He laughed and put her down.
“My dear ladies, cease to fret. I will call off my man and you shall go on your way in peace. Of course I have the lady’s purse and I have her locket. Have you some little token for me to remember you by, my lady?”
He had his eyes on a bracelet Harriet was wearing.
She took it off and handed it to him. He smiled and put it into his pocket.
“You’re a robber,” said Clarissa. “Are you hungry?”
Her face wrinkled in pity. One of the greatest calamities she could visualize was to be hungry. “I’ll give you the tail of my sugar mouse.”
“Will you?”
She felt in her pocket, produced the mouse and broke off the tail.
“Don’t eat it all at once or you’ll be sick,” she told him, repeating my mother.
“Thank you. I won’t. Perhaps I won’t eat it at all. I might keep it in memory of you.”
“It’ll get sticky in your pocket.”
He touched her head gently and she smiled up at him.
Then he bowed.
“I will detain you no longer, ladies, but bid you farewell.”
He picked up Clarissa and kissed her. Then he took Harriet’s hand in a very courtly manner, bowed, kissed it then kissed her lips.
It was my turn. He drew me to him; he held me fast. Then his lips were on mine.
“How dare you!” I cried.
He whispered: “I’d dare much for you, sweetheart.”
Then he laughed. “Into the coach,” he cried, “all of you.”
He gave one fleeting look through the window and was gone.
Harriet sat back in her seat and stared at me.
“What a strange adventure! I didn’t think being held up on the road was like that.”
“I doubt it ever was before and ever will be again.”
She looked at me oddly.
“A most gallant highwayman.”
“One who has taken my purse, my locket and your bracelet?”
“And the sugar mouse’s tail,” piped up Clarissa. “Though I gave him that. Do you think he’ll remember not to eat it all at once?”
The grooms were at the door, white and shaken.
“God help us, ladies,” said the driver. “They were on me before I had a chance.”
“The blunderbuss in the coach didn’t prove much use,” I said. “Have they taken anything of yours?”
“Not a thing, my lady. It was you passengers they were after robbing.”
“They didn’t take much,” I said.
“It could have been worse,” agreed Harriet. “Get back and drive on as fast as you can. We want to get to an inn before it’s dark.”
We rattled on in silence for a while. Harriet was looking at me very intently.
I shut my eyes and thought about him. He was back. How like him to have chosen this way to let me know. For I was sure he had known whose the coach was. He had meant to surprise me. I should see him again soon, I was sure of it.
I pretended to be asleep. I had to escape Harriet’s searching gaze. She had known. We had betrayed something. Or she had guessed.
Clarissa was soon fast asleep and once again I marvelled at the way in which children could accept the most extraordinary happenings as the natural course of life.
The first thing she said was: “He was nice. I liked him. Will he come again?”
“Do you mean the highwayman?” said Harriet. “Good heavens, no.”
“Why won’t he?” asked Clarissa.
Neither of us replied and Clarissa did not press for an answer.
Benjie was delighted to see us back. He said it seemed like years that we had been away. I had been thinking so much about Hessenfield since our adventures with the highwayman that my conscience worried me; and when that was the case I always tried to make up for my deficiencies by being especially affectionate to Benjie, which always delighted him. At such times I often thought what a happy lot could have been mine if I had only been of a different nature.
Benjie was horrified to hear of our adventure with the highwayman. “It’s the coach,” he said. “These people think those who ride in coaches are very rich.”
Gregory reproached himself because he had not come with us, but Harriet said perhaps it was better that he had not been there.
“He was one of those gentleman highwaymen we hear of,” she said. “He took pity on two women travelling with a child. He really dealt with us very gently. Do you agree, Carlotta?”
I said I thought she was probably right.
We had been back two nights and were in the winter parlour, a small cosy room at the back of the east wing with windows which overlooked the shrubberies.
It was dark and the candles had been lighted. Gregory remarked, as he did frequently, that the evenings were drawing in and he could notice the difference every day.
A fire burning in the grate, throwing flickering shadows over the panelled walls, and four candles guttered in their brackets on the wall. Harriet was playing the spinet and occasionally breaking into song. Gregory was sprawling contentedly in a chair watching her, and Benjie and I were playing a game of chess. It was a typical evening scene at Eyot Abbass and one I had shared many a time.
And as I sat there looking at the chessboard and deciding on my next moves, I was aware of a shadow, or it might have been some instinct which made me look up—but I did so.
Someone was outside looking in. Someone tall, wrapped in a dark cloak … and I knew who it was.
My impulse was to shout: “Someone is outside.” But I restrained myself.
What if he were caught in the grounds? If they released the dogs he might well be. He would be captured and I knew what that would mean. I had heard enough at my grandfather’s table to understand that it would be a feather in the cap of anyone who brought about his capture. We should be applauded for giving up one of the Queen’s enemies.
You fool, I thought. Why do you play with danger? Why do you have to risk your life?
I looked away from the window and back to the chessboard.
“Your move, Carlotta,” said Benjie.
I moved a piece without thinking.
“Ha!” said Benjie triumphantly. And a few moves later: “Checkmate.”
Benjie always liked to analyse a game.
“It was that bishop’s move of yours. Till three or four moves back you were on the offensive. You lost your concentration, Carlotta.”
I thought angrily: Of course I did. How could I help it? Hessenfield has come back.
It was an hour later when I was able to slip out. I would not be missed for a little while. I had wrapped a cloak over my dress and told myself that if I were seen I would say I heard one of the dogs or something like that.
In any case I had no intention of being missed if I could help it.
He had come to see me. He might have gone by now. Even he must realise how dangerous it was to hang about here. I would tell him so if I found him.
I examined the flower bed under the window. It had quite clearly been disturbed.
I looked towards the shrubbery and as I did so I heard what could have been the call of an owl.
I stepped towards the bushes and said softly: “Is anyone there?”
“Carlotta … ?”
It was his voice. I ran forward, glancing over my shoulder as I did so to assure myself that no one was about.
I was caught in his arms and held tightly. He kissed me again and again and so fiercely that I gasped for breath.
“You fool!” I cried. “To come here. Don’t you know they will be after you?”
“Dearest, everyone is always after me … just everyone.”
“Do you want to end up with your head on a block?”
“No, on a pillow side by side with yours.”
“Will you please listen to me.”
“No. You must listen to me.”
“I will talk,” I said. “I have heard your name mentioned. You have only to be recognised and it will be the end of you.”