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Jeremiah spread the fingers of his left hand, ticking them off with his right thumb. “First, Cole and his guard are in on what happens. Second, Cole directly told the highwayman he’d be paid. Third, the fellow was no ruffian, had a voice like a velvet cushion. Fourth, the rest were speaking Spanish, not some Romany tongue. Don’t I know my Spanish from five years on the Peninsula!” Jeremiah paused to take a long draught of ale. “Fifth, they never bothered the passengers for a purse or a watch, but took the worthless horses. And lastly, it was the guard who shot the boy.”

“Boy?” Harry asked.

“Young fellow with the whitest teeth, traveling with his pretty wife.”

“Where are they?”

“The highwayman and his gang took ’em.”

“Took them?” Harry swore. He was used to bad news. Equipment got lost. Foul weather descended. Orders were garbled. One soldiered on. He hadn’t wanted a new partner, but Wilde was one he didn’t want to lose.

“The wife begged the fellow. She didn’t trust the guard at all.”

“Frost, thank you. Your account of the robbery is most helpful.” It was the guard Harry needed to talk with, preferably now when the fellow was still in pain.

He found the man sitting in Lucy’s private dining room. He had been neatly grazed by someone who was obviously a good shot and had suffered more from tumbling backward off his seat. At first he refused to talk with Harry about the robbery, but agreed when Harry suggested that the doctor wait to snap the collarbone into place until a constable could be summoned. When the doctor finished, Harry handed the fellow a pot of ale and encouraged him to talk. This time the fellow had quite a lot to say.

* * * *

Miranda was having a second stay in a grand house, and not in the housekeeper’s room either. She had been shown to a blue-and-white lady’s room with the most cunning dressing table piled with silver boxes and china scent bottles. Frothy lace draped tall windows.

The strange men who spoke in that foreign tongue had carried Nate into the grand house with its marble entry and sweeping staircases. Then English people, country people with recognizable English faces and voices, had taken over and carried Nate up to this grand room. He’d been stripped to his smalls, so that his wound could be cleaned and dressed. A doctor had come and praised Miranda for holding her gloves to her husband’s shoulder. She’d likely saved his life, she was told. Somehow the lie about being his wife stole the pleasure from the praise.

A stout maid with a hardy, unsentimental manner took Miranda away while the surgeon probed for the bullet. The woman found Miranda a gown to wear and a shawl for warmth and promised to try what she could to save Miranda’s blood-soaked skirts.

When Miranda returned to the pretty bedroom, pale morning light was coming through the tall windows and the doctor had given Nate a draught of medicine to make him sleep. He lay still and white as death in the grand bed, his beautiful shoulder wrapped in bandages.

His other shoulder, smooth as an ivory brush handle, peeked out from the bedclothes. She remembered when he’d been injured the year before. He’d kissed her then. He wouldn’t want to kiss her now. He’d left her alone in their room at the inn, he’d hardly looked at her, and he’d slept on the floor. She had stolen glances at him while he shaved, but he had been cool as ice under her gaze, never looking her way.

It made her think again about why he’d brought her with him. She’d thought he still fancied her, but now she saw that he had been intent on the work for Captain Clare. The whole adventure had been a mission to him. He’d been using her as his cover, so that he could ask his questions about Adam without anyone suspecting he was working for a spy. Well, she wouldn’t be foolish over Nate Wilde.

She’d been ever so foolish over Lord Hazelwood. She saw that now, and in her folly, she’d done the really unforgivable thing that caused the club to close. Nate wasn’t sweet on her anymore, and he didn’t even know what she’d done. If he knew... She shook herself. She wouldn’t think about that. She had to help him get back his strength, and she had to figure out how they were to get back to London.

The mysterious highwayman had vanished almost as soon as they entered the grand house. Now that she had time to think about it, she realized that the house belonged to him. For a few minutes in the tall wide entry there had been a flurry of activity, of a butler and liveried footmen, all taking orders from the highwayman. As he strode toward a pair of paneled oak doors, he had tossed his hat and black coat into the hands of a waiting footman. Another footman dashed to push open one of the doors. Miranda saw a book-lined wall.

The highwayman had turned to her. Even in the blaze of lights in the hall, what she saw was darkness. His tousled hair was inky black. His brows and eyes and the shadow of his beard were equally dark. He was as tall and wide as old Goldsworthy, but younger and leaner than the spymaster, not much older than she and Nate.

“You and your husband will be safe here, madam, until we can figure out what’s to be done with you.”

She did not find the remembered words encouraging, and she reached for Nate’s still hand and gave it a squeeze. “Sleep now, Nate Wilde, because I need you to wake up tomorrow ready to act,” she whispered.

* * * *

Harry’s conversation with the guard had made several things clear. The robberies were a distraction. Everything about them was calculated to summon a figure out of legend—the wooded place, the man in black, the band of supposed gypsies. It was all a bit of theatre designed like a magician’s sleight of hand to mislead the authorities. Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe appeared to be the victim of robbers, but the stolen horses were actually no loss.

The guard believed Sir Geoffrey had picked the place for the holdup and paid the highwayman. He was less forthcoming about why he’d shot a passenger, claiming the coach had moved and wobbled his gun hand. And he had no idea who the highwayman was. He spoke of the man in the aggrieved tones of one who felt himself wronged. “Some toff on a lark. Disappears every time with the horses and that lot of rabble speaking their gibberish. He had no call to shoot me.”

Harry doubted that the highwayman went far after the robbery. If he really was a gentleman on a lark, he had a place nearby. Radcliffe’s weary coach horses would slow any escape, and a man would need a place to conceal them. He would start his search for Nate and Miranda with the country estates bordering the Aylesbury road. But first he would pay Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe a visit.

Sir Geoffrey’s place of business in London’s bustling Church Street had a prominent sign declaring that the business had been established in 1806 and a ground floor devoted to the carriage trade. The vast lower room housed six carriages of various designs leading up to the famous Rocket. A sign proclaimed, Ride a Rocket Today! The carriages on display stood on platforms, each with a designation of its year and make. Great maps on two walls showed the routes Radcliffe’s Rockets traveled. A third wall was devoted with cruel relish to a display of coachman’s whips, including the murderous tommy.

A beefy clerk with the battered nose and ears of a former pugilist manned the display room, while another clerk asked Harry his business.

“Tell Sir Geoffrey that I heard that his Aylesbury Rocket is troubled by robberies. I wonder, can he use an armed escort on the night run?”

“You?” said the clerk with the pugilist’s battered face.

“Old soldiers find work where we can,” Harry said.