Her Band of Rakes (PAPERBACK, LGBT)

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ONE

“AT LEAST IN the country, folks won’t constantly be whispering and nattering behind your back, Miss. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

Cassandra Fenwicke stopped looking out the window of the jouncing coach in favor of meeting Mary’s guileless brown-eyed gaze. Her lady’s maid was perhaps a decade older than Cassandra, and had only recently come into her aunt and uncle’s employ. The departure of her previous maid was only one small aspect of the slow-rolling catastrophe that had unfolded over the last few months. Mary might be plainspoken and unusually blunt for a servant, but Cassandra knew she was lucky to have a maid at all, after the scandal.

The latest scandal.

“Have you ever lived in the country, Mary?” she asked.

“Never, Miss.”

Cassandra couldn’t help the hint of bitterness that crept into her tone. “Believe me when I say, when it comes to gossip, country folk put Londoners to shame. There’s very little else to do out here, you see. I daresay my presence will be the talk of Horsham within a fortnight.”

Mary wisely did not reply, and Cassandra returned to her listless cataloguing of their surroundings. The Surrey Hills had given way to dense forest as they approached the tiny market town where they would break their journey for the night. Recent heavy rains had turned the roads to mud, slowing the horses and churning splatters of muck onto the sides of the enclosed coach.

At the age of twenty-two, her humiliating exile to a tiny cottage near the Wycliff family seat had come as no surprise to anyone. Indeed, the only surprising thing was that it had taken as long as it had for Cassandra’s aunt and uncle to tire of her presence in London, after the shame her actions had brought on them. Most days, Cassandra wished they had never offered to sponsor her Season in the first place. If only they had shuffled her off to the country immediately after the death of her parents, so much unpleasantness could have been avoided.

The shivery, panicked feeling that sometimes tightened her chest when her thoughts turned to the events of that night threatened to seize her lungs. She focused intently on the trees sliding past the window, breathing with slow deliberation until the tightness around her ribcage eased.

“Are you all right, Miss?” Mary asked with concern. “You’re very pale all of the sudden.”

“Yes, fine,” she replied in an absent tone, not looking away from the window.

Cassandra’s hopes for a decent marriage were, at this point, almost nonexistent. Looking back, she understood that she had been marked for failure long before that fateful night at the Regatta, when she had allowed herself to be lured into the gardens after dark. No… even then, it had been too late for her. She had already been damaged merchandise, good for nothing except further ruining.

If only she’d known.

She took a deep breath, watching the vibrant green of the dappled forest slip past as the coach wheels juddered over muddy ruts. Perhaps the countryside would not be so bad. She’d loved it when she was small, living with her parents on their rural estate before things had started to go wrong. Indeed, she had many fond memories of riding through the woods on her pony, of long walks and quiet evenings on the veranda while the birds and insects chirped a rustic symphony.

If she kept to herself, the locals would eventually move on to other gossip… other scandals. She would become a female hermit, avoiding other people in exchange for them avoiding her. It would take careful budgeting, but if she could save enough of the pittance her aunt and uncle were providing for her upkeep, perhaps she could buy a few paints and take up watercolors again. That would be nice.

And maybe eventually, the townsfolk in Horsham would forget. Perhaps she could make a match with some tradesman or shopkeeper, thereby finding salvation from the loneliness and destitution of permanent spinsterhood.
At any rate, things would work themselves out somehow. She would be all right.

Mary gasped in surprise as the coach gave a violent lurch. Cassandra steadied herself against its side with one hand, her heart racing at the unexpected jolt.

“Whoa, there!” cried Leeds, the driver.

“What’s happening?” Mary asked, as the coach rocked crazily, slewing to a halt in the mud.

“I don’t know,” Cassandra said, doing her best to disguise the tremor of fear in her voice. She cleared her throat and called, “Leeds! What is it… what’s wrong?”

“Stay inside, Miss Fenwicke!” Leeds replied. “There’s men on horseback blocking the road!”

Cassandra ignored him, at least to the extent of craning out of the window to look. She caught a glimpse of dark shapes moving closer before Mary’s hand closed around her arm and dragged her back inside, out of sight of the approaching riders.

“What are you doing?” Mary demanded. “Don’t let them see you!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cassandra retorted, trying to ignore the worry churning in her stomach. “Perhaps someone fell from his horse and needs assistance, or—”

“Stand and deliver!” The rough voice echoed amongst the trees, carrying the unmistakable tone of command.

