The Outrageous Lady Read online

  “I was half-afraid that you would not come,” the highwayman said at last.

  “Nothing would have prevented me,” Lady Roysdon answered and wondered as she spoke if she sounded too intense.

  “I don’t think that you will need your cloak. It is very warm this evening.”

  He took it from her as he spoke and then stood looking at her low-cut evening gown, the silver gauze of which did little to conceal the exquisite lines of her figure and at the ribbons tied beneath her breasts.

  “Perfect!” he said softly as if he seriously appraised her before he gave his approval.

  Then he drew her emerald necklace from his pocket.

  “As I told you before, you don’t really need them, but they complete your ensemble.”

  “Tonight I am prepared to accept your compliments.”

  He fastened the emeralds at the back of her neck and then hooked the earrings into her ears.

  His fingers were very gentle and yet she found herself quiver because he was touching her and hoped that he did not notice.

  She felt ashamed because the close proximity of him evoked sensations such as she had never known before.

  He clasped the two bracelets on her wrist and then with an expression of dismay he looked down at her finger.

  “I must have left the ring behind!” he said. “Will you forgive me?”

  “Perhaps I could collect it – another time.”

  “That is what I want you to say if the evening pleases you, but it was not in fact an intentional action on my part.”

  “I believe you,” she answered lightly.

  He looked towards the centre of the clearing.

  “You are hungry?”

  “Ravenous! The sea air has that effect on me.”

  She knew that it was not the sea air, in fact she had been unable to eat anything at midday simply because she was excited at the thought of what lay ahead.

  Now she saw spread out on a white cloth that there was a huge crimson lobster and beside it a salad served in the French way.

  There were other dishes all laid out like a child’s picnic and she laughed and clapped her hands and sat down on the soft moss beside the tablecloth.

  The highwayman poured some wine into a glass and handed it to her and when she sipped it she found that it was champagne.

  “We are very grand tonight,” she said.

  “We are celebrating.”

  “What particularly?”

  “What else but that you are here?”

  “You promised me an elaborate menu and nothing could look more delicious.”

  “The lobster came from the sea this morning.”

  “Who cooked it for you?”

  “Some friends of mine, who also baked the bread French fashion and prepared the salad and pâté, which I swear you will not find elsewhere in England.”

  “I have a suspicion that your friends are French.”

  She thought as she said it that he must be in league with smugglers and as such an enemy of England.

  The country was at war with France and she was well aware how reprehensible it was that so much English gold crossed the Channel to finance Napoleon’s armies.

  For a moment she thought that she could be accused of treachery just for consorting with a man who was outside the law and apparently engaged in more subversive activities than highway robbery.

  As if he sensed exactly what she was thinking, the highwayman’s lips twisted a little as he said,

  “I will set your mind at rest because I want you to enjoy yourself. So may I say that my friends are émigrés who escaped to England during the Revolution.”

  Lady Roysdon dropped her eyes, ashamed that he should realise she had mistrusted him and remembering now that thousands of émigrés had arrived in Brighton alone over the years.

  “I am – sorry.”

  “What you thought is entirely understandable, but actually my friends keep the inn which you were so interested in the last time you came here.”

  “And that is where you stay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you trusting me with your secrets?”

  “Should I not trust you?”

  They looked at each other and she thought that she told him the answer without words.

  Then, as if he had no wish to embarrass her, he handed her a portion of the lobster, taking the flesh from the claws and placing also on the plate a spoonful of mayonnaise, which was better than her chef had ever prepared.

  The food was so delicious that it was hard to talk while they were eating.

  Finally Lady Roysdon refused to eat any more paté, which, spread on the crisp French bread with yellow Jersey butter, was the most superb she had ever tasted. She then said,

  “I have never eaten a more delectable meal. Will you tell your friend who cooked it that I said so and thank her?”

  “She will be very pleased.”

  He was sitting on the ground and she thought, as she had thought the first night they met, that he had a grace few men possessed. There was something athletic about him that was not to be found amongst the Prince Regent’s self-indulgent friends in the Royal Pavilion.

  “A little more wine?” he asked.

  She shook her head and he filled his own glass before he said, looking at her,

  “That is how I saw you first, sitting with a glass of champagne in your hand.”

  “You saw me? When?”

  “Two-and-a-half years ago.”

  “In London?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were there and I did not meet you?”

  “It was not the sort of place where we were likely to be introduced.”

  “Where was it?”

  She had the feeling as she asked the question that she would not like the answer.

  “At Tom King’s.”

  “Oh!”

  There was a silence and she put her glass of champagne down on the ground and sat looking at it.

  She remembered the night she had gone to Tom King’s. It was a so-called coffee house that stood in the centre of Covent Garden market.

