Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue Read online

  The Nutberry Moss Inn was old. Its two storeys looked worn, but also still solid. With walls of whitewashed stone, black window frames and doors, and immense black beams supporting the dark gray slate roof, it seemed sunk and anchored into the earth, as if it had literally put down roots.

  Fletcher descended first, then handed Heather down. She paused on the coach step to glance around. There were few trees to impede her view. She didn’t see Breckenridge, but she did manage to get her bearings. The lane in which the inn stood continued further west, merging with the larger road to Dumfries a little way along.

  Stepping down to the rough gravel of the forecourt, she scanned the front of the inn; it exuded an air of homely comfort. Then Martha joined her; with Cobbins bringing up the rear, they followed Fletcher into the inn.

  Inside, it was a great deal warmer. Heather held out her hands to the small blaze in the fireplace built into one wall of the hall, and glanced around curiously. A set of narrow stairs led upward, dividing the front hall into two. The landlord had just come out of a swinging door at the rear of the hall to the left of the staircase; that door presumably led to the kitchens. Wiping his hands on a cloth, he welcomed Fletcher. On being informed they needed rooms, the landlord crossed to a long counter set against the wall to the right of the stairs.

  Turning back to the fire, Heather was reviewing potential questions—reviewing what else she might learn from her captors—when she heard Fletcher inform the landlord, “Don’t know how many days we’ll be here. Two at least, but most likely more. We’ll be here until Sir Humphrey Wallace’s agent—a Mr. McKinsey—arrives to escort the young lady on.”

  Swinging around, Heather stared at Fletcher—at his back. He remained engaged with the landlord, haggling over rooms.

  Snapping back around, she pinned Martha with a demanding glare. “This is where you’re to hand me over? We’re waiting for this laird of yours here?”

  Martha shrugged. “So Fletcher says.” Her hatchet face was entirely uncommunicative.

  “But he’s not here yet?”

  “No.” Martha resettled her shawl. “Seems it’ll take him a few days to reach here, wherever he’s coming from.”

  Fletcher was still engaged with the innkeeper. Heather turned to Cobbins, as always standing near. “When did you send him word that you’d seized me and were bringing me north?”

  As she’d hoped, Cobbins answered, “Put a message on the night mail at Knebworth.”

  Heather calculated; she was losing track of the days, but . . . if McKinsey had been in Edinburgh or Glasgow, he should be here, if not by now then certainly by tomorrow.

  Before she could follow that idea further, Fletcher strolled up.

  “Two rooms as usual, both in the east wing, but not next to each other.” He glanced at the two lads carrying in their bags. “Cobbins and I will take the room nearer the stairs.”

  Heather straightened, lifted her chin. Narrowed her eyes on Fletcher’s face. “Why are we stopping here?”

  Unconvincingly mild, Fletcher returned, “This was where McKinsey told us to bring you.”

  “Why of all the towns in Scotland did he chose Gretna Green?”

  Fletcher opened his eyes wide. “I don’t know.” He exchanged a glance with Martha, then looked back at Heather. “We might guess, but”—he shrugged—“we really don’t know. This is where he said, so this is where we’ve brought you. Far as we know, that’s all there is to it.”

  And they didn’t believe that for a moment.

  Heather absolutely definitely did not like the implications. She knew that, theoretically, a woman had to be willing to be married, over an anvil or any other way, in Scotland or anywhere else in the British Isles.

  What she didn’t know was, in a place like Gretna Green, just how agreeable a woman had to be. Did she have to make any statement of agreement? Or could she be drugged or coerced in some way to ensure the deed was done?

  One thing she did know was that marriages conducted over the anvil at Gretna Green were legal and binding. Her parents had been married there.

  She made no demur when Martha shooed her up the stairs and ushered her to their room. Inside, she’d grown strangely detached. To her mind, the way forward had just become crystal clear. It was obviously time to leave her kidnappers, to cut and run with what she’d already learned. When Breckenridge arrived, she’d tell him she was ready to escape. . . .

