Louise Allen - Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1

If she failed, then Nick would hang. She would be there, although not where he could see her. He would hate that, his pride would revolt at the thought that she should see him choke and slowly strangle to death, kicking in front of a baying crowd. She had known him for only a few hours, but already she knew that his pride drove him, fed him with a sort of anger that had driven him into whatever life he had lived on the continent and now gave him the grace to look an unjust death in the eye with dignity.

‘Are you going to tell us what we are doing here, Miss Katherine?’ John demanded after the waiter had deposited a leg of mutton on the table and departed.

‘Yes. Will you carve that, please, John? We are going to prove Mr Lydgate innocent and to do that we need to meet a highwayman called Black Jack Standon and a magistrate whose name I do not know, but who probably has a new watch and a scar on his head.’

‘Heaven preserve us, Miss Katherine.’ Jenny reached for a glass of ale and gulped a mouthful. ‘We’ll be murdered in our beds.’

‘I doubt it,’ Katherine responded tartly. ‘We will have to identify the magistrate, of course, but I need to find Black Jack before I actually approach the Justice. Dear me,’ she added as John opened his mouth to begin what was obviously going to be a lengthy protest, ‘what melodramatic names these highwaymen adopt. Quite unnecessary, I would have thought. I am sure they are not as ferocious as they would like everyone to believe.’ She relented at the sight of their appalled faces and retold Nick’s story.

‘That’s a terrible thing if he is telling the truth, but do you have to do this, Miss Katherine?’ John asked sombrely. He appeared to understand at last that she was not going to be discouraged.

‘Yes, John, or I will always have it on my conscience. Now,’ she said briskly, ‘how do you suggest we find the magistrate who was robbed?’

Jenny took another swig of ale, tossed her curls and said, ‘I’ll ask.’ She got to her feet and with a swing of her hips vanished through the door into the taproom. Katherine looked dubiously at John.

‘I’ll keep an eye on her.’ He followed the maid out, leaving Katherine sitting alone, her chin propped on her hand, her mind at last free of all distraction.

Last night she had slept in the arms of a man she scarcely knew, a convicted felon she had married out of hand for sheer expediency. Her conscience nagged her. She had not deserved to have found someone who treated her with respect and consideration, she told herself bitterly, but by some miracle she had done so. She might be innocent of men, but she had a very good idea of just what self-control it had taken to sleep with her scarcely clad in his arms. Katherine folded her arms on the table, bent her head down and tried to send some message of support. She dared not think of hope yet: it would be too cruel.

Back in his dank cell Nick rested his head on his bent knees and let his mind dwell on the warm, soft, trusting femininity he had spent the previous night cradling in his arms. He corrected himself: not so trusting, perhaps. She knew exactly what she was expected to have to do last night and had been prepared to go through with it out of a sense of honour that men liked to think only their sex possessed. What must that have cost? He had all too vivid a memory of himself in that mirror: filthy, dangerous, desperate. And yet she had sent him soap and soft towels and a book of poetry. What was she doing now? He breathed slowly, deeply, recalling her voice and the generosity of her innocent lips against his. Kat. Kat, don’t come back. Please.

The next morning Katherine rose at seven, dressed with care in her best walking dress and left Jenny behind to discover the direction of Mr Highson, the outraged magistrate. Jenny had had easily extracted the tale of the magistrate and the highwayman from the crowd in the common tap the night before, even if she had had to be rescued by John from the somewhat over-amorous advances of her new friends.

John drove the gig they had hired and Katherine was thankful for his stolid bulk beside her. If she had realised he had felt it necessary to shove two loaded pistols into his belt, she would have felt considerably less sanguine. She tried to breathe deeply and calm herself. She had two days before they must return to London, surely that would be enough?

They crossed a bridge and she found herself looking out over water meadows dotted with grazing beasts. This must be Box Moor. What hope of being waylaid by Black Jack? she wondered. That would be a saving of time indeed! But nothing disturbed their journey and before many minutes had passed John was swinging the gig into a small stable yard.

Silence. The place appeared deserted. John shouted, ‘House!’ and finally a scruffy youth wandered out and squinted at the gig as though he had never seen one before.

‘Yer?’

‘Where is the landlord? My mistress requires refreshment.’

‘Er. Inside. Master’s inside.’

‘Well, come and hold the horse, you half-wit, while I help my lady down.’

Katherine climbed down into the yard and looked around. It seemed harmless enough. She gathered up her skirts and trod across the cobbles, avoiding the worst puddles, and went in through a back door.

Someone was singing tunelessly in the back quarters, but the voice was male and not young and she wanted to find the barmaid. Clinking noises from the front sounded more hopeful. Following the sounds, she made her way through to the bar room. A young woman in a plain gown, low cut to show the edge of her chemise and kirtled up to keep her petticoats clear of the newly washed floor, was replacing tankards behind the bar.

She spun round at the sound of Katherine’s tread and the flare of wariness and fear in her eyes gave Katherine hope. The woman collected herself quickly. ‘Yes, ma’am?’

‘A glass of your best ale,’ Katherine said pleasantly. ‘I will be glad of a short rest on my journey.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ she repeated, turning to one of the great barrels propped up behind the bar.

Katherine took a table on the far side of the room and waited until the girl came and placed the tankard in front of her. She took a sip. ‘Excellent. You brew here?’

‘Oh, yes, ma’am. Famous hereabouts the Lamb and Flag is.’

‘And for more than your ale, I hear,’ Katherine said smoothly, dropping her hand over the girl’s wrist to detain her. ‘You have a notorious highwayman amongst your customers, so I hear.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ The girl seemed unsure of how to deal with the detaining hand. ‘But no longer, ma’am. The troopers took him near a month past.’

‘Did they, indeed?’ Katherine kept a firm grip of the slender wrist and pulled the girl down to sit beside her. ‘Tell me all about it. Did you know this desperate villain well?’

Something in the quality of the air changed. Someone else was in the room. A powerful presence. Katherine’s heart missed a beat.

‘He’d come in from time to time, I s’pose,’ the girl said sulkily. Katherine watched her eyes flicker to the doorway behind her. The air stirred. She watched the dust motes dance and offered up a silent prayer.

‘So I imagine you were relieved that they got the wrong man?’ she remarked conversationally.

‘Yes … No! What do you mean?’

‘That it was not Black Jack Standon they caught, of course. Fortunate for Mr Standon and his friends, a pity for the man they are about to hang.’ Her ears strained for the slightest sound from behind her. ‘Not what I would have expected from a man of Black Jack Standon’s reputation.’

The maid’s eyes flickered and she tried to pull her hand free. ‘What do you mean?’ she repeated dully.