No Other Love by Candace Camp Page B

my carriage last night, you know.”
    “No!” Mrs. Hinton set down her cup with a clatter, looking genuinely shocked. “Now, he hadn’t ought to have done that, Miss Falcourt. Not to you. I mean, it’s one thing when it’s his—” She stopped abruptly, then added lamely, “Well, there’s no call to be stopping a lady like yerself.”
    Nicola smiled faintly. “If you are worrying that I might tell the Earl anything you say to me, you needn’t. Exmoor and I are not on the best of terms.”
    “It’s clear you haven’t visited them before all these years…” Lydia admitted. “But blood is thicker than water, they say—”
    “Exmoor and I share no blood!” Nicola snapped, her gray eyes suddenly silver with emotion. “My sister’s foolish decision to marry the man does not bind me to him in any way. I think you know me well enough to know that I have no interest in hurting anyone. Did I ask how young Harry got shotgun pellets in his thigh last month when it was clear as day that he must have been poaching? Did I tell Lord Buckminster or his gamekeeper that I had given him salve after his father had dug out the pellets and left him with a raging infection? I did not. I put it on and bound him up and never said a word to anyone. And Bucky is my dear cousin—if I did not tell him, you can be sure I would never reveal anything detrimental to Lord Exmoor, whom I despise.”
    Lydia flushed. “It’s that sorry I am, miss. I know you wouldn’t be tellin’ on anyone. It was just, well, you know, you are livin’ at Tidings now, and your sister is his lady.”
    “I know.” Nicola smiled at her. She understood the woman’s innate distrust of a member of the aristocracy. No matter how well one might get along with the common people, there was always the possibility that, when it came to something important, one would revert, would come down on the side of one’s “own kind.” “But I’ll tell you this: even though he robbed me, I did not give a good description of him to the Bow Street Runner.”
    “Runner!” the other cried, alarmed.
    Nicola nodded. “Yes. The Earl has hired a Runner to investigate the highwayman and his gang. His name is Stone, and I talked to him this morning. He looks a hard man. I did not like him.”
    The other woman shook her head. “The Gentleman shouldn’t be taking such risks. I knew he’d go too far one day and his lordship would go after him. The Earl’s not a man to be crossin’, is what I say.”
    “No doubt you are right about that,” Nicola agreed. “You sound as if—do you know this man? Have you met him?”
    Lydia shifted in her chair, looking uneasy. “I don’t know him, exactly. I’ve, uh, well, he’s known around here.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Lydia sighed, then straightened, looking Nicola in the eye. “He is liked, miss, that’s what I’m sayin’. He’s done things for people. He helps them out.”
    “You mean gives them money?”
    Lydia nodded. “Aye, he does. You know Ernest Macken, miss. He’s got a wife and five little ones, and he’s worked in the tin mines all his life. Well, he come up sick and couldn’t go to work for weeks. His lordship let him go, and he owns the house they live in, too, miss, and he was ready to turn them out ‘cause they couldn’t keep up the rent with Ernest not workin’. But one night they hear a thump at the door, and Jenny, she gets up and goes to the door, and there’s a sack lyin’ there, and when she looks inside, it’s got coins in it. Enough to pay their rent for six months and buy food and clothes, too.”
    “And it was the highwayman who gave it to them? How do they know?”
    “Who else? There’s none around here that has that much money to hand, except for the Earl or the Squire or Lord Buckminster, and none of them were riding about at night droppin’ off sacks of coin.”
    “No, I am sure you are right.”
    “It has happened to others, too. Some more, some less. Faith Burkitt, when