“It’s bandits!” Mary’s hands flew to her face. “Oh, Lor’, Miss—it’s highwaymen!”

Cassandra’s galloping heartbeat seemed to have lodged firmly in her throat. She swallowed hard, trying to drive it back down where it belonged.

“Leeds is armed,” she said, striving for calm. “He’ll chase them off.”

“Hands where we can see them, friend,” called the commanding voice. “We’re after your coin—don’t be a fool. Whatever toffs you’re ferrying around, they ain’t worth your life.”

Mary lunged forward in her seat, grabbing Cassandra’s hands between hers and holding tight. Outside, two deafening cracks sounded, nearly on top of each other, and Leeds cried out. Cassandra would have cried out as well, but her voice seemed to have disappeared. The coach shifted as a heavy weight slid off of it and landed on the muddy road with a dull thud.

For a dizzying moment, the wheels began to roll again as the restless horses started forward.

“Get those horses under control!” snapped the leader of the bandits.

The coach halted abruptly. Mary shrank back, trying to make herself small, as a man with a mask over the lower half of his face appeared in the window. Cassandra’s eyes fell on the muzzle of the pistol that pointed at her. She found herself unable to look away from the dark hole in the centre of the gray cylinder, where death might emerge at any moment in a blast of smoke and lead.

“Hand over your valuables, unless you want to end up like your driver.” It was a new voice, higher pitched than the leader’s, with a sniveling whine lurking beneath the bravado.

“We have nothing of value.” Cassandra hated the quiver she could hear in the words, but she was powerless to stop it. “I have no money or jewelry, sir. Please let me out so I can check on Leeds. Maybe he’s only injured—”

Though he was in silhouette from the light outside, Cassandra felt the man with the pistol drag his eyes up and down her body, no doubt taking in her plain dress and lack of adornment.

“Fine coach like this?” he sneered. “And you expect me to believe you’re poor as a church mouse? Get out.”

Mary gasped and clutched Cassandra’s arm. “Don’t, Miss! You mustn’t leave the coach!”

“’Oooh, Miss… you mustn’t leave the coach,’” the man mocked in a high falsetto. He steadied the pistol, sighting along it, and Cassandra jerked Mary to the side with sudden, overwhelming certainty as to what was about to happen.

An explosion of sound half-deafened her, and Mary screamed—the cry sounding oddly distant and attenuated. A moment later, Cassandra saw a growing bloom of wet crimson on Mary’s arm and screamed, too. The desperate certainty that this could not possibly be real—that it must be a dream—gripped her as she tried to support her maid’s sagging body in the confined space.

The coach door opened. Rough hands reached for Mary, and Cassandra leaned over her like a lioness protecting its cub.

“Don’t you touch her!” she snapped, lifting a hand as though to use her fingernails like claws in the absence of any proper weapons.

The brigand grabbed her instead, dragging her snarling and spitting from the vehicle. Mary flopped limply to the floor of the coach as Cassandra was pulled away. The maid’s eyes had rolled back, showing the whites, and her arm still dripped a steady stream of red. Cassandra struggled and howled, trying to break free, until the butt of the pistol crashed into her skull, sending her into darkness.

TWO

FREDERICK ASHBURY, Viscount Rotherdam, was not generally a proponent of lengthy rides through the countryside. However, such journeys were marginally less trying while on horseback than they were in a carriage, and he was hardly going to force his London guests to travel the ten miles from Leatherhead to Hengewick House unescorted.

Aside from the stubborn persistence of highwaymen along the main road running through the nearby market town of Holmwood, the weather had been abominable in recent months. Torrential rains had pounded the area throughout the spring, and though today was a rare sunny day, there was still the danger of flood-damaged bridges and washed-out roads to navigate.

Though Frances Hunter would no doubt inform him that his chivalry was misplaced, Frederick would sooner cut off his right hand than allow her to make that journey alone. With Edmund St. Germain, his man of business, at his side, they’d made the trip to meet her at the inn in Leatherhead. Now, with the sun hanging low in the western sky, they were approaching the end of the return journey.

The horses were laboring in the sloppy mud covering the road, but at least he had no complaints about the company. Edmund was always good for dry and witty conversation, his smile a slash of white teeth against the rich brown of his complexion. Frances—dressed in male attire and riding astride today—was a reliable font of the latest gossip from London. Including, of course, the gossip about him.

