Page 28 of Hold Me Fast
Tammie took a sip of the tea as the maid said, “I shall pass those messages on, Miss Lind.”
At that moment, Guy’s muscle called out, “What are you about, Prue or whatever your name is? No gossiping with Miss Lind. She is preparing to sing.”
“Is there anything else I can help you with, Miss Lind?” Prue said, ignoring the man as if he had said nothing.
“Thank you, no. I shall sip my tea and rest. Perhaps, if Daisy is not back in time to do my hair, I might need you. Tell Jowan’s friends that I am anxious to escape, and I want to go home to Cornwall.”
“I shall, Miss Lind.”
The maid moved to a chair a few yards away and the muscle relaxed. But when the footmen started to play cards, Tammie beckoned the maid. “Put up the dressing screen and begin on my hair, please, Prue.”
The muscle looked up and then returned to watching the card game. As soon as Prue was near enough, she told Tammie, “Wear a cape that is easily given to a decoy.”
Tammie had something she needed to say, too. “Tell Jowan not to listen to me. When I beg for the drugs, he must not listen. He must refuse.”
The door opened, and in came Daisy. Prue had time to say, “I will tell him,” and then Daisy sent her away and took over. Tammie let her grumble about the accident and praise the treatment she received afterward. “I would have been back earlier, Miss, but her ladyship herself came to tell me how sorry she was, and she kept me talking. I hope you didn’t mind, Miss. It was so nice of her, and I did not wish to offend.”
This had been a very efficient operation, Tammie realized. She wondered if Guy knew that Jowan had such useful and clever friends.Well.He wouldn’t learn it from her.
Chapter Eleven
“If this fails,we will try something else,” Bran said, as they waited on a ride that Coombe and his entourage would pass as they returned through the park to the gate nearest to Coombe’s townhouse.
Bran was trying to soothe Jowan’s anxiety, but it wasn’t working. Jowan had several other plans, or at least the first inklings. Abducting Tamsyn from a public place with her consent was the only one that didn’t cross the line from probably legal to definitely criminal.
Kidnapping her from Coombe’s carriage was arguably highway robbery. Taking her from a concert or other engagement would mean fighting those Coombe had assigned to keep her caged. Perhaps Coombe himself, and Jowan’s heart leapt at the possibility.
But they would risk injury, arrest for assault, and worse, failure.
There was always an invasion of Coombe’s house. Jowan had even thought of a way to make that somewhat legal. If someone provided the appropriate magistrate with enough evidence of crimes to justify a warrant to search and seize, they could get in and bring Tamsyn out with them.
But that would mean waiting until they had collected definitive evidence, for raiding the house of an earl was not undertaken lightly.
He had better make a success of this abduction in the park. And he would. He and his accomplices had spent hours thinking of everything that could possibly go wrong and deciding on countermeasures.
“They’re coming back, guv!” said the boy who was a few paces ahead, keeping an eye out for Coombe and the riders.
It was time, then. Jowan mounted his horse. “Wish me luck, Bran.”
“Always,” Bran replied from the back of his own steed, extending his hand. Jowan shook it and then Bran rode off, away from the main ride.
After a nod for the boy on lookout, Jowan nudged his horse into a swift walk. So far, so good. Coombe kept coming. Jowan tucked in his chin so that the hat would shade his face. The conspirators had calculated that Coombe would not give Jowan a second look, given he was on a branch ride and not likely, at his current pace, to reach the main ride before all of Coombe’s retinue had passed.
Good.Coombe was beyond the intersection of the two rides. Jowan gave the horse the signal for a trot, then a canter.One… Two… Three…By the time he counted to fifteen (and he was counting quickly), he was pulling the horse up alongside Tamsyn’s, clasping her around the waist, and lifting her to sit on his pommel. The clever lady had already kicked her feet free of her stirrups, and so the transfer took a count of two, but that was enough time for one of Coombe’s men to react, forcing his horse forward to block Jowan’s escape.
The horse Drew had provided for the rescue shouldered the other horse out of the way and bounded away, reaching a gallop within a second. Ten strides and they were through the gate. They slowed and turned left, continuing to reduce speed. Drew had assured Jowan that the horse would be able to stop within ten yards of the gate, and so two of Jowan’s accomplices waited at that point.
The horse was still moving, if slowly, when Jowan let Tamsyn down into Drew’s arms. By the time he had dismounted himself, Tamsyn had abandoned her riding cape to Prue Wakefield and was donning the hat Prue gave her—a stylish flat hat that tied on with a scarf and hid part of Tamsyn’s face.
Jowan tossed Tamsyn up into the saddle of one of the two horses a boy was holding, then the lad mounted the other. Meanwhile, Prue had put on Tamsyn’s cape. Drew tossed her up on the horse Jowan had abandoned and mounted behind her.
“Thank you both,” Jowan called to them, and they rode off along Park Lane. Jowan led Tamsyn in the opposite direction. They had organized several more decoys. Drew would fire off one of them as soon as he reached the corner of Cullross and Park. Drew’s horse would go one way along Park, and the near-identical horse that was standing at wait would go the other.
They’d repeat the ploy at three more corners, until sixteen bay geldings spread out across London, all around sixteen hands high and all bearing a rider in a black coat and top hat, with a passenger sitting on the front of his saddle. All those decoys had to do was stay out of reach of Coombe and his men, but even if they were caught, they all had good reason to be out on the roads on such a day.
Meanwhile, Jowan must trust them to know their work, for his part of the plan was to turn off into a street away from the shell game of the multiplying horses, where a hackney waited that would take them west to Bran and the traveling carriage.
“We will go to Ealing tonight,” he told the woman in his arms. He didn’t want to celebrate yet, but he couldn’t stop the feeling of joy that spread through him. Tamsyn! His Tamsyn. She was in his arms, and he was holding her close, just as he’d dreamed about for so long. “It’s about an hour away, so we will not need to change the horses.”
