Lord Hawkridge's Secret

His fair brows snapping together, Charles went striding over to the door. ‘I consider Sarah a very valuable member of this household. When she does decide to remove back here I expect you in particular to treat her with a deal more respect than you have been wont to display in the past, otherwise you might find yourself packed off to Bath to spend a prolonged visit with Great-aunt Henrietta!’

By the look of mingled resentment and fear which flitted over exquisite features, Sebastian felt sure that the matron in question was somewhat formidable and not a firm favourite with the beauty of the house.

‘What on earth do you suppose has come over him?’ Drusilla asked, appearing genuinely bewildered, as Charles swept out of the room without uttering anything further. ‘I cannot imagine why he’s so out-of-all-reason cross.’

‘Ahh, I expect it is spring nipping at him, my dear,’ Sebastian enlightened her with a crooked half-smile, as he slipped her arm through his and patted her fingers reassuringly. ‘But do not be alarmed, child. It is unlikely that you shall ever succumb to the affliction.’

Chapter Five

Emily was swiftly forced to accept that she was nowhere near as intrepid now as she had been as a child. Years before, she would never have taken the least account of the chill night air, wouldn’t have nearly jumped out of her skin at the mere hooting of an owl, or imagined that every sound and every shadow was something sinister, just lying in wait to entrap her. Moreover, after twenty minutes of scouting the fringes of the wood, made infinitely more eerie by brief glimpses of moonlight filtering through the thick canopy of foliage high above her head, she was forced to acknowledge that this was not perhaps the most sensible course of action she had ever taken in her life.

Even if she was right, and Lord Hawkridge was here somewhere, concealed in the undergrowth, finding him would be a virtually impossible task. She could hardly call out his name, thereby alerting anyone else who might be lurking to her presence. Furthermore the wood covered a wide area, so there was no guarantee that Sebastian would have positioned himself in this particular section.

Yes, it had been unutterable madness for her to attempt to confirm her suspicions in this way by coming here tonight, she silently told herself, pausing beside the trunk of a sturdy elm. She glanced back over her shoulder in the general direction from which she had come, and had almost decided to abandon her efforts, and return to where she had left her mount tethered at the edge of the wood, when she detected the snapping of a twig directly behind her. The next moment something solid struck the backs of her legs just below the knees, felling her in a trice. All at once a large hand clamped over her mouth instantly smothering her cry of mingled fright and pain, while a substantial amount of bone and muscle effortlessly pinned her to the ground, confining her arms and making it impossible to reach the weapon concealed in the pocket of her borrowed jacket.

Eyes, glinting ominously, peered down at her from above the woollen muffler successfully concealing most of her captor’s face. Then just for a moment they widened fractionally, as he unexpectedly pulled off her floppy hat, allowing the long hair to tumble about face and shoulders, clearly revealing her sex.

‘I’ll wring your dratted neck, my girl!’ an unmistakable voice growled, and Emily, totally unmoved by the threat, almost cried out in relief as he removed his hand from over her mouth and pulled down the muffler to reveal an expression which betrayed more clearly than words ever could his annoyance at discovering her here.

‘What the blazes do you imagine you’re playing at, Emily?’ the man she had been searching for demanded, easing himself away so that she could remove the pistol, which had been digging painfully into a certain part of her anatomy, and sit up. ‘And what the devil are you doing with this?’ he added, removing the firearm none too gently from her fingers.

Given his present mood, she decided it might be wise to answer, even though she considered the question totally unnecessary. ‘Surely you didn’t imagine that I’d ever be stupid enough to venture out unarmed?’

He appeared not one iota appeased. ‘Where the deuce did you get it from?’

‘It’s Grandpapa’s.’

He regarded her now with acute suspicion. ‘Do you mean to tell me you’re here with his full knowledge and approval?’

‘Of course not,’ she answered, truthful to the last. ‘Although it was he who inadvertently confirmed what I had begun to suspect. And I simply had to come and try to discover if my suspicions were correct and you were the mysterious “Kestrel”.’ Excitement brightened her eyes. ‘What on earth are you about, Hawk?’

