Stephanie and the Wicked Deceiver (Wild Marchmonts #2)

1. Stephanie the Brave

Chapter 1

Stephanie the Brave

S tephanie Marchmont, seventeen, was bowling along unfamiliar roads in one of Mama’s new travelling carriages with Morag, her mother’s lady’s maid and Stephanie’s childhood tormentor, (‘No, you may not, Miss Stephanie! Get down from there or I’ll tan your hide! See if you can cool your heels in the stillroom for an hour, Miss, to calm your hot head!’ ) a sturdy dame with a Highlander’s square face and brusque manner.

There was a burly coachman, Malcolm McLeod, also from their Highland castle home and, in view of Miss Marchmont’s ability to bolt and then do as she wished, there was a mounted figure to the rear of the carriage. Of swarthy complexion and with a short muscular body, he had been installed by Mama as Stephanie’s follower in London since his speed and dexterity matched hers.

She was being sent to Surrey in disgrace, there to be surrounded only by servants until her mama arrived some weeks later. She had lately been in London; though of an age to be considered suitable for making her ‘come out’ into society, both her mama (the quietly formidable Lady Eleanor Marchmont) and Stephanie herself found her unsuitable to make her debut to the world.

She had gone to the metropolis with her younger siblings, Tabitha, who was twelve years old, and Berthe (the youngest at only eight years), to see the sights and visit the amusements while their elder sisters, Roseanna and Phoebe, and cousins Ophelia and Queenie, enjoyed the Season’s more ladylike attractions.

Stephanie had enjoyed her weeks in London rather too much – and not in the right way, apparently. She was sad to leave the city and her family, who were staying there for several more months. One could only hope that Mama’s punishment might quickly be judged complete. For Mama to leave Roseanna and Phoebe during their come out to travel here to fetch Stephanie back to London would be an inconvenience, one that Stephanie was mildly sorry to have caused, though she was at a loss as to what Mama was making such a fuss about.

Stephanie was wearing her London clothes. She was no longer chafing at them as she had when they had first replaced the sturdy clothes that she used in the country, to leap rivers and climb trees. These new clothes were smart, though they differed from her sisters’ in several ways. Today her outfit consisted of neat, lace-up leather boots (better to walk in than slippers — Mama had allowed her that, at least), a muslin gown in cream with tiny red roses printed between the stripes, and a turquoise-blue pelisse with a green rever collar and high-backed neck. Her hands were covered with the finest kid gloves that extended past her wrists. Her orange-red curls, which had been put up since she had arrived in London, were confined in a simple but becoming straw bonnet with turquoise ribbons.

Five miles earlier, she had declared herself bored. Morag had adjured her to pick up her book, but as the coach jumped the ruts Stephanie had found reading uncomfortable and given it up.

Suddenly, she sat forward as she saw the first movement for miles that was not a sheep or a cow. In a natural half-circle of clearing that opened out of a spinney to the side of the road, she saw four men brandishing foils.

‘Three against one!’ she screamed. She banged on the carriage roof and stuck her head through the window. ‘ Stop!’ she cried to the coachman,

Morag stuck her head out of the other window and shouted, ‘Don’t you dare, Malcolm McLeod!’

They were almost upon the clearing – and Stephanie saw that three of the rogues were masked. With horror, she watched as a fourth, maskless man was driven back; his heel caught on a tree root and he fell heavily. She put her hand out of the window and turned the door handle, throwing herself from the coach to the ground, rolling in a practiced way, one shoulder tucked beneath her.

In two leaps she was at the side of the fallen man, had clutched up his dropped foil and fairly flew towards the three assailants. She wielded the foil from left to right, advancing the whole time while the three masked men, obviously taken off guard, tried to catch their breath. She was proud to see them back away, one even hiding behind a tree. All three were shouting at her, but she could not hear them, so loud was her own blood in her ears, so overwhelming was her rage. ‘Curs!’ she called them. One lowered his foil as though he would come forward to verbally threaten her, but she only pointed the tip of the foil at him, and noticing it still had a button on the tip, she dashed it off on a rock, in a quick move. She kept a wary eye on his friend. The man on the ground croaked, ‘Be off with you, knaves, be off!’

