The Raider Read online

  He grinned at her and Sophy felt herself succumbing to his charm. He was frightfully appealing in that black mask.

  “I was waiting for Jessie.”

  “Alexander, remove that mask.” She might deal with him better if he were familiar-looking.

  “No,” he said, still smiling. “Is Jess inside?”

  “What are you planning to do to her? What you just did to me? Alex, this has to stop. First you make her jealous of you as Alex, then you…you attack her dressed as something out of a play. You have to tell her the truth.”

  “You like her, too, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do and I’m sorry I ever conspired with you against her. I have to leave day after tomorrow and if you haven’t told her by then, I will.”

  The Raider, his sword lowered, leaned against a tree. “She’s going to be angry with me.”

  “And well she should be.”

  The Raider stood up straighter. “But the rewards if I don’t have to be secret with her anymore are staggering,” he said in a faraway voice, as if contemplating those rewards. “I can be Alex during the day but at night, alone with Jessica, I can be the Raider.”

  “I envy her,” Sophy sighed, then came back to the problem. “You’ll tell her?”

  “Yes, I think it’s time. Tomorrow I will take her out and show her who the Raider is.”

  “Good,” Sophy said. “Now go before someone sees you.”

  He kissed her mouth sweetly and then melted into the forest.

  When Sophy returned to the small parlor where Jessica had been working on account ledgers, the room was empty. She found Jess in the little room off Alex’s bedroom, everything a shambles about her.

  “It’s gone,” Jess said.

  “What is?”

  “The paper I found in the admiral’s room. I wanted to wait until Alex was out of the house before I read it, but it’s not here.”

  “You lost it somewhere?”

  Jessica looked up, her eyes wide. “No, I hid it.”

  It took Sophy a moment to understand. “Then someone has stolen it. Someone knows what the admiral plans. I don’t guess you had time to read it?”

  “Not with Alex hovering over me. If Pitman found it and knew I was the one who’d taken it—”

  “We will know very soon. Sit down and let’s make plans. For all we know, one of the children found it and used it to make paper dolls, but if your Mr. Pitman does have it we’ll have to get you out of Warbrooke before they try to hang you.”

  “Yes,” Jess whispered and sat down.

  Chapter Twenty

  ALEX, isn’t it rather late to be out? I think, with your health, you should be home resting. Sophy says—”

  “I don’t want to hear what she has to say.”

  Jess smiled in the darkness as she held onto the wagon seat. For a while he’d had his pretty countess all to himself, but now Sophy was spending more of her time with Jessica and the children than with Alex. The countess had planned to leave before now but this morning she had announced her intention of staying another couple of days. “Just until I see what happens,” she said but wouldn’t explain her meaning.

  “Are you warm enough?” Alex asked.

  Jess pulled the long, hooded cloak about her more securely. “I’m not the one who’s ill, Alex. I think we should go back.”

  “Whoa,” Alex called to the two horses, pulling back on the reins. “Here we are.” He got down and went to Jess’s side of the wagon to help her down, but she was already on the ground. “You can see all of Warbrooke from here,” Alex said as he began to unhitch the horses.

  “Alex, it’s ten o’clock at night. I think we ought to return home. Don’t unhitch the horses.”

  Alex continued what he was doing. He thought that Jess might be a little, well, perhaps just a shade angry when she heard that her husband and the Raider were one and the same. Of course, there was no reason for her to be angry, but who knew about women? There was always the possibility that she’d be sensible and realize that what he’d done, he’d done for his country and to protect her.

  He attached an iron hobble to each horse. No, there was no remote possibility that she’d be sensible. It was much more likely that she’d be as unreasonable and difficult as she usually was.

  He grinned in the moonlight. Of course he’d be able to calm her down. He’d stroke her and caress her and—

  “Alex, what an odd little smile. Would you please tell me what it is that you came here to tell me, so we can get you home? This wet grass is going to ruin those new shoes of yours.”

  He slipped his arm about her shoulders. “Come over to the ridge and we’ll look at the view.”

  Jess was impatient. “Alex, I have seen Warbrooke at night all my life. I have seen it from this view hundreds of times. Wait! Alex, have you bought a new ship? Is that what you want to tell me?”

  He turned her toward him, his back to the village below. “Jessica, I came up here to tell you something much more important than that I bought a new ship.”

  “There’s a lugger for sale that we could use to—”

  He put his finger to her lips. “Just listen to me, Jessica. Let’s sit down here, so I can talk to you about men and women and trust and duty and honor.”

  “All right, but if your feet or anything else freezes—”

  “Sometimes people do things that they must. Perhaps to another person it may not seem to be something they had to do but—”

  Jessica’s mind began to wander, and as she half listened to Alex, she looked at the scene of the town below them. As she watched she saw moving torches. Someone must be unloading a ship at night, she thought.

  “…and we learn to forgive each other and accept each other in spite of what we might consider flaws and we…”

  Jess kept watching the scene below. The group of torches was moving faster now, away from the wharf. Frowning, she began to study the group harder. More torches were coming from down the streets.

  “…of course, you did start this, Jessica, and if it hadn’t been for you, much of this wouldn’t have happened. I’m not really angry with you, but I do want you to remember that when I tell you…”

  In the moonlight, Jessica began to see a moving form. She couldn’t at first make out who it was, but as it came in their direction, she saw it more clearly.

  Abruptly, she stood. “It’s him,” she gasped.

  Alex, still sitting, looked up at her. “Who is?”

  “The Raider. That crowd down there is chasing him!”

  With a knowing smile, Alex rose. “Jess, let me assure you that whoever they are chasing is not the Raider. It’s probably a stowaway who just came in or some other such—”

  “There!” she yelled, pointing into the trees. “There by the courthouse. It’s him I tell you and—oh, God—look, they have him blocked off.” She lifted her skirts and began running toward the horses. “I have to help him.”

  She’d never seen Alex move so quickly or even dreamed that he was capable of moving so fast. He ran up behind her, practically tore the black cape from her body, slung it over his own shoulders, then ran to the horses. He’d unhobbled a horse and mounted it bareback all in a split second, while Jess was still standing where she was.

  “Get back to the house,” Alex yelled at her as he galloped away, forcing the wagon horse to move faster than it ever had.

  Jessica was speechless. For a moment she couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. One moment Alex had been whining about love and patriotism and the next he had galloped away while wearing a black cape.

  Jess walked back to the ridge slowly, as if in a dream, and watched what was going on. She saw Alex tearing down the hillside and heading straight toward the crowd of torches, but then she lost him in the darkness. To her left she could barely see the movement of the Raider.

  “My two men,” she said with a sharply drawn breath. Both her men being pursued by an army of English soldiers.

  She caught sight o