  At midnight the bucks, bloods, demi-rips, rakes and all the rowdy spirits of London associated with the most elegant and fascinating Cyprians, besides a number of persons of every sort and kind, when intemperance, idleness or curiosity could assemble them together.

  It had been the Earl’s idea that it might amuse her, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan had concurred, and the three of them had gone there to drink champagne, eat oysters that were brought in from the market and laugh or sneer at the other people present.

  Tom King himself was a boisterous man who was like a Shakespearean character as he went roaring down the long room arousing the drunkards, thrusting them and all who had empty glasses out of his house.

  He would set everything to rights until a few minutes later three or four more roisterers would arrive and put everything into an uproar again.

  It had been amusing at the time, but now Lady Roysdon felt embarrassed.

  The highwayman had seen her there and thought perhaps that she was as depraved as some of the other women looking languishingly at the bucks who were buying them drinks.

  “Were you – shocked?” she asked after a moment because she had to know the answer.

  “Yes!”

  She had expected him to prevaricate and the single monosyllable disconcerted her.

  “Why?” she asked after a silence which seemed to last a long time.

  “Because it was like finding a lily growing on a dung heap,”

  “But you were there!”

  He smiled.

  “I am a man.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “No.”

  She looked away from him towards the quietness of the trees and after a moment he said,

  “I had not been in London very long, but I had heard about you and thought that the tales must be exaggerated. When I saw you, I knew – ”

  “What did you
know?” she asked quickly.

  “That you were more beautiful than I had heard.”

  It was not the answer she expected and after a moment she asked,

  “And yet – you were shocked? You must have been very much more shocked by the things you heard about me later.”

  “Some of them,” he admitted.

  “And did you see me again?”

  “Not that year, because I left London.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you really curious?”

  “Of course I am! You know I am curious! If you are who you say you are, why do you risk your life behaving in such a crazy manner?”

  “Is not that what I should be saying to you?” he asked.

  “I don’t risk my life in what I do.”

  “You did last night. Had we been caught in a trap, as Sir Francis hoped we should be, you would have undoubtedly hung beside me. A most regrettable ending for a famous Peeress.”

  She had the strange feeling that it might not have been as bad a fate as it sounded if she could die with him. Then she told herself that she of all people had no right to criticise.

  “I wanted adventure,” she said defensively.

  “So you told me before and I thought the same.”

  “But there are so many other things you could do.”

  “I could not afford most of them.”

  “You are poor?”

  “Shall we say not wealthy and certainly not rich enough to live the life of a fashionable gentleman in London.”

  “But you would have liked to do that?”

  “Not really,” he answered. “I don’t care for gaming. I dislike drinking to any excess and the Social round, as you yourself have found, my Lady, would become very wearisome.”

  “How do you know so much about me?”

  “Because I have made it my business to know what you were doing and to hear about you.”

  “Because you had seen me?”

  “Exactly!”

  She looked at him with a sudden startled look in her eyes.

  “Did you send Jake to me when you heard I required a groom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Supposing I had not engaged him?”

  He smiled and she had the feeling that like all his plans he was certain it would succeed.

  “You had no right to spy on me,” she said hotly.

  “I did not hurt you in any way.”

  “But how could you be sure of that? After all you robbed me.”

  “It was an easy way of being able to – talk to you.”

  There was a little pause before the verb and the colour rose in her cheeks as she remembered how he had kissed her.

  “It was an intrusion and quite indefensible!”

  “Are you angry?”

  “I have every right to be.”

  “It has not bothered you for two years.”

  She looked at him in astonishment.

  “You mean you have been – near me and known what I was – doing?”

  “Having a very good idea,” he answered.

  “You knew I was coming to Brighton?”

  “As you did last year and the year before.”

  “I cannot believe it! Why? Why should you have done this? Why should you have followed me? Why should you be interested in me?”

  He looked at her and she knew that there was no need for him to answer the question.

  “It’s impossible!” she said almost childishly. “And if it is true, what were you waiting for?”

  “For you to become bored with what you were doing and with the men you were doing it with.”

  She sat up very straight.

  “How do you know that I am bored? How do you know of these things? Have you any more spies in my household or among my friends?”

  “I don’t really need spies,” he answered, “with the exception of Jake who brought you to me as I intended him to do. I saw you at different times.”

  His voice was very quiet and serious as he went on,

  “I saw the disillusionment in your eyes, the boredom in your expression and the wistful little droop to your lips which told me you were not happy.”

  He paused for a moment before saying,

  “You are not happy, are you, Galatea?”

  It seemed so right for him to call her by her Christian name that she hardly noticed it.

  “No,” she replied after a moment’s pause. “I suppose I am not.”

  “That is why you have done such foolish things.”

