Ana Seymour - Moonrise

“I can’t believe you want to send me to the wilds of Yorkshire just when the war is heating up...sire,” he added with somewhat belated deference.

Charles smiled. “Anthony, my friend, I have all kinds of courtiers whom I can put to captaining a ship against my foreign enemies, but I have only a few whom I can trust to deal with the enemies from within.”

“Are you saying that General Fairfax is your enemy?” Anthony looked perplexed. The famous old soldier had been living in what appeared to be peaceful retirement these past three or four years.

Charles shook his head, his elaborate lovelocks brushing along the tops of his shoulders. “I fervently hope not. But there’s been trouble in the area. The people there haven’t accepted back the church, and they don’t want to pay the new taxes.”

“Very seldom do people welcome new taxes, sire,” Anthony said dryly. Especially, he refrained from adding, when they know they will likely be spent to buy a new carriage for the king’s latest mistress.

“And there’s another problem,” the king continued, ignoring Anthony’s comment. “There have been robberies...several. It seems a masked highwayman has been assaulting the gentry. The villagers are making him into some kind of hero. They say he strikes with the full moon. Last month the Bishop of Lackdale was robbed of a small fortune that he had collected to refurbish the church.”

“To refurbish the size of his girth is more likely,” Anthony grumbled.

Charles laughed. “Impious as usual. Someday your irreverence will catch up to you, my friend.”

Anthony gave one of the slow, lazy smiles that had won him more conquests than any man at court except the king. “I fully intend to repent on my deathbed, your majesty.”

Charles impatiently waved away the formal address. He and Anthony had been in too many escapades across the length of Europe to become sudden observers of proprieties. “Will you do it, Anthony?” he asked in a cajoling tone that still managed to sound regal. “Will you go to Yorkshire and find out the truth?”

Anthony made one last attempt at refusal. “I’ve ever been better at fighting than at intrigue, sire. Spying is not to my taste.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Anthony. It’s not really spying.... Just consider that you’re doing me a favor.”

“A royal favor.” Anthony’s tone was of one who knew he had little choice in the matter. His dark eyes looked directly into the king’s. There had been times, in earlier days, when they had been mistaken for brothers. Both were tall and dark complected. Both had an innate charm that brought people effortlessly under their spell. But whereas Anthony, five years the younger, had retained his lean form and high energy, the king had mellowed in the four and a half years since the Republican generals had given him back his throne. His face was softer, and he preferred the company of his ladies to sparring with his courtiers.

Charles sighed. “Not a royal favor. A personal favor. If Fairfax is working against me, I need to know immediately. On the other hand, if he’s still loyal, I don’t want to risk his anger by bearing down too hard on the dissenters there.”

“And what about your moonlight marauder?”

“He’s just what we don’t need at the moment—some kind of romantic hero for the masses, demonstrating once again the age-old disparity between rich and poor. Which was not, by the way, invented by my ministers, no matter what the opposition might say.”

The king boosted himself off the high bed and started to pace the room, warming to one of his favorite topics. “Oddsfish, I’ve been poor myself, you know. I’ve passed hunger and thirst and...”

“Deprivation,” Anthony filled in obligingly. Over the years the script of Charles’s adventures in exile had become more elaborated than one of Master Dryden’s productions at Drury Lane.

“Yes, deprivation,” Charles continued. “No one can say that I don’t understand my people.”

Gently Anthony tried to shift back to the topic at hand. “You were saying, sire, about the Yorkshire highwayman...?”

Charles stopped in midstride, his mind pulled back to the present. “Yes, blast it. Find the man, Anthony. Shoot him or hang him—I don’t care what you do—just get rid of him.”

Anthony gave a short laugh. “At least my mission won’t be without some sport.”

* * *

The shimmery gray silk of Sarah’s dress matched exactly the cold glitter of her eyes. “I don’t care what my uncle ordered,” she said with controlled fury. “No so-called Surveyor of the Royal Stables is coming anywhere near Brigand. That horse is mine. He doesn’t belong to the Fairfax stables.”

The old servant shrugged and pulled on his cap. “Begging yer pardon, mistress, but I believe the gentleman is already down there inspecting the lot of them. Brigand along with all the rest.”

Sarah jumped to her feet and took off at a run down the path toward the stables. She was breathless by the time she reached the old stone structure, and took a minute to compose herself. She could already picture the scene. One of Charles’s foppish cavaliers mincing along through the muck of the stable in high heels, ribbons adorning his artificially curled lovelocks. And putting his hands on her beloved horse. It was not to be borne. Her anger building, she stepped over the top of the wooden sty and tugged with all her might on the stable door. It swung open with a crash.

In the darkened interior of the barn, two men straightened up from their perusal of the foreleg of one of her uncle’s prized stallions.

“It’s my niece,” she heard her uncle say to the other man. Then he called to her, “Sarah, come in and join us.”

Slowly Sarah walked along the stalls, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. She could now see that the man beside her uncle was, at least, no fop. Taller than her brother, Jack, and handsomely built, he needed no high heels to emphasize his stature. Instead of the lace and furbelows understood to be de rigueur at court functions these days, he wore a leather jerkin over a simple, but fine, linen blouse and breeches that molded well-muscled thighs.

Her uncle reached out and took her hand as she drew near. “My dear, this is Baron Anthony Rutledge. The king has honored us by sending Lord Rutledge to review our horses as possible candidates for the royal stable.”

Sarah swallowed her angry words as her eyes met the newcomer’s. They were magnetic, almost black in color...and, to her dismay, showed a keen intelligence. Her own quick mind did a short reprise of the situation. The only thing worse than a visit from a foolish representative of the king would be a visit from a king’s man with wits to challenge her own.

“Sarah?” her uncle prompted.

She lowered her eyes from the baron’s dark gaze and gave a demure curtsy. “How d’ye do,” she murmured.

When she looked up at him again, his expression had become distinctly predatory. A slight smile curved his lips. Inexplicably, Sarah felt herself growing warm.

“I’m at your service, mistress.” The words were correct, but they were spoken in a low, caressing tone that made Sarah’s toes want to curl up inside her slippers. She glanced quickly at her uncle, but he was smiling congenially as if nothing untoward were occurring.

Perhaps she was imagining things, Sarah told herself. Since her uncle’s retirement from public life, they did not receive many visitors at Leasworth. She was sadly out of touch with society these days. For all she knew it might be normal for a court gentleman to devour a lady with a mere gaze, as their visitor was doing at this very moment. Or perhaps it was just that the day was unseasonably hot.