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A Lady for a Highwayman

Excerpt

Chapter One

“I don’t wish to marry Lord Quarrymire,” Annabelle said calmly and firmly. “I would prefer you call things off.” 

She hadn’t once raised her voice or sniffled a tear from the moment she’d been stuffed into a gown and paraded through London like a broodmare at auction, but her mother’s reaction was still condescending. 

“It’s a lovely day for a drive. Don’t spoil it with tantrums, Annabelle.” The countess lifted her nose to the fine country air. “We’re meeting his mother in two hours. I don’t want to appear cross when we arrive.”

They were in a rented barouche en route to the property the marquess owned in the district. It was a small manor the family rarely visited, Sherwin Bickford had told Annabelle’s mother when they had met him in London last season. He had promised to call on them when he was next in residence. 

Indeed he had, much to Annabelle’s profound disinterest. He had soon made an offer for Annabelle that her parents had snapped up, paying no mind to her objections.

“Mama.” Annabelle had spent hours rehearsing this argument. “If I’m too childish to have a discussion about marriage, surely I’m too immature to marry.”

Her mother sent her a stony look at that irrefutable logic. “Take it up with your father.”

Annabelle turned her attention to her father. He was also pretending great enchantment with the rolling hills, so he didn’t have to look his daughter in the eye. He gave her no opportunity to speak. 

“I am beyond exhausted with the topic. Ask Quarrymire while you’re on honeymoon.” 

Mrs. Hargrove’s Academy for Female Learning and Scientific Study didn’t take married women, or she would have made it a condition of accepting his proposal. And Annabelle didn’t want to marry. 

“I can pay for it myself with the money Auntie left me.” That was not entirely true. The moment she had received a letter granting her admittance, she had forged a note from her father to the family’s solicitor, urging him to prepare a draught for the funds. It was hidden in her room at home, unbeknownst to anyone including her aunt.

“I do not understand why you think boarding school is a better option than marriage,” her mother said with genuine bafflement. “It’s no better than a convent. People would talk about why you had to go. All you’d gain is a reputation.”

“And an education.”

“You want to think so, but those schools are rife with social climbers,” her mother said disdainfully. “Young girls who think they can better themselves by balancing a book on their head. You’ve been presented at court, Annabelle. You’re about to marry a marquess.”

“Some girls read the books. They want to learn how to support themselves so they don’t have to marry.” 

“You’re speaking nonsense. Your father supports you very comfortably.” She waved at the barouche. “So will the marquess. Someday your brother will be the earl and he’ll appreciate the valuable connection you’re providing him. You’re doing this for all of us, Annabelle, as I did for my family.” 

How was Quarrymire a valuable connection? He was nearly forty and thought Wollstonecroft was a type of wool from the north. When she had expressed her reservations about marrying, he had made a demeaning comment about trusting men to know what was best for her and then got foxed with her father. 

Annabelle had tried to tell her mother how unpleasant she found him, but her mother kept insisting this was a very good match. 

“I’ve taught you how to run a household and move in society,” her mother continued. “You already know the harp. Those are the skills a woman needs. You’re being silly.” 

And here she was reduced again. It was so infuriating. 

“I’m only asking for one year at school before I marry. Tom and Freddie get four.” And another decade of leeway after that, but a year was the thin edge of the wedge she would use as a starting point.

“I told you it was a mistake to allow her to sit in with Freddie,” her mother muttered to her father. “That tutor put ideas in her head.”

Was it so impossible these ideas could be her own? 

When they’d sent her younger brother, Freddie, off to Eton two years ago, they’d let his tutor go and pushed Annabelle into gown fittings and a coming out ball. That had been insult to injury when Freddie’s tutor had always praised Annabelle’s grasp of Greek and Latin, mathematics and engineering. He hadn’t urged her to press flowers as a botany study the way her governess had done. That grotesque inequality between the sexes fueled Annabelle’s ambition to become a teacher. She wanted to provide what she’d had to fight so hard to attain.

Her mother would fall right out of this barouche if she revealed that was her goal, though. No, she had to pretend she wanted to better her French and study music.

“It’s all arranged, Annabelle. Men of the marquess’s caliber don’t wait a year while his bride cloisters herself with social inferiors. You’re marrying him and that’s the end of it.” 

“I don’t wish to marry anyone,” Annabelle burst out. 

“I’ve said—” Her mother cut herself off and looked past Annabelle, leaning to see why the barouche was slowing. “What is happening?” she asked the earl.

“A lady in distress, m’lady,” the driver said over his shoulder.

“Drive past,” Annabelle’s father said. “Quickly.”

“Oh, Papa.” Annabelle twisted to see a woman in a blue riding habit on the tree-lined lane ahead of them. She stood in a shallow ditch, looking worse for wear, attending her horse that must have thrown a shoe. The plume on her wide-brimmed hat bobbed as she bent over the animal’s raised hoof. “She’s a woman alone. At least ask if we can take a message into the village for her.” 

