Captain Rakehell Read Online Free Page A

hand to reassure her, then wedged himself into the crotch she’d just vacated.
    “No lower,” he hissed, and she nodded.
    Gauging they were still a good fifteen feet or so from the steaming ground—and hoping it would be a safe enough distance—Andrew turned his attention to the Duchess of Braxton’s mansion. He heard Jack and Harry’s accomplice before he saw him, and realized as the figure stepped into the backwash of the lights blazing from the house, that the dull clanking he’d heard came from the sack thrown over the man’s left shoulder. He realized, too, that the angle of his approach would bring him directly beneath the beech tree, where Amanda’s slippers and the lantern still lay on the ground. Andrew caught and held his breath.
    So did Amanda, but for an entirely different reason. Noble as she thought Andy was for putting her safety above apprehending these criminals, she had no intention of allowing them to escape. She, too, had realized that the thief hurrying across the garden must pass directly beneath them to reach the gate in the wall where Harry and Jack awaited him. She intended to drop out of the tree onto his head, which, of course, would give Andy no choice but to jump after her to save her from these desperate men.
    Not that she thought they were—at least not Jack and Harry—but she’d chosen not to argue the point with Andy. If she’d learned nothing else in the three luckless Seasons since her come out, Amanda had learned that gentlemen didn’t like being made fools of by females.
    Almost running now, the sack flung over his shoulder making an awful racket, the thief drew within ten feet of the beech tree. Her heart pounding and her palms nervously damp, Amanda gripped the limb upon which she crouched.
    “Hallo, Smythe!” Jack called from the shrubbery. “S’that you?”
    “Who else you expectin’? Prinney ‘imself?” Smythe replied, as he drew nearer to Amanda and she wiggled closer to the edge of the limb.
    Just as she gathered herself to jump, Smythe tripped and fell face-first on the spongy, muddy grass. The sack spilled off his shoulder, slid down the short slope of ground to the garden wall, and came to rest there with a clunk.
    What luck! He’s already down, Amanda thought, all I have to do is hold him there. But as she let go of the limb to jump, Andrew caught a handful of his coat and held her fast.
    “Andy!” She gasped, trying to twist herself free. “We can catch them if—”
    Slipping his right arm up and under hers, Andrew clapped his hand over his sister’s mouth, and wrapped his left arm half around the beech trunk. “We could also catch a knife in the ribs,” he hissed in her ear.
    “‘Ere, Smythe!” Jack called. “What’s ‘appened?”
    “I tripped on somethin’,” Smythe replied, feeling the ground around him as he reared back on his heels. “Git over ‘ere wi’ th’ lamp.”
    There was a flare of light in the bushes, which faded suddenly—probably as Jack slipped a hood over the lantern, Andrew guessed—then the scrape of heavy boots on stone. Two figures, dimly outlined in the half light, clambered over the wall. The larger one bent to retrieve the sack, flung it with a clank over his shoulder, then joined his two fellows under the tree.
    “What’s this?” Smythe said, as he got to his feet and stepped closer to the shrouded lantern. “Lift th’ shade a bit, Jack.”
    Andrew groaned as a thin beam of light fell on Amanda’s muddy shoe, and the gold braid trim on the sleeve of the peacock blue Braxton livery worn by Smythe. But that’s all he saw, for the light was too feeble to illuminate the thieves’ faces.
    “A ladies’ slipper!” Jack exclaimed. “What you s ‘pose it’s doin’ ‘ere?”
    Harry stepped closer to have a look, stumbled, and bumped into Jack.
    “‘Arry, you idget!”
    “Look, Jack!” Harry bent down and came up  with Amanda’s other shoe. “‘Ere’s th’ other ‘un!”
    “Gimme that.”