‘We’ll leave you in privacy, sir.’
‘My hands will need freeing,’ Beau pointed out.
His guardian was clearly unhappy. ‘I suppose so.’ He untied the knot with nervous fingers. ‘I’ll be back in a few moments—sir.’
Beau almost had to laugh, it was all so ridiculous. What would his friends—Prinny and the Duke of Devonshire and the rest of high society—have to say if they could see him like this? Swiftly he eased off his blindfold and stared around. His captors were busy over their fire again, but they were still near enough to spot instantly if he were to try to undo the knotted rope around his right leg. And the older one no doubt still had Beau’s pistol in his belt.
He assessed the two men swiftly. The older one, a lanky fellow, wore a long coat in a peculiar shade of red, and a black hat with a feather in it. The younger was—well, the younger was just a fair-haired lad, pleasant-looking enough, wearing breeches and a leather tunic.
He spotted their horses—a pony and an old grey mare—over on the far side of the clearing, and tethered beside them was Palfreyman’s bay horse. After a few moments Beau called out to his captors and allowed them to lead him back to the charcoal-burner’s hut.
They were clearly upset that he’d removed his blindfold, but after conferring together decided there was little point now in replacing it. They tied his wrists again, but his legs were left free. Preferring to remain standing, Beau leaned against the doorway and watched the two men bend over their small fire—he could smell bacon cooking. He wondered how Palfreyman had felt yesterday when Beau failed to turn up for his four o’clock appointment. Most likely he’d opened a bottle of his best wine to celebrate.
‘You take the food over to him, Luke,’ he heard the older one say. As the younger one approached, Beau stared down at him fiercely.
The lad cleared his throat. ‘Here’s some bread and bacon for you, sir. Is there anything else you need?’
‘Yes,’ said Beau curtly as he took the hunk of hot bacon wrapped in two slabs of bread. ‘I need to be set free. I want my pistol back and that bay horse, so I can ride to Oxford and report the pair of you for kidnap and violence.’
‘It’s not kidnap!’ The lad sounded terrified. ‘And we’re only to keep you here until Miss Deb gets back, she said so. Then we can let you go, I swear...’
‘You take orders from a girl?’ said Beau with contempt.
The lad flushed to the roots of his fair hair and hurried off. Beau ate the bacon and bread, then settled himself on the floor and pretended to be asleep again. They came over to check him, then stood outside, talking. They talked for quite a while; then the older one said, ‘Best get going with our jobs, lad. The horses need feeding and watering for a start—I’ll see to that, and lead them down to the river. You go and explore the track—in both directions, mind. Make sure there aren’t any search parties out looking for our prisoner, do you understand?’
‘But shouldn’t one of us stay to keep an eye on—him?’
‘With his wrists tied, and that rope round his leg? Our Mr Beaumaris is going nowhere in a hurry. Besides, he looks to be sleeping again...’
Their voices faded. Lying by the open door of the hut, Beau opened one eye and watched the younger one set off anxiously towards the track, while the other made for the horses.
They’d left the fire burning low.
As soon as they were out of sight, Beau began to get to his feet, smiling grimly to himself.
Deb O’Hara was sitting on a bale of hay in the Angel’s stable, dressed in a white shirt and black velvet breeches, with her long chestnut hair pinned up tightly. She was doing her breathing exercises, which consisted of swinging her arms from side to side, taking a deep breath, then expelling the air from her lungs in a steady hum—Gerald had taught her to do this, to warm her vocal cords. At the same time she was trying hard to concentrate on the words she would be reciting out there in about—oh, no—in about twenty minutes.
Miss Deb O’Hara’s ‘entertainments’ always gathered a crowd. It had been her idea years ago to present selections of their repertoire by herself, keeping the content short and lively. After considerable practice she’d mastered the art of playing two parts at once—in this case, the clown from Twelfth Night and the lovelorn heroine, Viola. By the time she’d skipped from one side of the stage to the other, changed her hat and her voice as necessary and sung a few comical songs as well, she usually had her audience captivated.
But at this precise moment, she couldn’t even remember her lines.
‘I will build me a willow cabin...’
She stopped. She wasn’t getting a headache, was she? She’d slept badly last night in the stable loft, but there was a good reason for that—Mr Beaumaris. And his kiss. He’s safe in the woods, she kept assuring herself. Francis and Luke have him tied up... After taking a deep swallow from the flask of water she’d put on a nearby hay bale, she began again.
‘Build me a willow cabin—’
She broke off once more as her old pony, watching from its stall, stretched to nip playfully at her shirt sleeve. ‘I’ve no apples for you, Ned! Now leave me be—you’re having a nice long rest, but I’ve got all these words to remember!’
And an awful lot on my mind, if truth be told, she muttered to herself before starting her breathing exercises again. ‘Hmmm...’
A crowd was already gathering out in the yard. They sounded to be a noisy, ale-swilling lot, but that was only to be expected, and besides, she’d been used to stepping out in front of lively audiences since she was little. Her very first role had been as one of the young, doomed princes in Richard III, and some raucous onlookers had started jeering the moment she appeared. But they’d gone absolutely silent when she’d made her poignant little speech—God keep me from false friends!—and the sense of sheer power over people’s emotions had enthralled her.
‘You’re born to it, Deb,’ Gerald O’Hara had said proudly afterwards. ‘Some day they’ll be calling out your name in Drury Lane or Covent Garden.’
Perhaps. But meanwhile here she was, struggling to remember her lines for a performance in an inn yard, and the surly innkeeper was banging on the stable door. ‘You nearly ready? All this lot out here are making an almighty nuisance of themselves.’
Deb thought of all the sixpences he would have been busy collecting from them and bit back a sharp retort. ‘I said I’d appear at midday.’ She kept her voice pleasant. ‘And that’s what I’ll do.’
‘Well, see that you keep to it, missy.’
He left before she had chance to reply.
Don’t waste your time and effort arguing with the wretch. Don’t. A feeling of deep dread lurked in Deb’s heart—but it wasn’t the crowd she was afraid of.
Her business with Palfreyman was more or less resolved. At ten this morning she’d hurried to St Mary’s churchyard, watching out for any trap that might have been laid—after all, she wouldn’t put anything past Palfreyman. But everything was quiet there, and relief swept through her when she spotted the letter under the horse trough by the church wall.
Deb sat in the sun on the village green, and carefully opened the letter, which promised that Palfreyman would lift the charges he’d laid against the Lambeth Players. The wording was brief and gave away little, though she thought she could detect