  Except Fletcher had said they’d be here for at least two more days.

  Entering the room ahead of Martha, barely registering the pair of narrow beds and the single small window, Heather considered, but she didn’t think Fletcher had been lying. He wasn’t honest, but in general he focused on his route forward; she didn’t think he was likely to have invented the tale of having to wait for days.

  Why would he? He didn’t know Breckenridge was close, her ready route out of their clutches. There was, from their point of view, no reason to lie to her about how long they would remain there, waiting on McKinsey’s arrival.

  Sinking onto the bed further from the door, she stared at the wall and wondered if there was any way she could exploit the situation for her own ends. Whether with what she now knew, she could pressure Fletcher, Martha, and Cobbins for yet more about McKinsey. And when she ultimately decided to escape, whether that escape might be timed so that she and Breckenridge could remain close enough to watch and see McKinsey arrive.

  If she and Breckenridge could get a good look at the man, they’d have a much better chance of identifying him, and subsequently nullifying any threat he might pose, now or later, to her sisters, her cousins, and herself.

  Drawing in a deep breath, she put aside such speculations until she could discuss them with Breckenridge, then rose and crossed the room to open negotiations over what clothes her “maid” would allow her to retrieve from the large satchel Martha continued to guard like a terrier.

  Breckenridge was in the tap, deep in his guise of a solicitor’s clerk, elbow to elbow with three locals, each consuming a serving of the inn’s dinner stew, when Heather and her captors walked into the room.

  The inn was, fortuitously, too small to boast a separate dining room. Along with the other men, all older and distinctly more grizzled than he, he could look up, apparently distracted from his meal by the sight of a young lady of quality—no matter how Heather dressed, her carriage, her composure, screamed her antecedents—gliding into the room.

  Briefly—fleetingly—he met her eyes. Hers had widened only slightly when she’d seen him; otherwise nothing showed in her expression as her gaze moved on, scanning the occupants of the tap, then passing on to the serving girl bustling up to steer her and the other three to a table at the front of the room.

  Of all the men present, he was probably the only one who correctly read the upward tilt of her chin. She was putting on a good face, which meant something was troubling her.

  Looking down at his plate, he inwardly frowned. She hadn’t previously seemed all that concerned with her captivity. Not that she hadn’t recognized it for what it was, but she’d seemed to view it as a cross to be borne until she could learn what lay behind it. Now . . . something had changed.

  Instinct prodded, more insistently this time. He hadn’t been thrilled by Fletcher’s choice of inn, not with that far-too-well-known smithy within easy walking distance, but given they’d assumed her captors were taking her to Glasgow, he’d viewed the Nutberry Moss Inn as simply a convenient halt.

  Given Heather’s sudden concern, perhaps that wasn’t so.

  Toying with the lumps of mutton swimming in the gravy filling his plate, he turned his mind to considering where, exactly, to meet her that night.

  Across the small room, Heather sat on a bench with her back to the wall, wedged into the corner by Martha’s stout form. The only useful aspect of her position was that she could see Breckenridge where he sat
with three locals at a table near the bar.

  Even as she idly, apparently absentmindedly, stared in that direction, he made some comment and the other three laughed. His hair had been roughed up, so it no longer sat as it should, making him look more loutish, especially with his beard shading his cheeks and jaw. A napkin tucked into his collar, he had both elbows on the table, leaning on them as with a fork he scooped up stew—and spoke while he chewed. She’d never met his late mother, but could they see him, his sisters would be appalled.

  Still, his disguise definitely worked. Although he wasn’t a local, and still clearly stood out as someone different, he nevertheless fitted into the Nutberry Moss’s picture. He appeared to belong.

  The relief still coursing through her—that had flooded her the instant her eyes had alighted on his dark head—was intense; she must have been more worried than she’d let herself admit.

