He glanced at the thickly sliced white bread, toasted and smeared with butter and brown sauce, piled high with rashers of salty, fatty bacon. “Perfect. One for me and one for you.”
“I’m not hungry,” Bess insisted, “But you must eat.”
“I’ll eat one if you do.”
Glaring down at the grease-spotted paper wrapped around the sandwiches. “I feel as if I couldn’t swallow a bite.”
Nathaniel shrugged, watching her from the corner of his eye. “Then neither will I.”
She made a sound almost like a little growl. Nathaniel struggled not to find it adorable.
“Fine,” she said, opening the packet and handing him one of the sandwiches before taking a small bite of the other.
Nathaniel waited for her to take a second, grudging bite before devouring his sandwich as quickly and tidily as he was able. Bess didn’t finish hers, but she made a dent in it and Nathaniel let it go.
She went back to the hamper and pulled out a jug of cider, faintly fizzy and with a distinct musty funk that cut the apples’ sweetness.
After the sandwich and cider, Bess somehow managed to fall into a fitful doze slumped against Nathaniel’s side. He kept his left arm as steady as he could, so as not to jolt her awake.
The hours rolled by like the verdant meadows and grassy hills of the western counties, through the prosperous towns and villages that had sprung up along the Bath Road. They passed through Twyford and Thatcham, stopping only to refresh the horses.
As the sun began to slip below the horizon, shadows lengthening along the hedgerows, it was time to change the horses again and Nathaniel girded his loins to try to force Bess to take another short rest.
“At the next coaching inn, we will stop and have dinner,” he declared, snapping the reins decisively. Bess had finally broken down and allowed him to feed her a pork pie for lunch, and now the hamper was empty.
“Must we?” Bess asked instantly. “I would rather push through.”
“Oh, look,” Nathaniel pointed up ahead to the very welcome sight of a two-story brick building with a sign hanging out front that looked like it sported some sort of bird. “Here, this will be perfect.”
Bess sighed but didn’t protest further. And when they pulled into the courtyard of The Pelican Public House, they were surprised to find the entire place in something of an uproar.
Potboys and ostlers milled about excitedly, and there was a fellow in the black and scarlet livery of the Royal Mail with his shoulder bound in a white sling sitting on a barrel by the stables, holding court.
Nathaniel tensed, all his senses alert.
With the unerring instinct of his kind, the landlord came out into the courtyard in person to greet his illustrious, ducal guests. Barrel-chested and ruddy-cheeked, he twinkled at them with real pleasure.
“Your Graces, you are most welcome! Yes, yes, welcome to the humble Pelican. I am Arthur Peabody, the landlord of this public house. We have the cleanest beds, a lovely private dining room, and my wife has done a roast that melts in your mouth, so it does!”
“Much obliged, Mister Peabody,” Nathaniel said, helping Bess down from the box, his gaze still on the Royal Mail employee. “Tell me, what has happened to that fellow over there? Has he been injured?”
“Oh, quite the to-do, quite the to-do, Your Grace,” Peabody said, bustling around them in a pleasantly officious way, his chest puffed out in pride at having such an interesting event to relate. “For that is Mister Danforth, the armed guard who was sent along with the Royal Mail Coach to Bath, and last evening, well, what do you think?”
Here, Peabody paused impressively. Bess’s fingers were thin bands of iron around Nathaniel’s arm.
“I cannot imagine,” Nathaniel said curtly, willing the man to get to the point.
“Oh,” said Peabody, in the booming tones of a man used to speaking loudly enough to be heard over the din of a bustling coaching inn. “What it is, is that the Royal Mail coach on its way to Bath last evening…was set upon by none other than that most famous highwayman, The Gentle Rogue!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bess was not a swooner. That was something fine ladies did, not sturdy country lasses.
But it was a nearer thing than she would have liked to admit.
“A highwayman,” she said faintly, everything inside her drawing tight and terrified. A horrible premonition had seized her. “Attacking a Royal Mail coach and actually injuring the guard!”
“Oh, as to that,” Mr. Peabody temporized, “the injury weren’t caused by the Gentle Rogue, as such. The guard, Mr. Danforth, took a strong knock to the shoulder when the coach went athwart a branch in the road—what has since been removed, have no fears on that score, Your Graces!—and the coach nearly turned over.”