Stephanie’s opponent turned to him, but another of the dogs leapt from behind the tree, pulled at his arm and all three ran away.

Stephanie cast the foil from her and ran to the man on the ground. ‘Are you well, sir?’ she asked.

‘Better than your bonnet,’ the gentleman gasped.

Stephanie put up her hand, encountered the broken straw rim and pulled it off unceremoniously. She looked at his pale face. ‘Did they injure you?’

‘No! I seem to have fallen awkwardly on my already damaged arm is all to complain of.’

He wore a very well-cut coat in which resided a pair of broad shoulders, unstained buckskins and white-topped riding boots. With tassels, Stephanie narrowed her eyes at the tassels. His hair was curly or curled, she could not decide which, for it was well groomed and swept forward in a style as mannered as any she had seen in London. It was not ridiculous, like her cousin George’s bouffant, but it probably took the same amount of time to achieve. His nails were more buffed than her own.

She looked into his light-grey eyes. Somehow they seemed kindly, though she saw some distress in them. As she lifted him to a proper sitting position by dint of a hand around his shoulder, she asked, ‘Am I pressing on your arm?’

‘I think so.’

‘Was it damaged in another fight?’

The gentleman looked into concerned emerald eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Well, the sawbones splinted it.’

‘Then why did you have a foil today?’

‘I thought I would practise. With my other hand, you know.’

‘That shows spirit, sir, but not sense. Had I not come along, who knows what those masked men would have done?’ She helped him to his feet and threw his good arm over her shoulder. He yelped a little as he stood up. ‘You have sprained a foot,’ she surmised.

‘I do not think so…’ he said, but weakly.

‘Do not be brave, sir. I know you are injured. Lean on me.’

A small, monkey-like person leapt from behind a tree wearing a strange round hat and greasy coat. Stephanie was quick to say, ‘That is only Pietro, not another robber – even though he looks like one.’

Pietro went to the other side of the tall man. Stephanie called, ‘Stop!’ that arm is injured,’ when he made to shrug the damaged limb over his shoulder. As he moved swiftly to take her place at the other side, she ordered, ‘You cannot! You are too short to be of use. Look, I am just the right height!’

It was true: when the man’s arm was about her shoulders, her height put the arm at right angles to his body. Though she was a tallish girl, he was a full head taller, perhaps more if he was standing straight.

She looked down at his long legs, longer even than her brother Richard’s or even her brother-in-law Eliot’s. That would make him well over six feet, perhaps by two or three inches.

Stephanie turned her head and the man with the pale-grey eyes and handsome features smiled down at her. ‘Do you live far from here, sir?’

‘A mile and a half only.’ He gestured and looked at her guiltily.

‘Pietro! Tell McLeod to turn the carriage,’ she ordered.

‘I would be quite alright if only your servant could cut me a stout stick.’

‘Not at all! We shall take you by carriage.’ Stephanie’s tone was compassionate but brisk. Pietro was already gesturing to the coachman to turn the horses.

It was evident that this man was embarrassed at being rescued by a female. These fashionable fribbles (she had seen enough men in London who looked like this fashionable buck) would screech at a cat; encountering a robber might send them into a swoon. But this man had tried to fight off his foes and then tried to disguise his injury from her. He might not be a top-o’-the-trees, like Eliot’s friend Sir Francis Sedgewick, but he was trying his best.

The coach arrived, and with it a disapproving Malcolm and Morag. Stephanie stopped the big Highlander alighting from the box and speedily helped the injured man into the carriage herself before sitting opposite him.

At her side, Morag’s stiff posture signalled her outrage, though the maid was unwilling to chastise her mistress before strangers. Stephanie had no doubt she was composing her lines for later.

The gentleman issued some instructions to the taciturn coachman and they went on their way. He closed his eyes as if in pain, then suddenly opened them and said, ‘Excuse me! Might I know your name, my rescuer? This seems too extreme a situation to await the proprieties.’