  But now he was there, close, she could set aside said worry and concentrate on extracting every last piece of information she could before McKinsey’s pending arrival forced her to escape.

  The serving girl arrived with their meals. Heather said nothing but applied herself to consuming the thinly sliced roast lamb, parsnip, and cabbage, while inwardly she compiled a list of all the little telltale snippets Fletcher, Cobbins, and Martha had let fall.

  When Breckenridge and she met later, she would need to put forward all she’d learned in support of her contention that, with McKinsey still days away, they need be in no rush to slip away from the Nutberry Moss Inn. They could stay a few days more and see what more she might learn.

  Although Fletcher kept looking at her assessingly—she suspected he was waiting for her to have hysterics over the implications of the nearness of the blacksmith’s forge—she kept her head down and clung to her passivity. It wasn’t at all natural, but her captors didn’t know that.

  Once she finished mentally cataloguing all she’d learned, she turned her mind to what other questions she might conceivably ask—and her arguments for remaining to ask them.

  The meal ended. Martha glanced at her, then humphed. “Don’t know about you, but I want my bed. Come along—upstairs.”

  With that Martha heaved herself off the bench. Heather glanced at Fletcher, then sighed and slid along the bench to rise and join Martha. Fletcher and Cobbins remained seated; both were still nursing pints of ale.

  As she walked up the room, following in Martha’s ample wake, Breckenridge glanced at her and she met his eyes.

  Immediately he cut his gaze forward—out of the door, across the foyer.

  She looked that way, saw the reception counter, and the narrow door behind it that led to what appeared to be a tiny cloakroom.

  Glancing back, she found Breckenridge looking at her again. Along with all the other men in the tap.

  Tilting her head, she poked at her hair, as if a ticklish lock was the reason for the movement.

  Breckenridge looked down, into the ale mug cradled between his hands.

  Turning, Heather followed Martha out of the tap and up the stairs.

  Satisfied she’d understood him, Breckenridge drained his pint, then offered to refill the mugs of the other three men who’d provided him with such excellent cover through the evening. Friendly souls.

  They all drained their mugs and handed them over, but one thought to say, “Here—thought you was out of work.”

  “I am.” Gathering the mugs, Breckenridge stood and grinned down at them. “But it’d be a hard day when a man can’t share a drink with like-minded souls—what’d be the point of working at all if you couldn’t at least do that?”

  They all vociferously agreed. Crossing to the bar, he leaned on it while the barman refilled the mugs. Most of those in the tap appeared to be locals, not inn guests; although he’d assumed he and Heather would be at the inn for only one night, if he needed to, extending his stay wasn’t likely to be hard.

  Swinging around, he glanced back at his table of ready friends. In the edge of his vision, he could see Fletcher and Cobbins, talking quietly over their beers. He toyed with the idea of approaching them, but if they did remain here for more than one night, then putting in the time to establish his bonafides as a harmless solicitor’s clerk—one accepted by the locals—might bear better fruit than a more direct befriending.

  “There you be.” The barman placed the last of the four refilled mugs on a tray.

  “My thanks.” Breckenridge remembered just in time to pull out some coins and pay, rather than simply expect the man to put it on his slate. Unemployed solicitor’s clerks were unlikely to be afforded credit.

  Carrying the tray back to the table, he set it down and sat, then he and the other three all reached for their mugs. Silence reigned as they all sipped. It was in fact a quite palatable brew.

  Then one man commenced a tale of a local drover whom the Customs and Revenue men stationed in Gretna had halted before he could cross the border. “He’s having to prove all the steers are his.”

  One of the other men snorted. “I’d like to see him do that—everyone round about knows he ‘finds’ his stock up in the hills. Just amble along and join his herd, they do—least to hear him tell it.”

  There was general laughter, and the conversation continued, addressing various aspects of local life.

  Trays of ale came and went. After a time, the man sitting next to Breckenridge nodded down the room at Fletcher and Cobbins. “Any notion who they be?”

  Along with the others, Breckenridge shook his head.

