Highwayman Lover

  * * * *

  The next morning, with the sun no more than a pale glow through the clouds and predawn fog, Charlotte awoke from a sound and comfortable sleep as her sister, Caroline, plopped her bottom heavily against the mattress immediately in front of her.

  “Charlotte, look!” she exclaimed, flapping a newspaper noisily in Charlotte’s face.

  Charlotte’s eyes flew wide in bewildered surprise, and she gasped for breath. “What?” she said, her voice a groggy croak. She blinked at Caroline, pushing her disheveled hair back from her face. “Caroline? What…what time is it?”

  “Half past six or there about,” Caroline replied. “Look at this. Sit up.”

  “What are you doing here?” Charlotte groaned, shoving her face into her pillow.

  “Randall dropped me off just now,” Caroline said. “He is off for London again. Some sort of business too urgent to miss. He does not want me keeping at Heathcote with only the staff about and the baby nearly due.” She slapped the newspaper against Charlotte’s shoulder. “Sit up. I have brought you something. Look.”

  “Caroline, leave me be,” Charlotte said into her pillow. “You are all excited and you will drop that baby squarely on my mattress.”

  Caroline laughed. “I will not,” she said. “It takes hours of conscientious pushing, shoving, and pain to birth a baby. You cannot just spread your legs and drop it. Sit up and look at this. It is positively thrilling. You will be delighted. Come on now.”

  Charlotte squirmed and scowled, scooting her hips toward the headboard and sitting up. She tucked her hair behind her ears and took the paper in her hands, squinting in the dim light, her vision still sleepily blurred. It was yesterday’s copy of the London Evening Post.

  Caroline had folded it back to one of the inside pages. It did not take Charlotte long to discover what had so excited her sister. She read the words, Thieves Deliver Funds to St. Bartholomew’s, and her eyes widened. She glanced at Caroline and sat up all the straighter, reading again.

  “Is it not thrilling?” Caroline asked, grinning brightly.

  “They gave their money to the church,” Charlotte whispered, bewildered. “This says the Black Trio left money at St. Bartholomew’s in London.”

  “Not they, Charlotte—he,” Caroline said, her smile growing wider. “The highwayman who accosted you left it, and a note attached besides, written on a broadside proffering reward for their capture. Did you read?”

  She leaned toward Charlotte, tapping her fingertip against the page. Charlotte read the description of the highwayman’s charity, and the note he had left with the sums he had tendered.

  “‘As my lady asked of me’,” she read aloud. “‘And to which I gave my word.’”

  She blinked up at Caroline in absolute shock. “Not just what was taken from you,” Caroline said. “Did you read the amount? He left almost two guineas, eight shillings in full.”

  Charlotte stared at her. She had lost no more than two shillings and a fourpence in coins to the highwaymen. She doubted between Lady Chelmsford, Una, and Cheadle they would have netted such a sizable sum as was left at the church.

  “All of his money?” she whispered. “He left all of the coins he has stolen? But that…that is preposterous. I…I never asked him to leave… I never asked him to do anything! What kind of thief gives away all that he has risked the gallows to take?”

  Caroline arched her brow, smiling wryly at her sister. “A thief who is smitten,” she said, tapping her finger against the gazette page again, the words: As my lady asked of me.