“Old Treadwell is putting it about that you’re planning orgies and satanic sacrifices in the ruins behind the manor,” she said. “Apparently, the whole of Horsham is in on it. The town is simply crawling with devil worshippers.”

“Good God,” he replied, appalled. “As if I’d force orgy-goers to debauch themselves in a muddy field. And anyway, orgies are a nightmare to organize. If you lot want that sort of bacchanalia, you can arrange the details yourselves.”

Frances let out an exceptionally unladylike bray of laughter, and applied the riding crop to her mount’s haunches when the gelding balked at a particularly deep stretch of mud. Her face—too angular to be called pretty and too stubborn to be considered handsome—was shadowed by the brim of a John Bull top hat and framed by roguishly close-cropped chestnut hair.

“I can think of few things that interest me less than an orgy with you bunch of clods,” she said, sitting the horse effortlessly as it plunged forward with a lurch. “As you know perfectly well.”

“As long as we’re not expected to organize the virgin sacrifices as well,” Edmund put in. “There are limits, Rotherdam.”

Frederick shook his head as he picked his way past a particularly ominous looking puddle. “Where does Treadwell even come up with these ideas?” he asked.

“Well,” Edmund replied patiently, “if you will insist on calling your little get-togethers a Hellfire Club…”

Frederick set his jaw, settling in for a familiar argument. “Don’t be foolish. The entire point of the name is that we don’t believe in any of that nonsense—”

The sound of two pistol shots, so close together that they nearly overlapped, cut him off in mid-complaint, spooking the horses and shattering the serenity of the dappled, late-afternoon forest.

“What in the devil’s name?” Edmund muttered, his hand going to the butt of the pistol that Frederick had insisted he bring.

“Highwaymen, you said?” Frances, still wrestling her startled mount under control, sounded grim.

She was unarmed, but Frederick drew one of the pair of flintlocks he was carrying for the journey.

“Yes, I did,” he said. Reins clasped in one hand, he checked that the weapon was primed and pulled the hammer back to cock it.

The forest had grown deeper over the past few miles, making sounds echo oddly and preventing them from seeing around the next bend in the road. Another shot rang out, followed by the piercing sound of female screams.

“Damn and blast!” Frances cursed, spurring her nervous horse forward.

Frederick exchanged a hard glance with Edmund as they followed suit, overtaking her in the terrible footing so she would be behind them when they rounded the curve. Unlike Frederick, who had seen plenty of action as part of the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards against Napoleon’s army at Waterloo, Edmund had never been in the military. He could, however, fire a pistol—Frederick had seen to that personally.

Ahead, a fine coach stood half-slewed across the road. Frederick had the brief impression of a mounted man holding the reins of one of the lead coach horses, and another holding a saddled, riderless horse nearby. One man lay unmoving in the mud. Another loomed over a woman, also on the ground. The limp arm of a second woman flopped out of the open coach door.

The three highwaymen—for that was surely what they were—looked up in tandem as Frederick and his companions bore down on them at unsafe speed. The man holding the riderless horse cursed and dropped its reins in favor of scrabbling for his pistol. Frederick clenched his jaw and swerved his mount, in hopes of drawing the man’s eye, and consequently, his fire.

The pistol exploded in smoke and sparks. The brigand’s shot went wide, though Frederick imagined he felt the heat of its passage near his head. No cries or faltering hoofbeats sounded from his companions behind him, and he let out his breath, charging toward the man with the same reckless disregard that had once distinguished him on the battlefield.

The highwayman’s mount tried to skitter away, only to get tangled up with the loose horse. The animal reared in alarm, sending its rider tumbling to the ground with a sharp curse. Frederick pulled his horse to a messy, skidding stop and steadied his aim before shooting the fallen man through the heart.

The bandit who’d been assaulting the unconscious woman backed away in obvious fear, his hand scrabbling for a knife hanging at his belt. Meanwhile, the third brigand was frantically attempting to reload his pistol even as Edmund bore down on him. A dagger blade embedded itself in the flap of Frederick’s saddle with a dull thunk, and he snarled in irritation, pulling his second pistol free of its holster and shooting the man who’d thrown it.

Another shot, followed by a cry, heralded Edmund’s contribution to the brief battle. The third man curled forward in the saddle, wounded—but he managed to yank his horse around and kick it into motion, fleeing the scene.

“Leave him,” Frederick called, making a quick assessment of their surroundings before Edmund could decide to go after the survivor and try to finish the job.

