by Rebecca King
“Who are the other two?” Morgan breathed into his ear.
“I have no idea, but they must be local,” Elias replied before turning his back. When he looked across the bar, he realised that the inn keeper had vanished.
Morgan nodded toward an open door behind the bar. “Do you think he has gone to fetch reinforcements?”
Elias hoped not. He and Morgan were going to be heavily outnumbered if the tavern’s patrons turned hostile. “It will be the mother of all battles,” he warned more to himself than to Morgan.
“Brace yourself,” Morgan whispered, watching Elias re-strap his gun to his hips. “Should we go and fetch our own reinforcements?”
“They are already on their way,” Elias replied. “But with the snow as bad as it is, God only knows when they will get here.”
“I told Al that it wasn’t a good idea for us to come here alone in this weather. It is going to be damned near impossible to escape if they chase us. We certainly won’t be able to hide. Damn it, we need reinforcements. I don’t want to die tonight.” Indeed, having only just met the love of his life, Morgan wanted to get home to Lucy. “Lucy would never forgive me.”
The nonsensical nature of his statement was droll enough to make Elias grin, but his good humour swiftly disappeared when the inn keeper returned and plonked a bottle of rum onto the bar with a bang so loud it sounded like gunfire. The inn keeper barked a price that was over-inflated, but Elias dropped a note onto the bar leaving the greedy highwayman in no doubt that his pathetic attempt to extort money from Elias was nothing that Elias was going to worry about. “I want change,” Elias warned when the inn keeper slid the large note toward him. He lifted a brow when the inn keeper scowled before ambling off to try to find the enough coins to give him change.
“What do you want to do about following them?” Morgan breathed with an imperceptible nod in the direction of the watchful highwaymen.
“Do you recognise the two newest members?” Elias asked before watching Morgan shake his head. “Then we follow them. The youngest is our weakest. So long as he isn’t staying with Rointon, there is no reason why we shouldn’t focus our efforts on him. He is going to talk to us once we get him behind bars.”
The heavy rattle of Elias’s change being slammed onto the counter by the annoyed inn keeper interrupted Elias’s and Morgan’s conversation. Elias swept the coins into his pocket but didn’t even bother to glance at the inn keeper as he swiped the bottle off the counter. He tugged the cork out of the bottle with his teeth and spat it across the bar before pouring himself and Morgan two tankards of the rich, ruby liquid.
“God, that tastes like dish water,” Morgan grumbled when he had taken a sip of the liquid and realised that it had a bitter aftertaste that tasted suspiciously like soil.
Elias took a tentative sip and immediately curled his lip. His face remained an implacable mask of civility as he placed his goblet onto the counter and beckoned the inn keeper over. The inn keeper levelled a searching look on his comrades in the corner of the room and received authorisation from the ringleader of the group before he reluctantly sidled closer.
When he was before him again, Elias grabbed the man by the shirt again. “Now get me what I paid for. A bottle of your finest rum that hasn’t been messed with or watered down by mop water. Understand? If you don’t, I am going to arrest you for thieving from customers. This is not what I paid for.” When Elias released the inn keeper, he shoved him so hard the inn keeper staggered backward and nearly fell over. The burly man’s fists clenched but he didn’t try to swing at him like Elias expected. Instead, after a dour look, the inn keeper disappeared into the back room again, but this time he didn’t come back out.
Morgan eyed the men in the corner of the room but suddenly became uneasy about how intently they were watching everything that was happening. “I think we need to leave,” he breathed to Elias.
Before either man could move though, a maid appeared. She smiled coquettishly at Elias and slid an unopened bottle of rum onto the counter. “Don’t mind the boss. He can be a little surly,” she drawled, her ample lips turned upward in what she believed was a winning smile.
Elias struggled not to curl his lip in distaste. “Thank you,” he muttered, but eyed the new bottle with curious disinterest. He didn’t want to touch it now but had paid for it, so wrestled the cork out of the bottle. By the time he was ready to pour the untainted liquid, an unusually helpful maid had slid two clean goblets onto the counter before him. Elias wondered what the woman was up to because she was the same maid who had literally thrown tankards of ale at the patrons beside the door when he and Morgan had arrived. Her now overly helpful interest in him was a little unnerving and the very last thing Elias wanted because he suspected she wanted something lurid from him.
When she placed a cold hand on his arm, Elias felt the small hairs on the back of his arm stand on end, but it had nothing to do with attraction. The urge to shake her off was strong. He looked her in the eye and knew from that coquettish smile exactly why she wanted his attention. She had seen his coins and saw him as a prospective customer so she could get those coins. But the thought of touching her made his skin crawl. She clearly expected her ample bosom, toothy grin, and sly look to be sexually attractive, though.