If anything he looked angrier than before, and certainly in no mood to satisfy her curiosity, as his next words proved. ‘You’ve come very close on several occasions in the past to receiving your just deserts, Emily Stapleton, but never more so than now.’

Indignation held her mute, but only for a moment. ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ she hissed, in no doubt as to precisely what he was threatening. ‘Besides, I’d squeal my head off, and scare away whoever it is you’re hoping to see.’

His distinctly unpleasant smile was a threat in itself. ‘I’m a patient man. I can wait.’

She didn’t doubt that he was in earnest, and so decided it might be in her own best interests not to annoy him further, and merely regarded him uncertainly for a moment, as she positioned her back against the tree trunk beside him. ‘May I have my pistol back?’

‘No, you mayn’t!’ he snapped, slipping it into his own pocket. ‘You can sit still and be quiet.’

She dutifully obeyed the hissed command, until sometime later when the church clock at Kempton began to chime the midnight hour. ‘I can’t hear anything, can you, Hawk?’ There was no response, so she remained quietly scanning the woodland surrounding them for a further lengthy period. ‘Of course, whoever it is who is meant to be coming might be in quite a different part of the wood,’ she suggested as the clock solemnly tolled the passing of the hour.

This won her a brief, considering glance from attractive, almond shaped eyes which were noticeably less angry now. ‘There are others positioned about the area.’

She didn’t attempt to conceal her amazement. ‘You brought others from London with you?’

‘Only my servants. My groom is somewhere about.’

She relapsed into silence again, considering what he had told her, and, more importantly, what he was keeping to himself. ‘Then you must have attained help from Sir George Maynard,’ she finally announced, after deciding the local Justice of the Peace must have been the one in whom he had confided. ‘I hope Sir George’s people don’t stumble upon some hapless poacher,’ she added, after failing to elicit a response.

She was more successful this time. ‘If they see anyone, then I suspect it will be someone thus engaged. I expressed my doubts to Sir George when I saw him yesterday evening.’ He sounded quite matter-of-fact, as though he wasn’t expecting a successful outcome to the night’s escapade. ‘It’s such a deuced odd location. Why arrange an assignation in a wood when you can hold a meeting in the comfort of a house, or inn? It just doesn’t make sense.’

‘But that’s what the man told me, Hawk,’ she assured him, at last feeling the effects of sitting too long on the cold, damp ground.

His response to the shiver was to reach out and place an arm about her, drawing her closer to share the warmth of his voluminous cloak. Only for an instant did she stiffen, then he felt her relax against him, as she had done on scores of occasions in the past. He smiled to himself, remarking as he did so, ‘Anderson was near dead when you found him. He could not have been too coherent.’

She raised her eyes to the rugged profile that had remained etched in her memory during their years apart. ‘Anderson? Was that his name? What was he doing down here?’

‘He was an agent, Emily. And a damned good one.’

She frowned at this. ‘A spy, you mean?’

‘If you choose to describe it so, then yes. But he was working on behalf of this country. He was obtaining information for a man who is determined to uncover a network of spies.’

Again she studied the strong contours of his face, her eyes coming to rest on the shadow of stubble covering the cleft in his chin. He seemed inclined to confide in her now, so she felt no compunction in asking, ‘Is that what you do?’

‘Only in as much as whenever I discover information which I think might prove valuable I pass it on. My objective is somewhat different. I am determined to uncover the identity of the man who was responsible for the late Lord Sutherland’s demise, and who has been the brains behind several successful jewel robberies.’

Emily had read reports in various newspapers during recent years of the theft of certain well known and highly valuable items of jewellery which, as far as she was aware, had never been recovered. She had also known the late Viscount Sutherland, and remembered well those occasions when he had stayed in Hampshire with Sebastian. They had been very close friends since boyhood, more like brothers, and she didn’t doubt that Simon’s death must have been a bitter blow to the man beside her.

