertheless, I should like to know.” His smile was suddenly coaxing, inviting, his voice quiet, his eyes no longer arctic but the gray of a soft dawn.

  Since the disaster Octavia had had no one to talk to, no one to share her desperate struggles or to listen to the fierce bubbling rage of helplessness. She’d fought alone to keep herself and her father out of the workhouse, biting her tongue when the urge to heap angry recriminations on his head had become almost overpowering. She could say nothing to him because he didn’t understand their situation. He had no idea they were penniless, no idea of the means she was forced to adopt to keep them from starvation. The invitation to speak of the unspeakable suddenly became irresistible. The highwayman would understand her life because, as he’d said earlier, in some ways they were two of a kind.

  She pushed her plate away.

  “My father is a very clever scholar but a fool in the ways of the world,” she stated. “And since his … his misfortune he has withdrawn even further into his books. He sees and hears nothing outside his texts. Three years ago he had a sizable fortune, enough to keep him in comfort and to provide me with a respectable dowry, only—only he fell among thieves.”

  She looked bleakly across the table. “If I’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened, but I was away visiting an aunt, and while I was gone, two men wormed their way into his confidence and persuaded him to invest heavily in a silver mine in Peru. Needless to say, the mine does not exist.”

  “I see,” he said neutrally. There were thieves and rogues at every level of society, even at court, ready to prey on the unwary under the guise of friendship. “So your father lost everything.”

  “Yes, but his friends appear to be doing very well,” she said bitterly. “They live high at court, and now inhabit my family home. They lent him money with the house as security to meet the original cost of his investment. Needless to say, they were very sorry when they were obliged to foreclose.”

  Her mouth was tight, and he read murder again in her eyes. “The whoresons allowed him to take his books. But I daresay they had no use for them.”

  “What of your mother?”

  “She died when I was born. There’s only ever been the two of us.”

  Silence fell, broken only by the spurt of flame as a piece of green wood caught in the hearth. A log shifted, and the highwayman rose from the table to mend the fire. “But why choose a life of crime? You’re presumably well educated—you could go for a governess.”

  “Or a lady’s maid,” she said sardonically. “Yes, I suppose I could go into service … it would be the respectable way of dealing with our difficulties. But as I said before, I haven’t been educated to consider myself a servant. I’d rather die.”

  Exultation surged in his veins. Octavia Morgan was made to be the perfect accomplice. But he merely said coolly, “Pride, Miss Morgan?”

  “Do you not understand it?” she fired back.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, straightening from the fire and turning back to the room. “Oh, yes, I understand it. But many would consider thievery more humbling than honest toil.”

  She met his eye as he scrutinized her pale, set face. “Perhaps.”

  He knew what she was thinking: that servants were almost universally exploited and demeaned, the gap between them and their employers as vast as between a slave and his master in ancient Rome. If one were bred to the life, then perhaps one could live it with some self-esteem, but if one were not, then it would indeed be a living death.

  “You don’t dream of revenge?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “I might dream about it,” she said. “But I live too close to reality to indulge in fantasy, sir. I make shift as I can, and when things become impossible …” She shrugged and sipped her wine. “Why, then I turn to thievery. I do less harm than those who robbed my father. I take a little from many people … not everything from one. No one is ruined by my activities.”

  “Nor by mine, I believe,” he remarked, returning to the table. “Do you care for some Stilton with Bessie’s apple pie?”

  The change of subject was a relief, breaking the intensity of the last ten minutes. It had been a strange sensation to speak aloud the seething fury and to express the hatred she felt for the men who had ruined her own life as ruthlessly and indifferently as they’d ruined her father. But she felt oddly comforted by this near stranger’s attention, by the knowledge that he understood and the certainty that he didn’t judge.

  “What of you?” she said suddenly. “What brought you to the road, Lord Nick?”

  He cut into the latticed pastry of the apple pie without replying for a minute. Then he said offhandedly, “A piece of the past … a misunderstanding, if you will.”

  “A misunderstanding?” Octavia looked at him in astonishment. “How could a misunderstanding turn you into a highwayman?”

  “In much the same way that your father’s lack of understanding turned you into a pickpocket.” He slid a slice of pie onto a plate and passed it over to her.

  Octavia hesitated, unsatisfied with this reply but sensing that it was all she was going to get. The confidences seemed to be flowing only one way. She shrugged and dug a spoon into the round of Stilton, placing a creamy blue-streaked mound on her plate beside the pie. There was no point neglecting a good dinner just because her confidences weren’t reciprocated.

  “Will your father be worried about you?” Her companion took a forkful of his own pie.

  “What do you think?” she demanded. “When people are abducted, they usually leave worried people behind.”

  “How worried will he be?” the highwayman asked steadily.

  Octavia sighed. There seemed little point in exaggerating the situation; the highwayman wasn’t going to suffer any guilty pangs, anyway. “He’s not always aware of the time,” she explained. “His grasp of the past … well, of classical times … is very acute, but he doesn’t really live in the present. Mistress Forster will look after him, and she’ll no doubt assume I’ve taken shelter from the storm somewhere.”

  He nodded. “I will return you home in the morning, if the storm’s blown itself out.”

  “You are too kind,” she said, not expecting the irony to make much of a dent, but she had been forcibly reminded that her virtue this night was totally dependent on the good faith and moral principles of a notorious highwayman.

  As she’d expected, her companion was unmoved by her tone; indeed, he barely noticed it in his own exultant absorption. His long, slender fingers traced the diamond cuts
in his wineglass, the firelight catching his amethyst signet ring, the red and blue colors refracted by the glass. Octavia Morgan could be the perfect accomplice for his long-awaited vengeance, and she had laid out for him the perfect motive to persuade her to join with him. He guessed that the promise of her own revenge would be more potent than an end to her financial difficulties, but the latter would be added incentive.

  However, he was convinced she wasn’t ready for the proposal yet. She was an adventuress of a kind, but he sensed that her commitment to the dark realms beyond the law was not yet wholehearted. For all her hardships, she hadn’t touched the desperation that pushed a man inexorably over the edge….

  Octavia suddenly felt cold, as if a draft had touched her back. The highwayman was looking at her across the table, but he wasn’t seeing her. His eyes were as blank and flat as polished slate, and there was no expression on his face. She wanted to speak, to say or do something to break the dreadful masklike intensity as he sat gazing upon some grim internal landscape, but words wouldn’t come to her lips. Then his features came to life again, and his gaze became once more alert, once more recognizing her as his eyes rested shrewd and assessing on her countenance. And the silent assessment was almost as unnerving as the blank stare of before.

  The highwayman was thinking that before Octavia Morgan would embrace their joint vengeance, she would need something to bind her to him, to make her see herself differently, to see herself as a woman who could perpetrate a deadly confidence trick on the vanity and twisted complacence of those who’d injured them both. He could see one obvious way to move her across the border into his dark world, to break the fragile chains of maidenly gentility.

  “Excuse me for a moment, Miss Morgan.” He rose from his chair, offering a courtly bow before leaving the room.

  Unnerved, Octavia abandoned her pie and propped her elbow on the table, resting her chin on her palm. She gazed out of the window. It was pitch-dark and the pane was crusted with snow. From the taproom below drunken voices rose in a raucous chorus of some ribald song, and there was a clatter as a chair went over. There was an edge of menace to the noise, a sense that whatever order was maintained could at any moment be plunged into anarchy. This highwayman’s haunt was definitely not a good place for a woman alone.