“This is far from nothing. If things…go wrong, all our reliance will be on you.”
“You will rescue us,” said Teresa.
This seemed to mollify the lad. “So I’ll be waiting for a signal, like?”
“Precisely,” replied the earl.
Tom considered, frowning. “There’s a clump of trees not too far from one of the side walls. Room for me and my friends to lurk.”
“That is what you will do then. Lurk.”
“What’ll the signal be?”
“You will know it when you see it,” declared Lord Macklin.
“Meaning you have no idea?” Tom replied. “I don’t like that.”
“I don’t know what we will find inside that place. Or how we might reach you.”
This silenced them all for some moments. Then they gathered their resolve and carried on.
The rest of that day was spent making plans. Teresa’s eagerness to move vied with a sick dread. She wondered if she would actually have done this without the earl’s aid. In truth, she didn’t see how.
With all their arrangements put in place, they set off the following morning in Lord Macklin’s curricle with no groom up behind them. Ironically, it was a lovely warm day, with the country on either side of the road full of flowers and birdsong.
Teresa fingered the gun in a deep pocket of her gown. She had created the hiding place with needle and thread overnight. “I still think it was a mistake not to bring your pistols,” she said to the earl.
“I don’t have to reload a sword stick,” he replied.
They followed the route Teresa had taken before. Her unease grew the closer they came to the place. Just before they reached the wall around the isolated house, they passed a small copse off to the right. She knew that Tom and some of his apprentice friends had sneaked into those trees in the darkness last night. She saw no sign of them, which was good. She turned to look at Lord Macklin’s handsome profile. “Are you sorry to be doing this mad thing?” she asked him.
“I have done very few mad things in my life.” He paused. “Aside from the recent matter of the conde, none at all, I think.”
She had brought this disruption to him. Teresa didn’t like the notion. “A life without mad things to do sounds very peaceful.”
“I suppose it has been mostly that. But a thing that is not mad is also not necessarily pleasant. Perhaps it was time for something different.”
They began to drive along the wall around the house. Teresa’s discomfort rose.
And then they were at the entrance, and the curricle was slowing. The gate was a little open, and a different guard lounged beside it, she was glad to see. She was fairly certain the previous one had not glimpsed her, but she was glad not to take that chance.
The earl turned the carriage and drew to a stop. “Open up,” he said to the rough-looking man.
“No one’s allowed in,” was the reply.
“Nonsense. Lord Simon was here just a few days ago.”
“Ye’re a friend of his lordship?”
“Would I be here otherwise?”
His tone was careless, arrogant, cold, everything Teresa hated about powerful men.
The guard peered up at him. “His lordship’s to send word beforehand. Them’s the rules.”
Lord Macklin’s whip stirred as if he might strike the guard with it. “Rules,” he answered, as if the word was completely unfamiliar to him. “You forget yourself. If you have made some mistake, it is not my problem.”
He sounded so like her old patron, as if he might actually be a man who always got his way and crushed anyone who opposed it. Teresa swayed a little in her seat.
“Rules is rules,” said the guard. “That’s what I was told, and I ain’t going to lose a place pays as good this one.”
“You will certainly do so when I complain of your behavior,” replied Lord Macklin, his voice icy with contempt. “And worse than that.”
This was the way of the world, Teresa thought. The men at the top cut down those who dared challenge them. There was no recourse.
“Yer honor’s got to understand…”
“I understand that you are in my way. And that Lord Simon will be very angry when he hears I’ve been stopped.” The whip twitched. At the same time gold flashed in the air between them. It was a sovereign, Teresa thought, a treasure for such a man. The guard snatched the coin out of the air. He hesitated for one more moment, then went to the gate. “Ye’ll tell ’em, up at the house that Lord Simon sent you.”
“Certainly.”
The gate swung open. Looking back, Teresa saw the man biting the coin to make sure it was real gold. “I suppose he’ll get into trouble,” she said.
“If we are successful, there will be little trouble left over for him. I expect he’ll take to his heels at the first sign.”
He sounded tense. Teresa didn’t blame him. She was even more so.
The gate closed behind them. Four large dogs appeared, two on either side of the gravel drive they drove along. The animals didn’t bark or offer to attack. They simply flanked the curricle in silent menace. They had black coats and sharp, gleaming teeth.
The drive passed through a band of trees. They couldn’t see anything until they rounded a curve and came upon a sizable house built of stone. It looked deceptively normal under the sunny sky. There were flowers in ornamental beds.
“The upper windows are barred,” said Lord Macklin.
Teresa’s blood chilled.
He drove on. A tall wrought-iron fence surrounded the house, its gate closed. Inside it, a graveled area surrounded the building.
The dogs stopped along the spiked fence, sitting on their haunches and watching them, but not moving closer. Arthur pointed this out to the señora. “We can hope they don’t venture in there.”
“Yes,” she said. She looked very pale.
He handed her the reins. “Just hold them steady. They will not bolt.”
“Where are you going?” Her voice rose near a wail.
“To open the gate. As we are not expected.”
“But the dogs!”
“I trust they know their territory. Or the rules, as the guard put it.” Hiding his own unease, Arthur climbed down from the curricle. The dogs stood up, their eyes following his every move, but they did not run at him. He unlatched the gate and pushed it open. There was no lock. Grasping the bridles of his leaders, he led them through the fence. With measured steps he went back to close the gate.