Kasey Michaels - The Bride of the Unicorn

Tamping down what she considered to be a reasonable rise of hysteria, Lady Gwendolyn slipped the rings from her finger for the first time since her husband had placed them there on their wedding day, and laid them in his hand. She was just raising her hands to her throat to slip the pendant up and over her head when the off door was flung open and a man wearing a full face mask gruffly ordered Lord Henry to leave the coach.

“Henry, no! For the love of heaven, don’t leave us.” Lady Gwendolyn felt her bravado desert her, and she clung fiercely to his arm, but he gently shook himself free of her grip, smiled reassuringly yet again, and stepped down into the road.

Left alone with her child, who was now wide-eyed and quiet, Lady Gwendolyn willed herself not to fall to pieces. People were robbed every day on the king’s highways. The lack of safety in these enlightened times was a national disgrace, as she had heard when the subject was discussed earlier, at Sir Stephen’s party for his youngest son’s birthday.

But people weren’t just robbed of their valuables, Lady Gwendolyn remembered. Sometimes, if they resisted, they were shot—killed! A man had met that terrible fate trying to defend himself just last month, somewhere near to London. Shot dead, he had been, and scarcely a mile from his estate.

Not that anything so terrible would happen to them. After all, this wasn’t London. This was Sussex. This was a civilized countryside. And her dearest, bravest Henry was cooperating with the highwaymen.

And yet…

Lady Gwendolyn was so frightened, no matter how reassuring her husband’s smile had been, and longed to do something to help him. Her hands went to her throat and the gold chain that still hung there. It wouldn’t do to have the highwaymen discover her wearing it and believe they had tried to hide some of their valuables. She quickly removed the pendant and chain and hung it around Caroline’s throat, prudently stuffing its length inside the collar of the child’s dress. No one, not even a highwayman, would be so basely cruel, so dastardly, as to search an infant!

But it wasn’t enough. There had to be something else—some other way to help. Henry had asked her to do something, something about Caroline. Yes, yes. She remembered now. He had wanted her kept quiet and concealed; he had distinctly said so. She looked down at the child, to see that Caroline’s little chin was quivering, as if she were about to burst into tears once more.

That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all!

And then Lady Gwendolyn was struck by an inspiration that would both keep her daughter quiet and hide the pendant from the highwaymen. Henry would be so proud of her for thinking of it! Why, at the next party they attended, Henry would hold court at the dinner table, recounting their brush with highwaymen and his wife’s brilliance.

Leaning forward, she raised the velvet-covered seat her husband had just vacated and surveyed the small, roughly lined compartment usually reserved for extra luggage. “Here, my darling,” she whispered, lifting Caroline and placing her small body in the compartment. “You hide in here for now, until Papa comes back. Be very quiet, please, so you can surprise him when I tell you to come out again. Can you do that, Caroline? Can you be a big girl and play this game for Mama?”

“A game, Mama?” Caroline repeated, visibly brightening. “Caro play a game?”

“Yes, darling! What a good girl you are. You are my sweet, darling Caro. Now give Mama a kiss.”

She hugged the child, clinging to her desperately, fearfully, for a moment before motioning for Caroline to bow her head so that the seat could be lowered back into position. Then Lady Gwendolyn sat down on the seat, daintily spread out the satin skirt of her gown, took a deep breath, and dared to push aside the leather curtain and peek outside.

It was raining steadily now, a drenching downpour, but the flickering light from the coach lamps provided her with a vague, distorted view of what was transpiring in the roadway.

She saw Henry standing no more than three feet from the door to the coach, his back to her, his hands raised, as one of the highwayman held a pistol leveled at his chest.

A second robber stood nearby, and she could see her jewels glinting in one gloved hand as he aimed a pistol up at the box, at John Coachman, an old man so timid and defenseless that Lady Gwendolyn had more than once suggested to her husband that the man was getting past it. And it was true. If John had only had the ears to hear the first shots he might have sprung the horses and they would be home and dry now, as her dearest Henry had promised, instead of sitting stranded on the roadway, in the clutches of these nefarious highwaymen.

Lady Gwendolyn shuddered, her feelings of helplessness returning. What was taking so long? Surely it was almost over now. Or were they planning to search the coach anyway? But why would they do that? They already had her jewels. They already had all of Henry’s money.

She pressed her fingers against the cold pane, wishing she could touch her husband, wishing she could hear what was being said, wishing she were stronger or smarter or braver.

And then the robber holding her jewels raised his pistol slightly and fired, the flash of powder visible a heartbeat before the earsplitting report that caused her entire body to flinch uncontrollably.

She heard rather than saw John Coachman’s body tumble into the roadway, for she was already looking toward her husband, who had dropped his hands and turned toward the coach, toward her.

“Gwen!” she heard him shout as he took a single step in her direction, his beloved face pale and frightened in the dim light. “Get out the other side. Run! Run into the trees!”

Run? Take Caro and leave him? Never! And yet, even if she had wanted to obey him, she could not have done so.

She couldn’t move.

She couldn’t breathe.

All she could do was watch, horrified, paralyzed, her fingers still locked behind the windowpane, as another shot rang out and Henry was flung forward heavily, to fall against the side of the coach, then slide away from her, to the ground.

“Henry—no!” Lady Gwendolyn reached for the latch, disregarding the earl’s warning, forgetting her child, not caring for her own safety. She threw open the door her husband, her protector, had closed behind him a minute earlier—a lifetime ago.

Her hands braced on either side of the opening, she struggled with the damning reality of seeing her husband lying just below her feet, his body facedown in the mud, a dark, ominous stain spreading on the back of his jacket. “Henry. Oh, my dear God—Henry!”

She raised her head and screamed at the highwaymen, her voice high-pitched with mounting hysteria. “We gave you all our money—all our jewelry. We gave you everything! And you killed him. There was no reason, no need. Why? Why did you do this?”

The man who had discharged his second pistol into the seventh earl of Witham stripped away his dark mask, revealing wickedly grinning features as he advanced in Lady Gwendolyn’s direction. “Good evening, Gwen. Beastly weather, isn’t it?”

She stared at the man as his face was revealed in the flickering light of the coach lamps, unable to understand either his presence or his actions. She then looked down at her husband’s body and shuddered convulsively before turning uncomprehending eyes back to Lord Henry’s killer. “But why? Why?”

She continued to watch as the man—this man she knew, this man she had trusted—took another step forward and slowly pulled a third long-barreled weapon from his belt….

A QUESTION OF HONOR

October 1815

Chance is a nickname for Providence.