Inside the coach with his fascinating rescuer, Hedley had to cope with her buttress of a Highland maid who said, ‘However, proprieties must be adhered to, sir.’ Take that, you Sassenach! her forefathers called through her tone.

Thankfully the redhead, whose emerald-green eyes with lashes so light as to appear missing, ignored her. ‘I am Stephanie Marchmont.’

‘Marchmont? The Duke of Clashmore’s granddaughter, then?’ he asked.

Morag the maid’s aspect changed a little at this.

‘One of six … and one grandson!’

‘They are at Reddingate?’

‘No. I was sent here in disgrace to be bored on my own until Mama comes. It is punishment. Little did Mama know what I would encounter!’ Stephanie laughed with relish.

‘Indeed!’ he said, looking shame-faced again.

She kindly changed the subject. ‘You knew my grandfather, sir?’

‘I once met him as a boy when he visited the estate. It was my father who talked often of his beautiful daughter. He tried to wed her, I think, before he met my mother.’

‘Mama had a suitor before Papa? How droll!’ Stephanie smiled. ‘And you are?’

‘I am Hedley.’

‘The earl?’ exclaimed Morag. ‘I have seen your father, my lord. If you be Hedley now, then I suppose…!’ She blushed at her own bluntness and stopped.

‘Last year!’ replied Hedley briefly.

The girl looked at him with obvious sympathy and, because it was a touch raw and honest, he did not mind it. ‘My father died two years since,’ she murmured. ‘You must be very sad.’

Hedley looked away since he could offer no response to this.

‘You must not be embarrassed by today’s events, sir. Not many men could take on three assailants.’

‘Not many men … and one woman,’ he said with some amusement and admiration.

‘When yur mither hears this…!’ murmured the maid, becoming her most Scottish.

Hedley smiled as a diversion and asked with interest, ‘Where did you learn your fencing technique?’

‘Well, Mama forbade me a foil or a pistol, saying I am too impulsive…’ She shook her head at this unfair judgement, which amused Hedley further. ‘But both Pietro and Sir Francis Sedgewick taught me in secret.’

‘Neapolitan menace!’ muttered Morag.

‘Sedgewick. I know him — a master,’ Hedley said.

‘Is he?’ Stephanie asked airily. ‘I beat him once. He said afterwards he “held back”, but I do not believe so.’ She leaned forward and patted Hedley’s knee as though giving encouragement to a child. ‘I can teach you if you wish to improve, my lord.’

‘You will ?’ Hedley steadfastly ignored the maid’s eye.

‘Yes! But not until you rest your leg and have your arm seen to, mind.’

‘I am sure my foot will be better tomorrow. You might come then. I can practise with my good arm.’

‘I admire your spirit, my lord. I find that fashionable men such as you do not practise the sporting arts, but you know now, from today’s events, how important it is to be ready for every emergency.’

Hedley nodded, keeping his countenance serious. ‘You are quite right,’ he agreed. He wondered if Fortescue, Armitage and Pettigrew were back at the house and, if they were, how to deal with the coach’s arrival.

When they had gone to the clearing for foil practice that morning, Pettigrew had objected to the stink from a neighbouring field where manure had been laid for the spring crop. He had tied a handkerchief to his face then knotted it tightly under his nose again while the others mocked him. Declaring it efficacious, he had recommended it to the other three. Hedley had declined to look like a quiz and had not followed suit.

Armitage had jeered that Hedley’s bad arm was an excuse to cover the rustiness of his foil practice, but Hedley had boasted that he could take on all three of them even using the wrong arm . He had been doing well, too, when a step back for another lunge had ended with the tree root tripping him.

When the three had tried to defend themselves against the red-headed whirlwind who had attacked them with Hedley’s foil, they had protested but she had not heard. Hedley, entranced by his rescuer, had gestured and shouted them away. Pettigrew had wanted to argue, but thankfully Armitage and Fortescue had understood and whisked him off.

A footman opened the door of the coach when they reached the front of Hedley Court. The earl leaned on him heavily, saying in his ear, ‘Have my friends make themselves scarce from the red drawing room.’ Then he appeared to collapse somewhat. To Morag’s disapproving, “ Tsk! Tsk!,” Stephanie and another footman grasped him while the first footman disappeared into the house.

