The Major and the Pickpocket (11 page)

Tassie knew she had no other option. The money he’d promised her was her only chance to make some sense of her past, of her future. She said in a low voice, ‘We have made a bargain, Marcus. I will go, and do what I promised.’

Marcus hesitated. Then, much to Tassie’s astonishment,
he touched her cheek almost tenderly and said, in a softer voice, ‘Very well. Take care of yourself, minx. Do you know, I think I’ll miss you.’

Tassie scowled and stepped back rapidly. But her skin still burned from his light caress as he turned to leave the room.

During the journey to Gloucestershire, Tassie rapidly came to the conclusion that she would rather have walked than ride in so uncomfortable a conveyance. The chaise was heavy, and wallowed in the mired ruts of the early March roads; the constant lurching motion made her feel ill, and Emilia’s disapproval of everything she did depressed her spirits constantly. Edward travelled in his cage on the floor of the coach, grumbling incessantly; every time they hit a rut, he would let out a loud, complaining squawk, at which Emilia would glare as if she would like to throttle him.

During the afternoon, Emilia dozed off, and Tassie lifted Edward’s cage onto the seat beside her. ‘It’ll be all right, Edward,’ she whispered to him through the bars of the wicker cage. ‘You and me have been through worse, much worse than this, haven’t we, now?’

Edward muttered something in reply, and Tassie, pressing her ear to the side of the cage to hear it, sighed deeply. ‘You’re supposed to say something sensible to cheer me up, Edward. “Pieces of eight” is no use at all.’

That night, in the posting inn, on learning that she was expected to share a bedroom with Emilia while Edward was assigned to an empty stable at the rear of the building, Tassie took matters into her own hands. Feigning sleep, she waited till Emilia was snoring. Then she got dressed again and crept down to the stables herself. There, she wrapped herself in her cloak,
pillowed her head on some hay intended for the horses, and slept at the side of Edward’s cage.

The grooms made a bit of a fuss when they found her there in the cold, chilly light of dawn; but Tassie quickly distracted them by showing them some of Edward’s clever tricks. By the time a distraught and angry Emilia had finally tracked her down, she was sitting happily with the grooms on the floor of the stable, showing them how to trickle the dice by the light of a glimmering lantern, while Edward pecked gleefully at a crust of buttered bread that one of the grooms had found for him.

Emilia, after complaining bitterly to the coachman Hugh about Tassie’s wild, termagant ways, turned on Tassie herself.

‘You’re a shameless jade, that’s what you are!’ she declared. ‘It’s not right that I should be forced to keep company with the likes of you!’

Tassie, white-faced, clutching Edward’s cage close, said, ‘It wasn’t my choice that you should travel with me, Emilia, believe me.’

‘Oh, I realise that!’ jeered the other woman. ‘You were hoping Master Marcus would travel with you, weren’t you? You wouldn’t have slept in the straw of the stables then, oh, no! Everyone in Portman Square, me and Sansom and all the rest, guessed immediately how you were after bedding him from the moment you set eyes on him. All that carousing round in the night with that parrot of yours, clad in a man’s clothing, looking like a back-street bawd; and then you’ve the nerve to dress yourself like a fine lady, and go off to the theatre with him and Master Hal!’

‘Darling Marcus! Darling Marcus!’ squawked Edward suddenly.

Emilia looked at the bird in downright horror; then back to Tassie. ‘Indeed you won’t get Major Marcus Forrester in your clutches, let me tell you that now! He’s promised to a real lady, he is, to Miss Philippa—oh, they’ve had a little disagreement, but they were childhood sweethearts, and she’ll be back to him soon enough, soon as she realises his worth, so you keep your sticky little hands off him, madam!’

As soon as she realises his worth?
thought Tassie. Yes, as soon as he’s restored the prospect of his godfather’s inheritance, which he is paying me to attend to.

Edward was quite silent now. Tassie looked down sadly at her chewed fingernails, and hands which were indeed greasy from feeding Edward his buttered bread. ‘Perhaps you’d better go back to London, Emilia,’ she said in a low voice. ‘What Edward said—it was a joke. I think I ought to continue this journey on my own, don’t you? It’s a journey I have to make, because of a promise, you see.’

Emilia eyed her narrowly, suddenly uncertain. Bother the girl. If she wasn’t careful, Tassie would twist her round her little finger as well, just as she’d got round Master Marcus, and the Beauchamp family at Portman Square, and even those grooms she’d found her with, dicing in the stables, at six of the clock this morning.

