CHAPTER I
Moments before the stagecoach overturned, Judith Law was
deeply immersed in a daydream that had effectively
obliterated the unpleasant nature of the present reality.
For the first time in her twenty-two years of existence
she was traveling by stagecoach. Within the first mile or
two she had been disabused of any notion she might ever
have entertained that it was a romantic, adventurous mode
of travel. She was squashed between a woman whose girth
required a seat and a half of space and a thin, restless
man who was all sharp angles and elbows and was constantly
squirming to find a more comfortable position, digging her
in uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing places as he
did so. A portly man opposite snored constantly, adding
considerably to all the other noises of travel. The woman
next to him talked unceasingly to anyone unfortunate or
unwise enough to make eye contact with her, relating the
sorry story of her life in a tone of whining complaint.
From the quiet man on the other side of her wafted the
odors of uncleanness mingled with onions and garlic. The
coach rattled and vibrated and jarred over every stone and
pothole in its path, or so it seemed to Judith.
Yet for all the discomforts of the road, she was not eager
to complete the journey. She had just left behind the
lifelong familiarity of Beaconsfield and home and family
and did not expect to return to them for a long time, if
ever. She was on her way to live at her Aunt Effingham's.
Life as she had always known it had just ended. Though
nothing had been stated explicitly in the letter her aunt
had written to Papa, it had been perfectly clear to Judith
that she was not going to be an honored, pamperedguest at
Harewood Grange, but rather a poor relation, expected to
earn her keep in whatever manner her aunt and uncle and
cousins and grandmother deemed appropriate. Starkly
stated, she could expect only dreariness and drudgery
ahead--no beaux, no marriage, no home and family of her
own. She was about to become one of those shadowy, fading
females with whom society abounded, dependent upon their
relatives, unpaid servants to them.
It had been extraordinarily kind of Aunt Effingham to
invite her, Papa had said--except that her aunt, her
father's sister, who had made an extremely advantageous
marriage to the wealthy, widowed Sir George Effingham when
she was already past the first bloom of youth, was not
renowned for kindness.
And it was all because of Branwell, the fiend, who
deserved to be shot and then hanged, drawn, and quartered
for his thoughtless extravagances--Judith had not had a
kind thought to spare for her younger brother in many
weeks. And it was because she was the second daughter, the
one without any comforting label to make her continued
presence at home indispensable. She was not the eldest--
Cassandra was a year older than she. She was certainly not
the beauty--her younger sister Pamela was that. And she
was not the baby--seventeen-year-old Hilary had that
dubious distinction. Judith was the embarrassingly awkward
one, the ugly one, the always cheerful one, the dreamer.
Judith was the one everyone had turned and looked at when
Papa came to the sitting room and read Aunt Effingham's
letter aloud. Papa had fallen into severe financial
straits and must have written to his sister to ask for
just the help she was offering. They all knew what it
would mean to the one chosen to go to Harewood. Judith had
volunteered. They had all cried when she spoke up, and her
sisters had all volunteered too--but she had spoken up
first.
Judith had spent her last night at the rectory inventing
exquisite tortures for Branwell.
The sky beyond the coach windows was gray with low, heavy
clouds, and the landscape was dreary. The landlord at the
inn where they had stopped briefly for a change of horses
an hour ago had warned that there had been torrential rain
farther north and they were likely to run into it and onto
muddy roads, but the stagecoach driver had laughed at the
suggestion that he stay at the inn until it was safe to
proceed. But sure enough, the road was getting muddier by
the minute, even though the rain that had caused it had
stopped for a while.
Judith had blocked it all out--the oppressive resentment
she felt, the terrible homesickness, the dreary weather,
the uncomfortable traveling conditions, and the unpleasant
prospect of what lay ahead--and daydreamed instead,
inventing a fantasy adventure with a fantasy hero, herself
as the unlikely heroine. It offered a welcome diversion
for her mind and spirits until moments before the accident.
