Beguiled Read Free

reign had brought in the fields of education and medicine. Workers were protected now, as they had never been before. There were those who protested the allowance given the Royal House. Those who felt that the royals did not do enough to warrant the money spent on the upkeep of their many properties and lavish lifestyle. England had a prime minister and a Parliament, and many felt that should be enough.
    With a sharp thunk, a wheel went into a pothole, and she nearly hit the ceiling. What was going on? Shelby wasn’t the type to be easily alarmed. He wouldn’t be frightened by law-abiding protesters. Then again, the protesters were not the ones actually causing the tremendous unease in the streets and the press at the moment. That unease could be laid at the feet of those trying to inflame the crowd by making people believe that the monarchy was behind the murders of those politicians who were speaking out against them. There were far too many people willing to believe that the Crown was silently behind the murders.
    She knew from her studies that anti-monarchists were not new to English politics, and she even understood, at least to some degree, why such a movement had come to the forefront again now. Despite Queen Victoria’s determination to bring abstinence and goodness back to the Crown, her children, including her heir, had behaved scandalously. Back in the days of Jack the Ripper, there had even been a theory that her grandson, Prince Albert Victor, was the murderer. Since that day, a very vocal faction of anti-monarchists had not hesitated to step forward. These current murders, said by many to be the monarchy’s attempt to quell that faction, had brought the political fever to such a rabid pitch that many of the country’s sanest politicians were warning that there must be compromise and temperance, or there would be civil war.
    Ally had never met the queen, but from all she had seen and heard, she couldn’t believe that the woman who had brought such progress to her empire and still mourned a husband lost decades ago could be guilty of such horror.
    But for all her knowledge of history and politics, she realized, she still had no idea why the carriage was racing so terrifyingly fast.
    Suddenly, with a jerk, the carriage began to slow.
    Surely, she thought, this could have nothing to do with the furor going on because two men, two politicians and writers who had viciously slandered the queen, had been found dead, their throats slit. Or with the distraught people in the streets, bearing their signs to protest the queen and Prince Edward. No, the cause of this had to be quite different, and if so…
    If so, she knew the answer.
    They moved slower, the horses walking now, not galloping. She heard the sound of a gunshot, and froze. There was shouting from nearby; then she heard Shelby calling hoarsely in return, but she couldn’t understand his words.
    â€œStop the carriage!” a deep, authoritative voice thundered.
    Tense, knowing that they were nowhere near the castle, Ally leaned toward the window, pulled back the drapery and looked out.
    Her eyes widened in surprise, and it was then that icy rivulets of fear at last snaked through her system.
    She had been right.
    There was a rider right by her side, a man seated upon a great black stallion, clad in a black coat, hat and mask. Other riders shifted restlessly behind him.
    The highwayman!
    She had never dreamed that such a thing could happen in her humdrum life. As a devotee to several newspapers, she’d read about this man and his accomplices. In an age when more and more automobiles were finding their way onto the roads, they were being threatened by a highwayman on horseback.
    He hadn’t killed anyone, she reminded herself. In fact, some were comparing him to Robin Hood. No one seemed quite able to say just which poor people he was giving to, although shortly after the Earl of Warren had been held up, churches in the East