“Do you see others?” Craning his neck to see if there were thieves awaiting them in the trees, he allowed with a grumble, “Oh, very well, then. Stop and ask if she needs assistance.”

The driver came to a stop alongside her.

“Thank you!” the woman said with breathless gratitude. She kept her head down to watch her footing as she came out of the ditch, hands in the full skirt of her habit. “I was hoping someone like you would stop.” 

She caught the reins of their nearest horse beneath its bit and lifted a pistol at the driver, finally tilting her hat enough to show her face. She wore a black kerchief across her eyes and had disguised the shape of her mouth by wearing heavy powder and painting a pert red kiss on her lips. 

“Step down, driver,” she said with congenial authority. “Make yourself comfortable with your nose to the dirt while I acquaint myself with your passengers.” 

A highwayman? Woman? Annabelle was frozen with astonishment. 

“Drive on!” her father shouted.

He was too late. The driver had leaped from the barouche and run into the trees. 

“Was he your accomplice?” The earl stood and shouted after him, “Get back here, you coward. Are there more? Show yourselves!” 

“Just me, my lord. But now you’re up, I’ll have you step out. All of you, please. I have three pistols, one bullet for each if you grow frisky.” 

Annabelle could only stare at this vision of boldness. 

“It’s the middle of the day!” Her father was apoplectic.

“Ah, the gentleman can tell the time. You won’t need that pocket watch, then. Your girl can bring it to me along with your cufflinks, my lord. And all those baubles the lady is wearing.” 

“I will not.” The countess placed a protective hand over her grandmother’s broach. 

“I usually start with shooting the men,” the robber said as though she were talking about her favorite part of a meat pie. “But I can make an exception today.” 

“William,” her mother said weakly. 

The earl hesitated. He was still standing in the barouche, but he was red and perspiring with distress. 

Oddly, Annabelle didn’t feel frightened. She ought to. No one had ever pointed a weapon at her before. The danger emanating off the woman was the kind that might come off a tiger or she-wolf. Annabelle would be very wary if she came face-to-face with one of those. 

But she only said, “I suppose we ought to do as she says. Give me your watch, Papa.” 

“A sensible young lady you have there, my lord. Yes, that pin from your cravat, too. Well done. And now you come down here and kneel on the grass where I can keep an eye on you.” 

Annabelle’s mother began to weep. Annabelle didn’t like to see her upset, but it also made her realize that her nerve was actually much stronger than her mother’s. Why did she allow her mother to bully her when she was the one thinking most clearly right now? She helped her mother shakily remove her earrings and necklace and rings, then supported her as she stepped out of the barouche.

“Oh, your poor mama looks as though she could use your father’s handkerchief. I’ll have you take it, though, love. Make a pouch for all that booty, if you please, and be sure to add that pretty locket you’re wearing. Mama, you can settle on the grass beside your husband. Give her a cuddle, my lord. She’s distressed.”

Annabelle’s mother fell into her father in a heap of shaken tears. He wrapped his arms around her protectively. Annabelle felt him watching closely as she brought the heavy package of silk-wrapped loot toward the most dazzling person Annabelle had ever encountered. 

“Annabelle,” her father said urgently. “Don’t get too close. Leave it on the ground.” 

She faltered to a stop just out of the other woman’s reach.

“Put it in your bonnet and tie it off, Annabelle. A pretty name for a pretty woman.” 

She wasn’t. She never had been. She was plain featured and her common brown hair refused to hold a curl for more than five minutes. The fashion for high-waisted gowns disguised the fact that her figure was boxy and her bosom modest. That’s why her parents were so thrilled she had caught the eye of a marquess. 

She managed to yank off her bonnet with one hand and do as she was told, aware the woman still had her pistol trained on them. When she looked up, she was startled to find the woman’s golden-brown eyes taking her in the way her brothers looked at housemaids. 

The way she sometimes looked at the maids.

Seeing that speculation in this woman’s gaze sent Annabelle’s heart into somersaults. Her body flushed with heat and an inexplicable smile of discovery tried to break on her face. 

“Hold tight, love.” 

That was all the warning the robber gave before she released the horse and gave its haunch a terrific slap while yelling, “Hiya!”

The barouche took off, driverless and horses out of sync. It rattled wildly, kicking up rocks off the rocky lane. Annabelle’s parents cried out while Annabelle was briefly accosted by the highwaywoman. The stranger’s free hand stole the bonnet from her startled grip while her pistol arm wrapped around Annabelle’s waist and squeezed her tight.

She kissed her! 

It was a single, hot, damp sweep of her lips across Annabelle’s mouth, which was parted in shock. Her tongue brushed her bottom lip once and it was over.

The woman leaped onto her steed—astride!—and spurred it into the trees. 

While Annabelle stood there in a moment of tremendous epiphany. 

That’s why I don’t wish to marry. No man will ever make me feel like she just did.