The Riddle of the Shipwrecked Spinster (21 page)

“No one could scoff at
that
much lettuce,” said Piers.

“As you say,” agreed Peregrine, but his steady and unsmiling stare told his twin that he had better prepare himself for some home questions.

He was quite correct.

O
ne might, Miss Mary, judge me to be the most savage criminal!” Cranford reined Tassels around a gorse bush and sent a rueful glance at the girl who rode beside him on this frosty morning. She was warmly clad against the cold in a dark blue hooded woollen cloak worn over a riding habit of lighter blue. Her cheeks glowed rosily and her hazel eyes sparkled with amber glints so that he thought those who judged her less than pretty should look again. Admittedly, she was not beautiful, but she was a most taking little creature. He knew now that her name was Cordelia Mary Westerman Stansbury, but he continued to think of her as Miss Mary. Since the race was to take place on the coming Saturday, he had remained in Town, and for the past two mornings had managed to persuade her to accompany him on his early rides. Knowing that she was so notorious as to almost certainly be dealt a cutting snub by any member of the
haut ton
they might chance to encounter, he had chosen to avoid the much frequented equestrian paths through Hyde Park and had ridden farther west into the open and largely deserted fields.

Mary said with a twinkle that while she did not judge Lieutenant Cranford “a criminal… exactly,” she could not blame his brother for being put out. “I know you wish to protect him, but he is a grown man and as a member of your family has a right to be consulted—even if ’tis on a matter that must disturb him. He is bound to think you have no confidence in his judgment.”

“So he told me,” Cranford admitted glumly. “You should only have heard him carry on. Threw questions at me like a barrister for the prosecution! Dashed if I didn’t feel I was on trial!”

She chuckled. “So the end of it was that you told him all of it?”

“Gad, no! He would have likely called off the wedding and ridden
ventre à terre
for Muse Manor! I managed to fob him off with some details of the necessary repairs to our roof and to the village church.”

“Then he is satisfied there’s nothing more? My goodness! I don’t envy you when you must confess the whole!”

She did not know the whole, he thought, for he’d not told her of the shot that had come so close, nor of the sinister pedlar who haunted Muse Village. He groaned and said, “True! I dread to think of—”

“Do you know those men?”

There was a note to her voice that made him turn swiftly in the saddle. They had seen less than a dozen other people thus far, the few riders venturing out having for the most part kept to the trails in the park. Now, however, three horsemen had emerged from a copse of trees and were coming up fast. With hats pulled low and collars turned high, their faces were too hidden to be identifiable but their rapid and silent approach and the business-like clubs they brandished left no room for doubt as to their intentions.

“Mohocks!” Cranford shouted. “Go back, Mary! Go back!”

There was no time for more; the three were upon him even as he heard her fierce “No!”

He ducked the long club that flailed at his head, and gripping his riding crop by the thong, he swung it hard at his attacker. The man swore, clutched his jaw and veered off. A tall rogue snatched for Tassels’ bridle and she reared, whinnying to the brutal tug. Managing to keep his seat, Cranford lashed out at the tall man’s arm and felt the shock as the handle of his riding crop struck home. There was an outburst of profanity.

He heard Mary cry out and sent a frantic glance her way. She was beating furiously at the third thief, who now turned on her and attempted to push her from the saddle. Cranford drove home his spurs. Frightened, Tassels plunged forward, caroming into the thief’s hack. “Go!” yelled Cranford.

Mary started her mare away, then pulled up, screaming, “Look out!”

Whipping around, Cranford saw that her attacker had levelled a pistol. He ducked even as the man fired. A blinding flash, a violent shock and a strange, thickening mist, through which he seemed to hear a vaguely familiar voice howling something about “… name of the law…”

“’Tis one thing to attempt a robbery in broad daylight,” growled the deep voice. “But—murder? The varmints must have been crazed!”

“Never heard of such a thing,” snorted another man.

A third and feminine voice implored, “Oh,
do
be careful.”

Whoever was mauling him about was clumsy, and made his head throb even more wretchedly. “Yes, pray do.” Cranford blinked one eye open and as the haze cleared saw Mary’s white face, seemingly disembodied, hovering over him. “Are you?…” But he found speech to be so ridiculously difficult that he was unable to finish the sentence.

“I am quite all right,” she declared, “thanks to you!”

“No thanks at all to him,” argued the deep voice. “Whatever possessed you to bring Miss Stansbury into this desolation, Cranford? You fairly begged to be robbed!”

“He did it for my sake,” Mary said staunchly. “To keep me from being embarrassed by London’s kindly aristocracy!”

Peering at the blurred individual who was offering her a large white handkerchief, Cranford asked, “Is that… you, Shoreham?”

