Lady Sherry and the Highwayman Read Online Free Page B

personal life. He groaned, reminding her of the need for haste.
    Sherry draped Aunt Tulliver’s shawl around the highwayman’s head and shoulders. The women surveyed their handiwork. “I suppose he’ll do,” Daffodil said, without much conviction. “So long as no one gets a good look at his face.”
    Sherry’s doubts about the wisdom of this undertaking were increasing with each passing moment, but it was too late to cry craven now. It would have been prodigiously unfair to turn Captain Toby over to the law after he’d made so miraculous an escape.
    It would also be prodigiously stupid, since that escape would not have been made without her assistance. Sherry’s excellent memory presented her with an old statute still on the law books, which stated very clearly that every person or persons who should comfort, aid, abet, assist, counsel, hire, or command any person to rob another would be hanged without benefit of clergy. She very much wished that she might have benefit of clergy just now. Or preferably assistance from on high.
    No such help was forthcoming, and nothing would be accomplished by further delay. Sherry removed the stopper from the vinaigrette she’d borrowed from Aunt Tulliver and held it under the highwayman’s nose.
    He choked and coughed, then opened his eyes and stared at Sherry. “You!” he groaned.
    How weak his voice was, thought Sherry, how pale his cheek. His eyes were certainly a vivid green. And she was as bad as Daffodil, mooning over a handsome rogue.
    Sherry peered cautiously out into the garden, half expecting to find a bevy of Bow Street officers outside waiting to take the guilty trio before a magistrate. She saw nothing more exceptionable than the under-gardener at work in the distance and Prinny sprawled dejectedly outside the doorway.
    Sherry turned back to her companions. “It’s time.” Between them, she and Daffodil managed to get the highwayman to his feet.
    The man seemed dazed. He had to be in pain. Well, there was nothing to be done for him just now. And were he in a better frame he might well prove less tractable. Sherry grasped the pruning knife more tightly and took a firmer grip on the highwayman’s arm. On his other side, Daffodil gasped as he leaned heavily on her.
    “Now!” Sherry said grimly.
    “Right, milady!” Daffodil replied.
    Together they stepped forward. The highwayman, who had not, cursed. It took some time to learn the knack of moving in unison while supporting the man’s weight. But before much time had passed, anyone gazing out the windows of Longacre House would have seen nothing more exceptionable than Lady Sherry and her companion, accompanied by abigail and hound, embarked on a gentle stroll.
     

Chapter Four
     
    The next few moments seemed the longest of Sherry’s life. So weak was the highwayman, so unsteady on his feet, that it took the combined efforts of both women to keep him upright. Prinny did not lend his assistance to this project. Quite the opposite. Prinny knew perfectly well that a stranger was garbed in Tully’s gown, a fact his canine brain immediately translated into an invitation to play hide-and-seek. That his friends did not enter enthusiastically into this game mattered not at all. Prinny was finding this day, with all its unexpected happenings, a rare treat.
    This viewpoint, Sherry could not share. She saw nothing pleasurable in hiding in the water closet to avoid being caught. Nor was she particularly interested to learn that Daffodil vastly mistrusted the earthenware vessel that was constantly washed by rainwater from a cistern on the roof. Even less did Sherry relish their encounter with her brother’s superior butler, Barclay, to whom she ruthlessly blackened Aunt Tulliver’s character by explaining that the old woman’s unsteady gait was due to having once again overindulged in the grape.
    All in all, Sherry was little steadier on her feet than the highwayman. Not much farther now, she told herself. Once in the