The Captain's Kidnapped Beauty

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It was several minutes before Charlotte realised she was not being taken to Piccadilly.

The chairmen had turned down a dark alley and were trotting at a pace that was bone-shaking. She put her head outside and commanded them to stop. They ignored her; if anything their pace increased. She shouted at them again, but it soon became evident that they had no intention of obeying her. Now she was very frightened indeed. Where were they taking her? And why?

Captain Carstairs’s warning came to her mind. She was being kidnapped!

After several more minutes they stopped outside a dilapidated tenement and let down the chair. She hurried to open the door and escape. But they had anticipated that and grabbed her arms and dragged her, protesting loudly, into the building, along a corridor which was as dark as pitch, and into a candlelit room.

A woman rose from a chair to face them. ‘You got her, then?’

‘We did, Molly, we did. ‘Twas as easy as winking, though she made a deal of noise.’

He was a big man, with a weather-beaten face, a moulting bag wig and bad teeth. He was also the man who had grabbed her bridle in Hyde Park. Captain Carstairs had been right in saying they might try again. Oh, how she wished she had listened to him …

This is number five in my Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club series, in which club members solve crimes in Georgian society. Previously I have featured murder, deception, coining and smuggling. This one explores kidnapping—but it is an unusual kidnapping, which involves sailing the high seas. Captain Alexander Carstairs, recently elevated to Marquis of Foxlees, being a Master Mariner, is just the man for the job.

The ‘kidnapped beauty’ is the daughter of a coachmaker. It was fun researching the coachmaking business, which was once very lucrative; the best coachmakers would have been multimillionaires in today’s terms. Anyone who was anyone needed a coach or carriage to get about, and the richest had more than one—just as today’s millionaires will have several different cars.

Henry Gilpin, father of my heroine, has become exceedingly wealthy in the coachmaking trade. The trouble is that it is trade—and tradesmen were not admitted to the society of the nobility. He is doing his best to find his daughter a titled husband when she is kidnapped.

I would like to acknowledge the help of Clive Gilbert, Chairman of The British Society of Portugal, in researching this book.

About the Author

Born in Singapore, MARY NICHOLS came to England when she was three, and has spent most of her life in different parts of East Anglia. She has been a radiographer, school secretary, information officer and industrial editor, as well as a writer. She has three grown-up children, and four grandchildren.

Previous novels by the same author:

RAGS-TO-RICHES BRIDE

THE EARL AND THE HOYDEN

CLAIMING THE ASHBROOKE HEIR

(part of The Secret Baby Bargain)

HONOURABLE DOCTOR, IMPROPER ARRANGEMENT

THE CAPTAIN’S MYSTERIOUS LADY*

THE VISCOUNT’S UNCONVENTIONAL BRIDE*

LORD PORTMAN’S TROUBLESOME WIFE*

SIR ASHLEY’S METTLESOME MATCH*

WINNING THE WAR HERO’S HEART

*The Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club mini-series

And in Mills & Boon®:

WITH VICTORIA’S BLESSING

(part of Royal Weddings Through the Ages)

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Captain’s

Kidnapped

Beauty

Mary Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

1765

The regular meeting of the Society for the Discovery and Apprehending of Criminals, popularly known as the Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club, was drawing to its close. Led by James, Lord Drymore, they were all gentlemen of independent means dedicated to promoting law and order in a notoriously lawless society. Some called them thieftakers, but it was a soubriquet they rejected only because of its unsavoury connotations. In general thieftakers were nearly all as corrupt as the criminals they brought to justice, but the members of the Piccadilly Gentleman’s Club were not like that and refused payment for their services.

Today each had reported on the case on which they were working. Jonathan, Viscount Leinster, was trying to trace two notorious highwaymen who had escaped from prison while awaiting trial and not having much luck. Harry, Lord Portman’s particular interest was counterfeit coiners and he often went in disguise to the rookeries of the capital in search of information, though to look at him, you would hardly believe it; he was the epitome of a dandified man about town. Ashley, Lord Cadogan, was chasing smugglers with the help of his brother-in-law, Ben Kingslake, and Captain Alexander Carstairs had just returned a kidnap victim safe and sound to her distraught parents without it having cost them a penny in ransom money. James himself was tied up with their sponsor, Lord Trentham, a Minister of the Crown, in maintaining law and order in an increasingly disgruntled populace.

‘Allow me to offer condolences on the loss of your uncle and cousin,’ James said to Alex as they prepared to disperse. ‘To lose both together was a double tragedy.’

‘And felicitations on your elevation to the peerage,’ Harry added. ‘Marquis of Foxlees, no less.’

‘Thank you,’ Alex said. ‘It was a great shock and I have hardly had time to gather my wits. A peerage is something I never expected and I’m not at all sure I like the idea.’

