A Reformed Rake by Jeanne Savery

so. Do not think of it, Miss Cole. Any man would have come to your rescue.” He thought of that scene in the yard where many milled around the struggling women but not one had lifted a finger. He knew she was thinking the same thing. “We will see you in the morning,” he added, “and discuss our next move in this, our own personal odyssey.”
    “Madame is unwell,” Harriet said with a frown. “The journey has tired her, and she should not attempt a crossing in this weather. “However that may be, I have no way of stopping her if she decides to do so.” She noticed he still held her hand and, blushing, jerked it from his loose grip. “Good evening, Sir Frederick.”
    He watched as she too disappeared up the stairs, her movements quick and graceful—and revealing now and again a trim little ankle! The silence was broken by Yves. “Well!”
    “Is it well, Yves?”
    “ No it is not. How can that man continue to frighten that shy little bird so badly? How can he behave in such a dastardly fashion to such a sweet child?”
    “Shy? Sweet? You refer to Mademoiselle de Beaupre?” Sir Frederick ignored the glower his friend turned on him and, throwing back his head, laughed heartily.
    Yves’ expression didn’t lighten. If anything his anger deepened. “She was frightened.”
    Sir Frederick sobered. “Both women were frightened. Badly frightened. Yves, we must see our valets guard them well. Too, I believe we must keep an eye on that plaguey landlord. He played some part in all this, I think.”
    Yves looked much struck by the notion. “He must have. There were too many inn servants out there ignoring the situation and only his orders to turn a blind eye to a kidnapping could have had it that way.”
    “My thought exactly.”
    Yves and Sir Frederick spoke with their men, who arrived just then with the last carriage and the luggage. After refreshing their travel weary bodies with a glass of brandy—Sir Frederick’s private stock which had made a timely arrival with the baggage coach and not that provided by the inn—they returned to the ground floor and followed their host to where a meal was laid out for them. “Now, mine host—” Sir Frederick spoke languidly, his eyes on the cold meats and sauce boats, the thick soup and bread, “—you will sit down and taste each and every item on that table.”
    The man blanched, backed toward the door.
    “But I insist!” Sir Frederick forced the tubby little man into a chair and served him from each bowl, sauce boat and platter on the table. “Eat.”
    Sweat spouted in tiny beads on the man’s forehead. “My lord, you cannot make me.”
    “Eat.”
    The landlord eyed the small pistol which had suddenly appeared in the large tanned hand, and the sweat ran down one side of his fat face. “I did not wish to do it.”
    “It?”
    “I was ordered ... I had to obey...”
    “The comte ordered you to, umm, add special seasoning to our food?”
    “He is powerful. He is terrible. He insisted...”
    “Just when did this powerful terrible comte insist?”
    “He ... He...”
    “He returned to the inn?”
    “He returned, my lord.” The pistol nudged pudgy flesh. “He returned and made me...”
    “Or paid thee?” The man blanched. “You are a greedy blackguard. Eat.”
    “No. No, I cannot .”
    “Yves, I think you must feed him.”
    “No. No, no, no.”
    “But you would have had us eat.” A thought crossed his mind, and Frederick’s pistol pushed, not gently, against the side of the man’s head. “What of the food sent up to the women?”
    “It is all right...” the man’s voice rose to a thin screech, his skin so grey Frederick thought him near to fainting. “I would not poison women. No, no. I would not.”
    “But will it, perhaps, put them into a deep sleep?”
    “No. Nothing. I swear it.”
    Sir Frederick let his pistol hand fall to his side. “Clear this away and see it is a danger to no one.” Then he smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.