his face, swiftly followed by another to his belly, doubled him over, and he fell insensibly to the ground.
“There!” pronounced the larger of his two attackers, dusting off his hands. “ ‘E ‘ad more fight in ‘im than I would’ve thought.”
“Never mind that now,” said his crony dismissively, rolling his victim’s limp form over and plunging a hand into the breast pocket of James’s coat. With a grin of satisfaction, he withdrew the coin-filled pouch, along with a sheaf of papers tied with a ribbon. He tossed the purse to his henchman, untied the ribbon, and perused the contents of the packet of letters. One, bearing an impressive red wax seal, caught his attention. He quickly scanned its text, and the words he read there wiped the satisfied smirk from his face.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed. “We’ve crowned a blinkin’ duke!”
They stuffed their ill-gotten gains into their pockets, then fled the scene as if the Furies were at their heels.
Chapter 2
Miss Margaret Darrington, cooling her heels at the Pig and Whistle, tapped a serviceably shod foot and glanced impatiently at the clock over the mantel. The man she had arranged to meet should have arrived on the three o’clock stage, and although Miss Darrington was charitable enough to allow that coaches often fell behind schedule, an hour-long wait had worn her patience (never her strong suit, even under far more sanguine circumstances) quite thin. If Mr. Fanshawe was this unreliable in all matters, then he was clearly unsuitable to have charge over her lively fourteen-year-old brother.
As the hostelry door burst open, Miss Darrington looked up hopefully, only to have her expectations dashed once again. Neither of the two men entering the Pig and Whistle looked at all like a tutor. The larger of the two looked as if he would be more at home at a blacksmith’s forge than in a schoolroom, while the other—
Miss Darrington blinked as he looked up at that moment and regarded her with a gaze so malignant that she shuddered, remembering anew the perils that might befall an unaccompanied lady loitering about a public inn. Her mind made up, Miss Darrington strode to the door leading to the stable yard. If Mr. Fanshawe were to arrive at some later time, he could make the five-mile trek to Darrington House on foot. He could while away the tedium of the journey by composing an acceptable excuse for the tardiness of his arrival.
* * * *
Groaning, James sat up in the road and rubbed the sore spot on his head, where a lump was already beginning to form. What had happened? Surely there must be some reason why he was lying here in the middle of the road to—where did this road lead, anyway? Turning to survey his surroundings—no easy task, when every muscle in his body screamed in protest—he saw no familiar landmarks, nothing to remind him of where he was or where he had been going.
That he had indeed been going somewhere was evidenced by the open portmanteau lying face-down on the side of the road, clothing strewn about it like a madwoman’s laundry. Wincing in pain, he staggered to his feet and began to gather his belongings, now covered with a film of road dust. A single book lay open at his feet, its pages turning in the breeze as if by a ghostly reader. He picked up the volume, and as he blew the dirt from its pages, he saw a name written on the flyleaf: Charles Haslett. James blinked. How very odd that one of his books should bear such a name, when his own name was—
A wave of nausea engulfed him as he realized he could not remember his own name. Panic-stricken, he reached for another book, then another. A dozen volumes yielded almost as many names, each one as unfamiliar as the one before. He fumbled in the breast pocket of his coat for anything that might provide some identification, but came up empty. Who was he, and where was he? Would anyone miss him, and come in search of him? What had happened here? If only he could