Read Online Alissa Baxter by The Dashing Debutante - Free Book Online

moment, wondering if she should return home for breakfast. Even though her stomach was rumbling loudly, she decided to walk down the hill to the stone wall that was the eastern boundary of the estate first, before returning home. She reached the wall and leaned her arms against it, sighing deeply as she looked at the surrounding meadowlands, hardly feeling the rough stone that was digging into her elbows.
    Sheltered by a spinney on the one side and a wood on the other, the soft countryside looked peaceful and still in the early morning light. Several sheep grazed in the distance, and nearby a brook gurgled happily on its way. Alexandra spotted a pretty blue kingfisher perched on a low-hanging willow branch at the brook’s side, and for a moment she forgot her troubles as she watched the bird swoop down to seize its prey from the moist earth. But as the kingfisher flew away, her thoughts turned once again to her problems. It wasn’t often that the peaceful sights and sounds of the countryside failed to have a consoling effect on her, but today not even Nature could soothe her downcast spirits. She was tired and frustrated by what she saw as her fruitless efforts to help the peasantry. Because, although she often gave them food and money, she was well aware that this was only a temporary measure of relief. What were really needed, she reflected, were dramatic reforms that would enable the peasants to become more self-sufficient, and less reliant on charitable handouts. But with the landowners in the surrounding area being so reluctant to implement reforms, the chances of things changing for the better in the near future were minimal.
    Her thoughts returned to Mrs Smith’s predicament, and suddenly her resolve hardened. Even if Ben refused to help her, she would do what she could to help the poor widow, she decided, and if that meant undertaking a robbery on her own, then that was what she would simply have to do.
    Alexandra pushed herself away from the wall and began to walk up the hill to the Manor. She was rather nervous at the prospect of undertaking a highway robbery on her own, but knew that there must be some way that she could carry it out. She frowned as she considered the finer details of her plan, and decided that the best thing she could do was to take a suitable saddle from the stables, and carry it with her to a secluded copse she knew of that was situated a little distance from the road when she went riding this morning. There she could change into her disguise and replace her side-saddle with the ordinary saddle, before riding closer to the road and remaining hidden there until a likely victim came along. After the robbery, she would return to the copse, change back into her riding habit, exchange saddles, and ride home again, with no one the wiser. The plan was a trifle risky, Alexandra admitted to herself, but if she was very careful, she thought there was a reasonable chance of its being successful.
    The only thing that concerned her about undertaking this final robbery was her conviction that Robert Chanderly had somehow guessed her secret. Rationally speaking, she knew that there was no real reason why he should have guessed anything, but she could not rid herself of the uneasy feeling that he suspected her. Perhaps it had something to do with that disturbing way he had of looking at her, she thought — as if he were intent on reading her very soul. Taking a deep breath, Alexandra decided to put him from her mind. Robert Chanderly could never conclusively prove that she was a highwayman so for her to continue worrying about him in this manner was not only fruitless, it was also ridiculous, she chastened herself.
    Alexandra entered the front door of the Manor, and smiled in response to Higgins’s greeting, before hurrying upstairs to her bedchamber to wash her hands. A few minutes later she made her way down to the Breakfast Parlour and joined her brother at the table. Studying Alexandra’s rather pale