April Lady - Georgette Heyer

Those steps were at last let up, and the door shut; the footmen nimbly mounted up behind; the coachman set his horses in motion; and the landau swayed forward over the cobbles.

It had not occurred to Nell, or, indeed, to any of her servants, that a drive to Chiswick could be attended by danger, so no one had thought it necessary to provide the equipage with outriders to protect her from possible highwaymen. But no one had foreseen that the Cardross carriage, instead of joining a procession of vehicles bound for Brent House, would be the last to arrive there by more than half an hour. There was hardly any traffic beyond the first pike off the stones. Kensington village seemed to be sleeping in the bright moonlight; only a post-chaise and an Accommodation coach were met in Hammersmith, coming in from the west; no other vehicle was seen except one of the mails, which swept past the Cardross carriage, its four fresh horses going along at a spanking pace, and its guard blowing a very loud blast of warning on his yard of tin. Shortly after this, the carriage turned off the high road towards Chiswick Mall; and then, just as Letty was saying: "Well, at all events it hasn't been nearly as tedious a drive as if we had been obliged to dawdle behind some rumbling coach!" both ladies were unpleasantly startled by a sudden pistol-shot, followed by a medley of alarming noises, in which the squeal of a frightened horse mingled with various rough voices upraised either in command or expostulation, and the trampling of hooves.

Letty uttered a whimper of fright, and clutched her sister-in-law, saying on a rising note of panic: "What must we do? What will happen to us? Oh, Nell, we are being held up! Why don't those cowards of footmen do something? This is all Dysart's fault! Will they murder us? Oh, I wish we hadn't come!"

Nell was not feeling very brave herself, but she was made of sterner stuff than this, and managed to reply with very creditable command over her voice: "Nonsense! Of course they will not murder us, though I am afraid they will take our jewels. Thank God I am not wearing the Cardross necklace, or my precious sapphires!"

"Give them everything!" begged Letty, her teeth chattering. "I feel sick with apprehension, and I am sure I shall faint! What is the use of taking footmen, when they do nothing to protect us? I shall tell Giles, and he will turn them off directly! He ought to be here: he had no right to go off to Merion, when he might have known—"

"Oh, do, pray, hold your tongue, Letty!" interrupted Nell, exasperated. "I wonder you should not have more pride than to let the wretches see you are afraid! And as for the footmen, what could the poor men do against armed ruffians? They are not carrying pistols! I don't suppose they ever dreamed we should be held up on the road to Chiswick, of all places! Oh, dear, it sounds as if there were several of them! I do hope they will be satisfied with our jewels, and not wish to ransack the carriage for a strong-box!"

This horrid thought made Letty shake with terror. Then she screamed, for a hideous figure, enveloped in a dark cloak, and with a mask covering his face, loomed up, and wrenched open the door of the carriage, presenting the barrel of a large horse-pistol, and growling in ferocious accents: "Hand over the gewgaws, and be quick about it!"

The moonlight glinted on the pistol, and the hand that held it. Letty cried: "Don't, don't!" and tried with feverish haste to unclasp the single row of pearls from round her throat.

"Not you!" said the highwayman, even more ferociously. "You!"

The pistol was now pointing straight at Nell, but instead of shrinking away, or making haste (as Letty quaveringly implored her to do) to strip off her bracelets and rings and large pendant that flashed on her breast, she was sitting bolt upright, her incredulous gaze fixed at first on the hand that grasped the pistol, and then lifting to the masked face.

"Quick!" commanded the highwayman harshly. "If you don't want me to put a bullet through you!"

"Dysart!"

"Hell and the devil confound it!" ejaculated his lordship, adding, however, in a hasty attempt to cover this lapse: "None o' that! Hand over the gewgaws!"

"Take that pistol away!" ordered Nell. "How dare you try to frighten me like this? Of all the outrageous things to do—! It is a great deal too bad of you! What in the world possessed you?"

"Well, if you can't tell that you must be a bigger sapskull than I knew!" said his lordship disgustedly. He pulled off his mask, and called over his shoulder: "Bubbled, Corny!"

"There, what did I tell you?" said Mr. Fancot, putting up the weapon with which he had been covering the coachman, and riding up to bow politely to the occupants of the carriage. "You ought to have let me do the trick, dear boy: I said her ladyship would recognize you!"

"Well, I don't know how the devil she should!" said the Viscount, considerably put-out.

"Oh, Dy, how absurd you are!" Nell exclaimed, trying not to laugh. "The moonlight was shining on the ring Mama gave you when you came of age! And then you said, Not you! to Letty! Of course I recognized you!"

"Then you might have had the wit to pretend you didn't!" said the Viscount, with asperity. "Totty-headed, that's what you are, my girl! Hi, Joe! No need to keep those fellows covered any longer! I've lost the bet."

"Dysart, how abominable of you!" Nell said indignantly. "To bring your groom into this is utterly beyond the line!"

"Fiddle!" said the Viscount. "You might as well say it was beyond the line to bring Corny in! I've known Joe all my life! Besides, I told him it was for a wager."

"I do say it was beyond the line to bring Mr. Fancot in. And I should have supposed he would have thought so too!" added Nell, with some severity.

"No, no! Assure you, ma'am! Always happy to be of service," said Mr. Fancot gallantly. "Pleasure!"

Letty, to whom relief had brought its inevitable sequel, said in a furious undervoice: "Idiot!"

"Nothing of the sort!" said the Viscount, overhearing. "In fact, if we're to talk of idiots—"

"I think you are detestable! You broke your engagement with Nell in the rudest way, just that you might play this odious trick on her, and frightened us to death for sport! Sport!"

"What a hen-hearted girl you are!" remarked his lordship scornfully. "Frightened you to death, indeed! Lord, Nell's worth a dozen of you! Not but what she's got more hair than wit! Of course I didn't do it for sport! I had a devilish good reason, but one might as well try to milk a pigeon as set about helping a female out of a fix!"

Letty was so much intrigued by this cryptic utterance that her wrath gave place to the liveliest curiosity. "What can you mean? Who is in a fix? Is it Nell? But how— Oh, do tell me! I'm sorry I was cross, but how could I guess it was a plot, when no one told me?"

"Ask Nell!" recommended Dysart. "You'd best be on your way, if you don't wish to be late. I'll follow you presently."

"Dysart!" said Nell despairingly. "It must be nearly eleven o'clock already! How can you possibly follow us? You cannot attend a masquerade in your riding-dress, and by the time you have returned to town, and—"

"Now, don't fly into a fidget!" begged Dysart. "I'm not going all the way back to London! You must think I'm a gudgeon!"

"Oh, I do!" she interpolated, on a quiver of laughter.

"Well, that's where you're fair and far off," he told her severely. "I've got all my toggery waiting for me at the Golden Lion here, and a chaise hired to bring me on to Brent House. Yes, and when I think that I never planned anything so carefully in my life, only to have it overset because nothing would do for you but to show how clever you are by screeching that you knew me, I have dashed good mind to wash my hands of the whole business!"