The Rake's Bargain. Lucy Ashford

to her two companions, who had seen her now and were hurrying towards her. ‘Luke, Francis. What on earth...?’

      ‘We got him, Miss Deb!’ cried Luke jubilantly. And Francis was nodding towards their captive. ‘We had to act quickly. You see, he was galloping along the track, making straight for Hardgate Hall. And we knew we had to do something, Deborah, or you would have run into him.’

      Deb looked at the bound, blindfolded man with a growing sense of—no other word for it—panic. ‘Who exactly do you think that man is?’ she breathed.

      ‘Why, he’s Hugh Palfreyman, of course!’ Luke delivered this news with an air of triumph.

      Deb gazed down at their captive and found herself speechless again. The man was around thirty, she guessed: lean, fit and long-limbed. Even though he lay sprawled and unconscious in the mud she could see for herself that he was dressed like a gentleman, a rich gentleman, in a heavy cambric greatcoat, handcrafted leather boots and a lawn shirt with lace ruffles at his wrists. His hat had fallen off and he had black hair, gleaming and thick. As for his face...

      She couldn’t see his eyes because of course he was blindfolded. But the rest of his features—his uncompromising jaw, his long nose, his firm mouth—were so downright arrogant that she felt her stomach lurch with renewed fear.

      ‘That man,’ she pronounced to Luke and Francis, ‘is not Hugh Palfreyman.’ Her every word was etched with a sincere and furious despair.

      Luke’s jaw dropped in youthful dismay. ‘But he must be, Miss Deb.’

      ‘Why?’ she asked with deceptive calm.

      ‘Because he was on Palfreyman’s horse!’ explained Luke. ‘Do you see it?’ He pointed. ‘Francis and I were admiring it only this morning in Oxford. A blacksmith was shoeing it and it took two lads to hold the beast steady. One of them told us afterwards whose it was...’

      His voice trailed away when he saw Deb’s expression. ‘And do you really, truly think, Luke, that there’s only one bay horse with a white blaze in all of Oxfordshire?’ Both of them stood silent; Deb pointed at the man wearily. ‘He is not Hugh Palfreyman. He’s nothing like Hugh Palfreyman. And anyway, what if he was? Since when have we been highway robbers? Why did you have to knock him out cold?’

      Francis looked affronted. ‘We only wanted to stop his horse and perhaps delay him a little in case he met you. But he was going at such a pace, and so—and so...’

      ‘He fell off with an almighty crash, Miss Deb,’ supplied Luke.

      Deb shuddered. ‘And then?’

      Francis took over the tale. ‘And then we thought we’d better blindfold him and tie him up, of course. Because we couldn’t let him see us when he came round, could we?’

      ‘If he comes round,’ said Deb. How could they? How could they have done something so foolhardy?

      Luke looked nervous now. ‘He’s still breathing and everything. We checked!’

      Deb sank to her knees beside the prone man and ran her hands swiftly over his arms and shoulders.

      As far as she could tell, he didn’t appear to be badly hurt. None of his limbs looked twisted or broken. There was no blood anywhere, and when she put her fingers to his wrist, his pulse was strong and even. But—oh, God, what would happen when he regained his senses and found himself trussed up tight as a turkey? And—who on earth was he?

      Feeling even more flustered after touching him—goodness, he was big, he was powerful—she reached gingerly into his coat pocket, where she found a gold fob watch on a chain. She turned it carefully in her fingers. It looked old and very valuable, and on the back was a faded inscription. She held it up to catch the murky daylight and read the name aloud: Damian Beaumaris.

      Whoever Damian Beaumaris might be, Deb knew with absolute certainty that they’d just made themselves a new and extremely dangerous enemy.

      * * *

      Beau was aware of aches and pains in every limb. His head hurt as if someone had swung a hammer at it. The last thing he remembered was riding through Ashendale Forest on Palfreyman’s horse, making good speed, until he’d spotted, too late, a length of cord stretched right across his path. And now he found that he was blindfolded, he was well and truly tied up, and he was lying on the cold, muddy ground.

      Muttered voices drifted across the clearing, and the owners of those voices sounded mighty worried. So they should be. Beau’s jaw was tightly set. Then he frowned again, because some other faint memory lingered in his mind: a memory of the lightest of hands fluttering over his clothing, a finger touching his wrist. He thought he’d inhaled the delicate scent of lemons, and remembered a woman’s soft hair brush his cheek...

      And he needed to pull his thoroughly scattered wits together this minute—because the voices were moving closer. He lay very still, assessing his predicament—bound, blindfolded and half-stunned—not good. His borrowed horse had been deliberately tripped up, and Beau had been thrown; but seconds before he fell, he’d glimpsed two men peering at him from the undergrowth—a middle-aged man in a scruffy red coat and black hat, and a callow fair-haired youth. It must be one of that pair of scoundrels—he guessed the older one—whom he heard now, muttering anxiously, ‘But that bay horse. We really thought it was Palfreyman’s, you see.’

      That was interesting enough; but the next voice Beau heard set his senses into full alert. Because it belonged to a girl, and she sounded very, very anxious—with good reason, Beau reflected grimly. ‘Francis Calladine,’ she declared, ‘if I hear your excuses repeated once more, I swear I’ll tie you up with your own ropes. This man is not Palfreyman. His name is Damian Beaumaris. And what, in heaven’s name, are we to do with him?’

      A case of mistaken identity, then—they’d thought he was Palfreyman, who it appeared was no friend of theirs. One thing was for certain—he was, at the moment, completely in their power. But Beau did not intend that particular circumstance to last for much longer.

      He heard the voice of the older man again—he sounded just as worried as the girl. ‘Perhaps we should untie him and leave quickly, Deborah. When he comes round, he’ll just imagine he was thrown by accident. He won’t even know he was our prisoner.’

      ‘But what if he doesn’t come round?’ The girl again—Deborah. Beau envisaged his trio of captors scratching their heads. ‘What if he’s truly hurt, Francis?’ she went on. ‘What if we leave him here and—he doesn’t recover?’

      In the silence that ensued, Beau found himself occupied by a thought that had been forming in his mind since the moment he heard the girl’s voice.

      Most of the females who travelled with bands of highway robbers were as rough as their menfolk. But something wasn’t quite right about this one. She spoke well. She had an educated voice... He stirred as far as his bonds would allow, and let out a slight groan. Almost immediately, as he’d hoped, he heard the girl gasping, ‘Oh, no. Did you hear that? He is in pain!’ There was a rustle of clothes close to his ear, and once more he inhaled the faint lemon scent of soap and freshly washed hair as the girl bent down and placed her hand on his forehead; a cool, tender hand...

      She’ll be ugly as sin, he warned himself. She was bound to be a painted, snaggle-toothed whore who had been bedded by the lot of them. Yet she spoke in a way that would be more at home in the drawing rooms of London than amongst a nest of vagabonds. He chided himself mentally. Whatever she was up to, no female was going to get the better of him. He lay very still, feigning unconsciousness once more.

      ‘We really should be off.’ The older man’s voice was taut with anxiety. ‘We could perhaps ride back to the nearest inn and mention that we glimpsed a stray horse in the forest. Then they would send someone out to investigate...’

      ‘We cannot leave him while he’s unconscious!’ The girl’s voice was authoritative. ‘This is my plan, Francis. I’m going to loosen our prisoner’s