Love and Money by Phyllis Bentley Read Free Book Online Page B

remember the knife at his belt and set on Sir Richard from the rear. Accordingly he moved Bess forward quietly until her nose touched the man’s shoulder. He started and looked up fearfully. Thomas glared down at him, and no doubt his eyes, gleaming through the slits of the vizard, appeared fierce enough, for the man cringed and dodged away to the other side of his horses.
    Looking back to the fray, Thomas was surprised to see that a third figure was now standing by the overturned coach. It was a woman. Ah! it was she who had screamed, remembered Thomas. Her hair, uncovered and disordered, doubtless by her efforts to climb from the coach, looked very fair in the moonlight, and rings gleamed on the hands with which she held her cloak together. She was following the sword-play intently, though making no move to help Sir Richard’s assailant. In case she should do so, Thomas took Bess nearer. The sandy-haired fellow was now gasping and retreating, and Sir Richard was clearly about to disarm him, when the lady gave a sudden shrill scream. Both the fighters were startled. The sandy-haired man stumbled, his sword flew from his hand; his adversary’s forward lunge, shaken slightly from its aim, took him entirely defenceless, and Sir Richard’s point passed through his body. The man fell,sprawling on his back in the dust, and did not rise. Sir Richard exclaimed and bent over him. “Is he dead?” asked the lady.
    Even in this moment of alarm and horror Thomas could not but note that there seemed a certain pleasurable anticipation in her enquiry. Sir Richard did not answer, but drew his blade carefully from the man’s body, wiped it and sheathed it. Then seizing the leather bag from the road he sprang back into the shadows, mounted his horse and rode off. Thomas, dumbfounded, nevertheless turned Bess and followed him.
    â€œThat fellow is like to die, uncle Richard,” he said coldly when they had galloped half a mile.
    â€œI know it. See—turn down this lane and turn to the left again and then again—’twill come out on this same road below the coach. Succour those three and set them on their road and bring them with thee to Bellomont.”
    â€œTo Bellomont?” exclaimed Thomas.
    â€œAye, to Bellomont. Doth not thine uncle live at Bellomont, to whose house thou, Tom, a very worthy young gentleman, art riding, belated by thy mare’s cast shoe? Is Sir Richard Bellomont not a colonel of the trained bands, a Justice of the Peace? Who could give better entertainment to travellers foully assaulted by highway robbers? Frankly, Thomas,” concluded Sir Richard in a different tone: “I do not wish the man to die.”
    â€œIt is dangerous to bring them to Bellomont, uncle,” faltered Thomas.
    â€œWill you do my bidding or will you not, Thomas Bellomont?” demanded Sir Richard coldly.
    â€œI will do it,” sighed Thomas, turning Bess into the lane.
    â€œThat will be best, Thomas,” said Sir Richard. “And heark’ee, Tom!”
    â€œSir?”
    â€œTake off thy vizard, lad; it is safest in my pocket.”
4
    It was dawn before the travellers were safely housed at Bellomont.
    Thomas had found the task of conveying them to his uncle’s house extremely disagreeable. The coachman was an honest fellow enough, but such small wit as he owned had been knocked out of him for the time by his fall on the road, and between his stupidity and the fears of the animals, the task of harnessing the horses to the coach again was not an easy one. The wounded man, Captain Miles Brownwood as it appeared, looked most wretchedly ill; stretched out on cushions in the coach, he lay still and silent, his only sign of life the blood which oozed from his wound. His wife on the contrary talked incessantly, even leaning out of the window to confide to Thomas, who rode beside the coach, the most private matters of her married life.
    She told him first of all about the gold