The Bride of the Unicorn

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

1801

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

Blaise Pascal

And doom’d to death, though fated not to die.

John Dryden

“CAROLINE, DO SIT STILL, CHILD. It’s enough that this coach is rocking as if John Coachman were blind as well as deaf and can not see the ruts, without your bouncing to add to the jostle.”

“Felling ill again, pet?” Henry Wilburton, seventh earl of Witham, and soon to become a father again at the advanced age of forty-six, looked adoringly at his young wife, who was still dealing with the fractious three-year-old. “We shouldn’t have stayed so long. Silly children’s party.”

Lady Gwendolyn pulled Caroline closer to her on the wide velvet seat, tucking the carriage blanket around the colorfully embroidered hem of the child’s gown and the chubby legs that refused to remain still, then hastened to reassure her husband. “Nonsense, Henry. It was a delightful evening. I’m much improved now. It was ill-advised of me to have sampled the syllabub, that’s all. At least not until I am past this third month. My reaction to sweet creams was much the same with Caroline, remember?”

“Vividly, my dear, vividly,” Lord Witham answered, stretching forward from the facing seat to pat her hand. “I suppose I will simply have to cosset you outrageously for these next months, a chore I admit I look forward to with great delight.”

“You are the very best of husbands, Henry—and I vow to hold you at your word. I rather enjoy being cosseted.” She reached across her daughter to lift the leather flap over the window and peered out into the darkness brightened only by the coach lamps riding high on either side of the driver’s box, then frowned. She hadn’t been entirely truthful with Henry about the state of her stomach. A lingering queasiness was still giving her fits, and she could barely wait to be out of the swaying coach and on solid ground again. “Are we nearly home? I believe I see raindrops on the pane.”

“Very nearly, pet. Caro, my rambunctious little lamb, why don’t you sing us the song your mama has just taught you? You remember—‘Now Is the Month of Maying.’”

“No, Papa,” Caroline answered with a mulish pout squeezing her small, perfect features. “Caro’s tired,” she said as she burrowed her blond curls against her mother’s breast.

Lady Gwendolyn chuckled at this not uncommon display of temper. “Willful little beast, isn’t she, darling? We can only hope our unborn son will have half Caroline’s starch. Boys should be—What’s that? Henry? That was a shot, I’m sure of it!”

She watched as the earl immediately cocked his head toward the window to his left, then frowned at the unmistakable report of a second pistol shot. He opened his mouth to warn her to take hold of the strap, but it was already too late for her to have time to obey him.

A heartbeat later all three occupants of the coach tumbled to the floor when John Coachman, whose deafness might not have alerted him to the noise, hauled mightily on the traces, then put on the brake as two dark-cloaked riders plunged out of the trees and directly onto the roadway in front of the horses, calling: “Stand and deliver!”

Caroline immediately began to wail, sounding not hurt but angry, as if overcome by a mighty indignation born of finding herself sprawled inelegantly on the floor, wedged partially beneath her mother’s body. Lady Gwendolyn couldn’t blame her, for she too was feeling the effects of being tossed about like so much flotsam.

“Are you all right? Good. Quiet her, Gwen,” Lord Witham ordered as he helped his wife back onto the seat, then reached into his pocket and withdrew a small purse that contained ten or twelve gold pieces. “I have enough on my plate being robbed, without Caro’s bawling to add to the chaos. Damned depressing, you know. I was told this road was clear of high-toby men. I’d give half my fortune to be able to turn my pistols on them, but it’s best not to put up a struggle. Give me your jewels, sweetheart, and I’ll step outside and deal with the wretches. We’ll be out of this and home safe and dry in a trice, I promise you.”

Lady Gwendolyn, forgetting her nausea and fatigue, fumbled to remove her diamond earrings and the matching bracelet the earl had given her just that past Christmas. She handed them over, then laid a hand on her husband’s arm. “Filthy beasts. I won’t give them my rings, Henry,” she told him firmly, “nor shall they have my beautiful pendant. There are some things that simply cannot be replaced.”

Lord Witham’s smile was eloquent with love, so much so that Lady Gwendolyn felt herself dangerously near to tears. “Anything can be replaced, my sweet,” she heard him say, “except you and our dearest Caroline. Now hurry, my pet,” he added, frowning. “We can’t have the rascals catching more than a glimpse of either you or the child. You are both too beautiful by far, and I don’t wish to tempt them.”

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.