It seemed then that the earl had to catch his breath, and they were delayed in entering. Morag said, ‘Come away, Miss Stephanie. We shall no doubt have nuncheon awaiting us at Reddingate.’

‘It can hardly be awaiting us since they do not know when we arrive,’ the girl retorted.

‘In that case,’ said the earl with excellent manners, ‘you might all enjoy an informal nuncheon in the red salon with me.’

‘We shall decline, my lord,’ said Stephanie briskly. ‘But I do want to see you settled comfortably before I go.’

‘Thank you!’ he said, hobbling stoically beside her.

Morag rolled her eyes and followed. Pietro descended his horse and followed like a Neapolitan vagabond awaiting his moment to strike the unsuspecting.

They all went into the large salon and laid the earl on a sofa. A maid ran ahead to pose a pillow at his back and one beneath his foot. Stephanie hovered, adjuring them to watch his damaged arm, which Morag regarded with mingled frustration and amazement. Never had she seen Miss solicitous in this way, not even with her younger sisters.

‘Fetch me a rug,’ Stephanie told a footman. He returned with a folded woven-wool rug, which she folded again and laid beneath the damaged arm. ‘Rest it now,’ she told the earl. ‘But mind,’ she said to the servants, ‘he will need the arm re-splinted, perhaps.’

‘Yes, miss!’ said the butler respectfully.

‘Oh, my lord!’ A small man bearing a long knife rushed in and Stephanie sprang defensively in front of the sofa. The little man hardly saw her in his panic but bent sideways towards his master. ‘They said you have injured your foot. Must I split the boot?’

Now understanding the presence of the knife, Stephanie relaxed and let the fussy little man move closer. This must be the earl’s valet; he was as effete as one of her relatives, The Earl of Tremaine, with the same slightly whining voice but a more servile tone.

‘No, Brumby!’ The earl moved his leg. ‘It will be quite alright.’

‘I can remove it.’ Stephanie was already on her knees. ‘I have done so for my brother Richard when he was injured. It is a matter of twisting the heel a little as you pull—’ As she did so, the valet looked on jealously. ‘Do you not find these tassels a liability when you ride?’ she continued in a disapproving voice,

The earl was looking down at her. ‘No,’ he said blandly.

‘These tassels,’ intoned the valet, as she pulled off the boot and set it down, ‘have started a new rage in Town.’

‘I have no doubt,’ said Stephanie, believing any Town stupidity possible. She looked from the valet to the rather pampered-looking earl. This was just the sort of valet this poor weakling would have, encouraging him in nonsense like tassels when he should be improving his sporting and manly skills for self-protection. The earl must have thought himself safe today on his own land and had therefore taken no attendants but look what had occurred!

There were certain people who lacked any sense of their surroundings and were not vigilant. Her cousin Charles was such, and her other cousin the Earl of Tremaine, but in consideration of their uselessness they kept to the house. This gentleman was at least trying to improve his manly skills, and Stephanie had both sympathy and admiration for his attempt.

‘I will help you,’ she told the earl, still kneeling at his feet.

‘You will ? You have already helped me!’ Then, seeming to respond to the serious, encouraging look in her eye, he asked, ‘Er, in what way will you help me?’

‘You will see. There are many ways I can help, I am sure. Do you ride?’

‘A little...’ he said vaguely.

‘We shall begin with that. Even if your foot is not fully recovered, you can still ride . Or drive, perhaps. Do not worry! If you drive, I shall accompany you and show you a thing or two.’

‘You drive well?’ he asked.

‘I am a sportswoman.’

‘After seeing your courage today, I do not doubt it.’ There was admiration in his tone but perhaps a little shame, too.

She would cure him of that unmanly quality. As she rose, Stephanie bent over him. It was obvious that he was embarrassed and she had no wish to humiliate him further, so she leaned forward and said into his ear, ‘There is no need for…’ She did not wish to name his state of humiliation. ‘Buck up, I say! By the time our lessons here end, you will have improved your skills considerably. Do not fear!’

He smiled back at her gratefully.