‘The same thing happened to me,’ Ash said. ‘My cousin was the heir and he died out in India and his father, my uncle, soon afterwards. It was an upheaval adjusting to it and just before my wedding, too.’

‘At least I don’t have a bride waiting for me,’ Alex said.

‘That will soon be remedied, my friend,’ Harry said, flicking a speck of dust from his immaculate sleeve. ‘Sooner or later, everyone in the Piccadilly Gentleman’s Club succumbs to falling in love.’

‘Not me. I will have my hands full sorting out my uncle’s affairs. It is just as well I have no case on hand at the moment.’

‘That, too, can be remedied,’ Jonathan put in.

‘I think we can allow Alex a short respite to sort out his affairs,’ James said with a smile.

They stood up, replaced hats on heads and headed from the room in Lord Trentham’s house where they held their meetings and emerged on to the busy thoroughfare of Piccadilly, where they went their separate ways.

Alex set off on foot to Long Acre because he wanted to hire a carriage to carry him to Norfolk and his newly inherited estate. He had not visited it in years, mainly because his uncle and cousin were so rarely there. They were seafarers, just as he was, just as his late father had been and his father before him. His uncle, his father’s older brother, had bought Foxlees Manor when his wife had decided, after a half a lifetime of following him all over the globe, that she had had enough of travelling and living in hot, uncomfortable places and wanted to stay at home.

That did not mean his uncle had given up his voyaging; the sea was in his blood and, being captain of an East Indiaman, he found it a lucrative business. He simply came home at the end of every voyage to spend a little time with his wife and their son, Harold, until Harold himself became a seaman and followed in his father’s footsteps. The marchioness had died soon afterwards and his uncle and cousin rarely visited Foxlees Manor after her demise. When not at sea they lived in their town house on Mount Street.

They had both been lost when their ship foundered in a storm while rounding the Cape of Good Hope and so Alex found himself a Marquis and owner of the Mount Street house and the Foxlees estate. It was something he had neither expected nor wanted, but he admitted the town house was a great deal better than the bachelor apartments he had hitherto occupied.

He enjoyed his life as Captain Alexander Carstairs, member of the Piccadilly Gentleman’s Club; it fulfilled his sense of adventure at the same time as he was doing some good in society. He had a full social life and many friends—what more could a man ask? But with his elevation to the peerage and the acquisition of an estate came responsibilities and these he could not shirk.

He emerged from Newport Street and crossed the road into Long Acre, looking for the coachmaking premises of Henry Gilpin.

‘The Earl of Falsham has failed to pay his interest again this month, Papa,’ Charlotte said, looking up from the ledgers on which she was working. ‘Last time I wrote to remind him, I warned him that if we did not receive at least some of what was owed, we would take him to court. He did not even favour us with a reply.’

The Earl had bought two carriages two years previously, a splendid town chariot for two hundred and ninety pounds and a phaeton for seventy-two pounds, borrowing the money from her father to pay for it. For the first six months he had diligently paid the five per cent interest on the loan, but since then nothing at all. Charlotte, who kept her father’s books, had written every month on behalf of the company to remind him, but the Earl had ignored her letters.

Henry Gilpin sighed. ‘You know how I hate taking customers to court,’ he said. ‘It ruins their reputation. As soon as news of the case gets out, every dunner in the country beats a path to their door. Let’s not forget that the Earl did introduce me to his cousin and he pays promptly.’

‘I am persuaded his lordship is counting on you remembering that.’

Henry chuckled. ‘No doubt you are right. Send the Earl another stiff letter. Give him seven days to reply and if he does not, then court it shall be.’

It was not that Henry Gilpin was in need of the money—he was one of the richest men in the kingdom—but his wealth was built on sound business practice and allowing bad debts to accumulate was not one of them. He did not in the least mind people owing him money so long as they paid the interest. To make sure of that he always insisted his debtors take out a bond for double what they owed in the event they reneged. The bond was backed by their assets which could, and sometimes did, include their estates.

Charlotte looked up from the desk at which she was working and looked about her. The Long Acre premises had been much enlarged over the years and were now big enough to house the whole coachmaking business, a workshop for the construction of the undercarriages, another for the body, one for the wheelwright, furnaces for the metal working, paint shops, leather shops, design rooms and offices, huge stores for the timber: mahogany, pine, birch and deal; racks of cloth and lace for the interiors—everything necessary for constructing coaches of every description. And in each department there were men to do the work, two hundred of them.

Charlotte was the only woman and she had had to plead with her father to allow her to work there. He had no son and she was his only child, so one day she would own it all. She needed to know how it operated and she loved the cut and thrust of business, the smell of varnish, paint and hot metal, loved watching the new coaches taking shape under the skilful hands of their operatives and derived huge satisfaction from the pleasure of their customers for a job well done. Since her mother had died, it had become her father’s whole life and hers, too. Not for her the round of meaningless social gatherings intended to unite eligible young men with suitable brides.

