Page 81 of My Rogue, My Ruin
The dark downturn of the conversation along with his luck made Archer signal a footman to call for his carriage. He made his excuses and left, silently beckoning for Brandt to follow him at a later juncture.
As he entered the foyer at Hadley Gardens ten minutes later, an annoyed-looking Heed met him. “What is it?” Archer asked him, frowning.
But before Heed could answer, a familiar gaunt figure strode from the adjoining parlor.
Thomson.
Archer’s eyes immediately fell to the bloodstained linen dangling from the inquiry agent’s hand. He didn’t have to look at the delicate embroidery in the corner to see his initials stitched there. He knew his own cravat when he saw it. Despite the shot of worry that arced through him, Archer’s expression gave away nothing as Thomson smiled, his eyes glittering with veiled triumph.
“I believe this belongs to you.”
It was an unfashionable hour for a stroll or drive through Hyde Park, but Archer was there, nonetheless. There would be a number of carriages tooling along the park lanes past dark, and they would be ripe for the picking. There were at least two balls occurring that night that Archer knew of, invitations to which he had received and politely declined. Enduring hours in a stuffy ballroom, while wearing a starched suit and cravat, could not hold a candle to the freedom Archer felt where he stood now, within a stand of woods near the border of Kensington Gardens. He wore his black buckskin trousers and Hessians, a long black greatcoat, and his mask, of course—a guise he had not worn for weeks.
It had been too long since his last outing. The jumping nerves in his arms and legs and the insistent clench of his gut were proof.
“We should not be here,” Brandt whispered from the trees behind Archer.
“Come now, Mr. Brockston, where is your sense of adventure?” he murmured in response.
Brandt snorted. “Playing a gentleman and riding the coattails of your influence at White’s earlier was adventure enough for me. Although I have yet to change out of these over-starched garments.”
Archer breathed in the early spring air, tracing the dank bite of the Serpentine’s stagnant water. The trees had bloomed with new foliage weeks ago. They sheltered Brandt and him well, especially in the darkness.
“I needed to get out,” Archer explained. “Especially after dealing with that hound from Bow Street.”
Thomson’s visit at Hadley Gardens had lasted over an hour, during which the zealous inquiry agent brandished the bloodied cravat bearing Archer’s monogram, which had been found inside Viscountess Hamilton’s burgled home.
Archer, sitting in his chair at his desk, his fingers laced over his stomach, had explained with forced calm that he had given the cravat to the late duke to staunch the blood flow from a gash on his palm at the Gainsbridge’s Masquerade. The duke had not seen fit to return the length of linen, stained and ruined as it was.
He’d also denied dropping the damned thing while robbing Lady Hamilton’s home and beating her senseless. Thomson had not been so stupid as to formally accuse him of the despicable act, but there was no question in Archer’s mind the man was digging to pin both the duke’s murder and the bandit’s crimes on his head.
That wasn’t what had driven Archer into a foul temper, though. What had was the fact that the imposter had left the bloodied cravat behind on purpose in an attempt to implicate Archer. Which meant the imposter had taken the cravat some time ago. The duke would have most likely tossed the ruined linen to Heed or his valet, Porter, after the Gainsbridge affair. If that was the case, the imposter must have been inside Worthington Abbey, where he’d formulated a future use for the cravat. Who the devil was he? A servant? Or had he sneaked into the duke’s home unseen?
“That Bow Street hound is precisely why we should have stayed put at Hadley Gardens,” Brandt replied. “You are breaking your own rules, Hawk.”
Archer paced a small swath of ground between two trees. “I’m simply restless.”
Waylaying a carriage and taking away a nice purse to be delivered to one of the parish churches, perhaps near Seven Dials or Whitechapel, would settle him. Besides, when he took a carriage tonight—a single carriage, no need to get cocky—he would ask the occupants to relay a message: that the real Masked Marauder does not steal for his own benefit, but for that of the poor. The real Masked Marauder does not harm women or slaughter defenseless animals.
Archer would like to wake up tomorrow morning to a bold headline likethatin the newssheets.
“It is poor timing, and you know it,” Brandt said.
“You did not have to come. I made that perfectly clear.”
In fact, he’d ordered Brandt to await his return in the stables. There were only a handful of servants assigned there, but Archer did not want to risk being seen by any of them when he returned from his outing. He’d rather his staff have no reason to believe he’d left his rooms at any point during the evening. He’d gone so far as to climb from his own window and descend the trellis into the gardens and out to the curb, where Brandt waited with two rented mounts from a nearby livery. His departure had been degrading enough as it was; he didn’t want it to have all been for naught.
“Someone needs to look after your reckless arse,” Brandt murmured as the telltale sound of rattling tack and carriage wheels sounded down the lane.
Archer let out a pent-up breath as the squall of tension within him released. He knew what to do and how to do it, and damn it if he wasn’t going to give the Masked Marauder his reputation back.
Before the imposter started on his rampage, the bandit had had a mysterious air about him, but no one had truly feared him. At the card table at White’s that afternoon, he’d heard pure revulsion in the voices of the men who had, before, shrugged off the masked bandit as a petty criminal unworthy of their concern. Some part of him desperately wanted to defend his alter ego’s honor.
“Be careful,” Brandt whispered as Archer’s muscles tensed and released, ready to spring.
“Yes, Mother.”
He jumped out of the stand of trees and into the darkened lane. The approaching carriage had two lanterns near the driver’s bench, and they threw off enough light for Archer to see the boxy shape of a brougham, pulled by one horse. The interior would fit two passengers at the most, and a single driver. Perhaps a groomsman at the back.