Frances had already slid down from her horse and tossed the reins over a hook on the back of the coach. “Edmund—get that coach team under control!” she called, as the wheels creaked into motion.

Edmund gave the escaping brigand a final look and went to take the lead horse’s head before the nervous animals decided to bolt. Frances slogged through the muck, checking on the various bodies.

“This one’s alive,” she said, crouching next to the mud-spattered lady lying on the ground. Next, she moved to peer into the open coach. “Christ. Freddie, get your noble arse down here and help me. This woman’s been shot.”

Frederick did as he’d been told, bracing himself for the churning nausea he always felt at the sight of a bleeding civilian—especially a female one. His eyes caught on the woman lying on the ground, taking in her spun gold hair and pale, beautiful features, marred by the fresh bloom of a vicious bruise at her temple.

He jerked his attention away, confident that if Frances thought she was the more seriously injured of the two, she’d have said so. Inside the coach lay a plain-faced woman in the conservative dark brown dress and white apron of a servant—the lady’s private maid, most likely. Her left arm and side were soaked with blood.

Frances knelt awkwardly on the seat, prodding at the unfortunate woman. She pulled out a folding knife and flipped it open, slicing the long sleeve of the dress away. A bit more poking, and she straightened.

“It’s bad,” she said. “Though not as bad as it could have been. The ball went straight through her upper arm, but it must have nicked something major. I need to slow this bleeding. Help me lift her onto the seat and then fetch me a stirrup leather from one of the saddles to use as a tourniquet.”

Frederick nodded and helped Frances hoist the woman’s dead weight onto the cushioned bench. His hands came away bloody, and he firmed his jaw as he went to retrieve a leather strap.

“How are they?” Edmund asked, as Frederick skirted around the unconscious beauty lying on the ground and resisted the urge to waste valuable time checking on her.

“Not good, in the maid’s case,” he replied. “I’m not sure about the lady yet.” He unbuckled one of the straps from the nearest loose horse and pulled it free of its metal bar, sliding the stirrup off and tossing it to the side of the road.

“Where are we going to take them?” Edmund asked. “Holmwood? And, for that matter, can you even drive a coach?”

“Our destination has yet to be determined,” Frederick said, thinking that he’d sooner trust Frances’ skills than those of the pompous old quack of a doctor who practiced in Holmwood. “And I’ve at least driven pairs before, if not a four-in-hand. I’ll manage.”

“Better you than me,” Edmund observed.

“Your property is closer, Freddie,” Frances called from inside the coach. “Closer is better.”

Frederick resisted the urge to sigh, and handed her the stirrup leather before succumbing to the temptation to crouch next to the fallen lady and check her pulse. “Do you have any idea what it’s likely to do to these women’s reputations if it gets out that they’re staying at my manor, unchaperoned?”

A derisive snort, followed by the sound of cloth ripping. “Yes, my dear Rotherdam—I might have some inkling.”

“You forget who you’re talking to?” Edmund put in.

“Look,” Frances said, her voice sounding distracted. “You can have their reputations tarnished, or you can have this one dead of shock and blood loss. Take your pick, Your Lordship.”

The lady’s pulse beat strong and steady beneath Frederick’s fingers, though her skin was chilled and she did not stir. “Yes, fine,” he said snappishly. “Your point is taken.”

“Good,” Frances snapped back. “Now get that one in here and put her on the other seat, so we can go.”

“Are we leaving the bodies in the road?” Edmund asked, not sounding thrilled by the prospect.

Frederick scooped the lady carefully into his arms, heedless of the mud transferring itself to the knees of his breeches and the sleeves of his tailored coat. “We’ll drag the brigands onto the verge—they can rot for all I care,” he said, rising and lifting his unconscious burden into the coach. “But let’s try to get the driver loaded onto the back.”

“Just don’t take all day about it,” Frances grumbled, perching awkwardly between her two charges.

Frederick gave her a terse nod and climbed up to put the coach brake on, freeing Edmund to help with the corpses without having to worry too much about the team running off. Once they had the road cleared and the unfortunate driver stowed, he peeled off his ruined coat and used it to cover the man’s face and upper body, while Edmund made sure his and Frances’ horses were firmly tethered to the back of the ungainly vehicle.

Edmund remounted his own horse while Frederick climbed into the driver’s seat and took a few moments to sort out the tangle of reins. With a cluck and a snap of the whip, they were off, heading to Hengewick House, his private den of villainy and ill repute.