‘But you do not need to concern yourself with it,’ her father had told her when she first broached the subject of working at Long Acre with him. ‘One day you will marry and your husband will take over.’

‘I may not marry.’

‘Of course you will. You are a considerable heiress and that alone would secure you a bridegroom, even if you were not so lovely.’

‘Lovely, Papa?’ she queried.

‘Of course you are. You are the image of your dear mother, God rest her. You can afford to be particular. A title, naturally, and the higher the better. I do not have a son to make into a gentleman, but I am determined you will be a lady.’

‘If I am not already a lady, then what am I?’ she had demanded with a teasing smile. ‘An hermaphrodite?’

‘Do not be silly. You are a lady, do not doubt it, but I meant a titled lady, a countess, a viscountess or a baroness at the very least. I may be able to mix with the best in the land and you may be admitted to every drawing room in town, if you would only take the trouble, but it doesn’t make us gentry. That is something for the next generation.’

‘Hold hard, Papa.’ She had laughed. ‘I am not yet married. And supposing I don’t fancy any of the eligible titles? I might fall in love with a man of the middling sort, a businessman like yourself, someone I can respect.’

‘Bah!’ he had said. ‘Falling in love is an overrated pastime and does not guarantee happiness, quite often the reverse. If you must fall in love, then make sure he is worthy of you. A title he will have, even if I have to buy one for him, though I’d as lief he came with a respected family history.’

‘I might decide I would rather stay single and keep my independence. You need someone to help you run the business and that is what I most like to do. I should hate to see it ruined by a profligate son-in-law who does not understand how important it is.’

‘Then you must make your choice carefully. I will not always be here to guide you.’

‘Papa, let us have no more of that. You are good for years and years yet.’

He had given in and allowed her to accompany him from their mansion in Piccadilly to Long Acre every day to assist the accountant with the book-keeping, a task which gave her a great deal of satisfaction. It was better than sitting at home looking decorative, reading, sewing or paying calls and listening to the latest scandals. And it gave her an insight into how the business was managed. If she had her way, she would do much more.

Their discussion about the Earl’s debt was interrupted by a shout and a resounding crash coming from the main workroom. They both dashed out from the office to see what was amiss.

Joe Smithson was lying at the bottom of the stairs to the upper floor and was struggling to rise. The stairs were wide and had a detachable banister because the coach bodies were constructed on the first floor and they were let down with ropes when complete and it was this task which had been occupying him when he fell. Charlotte had once said that the workrooms should be rearranged in order to construct the bodies on the ground floor, but her father had pointed out that to do that the metal workers, decorators and the upholsterers and all the other ancillary workers would have to be moved upstairs and how could they do their work if the coach on which they needed to work was downstairs? She was obliged to admit the logic of his argument. There was a completed shell of a town chariot on the upper workshop floor and Joe had been readying it for its descent to the ground which had meant removing the banister.

Charlotte and her father dashed forwards but someone beat them to it, a tall stranger who had come in from the street and reached Joe a fraction of a second before they did. He bent down and put his hand on Joe’s shoulder to stop him struggling to rise. ‘Be still, man,’ he said. ‘We need to know what damage is done before we get you to your feet.’

‘Yes, Joe, keep still,’ Charlotte said, as other workers crowded round them. ‘We will send for a doctor.’

‘Miss Charlotte, there’s no need for that,’ Joe said. ‘I’m not badly hurt, just shook up a bit. I’ll be right as ninepence when I’ve got me breath back.’

The stranger squatted down beside Joe and began feeling along his arms and legs. When he reached Joe’s left ankle the young man winced. ‘I am sure it is not broken,’ he told Henry who hovered nearby. ‘But if I were you I should send for the sawbones to be sure.’ He put Joe’s arms about his neck and hauled him to a standing position, then flung him over his shoulder. ‘Where shall I take him?’

‘Into the office,’ Henry said, leading the way. Charlotte sent the messenger boy for the doctor and the rest of the workforce back about their business before following.

She found Joe deposited in a chair, her father fussing round him and the stranger dusting down his coat. He looked up as Charlotte entered.

She was struck by his looks. She was not particularly short, but he overtopped her by a head at least. His complexion was tanned and there were wrinkles each side of his eyes as if he had spent hours out of doors, peering into the weather. A mariner, she surmised, and this was confirmed when he bowed to her.

‘Captain Alexander Carstairs, at your service, ma’am,’ he said, sweeping her a leg, a very elegant leg, she noticed.

‘I thank you for your assistance, Captain. It was lucky you were passing.’

‘I was not passing, I was heading here and just entering when the young man fell. It is surely dangerous to have stairs with no handrail?’