She was daydreaming about highwaymen. Or, to be more
precise, about a highwayman. He was not, of course, like
any self-respecting highwayman of the real world--a
vicious, dirty, amoral, uncouth robber and cutthroat
murderer of hapless travelers. No, indeed. This highwayman
was dark and handsome and dashing and laughing--he had
white, perfect teeth and eyes that danced merrily behind
the slits of his narrow black mask. He galloped across a
sun-bright green field and onto the highway, effortlessly
controlling his powerful and magnificent black steed with
one hand, while he pointed a pistol--unloaded, of course--
at the heart of the coachman. He laughed and joked merrily
with the passengers as he deprived them of their
valuables, and then he tossed back those of the people he
saw could ill afford the loss. No . . . No, he returned
all of the valuables to all the passengers since he was
not a real highwayman at all, but a gentleman bent on
vengeance against one particular villian, whom he was
expecting to ride along this very road.
He was a noble hero masquerading as a highwayman, with a
nerve of steel, a carefree spirit, a heart of gold, and
looks to cause every female passenger heart palpitations
that had nothing to do with fear.
And then he turned his eyes upon Judith--and the universe
stood still and the stars sang in their spheres. Until,
that was, he laughed gaily and announced that he would
deprive her of the necklace that dangled against her bosom
even though it must have been obvious to him that it had
almost no money value at all. It was merely something that
her . . . her mother had given her on her deathbed,
something Judith had sworn never to remove this side of
her own grave. She stood up bravely to the highwayman,
tossing back her head and glaring unflinchingly into those
laughing eyes. She would give him nothing, she told him in
a clear, ringing voice that trembled not one iota, even if
she must die.
He laughed again as his horse first reared and then
pranced about as he brought it easily under control. Then
if he could not have the necklace without her, he
declared, he would have it with her. He came slowly toward
her, large and menacing and gorgeous, and when he was
close enough, he leaned down from the saddle, grasped her
by the waist with powerful hands--she ignored the problem
of the pistol, which he had been brandishing in one hand a
moment ago--and lifted her effortlessly upward.
The bottom fell out of her stomach as she lost contact
with solid ground, and . . . and she was jerked back to
reality. The coach had lost traction on the muddy road and
was swerving and weaving and rocking out of control. There
was enough time--altogether too much time--to feel blind
terror before it went into a long sideways skid, collided
with a grassy bank, turned sharply back toward the road,
rocked even more alarmingly than before, and finally
overturned into a low ditch, coming to a jarring halt half
on its side, half on its roof.
When rationality began to return to Judith's mind,
everyone seemed to be either screaming or shouting. She
was not one of them--she was biting down on both lips
instead. The six inside passengers, she discovered, were
in a heap together against one side of the coach. Their
curses, screams, and groans testified to the fact that
most, if not all, of them were alive. Outside she could
hear shouts and the whinnying of frightened horses. Two
voices, more distinct than any others, were using the most
shockingly profane language.
She was alive, Judith thought in some surprise. She was
also--she tested the idea gingerly--unhurt, though she
felt considerably shaken up. Somehow she appeared to be on
top of the heap of bodies. She tried moving, but even as
she did so, the door above her opened and someone--the
coachman himself--peered down at her.
"Give me your hand, then, miss," he instructed her. "We
will have you all out of there in a trice. Lord love us,
stop that screeching, woman," he told the talkative woman
with a lamentable lack of sympathy considering the fact
that he was the one who had overturned them.
It took somewhat longer than a trice, but finally everyone
was standing on the grassy edge of the ditch or sitting on
overturned bags, gazing hopelessly at the coach, which was
obviously not going to be resuming its journey anytime
soon. Indeed, even to Judith's unpracticed eye it was
evident that the conveyance had sustained considerable
damage. There was no sign of any human habitation this
side of the horizon. The clouds hung low and threatened
rain at any moment. The air was damp and chilly. It was
hard to believe that it was summer.
