Chapter Five
A week passed, and Victoria listened hard for any word of the highwayman.
She learned while in company with Missy that Lord Beckenham had reported the incident to the magistrate at Leeds, who had in turn requested a troop of soldiers be sent to patrol the area.
Our womenfolk are in danger, not to mention our riches.
But were they? When the bandit held them up, he’d stolen nothing and displayed a certain gallantry toward Victoria before taking himself off.
Having few other resources, Victoria took to mining the servants for information. Lord Beckenham and his lady might be tight-lipped, but servants overheard much, and they loved to talk.
She fell into the habit of going to the servants’ hall every evening for a cup of hot milk before bed, to sit at the big, scrubbed table with Cook, whatever maids were still about, and sometimes one or two of the grooms.
“He struck again, did that highwayman, over Thirsk way,” Samuel reported one night as he sipped his mug of warmed ale. “Master Cotter and his family were on their way back from t’market.”
“Did he hurt anyone?” asked Bessie, her eyes large.
“Nay, and did not make off with much either, by all accounts.”
“I suppose the Cotters did not have much to take,” said Cook wisely.
“He’s a poor excuse for a highwayman, if ye ask me,” said Timothy, who was also there.
“Perhaps,” suggested Annie, the parlor maid, “’tis not a real man at all but the phantom out o’ that old story—the one who rides.”
“Nay, I saw him mysel’”—Samuel glanced at Victoria—“as did Miss Henshaw. And he had a head. Eh, Miss Henshaw?”
“He most definitely possessed a head,” Victoria replied. Full of black hair. Something oh so familiar about it.
“Stories are just stories,” Cook declared. “But I can tell ye, I would not mind getting a look at ’im.”
Neither would Victoria. In fact, her entire being yearned for it. Surely if she saw him again, she would know.
One evening following a long day, during which Missy had been unbearably demanding, she kept from lingering in the kitchen and carried her drink back up to her room.
The weather had been mild for the time of year, and when she went to the window, as had become her habit, she swung the casement open and leaned out.
A warm wind blew, carrying the scents of far-off places, and a dying moon sailed overhead, well past full.
Her room being a humble one at the back of the house, it commanded a view of nothing more than lawn sloping dimly toward the distant woods.
The light from the moon edged everything in shadow and silver, and filled her heart with longing.
Once, as a girl, she’d have been over the windowsill, climbing down the side of the house—vicarage in her case—and away into that moonlight. Now she could only ache for such an escape.
She breathed deeply of the air, trying to banish the monotony of her day. Suddenly something moved at the edge of the woodland.
A deer?
No, surely not. Not unless deer walked upright on two feet. At this moment, beguiled and weary, she was able to believe most anything.
He was a man.
He stepped out farther, setting himself with his feet planted wide, and gazed up at the house. Gazed toward her.
When he saw her there in her window, looking, he swept the hat from his head and, just like that, she knew him. Knew him for the highwayman, knew him for her love.
Her heart nearly convulsed in her chest. So great was her shock—and her conviction—that she near tumbled over the sill to the ground.
Impossible. Yet not impossible, for there he stood. Not mounted upon a horse this time. Standing. Watching.
Calling her with his heart?
Victoria did not pause to think on it. As a girl, aye, she might have attempted to climb down the outside of the house. Now she turned and ran.
Out from her room. Along the narrow corridor and down the back stairs. Cook and some of the others still occupied the kitchen, but she dashed past—too quick for them to see?—and out the back door.
Would he wait? Would he still be there when she reached the place?
There was a stone terrace here, with the stables and other outbuildings to the left. Nothing ahead of her but lawn. It felt wet to her feet as she started through, and the air not as warm as it had seemed earlier. A distance of perhaps thirty yards separated her from the woodland.
She ran full tilt.
She could not remember the last time she’d done so.
Perhaps it had been on her way to him. Her hair tumbled down as she went; the breath came harsh in her lungs.
She lost her shawl somewhere along the way, but none of that mattered because she could see—as she drew nearer and nearer, she could see him standing. Waiting.
She wanted to throw herself into his arms. To touch him, clutch at him, convince herself he was real. But the last remnants of caution had her dragging to a halt, her feet skidding in the wet grass.
“Hello, Torie.”
Not his voice, no. But the name he’d called her, that he alone had called her.
“Jamie?”
With a sob, she fell into his arms.
*
His world snapped into focus in that one moment, when she touched him. When he heard his name on her lips again. All the long years and all the weary miles came to nothing as the sheer rightness of it found him.
He drew her in tight. As he had in so many dreams and so many memories, he did. She wore her hair loose this night, all in a tangle, and he buried his face in it and inhaled. She smelled the same. Like clean linen and rose soap and woman.
“Torie. My God.” He could say no more. His heart pounded so hard in his ears that he could no longer hear the song of the night wind.