Henry started to explain the need for it, which made the Captain turn towards him and that gave Charlotte an opportunity to study him more closely. He was wearing a dark blue kerseymere suit of clothes, very plain but superbly tailored, a long pale blue waistcoat with large pockets and silver buttons, a white shirt and a neatly tied white muslin cravat. His stockings were white and his shoes had silver buckles. Besides being very tall, he was broad of shoulder and slim of hip. His hands were strong and capable. Her gaze travelled upwards. His dark hair was his own, worn long and tied back with a narrow black ribbon. He was most certainly not a fop. He turned back to her again and her breath caught in her throat. He had the most penetrating eyes, neither green nor brown but something in between, and they seemed to be looking right inside her, as if her skin and flesh were transparent and he could see secrets about her she had never even been aware of.

‘My daughter, Miss Gilpin,’ Henry said, waving a hand in her direction. ‘She likes to come and see her old father at work sometimes.’

Alex bowed to her again. ‘Miss Gilpin, how do you do?’

‘Well, thank you, Captain,’ she answered, resolving to have words with her father about the condescending way he had presented her. Likes to visit her old father, indeed! ‘How can we help you?’

‘I need to drive into the country and came to hire a carriage for the purpose.’

‘I am sure we can accommodate you.’ She held his eyes with her own, letting him know she was not the insignificant daughter her father would have him believe and that she was part of the workforce, but it took all her self-control. Being businesslike when one’s heart was definitely not behaving in a businesslike manner, but skipping and jumping about, was difficult. ‘What had you in mind?’

The doctor arrived before he could answer and as the room was not large enough for everyone, Charlotte led the Captain back into the main workshop so that her father could deal with the doctor. He hesitated, taking a look at Henry who was watching the doctor examine Joe, before deciding to follow her.

‘Now,’ she said, turning to face him, once more in command of herself. ‘Tell me, what do you have in mind?’

‘Do you not think we should wait for your father to join us?’

‘No. Do you suppose I am not capable of conducting the simple business of hiring out a coach?’ It was said with some asperity and served to disperse her last lingering discomposure.

‘Well …’ he began and then hesitated as her eyes challenged him.

‘I am a female and therefore useless, is that what you were about to point out to me?’

‘Oh, most definitely you are female—as to being useless, that I could not say.’ Now there was a teasing look in his eyes and it was most disconcerting. Was he laughing at her? She did not care for that at all.

‘Nevertheless,’ she told him. ‘I have been running about these workshops ever since I learned to walk and I also keep the books, so you can trust me to know what I am about. Tell me about the journey you wish to make. How far? Are you in some haste? What will the roads be like, smooth or rough? Do you go alone or will you have passengers and much luggage?’

‘You need to know a great deal considering all I came to do is hire a coach to take me to Norfolk.’

‘Ah, that has answered one of my questions,’ she said with a smile meant to disarm him, which it very nearly did. ‘And probably a second. I believe the roads to that part of the country are devilishly bad.’

‘Touché.’ He returned her smile with one of his own. It softened his features and she realised suddenly that the lines on his face had not all been made by wind and weather, some were laughter lines. The erratic heartbeats began all over again. She took a deep breath to steady herself.

‘Do you need a large conveyance for passengers and luggage, which will be slower, or something lighter to carry you swiftly?’

‘I might have a passenger for part of the way,’ he said. ‘And little luggage, but as you so rightly pointed out, the roads to Norfolk, once away from the capital, are dreadful, so the vehicle will need to be sturdy enough to withstand the jolting if we are to travel at speed.’

‘And do you intend to make just one journey or will you be coming backwards and forwards to the capital?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘If you hire a coach, you will need to return it by the arranged time and hiring over a long period will be more costly than buying an equipage. We have several second-hand coaches for sale, which I can show you or, if you are not in a hurry, we can construct one to your own specification. We can also supply you with horses.’

‘Do not tell me you are an expert on horseflesh as well,’ he said, laughing.

‘I know a good horse when I see one.’

‘And no doubt you are a bruising rider, to boot.’

She let that pass without comment. ‘There is a very good chaise in the yard, taken in part exchange for a newer model, which might very well suit you. Shall you take a look?’

‘Yes, I might as well see what you have to offer while we are waiting for Mr Gilpin to join us.’

She was annoyed by his attitude, but it was not the first time and she did not suppose it would be the last when customers treated her with condescension as if she were just out of the schoolroom and needed humouring. She was twenty-two years old; many ladies of her acquaintance had been married for years at that age and already had a brood of children. It was the only thing she regretted about her single state, she could not be a mother.

She conducted him outside, crossed the yard which had standing for a least a dozen coaches, and into another building, a vast barn-like area which contained a host of vehicles: town coaches, travelling coaches, phaetons, landaus and landaulets, gigs and tilburys. There was even a magnificent berline. Some were plain, some highly decorated, but all bore the hallmark of the Gilpin works, meticulously finished and polished.