Funnily enough, the girl truly didn’t seem to realise how pretty she was. Well, thought Emilia a little enviously, if she could only see herself as others did! The soft bed and wholesome food at the house in Portman Square had had their effect; she was as lovely as any lady Emilia had ever seen, in a wild sort of way, with those big green eyes that were almost too large for her delicate face, and thick golden curls that tumbled in sleep-tousled disarray around her slender shoulders…

Emilia hadn’t missed the way those grooms had looked at her. Some ripe ideas going through
their
minds, no doubt. Yet even they had treated her with respect, bringing her coffee and fresh-baked rolls from the kitchen and hanging avidly on her every word as she explained how to trickle those dratted dice.

No hint of any bawdy mischief there, though in all truth, with anyone else in the world, there should have been. Darling Marcus, indeed.

‘I’m not leaving you alone, miss,’ declared Emilia truculently at last, ‘to get yourself into even more mischief! Besides, I promised them at Portman Square that I’d look after you. But when Major Marcus arrives, you leave him alone, you hear? He’s not for the likes of you.’

Tassie said slowly, ‘I’ve told you. I wouldn’t want Marcus Forrester if he was the last, the very last man on earth.’

Emilia nodded, almost satisfied. They travelled after that in a state of armed truce, with Emilia complaining about her headaches instead of about Edward, and earning a promise from Tassie that she would find her some tansy—an old country cure—and make a brew of it for her as soon as they reached their destination. Then the sun came out, warming the chilly air; and Tassie, unable to bear Emilia’s fretful worries about footpads and highwaymen as they drew further away from habitation, asked Hugh Roberts the coach driver if she could sit up on top with him.

At first Hugh thought she’d be a nuisance. So he was relieved when she sat quietly, her attention on the unfolding rural landscape, with her infernal bird in its cage wrapped in her cloak against the cool breeze. And he was unexpectedly pleased when he saw how the fresh air brought a little colour to the girl’s pale cheeks.

Nevertheless, Tassie’s quiet demeanour hid a state of turmoil. Emilia’s stark accusation about her designs on Marcus still thundered in her ears. Had the servants guessed? Had they known about Marcus kissing her, about that awful scene in the bedchamber when he’d taunted her for being half-clothed?

What she’d replied to Emilia was still, in a way, the truth. Certainly, when she’d first had the misfortune to meet Major Marcus Forrester, she hadn’t liked him one little bit. How could she, when he was arrogant, and disdainful, and accused her of being a thieving little doxy? And yet things had changed during the vivid time she’d spent with him in London. She’d found herself actually enjoying being with him. Oh, they still sparred and insulted one another, but she felt he was—her friend.

She tried very hard not to think about the way he’d kissed her that night outside the Angel. But she couldn’t help but remember it when she was halfway between sleep and waking, or when she caught him watching her with those vivid grey eyes. And the thought of what else his lips and hands might do to her made her pulse quicken strangely, and her blood race in her veins.

Was that what Emilia meant? Had the hostile maidservant seen it straight away? Tassie almost blushed with shame as she remembered Emilia’s vicious accusation: ‘Everyone guessed immediately how you were after bedding him from the moment you set eyes on him…’
Bedding him.
Suddenly something she had never really troubled to think about in relation to herself seemed very real when she thought of Marcus. She remembered the way he smiled at her, remembered the warm strength of his powerful body, the heart-stopping touch of his fingers, and she felt the colour rushing hotly to her face.

The coachman said, in a kindly voice, ‘You comfortable enough out here, missy? Not too cold for you?’

Tassie pulled herself together with an effort. ‘Not at all. I’m truly comfortable, thank you, Hugh. The fresh air suits me.’

Hugh nodded sagely. ‘Aye. Sensible of you to get away from Miss High-and-Mighty in there. Don’t you worry about her—you’ll be safe enough from her bad tempers when Major Forrester catches us up. He’s a good ‘un, is Major Forrester.’

Bother the man Marcus, why did everyone go on about him so? With a slightly dizzying feeling of horizons opening out rather too rapidly before her, Tassie gazed out at the bleak fields, scattered with sheep, the bare-branched trees, the stark ploughlands. Yet Hugh the coachman was right. She felt she could trust Marcus, had felt it from the moment she made that stupid bargain with him; knew that beneath his autocratic, challenging demeanour he was basically a man of honour. The thought crept into her mind that she
did
feel safe with him.