  “Well, then,” said his companion, well-flown with ale, “let’s see if they wanna come and join us. Be friendly like.” Raising his voice and his mug, he called down the room, “Here—you two over there. Come join us and drink.”

  Demonstrating, the good fellow drained his mug, then smacked it down onto the table.

  Breckenridge watched Fletcher and Cobbins exchange a look, a few words, then both pushed back their chairs, picked up their mugs, and, dragging their chairs over, came to join the table.

  Introductions were made. The youngest man of the four already seated, Breckenridge waited. Helpfully, one of his unwitting allies waved at him and said, “And this here’s Timms. A solicitor’s clerk up from Lunnon, he be, but sadly out of work and headed up Glasgow way to look for a new post.”

  Breckenridge nodded to Fletcher and Cobbins and shook their proffered hands. Beyond that, however, he made no further overtures, allowing Jim, Cyril, and Henry to carry the conversation. They, naturally enough, were curious as to what had brought Fletcher and Cobbins onto their patch. When they inquired, Fletcher glibly related the tale Heather had told Breckenridge about. If previously he’d harbored any notion that said tale would be easy to contradict, hearing Fletcher smoothly explain it all eradicated any such hope.

  Fletcher was totally believable. He presented exactly the right persona for a man acting as hired agent for some ageing lordling.

  In his role as Timms, Breckenridge nodded sagely. “Lots of young girls run away when they think their guardians are too strict. Saw it all the time in London. Lots of girls find themselves in trouble there.”

  He let the conversation swirl on, satisfied with his now established role, with the way Fletcher no longer studied him but now viewed him as one with the others. Not the same, yet indistinguishable, unremarkable.

  The barman finally thumped the counter and told them he was closing up. “Just leave those mugs there—the girls’ll fetch them in the morning.”

  They all exchanged glances, then drained the dregs of their ale. Setting down their mugs, they lumbered to their feet. Breckenridge was grateful for his earlier years of dissipation, of drinking spirits into the small hours; at least he was steady on his pins.

  Between him, Fletcher, and Cobbins, they got the other three out of the front door. The landlord thanked them, threw the bolts, and wished them a hea
rty good night.

  Breckenridge headed for the stairs. Fletcher followed, Cobbins laboring in the rear.

  At the head of the stairs, Breckenridge paused and glanced back at Fletcher. “I was going to head on to Glasgow, but I’ve an old wound in m’side”—he pressed a hand to his right side and grimaced painfully—“and it’s twingeing something awful. Probably from driving all this way in my rattle-trap of a gig.” Raising that hand, he saluted them as he turned away. “So I might see you tomorrow, or I might not. But good luck to you anyway.”

  “And you,” Fletcher called after him.

  Without looking back, Breckenridge gave an acknowledging wave and strode on down the corridor. Smiling.

  Heather crept down the stairs of the Nutberry Moss Inn, clinging to the balustrade to keep from stumbling. While the upstairs rooms had been darkly dim, the well of the stairs and the foyer below lay in Stygian gloom. Reaching the last stair, she stepped carefully down onto the stone flags of the foyer; turning to where she knew the reception counter to be, she saw with considerable relief that the narrow door behind it stood ajar, outlined in faint, wavering candlelight.

  Crossing the floor, she slid around the counter, then eased open the door.

  Breckenridge was sitting on a narrow bench that ran along one wall beneath a rack of coat pegs, presently empty. He looked up as the door moved; elbows on his knees, hands clasped with his chin resting on them, he raised his head and nodded at the door. “Close it,” he murmured, “and come and sit.”

  Clad in her customary outfit, this time fashioned from the coverlet off her bed cinched at her waist with her silk shawl, she did as he said.

  He rose as she turned from the door, swirled the cloak from his shoulders, and solicitously draped it about her, overlapping the front edges. Grateful for the additional warmth, holding the voluminous cloak close, she sat. “Thank you. It’s rather chillier here.”