“Shorewood. Hold your head up, sir; you’ve taken a nasty rap on your brain-box. If your head ain’t broke it won’t kill you, but the ball scored along your scalp and you’re bleeding like a pig. Keep you out of the race, I shouldn’t wonder. Pity. I’d like to have seen your mare run. Recognize any of those bas——er, rascals?”

“No.” Trying not to flinch as Mary bound the handkerchief about his head, Cranford asked, “Tassels…?”

“She’s not hurt, but I think she was very frightened.” Mary added ruefully, “As was I, alas. A fine heroine!”

“Had it not been… for you, the ball would have… have gone through… my stupid head. What a fool to have… to have brought you out here.”

“Glad you agree with me,” grunted the barrister.

The unceasing throbbing in his head was beginning to make Cranford feel sick. He tried to see more clearly, and said, “There was someone… else just now, I think?”

Shorewood barked, “Right. Odd sort of duck. Was exercising his hound, and ran up with me when we heard the lady scream. Gone for help.” He stood, assuming giant-like proportions as Cranford blinked up at him. “Here he comes, with a coach. Hopefully there’s a sawbones inside.” He waved and shouted, “Can you not move faster, for God’s sake?” the strident howl reverberating excruciatingly inside Cranford’s battered head.

“Oh, poor soul,” exclaimed Mary, holding her own gory handkerchief to Cranford’s brow. “I am so sorry.”

He managed, “Thank you. Don’t tell…”

“I know. Don’t tell Peregrine.” She shook her head at him chidingly.

Faint but defiant, he murmured, “But it won’t keep me…from… the race,” and fell asleep.

“Why did you bring me here?” asked Cranford, with an uneasy glance at the bedchamber door in his great-uncle’s Town house.

Mr. Shorewood, who watched him from the foot of the bed, said, “Couldn’t take you to the home of Miss Stansbury’s three lunatic aunts.”

“No, by Jove! Heaven forbid!”

“What she wanted. Said you was staying at your club, but I didn’t know which one enjoys your patronage. She wouldn’t hear of us taking you to your brother’s flat.”

“Good for Mary!” At once anxious, Cranford said, “You haven’t sent him word of this—this nonsense?”

“No.” The lawyer rubbed his chin and asked shrewdly. “Is it nonsense?”

“Have you reason to think it anything more?”

“Zounds, how you delight to dance around an answer! Well, invalid or no, I’ll not wrap it in clean linen for you. No one with half a brain would judge it anything but an attack carefully planned and directed ’gainst you personally! You certainly cannot suppose that any thief worthy of the name would hang about deserted fields hoping for some wealthy rider to wander past? Oh, no, m’dear fellow! You have either a very vindictive enemy, or someone means to keep you out of the race. Ah, I see you have your suspicions. Care to voice them?”

Cranford hesitated. “They are suspicions only. But I am in
your debt, sir, for coming to the rescue. Now, if I might ask, who was the other fellow who you said ran to help? I didn’t see him.”

Shorewood said with a grin, “That’s only part of it, I think. You really want to know why I was hanging about an empty field.”

Cranford was becoming very tired, but meeting the light eyes levelly, he said, “Just so.”

“Very well. You are, or were, a soldier. By and large, your life was ruled by comparatively clear issues: You obeyed orders, you gave orders; you fought or retreated, as circumstances and your superior officer dictated. Everything neatly defined and straight from the shoulder. Now, I’m not so—shall I term it ’fortunate? In my business one is often obliged to proceed at variance with established rules and regulations, in the course of which—er, proceedings, individuals of less than savoury morals or—um, ways of life, have to be dealt with, or bribed, or frightened into divulging information that may be vital to whichever case is under way. D’you follow me?”

“You mean you were in the fields to meet a disreputable character with information for sale.”

Shorewood bowed and said admiringly, “Succinct, and correct. Remarkable for a fellow with a broken head.”

“And this unsavoury individual was the man you met who was walking his hound when Miss Mary and I were attacked?”

“Correct. And don’t ask me his name. I wouldn’t tell you, even though I suspect he’d given me an alias.”

Cranford tried to ask the barrister to describe his “unsavoury” individual, but in the middle of his question he fell asleep again.

“He looked absolutely nothing like Gervaise!” Mary jabbed her needle at the ruffles she was replacing on Cranford’s shirtsleeves
and added stormily, “Whatever reason would he have for doing such a—Ow!”

Cranford, who had been allowed to borrow his great-uncle’s dressing-gown and lie on the morning-room sofa today, said, “Now you have pricked your finger, which was unnecessary, because I didn’t say it
was
my reprehensible cousin—”