“Attacking my very own carriage!” Richard continued, disbelief warring with rage. “The effrontery of the man!”
“I would say that effrontery is something that man is not lacking,” Nicola pointed out with cool amusement.
The Earl ignored her. “I’ll have the coachman’s head for this.”
“It was not his fault,” Nicola pointed out. “They had dragged a cut tree across the road. He could hardly have ruined his horses on it, even if the horses had not balked.”
“What about the groom?” Richard swung around, pinning her with his piercing gaze. “I specifically put him up there beside the coachman with a gun to ward off such an attack. But he not only didn’t fire a shot, he gave them his weapon!”
“I don’t know what else you could expect. There were at least six men surrounding the coach. If he had fired it, both he and the coachman would have been dead in an instant. And then where would I have been? It would scarcely be doing their duty to leave me stranded and unprotected in the middle of the road, would it?”
Richard snorted. “Lot of protection they were.”
“Well, I am here and unharmed, with nothing worse lost than a few jewels and some coins.”
“I must say,” her brother-in-law said resentfully, “you seem rather blasé about the whole affair.”
“I am happy to be alive. For a few moments there, I was certain that I would be killed.”
“Yes. Thank heavens you got here safe and well,” Deborah put in, reaching out a hand to her sister.
Nicola moved nearer to Deborah and closed her own hand around Deborah’s.
The Earl regarded the two women sourly. “Well, I am glad that you can regard it so lightly. But it is something I cannot ignore. It is a blatant insult to me.”
“Oh, really, Richard! I am the one who was attacked!”
“You were traveling under my protection. It is a slap in my face. That blackguard is as good as saying that my protection is worthless. He clearly did it to humiliate me.” He smiled grimly. “Well, this time the chap will find out that he has gone too far. I won’t rest until I have his head on a pike. Thank heavens I had already sent for a Bow Street Runner. As soon as he gets here, I’ll set him on this. Then that scoundrel will learn that he has been tweaking the wrong man.”
It was typical, Nicola thought, that Richard would be much more concerned over the presumed insult to himself than he would be over his passenger’s safety. She glanced at her sister, wondering if Deborah was still so blinded by love for the man that she did not see how cold and self-centered he was.
But, looking at Deborah’s pinched, pale face, Nicola quickly dropped all thoughts of Richard or of the attack. “Enough of this talk,” she said crisply, going to her sister. “Deborah is obviously tired and needs to go to bed.”
Her sister cast a grateful smile in her direction, though she demurred, “No, I am all right, really.”
“Nonsense. It is quite clear that you are dead on your feet. Come along, I will take you up. Richard,” Nicola said, casting him a perfunctory nod, “if you will excuse us…?”
Richard bowed back, barely sparing a glance for his wife. “Of course. I need to go out to question the coachman. Good night, Deborah. Nicola.” He hesitated, then added with a wry twist of his mouth, “We are pleased to have you visit. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
He left the room, and Nicola took her sister’s arm and helped her up from her chair. They began to walk to the stairs. Deborah cast an anxious look toward the front door, through which Richard had disappeared.
“I do hope Richard will not be too harsh on the coachman. I—he would not be unkind normally, of course. It is just that this highwayman has him so upset.”
“I could see that.”
“It is because the man plagues Richard, you see. He—I know it sounds odd, but he seems to particularly delight in stealing from Richard. Tenants’ payments, the shipments to and from the mines—I cannot tell you how many times those wagons have been stopped. Even in broad daylight. It is as if he were thumbing his nose at Richard.”
“It makes sense. Richard is the largest landowner around here. It would stand to reason that much of the money the man takes would be from him.”
“Oh, he stops other things—other carriages, the mail coach sometimes. But it is Richard who has been hit the hardest. It has cut deeply into his profits from the tin mines. Richard has been nearly beside himself. I think what bothers him the most is that ‘The Gentleman,’ as they call him, has evaded capture so easily. He comes out of nowhere and then melts back into the night. Richard has sent men out looking for his hiding place, but they have found nothing. He has put extra guards on the wagons and his carriage, but it doesn’t stop him, just as it didn’t tonight. And no one will come forward with any information about him. Even the miners and farmers who work for Exmoor claim to have no knowledge of the man. Do you think that is possible?”
“I don’t know. It does seem somewhat unlikely that no one would know anything about him.”
“Usually the people in the village seem to know about everything. Richard says they are deceiving him. Hiding the man’s whereabouts from him. For some odd reason, the highwayman seems to almost be some sort of hero to the local people.”
Having seen the fit of rage that Richard had pitched about the theft and the way he had blamed first the coachman, then the guard, Nicola could well believe that Richard’s employees and tenants told him little. She had never seen Richard be anything but arrogant, even with his peers. With those he considered his inferiors, he was doubtless far worse. She suspected that the people around here were probably secretly pleased that the highwayman was harassing the Earl of Exmoor.
“What do you know about this highwayman?” Nicola asked, trying to keep her voice casual. “He seems an odd sort to be a thief. He spoke as well as you or I. And so did one of the other men.”
Deborah nodded. “That is why they call him The Gentleman.” They had reached the top of the stairs, and Deborah paused for a moment to catch her breath. “That and his manners. He is reputed to be invariably polite, especially to ladies, and it is said that he has not harmed anyone that he has stopped. He stopped the vicar once at night when he was going to the side of a dying man, and he didn’t take a farthing from him, just apologized for stopping him when he saw who he was—and sent him on his way.”
“Indeed.” Nicola did not tell her that the man’s behavior toward her tonight could scarcely be characterized as polite. Not, of course, that he had actually harmed her, but that kiss…well, it had been an insult, an effrontery.
“No one knows where he came from,” Deborah added. “He started only a few months ago.”
“It seems an odd place to choose. Thieves usually operate closer to London or on a main thoroughfare, not out in the country. How do you suppose he came to this pass? Do you think he really was gently born? A son who disgraced his family and was disowned?”
“Or a wastrel who squandered his fortune,” Deborah offered. “That is the theory that the vicar’s wife proposes. Or perhaps he was merely someone who was well-educated but poor, a tutor or a fencing master, or someone of that sort.”
“A tutor?” Nicola couldn’t suppress a giggle. “A history scholar who takes to the highways?”
Deborah grinned, too. “That does seem a little absurd. Richard says that he is merely a ‘damned actor’ who has learned how to ape his betters.” She sighed. “And perhaps he is. No