  “They are over now. I don’t intend to do any more.”

  She felt without words he was asking her a question and she said,

  “I decided that when I came to Brighton earlier than I had originally intended.”

  “What happened?”

  She felt as if he compelled her to tell him the truth.

  “It was when the Earl of Sheringham took me to the – Justice’s Room in – Bridewell Prison.”

  As she spoke, she could see again the spacious chamber where the Court was sitting in grandeur and due order.

  A gentleman, probably the Governor, was sitting on the seat of judgement armed with a hammer.

  Just as they entered Lady Roysdon heard an accusation being made against a poor young prostitute who had stolen from the man she sold her body to and apparently had no friend to speak on her behalf.

  The proclamation was roared out by the Clerk of the Court known as ‘Flat Cap’,

  “All you who are willing that Edith Treviss shall have present punishment hold up your hands!”

  It seemed to Lady Roysdon that every hand in the Court went up eagerly and the double folding doors at the end of the Court Room were opened so that everybody could witness the punishment inflicted.

  She had never expected to see a woman whipped savagely naked to the waist and she had sat paralysed in her seat until, when the blood was running down the woman’s back and she was almost unconscious, the hammer came down and the scourging ceased.

  Lady Roysdon had risen to her feet to move blindly from the Court followed by the Earl.

  Then, before she really knew what was happening, they had passed into the prison itself and were walking along the corridors with their cages on either side.

  She saw women at work beating hemp and a cell was opened on the Earl’s instructions and they walked in to inspect what was being done.

  Still bemused by what she had seen in the Court, Lady Roysdon was looking without interest at what a jailer was pointing out to them until she saw an overseer armed with a switch beating the women as they worked.

  He brought the switch hard down on their backs. Some of them cried out and some of them sank lower as if in despair.

  Finally he reached the woman whose work they were inspecting. Roughly he told her she was lagging behind the others and brought the switch down on her several times.

  She was an emaciated, elderly woman, white-faced and with a cough that seemed to rack her whole frame.

  Lady Roysdon stared in horror at what was happening and looked at the Earl.

  She saw a glint in his eyes, which she knew had been there in the Court Room and revealed the real reason why he had brought her to Bridewell.

  Suddenly, horrified by the brutality and even more by what she saw in the Earl’s expression, her anger had risen within her irrepressibly.

  She had seized the switch from the overseer and, before he knew what was happening, she had slashed him about the face, beating him until he screamed and the weals were crimson on his unshaven cheeks.

  She had been quickly prevented from doing him any great injury, but it had cost a great number of golden sovereigns to salve his pride.

  The Earl had hustled her out of the cell and the women had cheered her as they left.

  As they drove home, he had laughed and told her she should not allow her feelings to run away with her, but she had said little if anything until they reached her house.

  “I was ashamed,” she said now in
a low voice. “I felt not only ashamed but also degraded by what I had seen and what perhaps I had encouraged by my behaviour in the past.”

  There was so much self-accusation in her voice that the highwayman reached out and took her hand in his.

  “I think you will no longer seek adventures of that sort,” he said very gently. “You have found that there is something much more exciting.”

  “Have I?”

  She looked up at him and then was very still.

  There was a look in his eyes that was unmistakable and she felt that it was what she had instinctively longed to see.

  Then he released her hand and said in a different tone,

  “You have an excuse for all you have done.”

  “You mean – my husband?”

  “You could not be expected to bear such a life alone.”

  “It was – amusing to be a sensation – to have every man in London running after me.”

  “I can understand that.”

  He smiled at her as if she was a child boasting of having a prettier doll than anyone else’s.

  “Yet after a time it grew very monotonous,” Lady Roysdon said, as if she would justify herself. “I wanted other things, although I was not certain what they were.”

  “I felt the same when I left the Army.”

  “You were in the Army?”

  “I served in India and after the War began with Bonaparte, I stayed with my Regiment until my father died. Then I came to London and saw you.”

  “Where is your home?”

  “In Cornwall.”

  “There is not enough for you to do at home?”

  “It’s a long way away,” he said and she knew that he meant from her.

  “Why did you not seek out my acquaintance? There must have been innumerable people who could have introduced you?”

  “As I told you before, I had not enough money for the life that you led and was not prepared to be a ‘hanger-on’.”

  “So you became a highwayman!”

  “It meant I could travel about the country without any difficulty.”

  She smiled.

  “I should have thought that it would have been very difficult!”

  “Not really and I found Bath, when you visited it last year, very interesting.”

  She looked at him incredulously.

  “Where else have you followed me?”

  “To Newmarket and Ascot for the races, to Chatsworth when you stayed with the Duke, to Woburn with another Duke. You certainly choose the most comfortable places to visit, my Lady!”