If the coachman hadn’t been there, she’d have chided herself aloud. Safe, with Marcus? Far from being safe, he was possibly the most dangerous man she had ever met. Anyway, he was still hoping for Philippa’s hand—wasn’t that what all this was about? And how could she possibly waste so much time thinking about a man who was in love with such a silly, vain creature? Oh, drat and blast Major Marcus Forrester.
Darling
Marcus. She would go mad if she couldn’t turn her thoughts to something else.

Suddenly, looking around, she realised how much she was missing Georgie Jay and her old, familiar companions. These were the sort of country roads she had walked many a time with them. They’d lightened every
journey with stories, and jokes, and merry quips…She sighed. She doubted they would miss
her.

She turned to face the coachman suddenly, and her green eyes were dancing again. ‘Are you a gambling man, Hugh Roberts?’

He turned to look at her in surprise, his face weather-roughened and good-natured. ‘I likes a wager now and then, missy, as well as any honest fellow.’

Tassie grinned. ‘Then listen, Hugh. Over there, beyond that ploughed field, I can see a lonely seagull in the sky. I’ll wager you one whole shilling that before we get to the next bend in the road, there’ll be a cluster more.’

The coachman stared after her pointing finger. ‘Nay. It be going away from us, that bird, for certain, lass! There’ll be no more gulls this far inland, not this time of the year.’

‘A shilling,’ repeated Tassie, her eyes glinting.

‘Very well, lass. You’re on!’

A few minutes later, a horde of crying gulls rose into the air, and Tassie threw the coachman a look of pure triumph.

‘You got me there, girl,’ he admitted, looking almost pleased at her victory. ‘But I’d appreciate the chance to earn my shilling back. Tell you what. In quarter of an hour or so, we should meet up with the mail coach from Oxford. I’ll wager you the leading nags will be greys. How about it?’

‘Greys? Fie, what nonsense. They’ll be bay, most definitely bay. I trust you’ve got a good store of shillings on you, Hugh?’ responded Tassie merrily.

And so the journey proceeded in a flurry of lighthearted banter and wagers, with Tassie gradually accumulating several of Hugh’s shillings, and Hugh, openly entranced by his unusual passenger, only too pleased to hear her gleeful laugh. They were travelling through rural
Oxfordshire now; and Tassie, even as she chattered with Hugh, never ceased to absorb the unfolding landscape with every fibre of her being: a church here, a stretch of woodland there, an ancient stone bridge over a fast-flowing river…The sense that she had been here before gripped her more strongly with every passing mile.

After one more night, which they spent uneventfully at a roadside inn just outside Cirencester, they reached the gates of the Lornings estate at eleven in the morning. Tassie knew she was in unfamiliar territory now; and, though still perched up beside the solid and reassuring figure of Hugh, she found her heart beating with apprehension as the carriage rolled along the sweeping drive.

Early lambs gambolled in nearby fields, and the blue sky arched high above acres of parkland set in a fertile valley between the rolling Gloucestershire hills, but Tassie saw none of it. Instead she gazed at the vast, imposing mansion that was drawing steadily nearer, the mansion that was to have been Marcus’s inheritance. She said at last, to Hugh, ‘Is that where Marcus’s godfather lives? It looks so big, so cold…’

‘Not there,’ said Hugh gruffly. ‘Not at Lornings itself. He’s had to move out, the old fellow has. In Queer Street, they say; so it’s all closed up. Over yonder—’ and he pointed with his thumb ‘—
that’s
his home now. The Dower House.’

Tassie shivered as they pulled off the main drive and Hugh guided the horses along another, narrower track towards a stone-built old house that lay in the shelter of a copse of beech trees. It looked a twisted, ill-kempt place, with tall chimneys, and secretive gables, and a daunting multitude of stone-mullioned windows. She could picture only too well the kind of cross, bad-tempered old man who must inhabit a place like this.
She bit her lip, then turned to Hugh. ‘I don’t suppose—I don’t expect—that he’d be
too
disappointed, if I didn’t arrive just yet, would he? If I waited somewhere nearby for a day or two, till Marcus arrived?’

Hugh grinned down at her. ‘Always one for a jest, aren’t you, lass? Course he’ll be expectin’ you. Master Marcus sent a message ahead, didn’t he? Hup, Beauty! Hup, Starlight!’ He drew his big horses to a halt a little way from the house, by the stable block. ‘Down you get, now, and take that bird of yours with you. I reckon old Sir Roderick will be real glad to see you.’