‘I did read an account of his death in the newspaper, Seb,’ she admitted softly. ‘But I understood that it was an accident.’ All at once she knew that this wasn’t the case. ‘What really happened?’

He gazed down at her, and even in the gloom she couldn’t fail to see the sadness in his eyes. ‘He committed suicide, Emily. For the sake of the family, Simon’s young brother and I did our best to make it appear an accident. I had been with Simon that evening. About an hour after I had returned home, his brother Michael came to fetch me in the carriage. He had been staying with Simon for several weeks, and had been out with friends that night. When he arrived back at the house, he discovered Simon in the library, slumped over the desk, the note he had left splattered with his blood.

‘We destroyed the note, and Michael and I informed the authorities that Simon was recovering well from the death of his wife. I told them that he had planned to spend some time with me in Kent, that we intended, among other things, to hold a competition at my ancestral home to see who was the best shot, and that I had left him earlier in the evening cleaning his pistols. The truth of course was very different.’

His sigh seemed to hang in the night air for a long time. ‘Two months before, his wife had been journeying to her parents’ home in Surrey when her coach was attacked. She had been carrying several items of jewellery with her, including the famous diamond necklace Simon had bestowed upon her shortly after their marriage. The report in the newspapers stated that she had suffered a miscarriage shortly after the attack and had died as a result. This was not true. She was violated, Emily, and then strangled. The female companion travelling with her suffered a similar fate, and the coachman and groom were murdered also.

‘Poor Simon never recovered from the death of his wife and his unborn child. Had I known what he intended to do that night I would never have left him. But I vowed, when I saw him laid to rest beside his wife, that I would avenge their deaths, no matter how long it took me.’

For several minutes Emily didn’t trust herself to speak. She may have been gently nurtured, shielded from birth from the more unsavoury aspects of life, but she knew well enough what had happened to Lady Elizabeth Sutherland.

‘Dear God!’ she muttered at length. ‘How dreadful…And how totally unnecessary. Those responsible for the attack on Lady Sutherland didn’t need to resort to such lengths. Why didn’t they simply steal the jewels and go?’

‘Because they’re unspeakable fiends, that’s why,’ he spat between gritted teeth. ‘Lady Sutherland and her servants are by no means the only ones to have fallen foul of those devils over the years. When Lady Melcham’s diamond necklace was stolen from her home, her butler became a further casualty. Although the authorities have no idea as to the identities of the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes, it is generally believed that the brains behind them is someone of my own class, someone who moves freely in Society and discovers by various means the whereabouts of these highly prized items of jewellery at times when they are most easily purloined—when they are being carried about the country, for instance, or when they are left in a house while the master and mistress are away, with fewer servants to guard them.’

As Emily sat quietly digesting what she had learned, something occurred to her as rather odd. ‘You mentioned that all the pieces stolen are well known. That being the case, how on earth do the thieves dispose of them? Surely no one in this country wealthy enough to purchase such highly prized items would be foolish enough to do so, and risk prosecution?’

‘We believe they are being sold abroad. In fact we are reasonably certain that Lady Melcham’s necklace and the one which belonged to the Sutherland family are now in the hands of an Italian nobleman who possesses another in the set. They are being taken out of the country by the same means by which secret information is passed on.’

‘Smugglers?’

‘Yes, Emily. And unless I’m very much mistaken Anderson got wind of a shipment of goods being landed hereabouts. I expect too that he learned that a valuable pearl necklace, which was recently reported stolen, would be taken out of the country on the same vessel landing the contraband.’

‘Yes, that’s possible,’ she agreed. ‘We’re only a matter of three or four miles from the coast here.’

‘Which makes me wonder why the meeting, possibly for the exchange of the necklace, would take place here?’ Sebastian looked about him assessingly, much as he had done when they had driven out in the curricle. ‘It would have made more sense for it to have happened somewhere along the coast. Freetraders don’t hang around for long. They run the risk of being spotted by our patrolling vessels, or Preventive Officers scouting the coastline.’