By some miracle, even the outside passengers had escaped
serious injury, though two of them were caked with mud and
none too happy about it either. There were many ruffled
feathers, in fact. There were raised voices and waving
fists. Some of the voices were raised in anger, demanding
to know why an experienced coachman would bring them
forward into peril when he had been advised at the last
stop to wait a while. Others were raised in an effort to
have their suggestions for what was to be done heard above
the hubbub. Still others were complaining of cuts or
bruises or other assorted ills. The whining lady had a
bleeding wrist.
Judith made no complaint. She had chosen to continue her
journey even though she had heard the warning and might
have waited for a later coach. She had no suggestions to
make either. And she had no injuries. She was merely
miserable and looked about her for something to take her
mind off the fact that they were all stranded in the
middle of nowhere and about to be rained upon. She began
to tend those in distress, even though most of the hurts
were more imaginary than real. It was something she could
do with both confidence and a measure of skill since she
had often accompanied her mother on visits to the sick.
She bandaged cuts and bruises, using whatever materials
came to hand. She listened to each individual account of
the mishap over and over, murmuring soothing words while
she found seats for the unsteady and fanned the faint.
Within minutes she had removed her bonnet, which was
getting in her way, and tossed it into the still-
overturned carriage. Her hair was coming down, but she did
not stop to try to restore it to order. Most people, she
found, really did behave rather badly in a crisis, though
this one was nowhere near as disastrous as it might have
been.
But her spirits were as low as anyone's. This, she
thought, was the very last straw. Life could get no
drearier than this. She had touched the very bottom. In a
sense perhaps that was even a consoling thought. There was
surely no farther down to go. There was only up--or an
eternal continuation of the same.
"How do you keep so cheerful, dearie?" the woman who had
occupied one and a half seats asked her.
Judith smiled at her. "I am alive," she said. "And so are
you. What is there not to be cheerful about?"
"I could think of one or two things," the woman said.
But their attention was diverted by a shout from one of
the outside passengers, who was pointing off into the
distance from which they had come just a few minutes
before. A rider was approaching, a single man on
horseback. Several of the passengers began hailing him,
though he was still too far off to hear them. They were as
excited as if a superhuman savior were dashing to their
rescue. What they thought one man could do to improve
their plight Judith could not imagine. Doubtless they
would not either if questioned.
She turned her attention to one of the unfortunate soggy
gentlemen, who was dabbing at a bloody scrape on his cheek
with a muddy handkerchief and wincing. Perhaps, she
thought and stopped herself only just in time from
chuckling aloud, the approaching stranger was the tall,
dark, noble, laughing highwayman of her daydream. Or
perhaps he was a real highwayman coming to rob them, like
sitting ducks, of their valuables. Perhaps there was
farther down to go after all.
Although he was making a lengthy journey, Lord Rannulf
Bedwyn was on horseback--he avoided carriage travel
whenever possible. His baggage coach, together with his
valet, was trundling along somewhere behind him. His
valet, being a cautious, timid soul, had probably decided
to stop at the inn an hour or so back when warned of rain
by an innkeeper intent on drumming up business.
There must have been a cloudburst in this part of the
country not long ago. Even now it looked as if the clouds
were just catching their breath before releasing another
load on the land beneath. The road had become gradually
wetter and muddier until now it was like a glistening
quagmire of churned mudflats. He could turn back, he
supposed. But it was against his nature to turn tail and
flee any challenge, human or otherwise. He must stop at
the next inn he came across, though. He might be careless
of any danger to himself, but he must be considerate of
his horse.
He was in no particular hurry to arrive at Grandmaison
Park. His grandmother had summoned him there, as she
sometimes did, and he was humoring her as he usually did.
He was fond of her even apart from the fact that several
years ago she had made him the heir to her unentailed
property and fortune though he had two older brothers as
well as one younger--plus his two sisters, of course. The
reason for his lack of haste was that, yet again, his
grandmother had announced that she had found him a
suitable bride. It always took a combination of tact and
humor and firmness to disabuse her of the notion that she
could order his personal life for him. He had no intention
of getting married anytime soon. He was only eight and
twenty years old. And if and when he did marry, then he
would jolly well choose his own bride.
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