But then suddenly she was drawing away from him, and perforce he had to let her go. She did not move far, only enough to gaze into his face, reach up with wonder and lay a hand against his cheek. “You’re not dead.”
“Not dead, nay.”
“They told me you were.”
A world of pain lay in those words, and he felt it right along with her.
“I do not doubt they believed me dead when they left me out on the moor.” And her father had wanted her to believe so. Needed her to.
“‘They’?” she repeated.
He looked into her eyes. Whatever else about her had changed, her eyes were the same, soft blue, tilted up slightly at the outer corners, those of a pixie in a spinster’s calm face. But nay, there was nothing calm about her. She blazed.
For him.
“A squad o’ men.” Did she need to know it had been her father? Would she guess? “Let us no’ speak o’ that now. ’Tis a miracle, a marvel to be with ye.”
“Your voice—you do not sound like you. You do not look like you either, at least—you do, and you do not. I knew you when you stopped the coach. My heart did.”
A thousand things he wanted to say to her. A hundred explanations. Desperate promises to be made. He wanted to tell her that even if death had separated them, he would have searched for a way back to her.
But she said, “Jamie, kiss me.”
“Since ye ask so politely…”
Their lips met. It should have been tentative, even awkward, after so much time, but it wasn’t. It felt as if it had been forever, and as if he’d kissed her just last week.
Her lips started out cool, but he warmed them with his, and she melted into him, opened to him as always she had, sweetly trusting. She came up on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his neck, and the taste of her went straight to his head.
“Now I believe,” she said at last when the kiss broke with a tender lingering of lips on lips.
“Now I believe it’s truly you.” She still pressed herself against him, arms draped around his neck.
“You must tell me, Jamie, how you come to be here in the guise of a highwayman. What befell you. Where you have been all this time.”
“Why I did not return sooner?” It seemed as if he could read her mind. “I thought ye would have moved on with yer life.”
“Moved on? Without you?” she gasped.
Gently he said, “I thought ye might have wed. Have a family. I did not want to—to ruin anything for ye. Ye are not wed?”
She shook her head violently. Already, the loosened tresses sprang into curls, nut brown.
“How could I? There was never anyone but you. Forever.”
He pressed his forehead to hers and they breathed the same air, helplessly held together.
“I thought you dead,” she repeated then, “but there was no funeral, no grave. No place I could go to grieve. And I think my heart continued to hope.”
“Yer father,” he said against his own intentions.
“He wanted me to marry, aye. He told me ye were dead—that some misfortune had befallen you, or I meant so little to ye, ye’d left for greener pastures. Only, I knew—you would not do that.”
“I would not do that.”
“I went to see your family. They believed you dead. Your brothers had searched for you and your mother—I had never seen anyone so stricken, so angry, save myself. Jamie, you must tell her you’re alive.”
He hesitated. “I need to do that, aye, only I am not sure how. I thought returning not in the guise of a gypsy lad but a highwayman would give me a better chance to come and go, to search for ye. There are too many eyes at the inn.”
“I could carry a message there for you.”
“Aye, maybe that. But listen, Torie.” He grasped her shoulders. “I want ye to come awa’ with me. If there is naught holding ye—”
“There is naught holding me here.”
A miracle, aye. That he should have found her, that she’d remained free and loved him still. He closed his eyes for an instant, giving thanks to whatever wayward powers guided his life.
“Torie, love, my situation has changed. I’m a man o’ means.”
“Are ye, then?” Her brows lifted, and for an instant she looked so like his nut-brown maid, his heart clenched.
“Aye. No longer the lowly rapscallion unworthy of ye.”
“You were always worthy of me, Jamie. More than worthy.” She pressed her mouth to his in a gesture of pure devotion.
“If ye come awa’ with me—like we planned all those years ago—I can provide for ye.” This he assured her most earnestly. “I made my way while we were apart, with the help o’ a good man. We can put the roles o’ highwayman and spinster behind us, start again.”
“I would like nothing better.”
“Ye will come with me? Leave behind your life—”
“I have no life without you.”
“Then we have only to arrange it. When will ye be ready?”
“Tomorrow night. It will not take me long to gather my things.”
His heart bounded.
“But Jamie, I need you to tell me what befell you when last we met, after they dragged me away—”
“Later, love. We will have a lifetime for explanations. Tomorrow night, then. Shall I meet ye here?”
“No. It is too risky, coming so near the house. Lord Beckenham was furious over your stopping the coach on the highway. He’s sent for a troop of soldiers to search you out.”
“The sooner we are away, the better, then.”
“Yes. You will have a care?” She caressed his face with tender fingers. “You are so very precious to me.”
“I will.” Surely having reunited them, fate would not be so cruel as to part them again.
“Then kiss me, Jamie, that I may live till I see you again.”
Aye, since she asked so politely.