Elias lowered his arm, hoping she would get the hint and release him. A frown darkened his brow when she merely stood beside him with her hand still in place, as if laying a proprietary hand upon him put a claim on the contents of his coin purse – for her services of course.
“Not tonight,” Elias growled, forcibly removing her hand, and stepping away. He barely registered her scowl before he promptly turned his back, effectively blocking her protests.
“Better,” Morgan mused with satisfaction when he had risked a sip of the fresh rum. This new bottled tasted like rum should and left a warmth in his stomach that was eminently soothing.
“Damn,” Elias grumbled when he turned around to slide a curious look around the tavern and realised that while he had been distracted by the rum and the maid the highwaymen in the corner of the room had left. Elias wondered if that had been the maid’s ploy and muttered a curse. He watched Morgan toss back the contents of his goblet and swipe the bottle off the bar, but only so he could recork it.
“We may as well take this with us and go now,” Morgan muttered, now uninterested in anything more than going home to Lucy.
“Brace yourself,” Elias warned.
Together, the men turned to face the door. Their faces were grim because they knew that the highwaymen were probably waiting for them to leave so they could accost them on the street.
“Ready?” Morgan asked his colleague. For once, he almost dreaded stepping outside, and hoped his colleagues arrived in time to help them before too much blood was lost.
“Go for Rointon first,” Elias suggested.
“Are you going already?” the maid suddenly cried looking at Elias as if he had betrayed her.
Elias glared coldly at her but before he could reply she pushed his goblet of rum toward him. “Aren’t you going to finish your drink?” she slid a look at him under her brows that Elias thought made her look sinister.
The sultry smile she followed it with was nothing more than conniving to the point that Elias decided right there and then that he didn’t trust her either. However, he could see no reason why he should deprive himself of some rum, especially given what awaited him outside. Morgan shrugged as if agreeing to the idea. Together, the men turned to face the bar.
Aware of how eager Morgan was to return to Lucy, Elias downed the contents of his tankard. But the second that he slapped the empty receptacle back onto the bar, he knew there was something wrong with what he had just drunk. Rather than enjoying the pleasant slide of the silken liquid warming him from the inside like he expected, Elias felt sick. A bitter aftertaste lingered in his mouth that was a little like medicine.
Poison.
A sickening sense of doom settled over him.
“Morgan,” he growled instantly, staring blankly at the goblet while his life flashed before his eyes. Elias studied the young woman and read the open calculation in her eyes for what it was. She was ruthless, spiteful, and intended to hurt him. For the first time in his entire life, Elias felt true fear, and of a woman no less. He had no idea what he had just drunk but knew that it was going to kill him.
Was it poison? Arsenic? How long was it going to take? If he died, would Morgan be able to get out of the tavern alive by himself? Elias looked dully at his friend and felt his stomach begin to burn to the point that he wondered if he was going to be sick. “Morgan,” he mumbled, suddenly struggling to form words. “We have to get out of here. Now. Get out. Get hidden.”
“What’s wrong?” Morgan read the look on Elias’s face and immediately stepped toward him but then realised that the entire tavern had fallen quiet. A sinister malevolence now hung in the air that was alarming.
Elias turned to look at the other patrons and instinctively reached for his gun only to realise that it was no longer on his hip. It had gone. He glared at the barmaid, but she smiled sultrily at him, completely undeterred by her theft and his anger.
“Why don’t you come upstairs with me?” she drawled suggestively, stepping forward to wedge herself beneath his heavy arm.
Elias couldn’t summon the energy to push her away. He wanted to. He tried to, but his arm wouldn’t move the way he wanted it to. He couldn’t voice his objection either, not in the vehement way he wanted to, because his lips were numb too.
“I am not interested,” Elias forced out through teeth that were suddenly clenched with determination. He scowled deeply when he realised that the words came out as a slur of noise that was indistinguishable. He sounded drunk, but he wasn’t.
“Elias,” Morgan grunted when he turned to look at his friend only for the room to start to swirl. The walls almost seemed to tip toward him while the bar reared up like a leopard pouncing on its prey. He reached out and clutched the wood to steady himself while he tried to understand what had gone wrong.
As one minute turned into two, Elias became more removed from the world around him. The shadows in the corner of the room seemed to grow darker and reach out to touch him as if trying to consume him. The silence of the tavern was unusual, broken only by a dull ringing in his ears that grew louder with each passing moment. He felt sick, dizzy, as if his body were no longer his.
“M-morgan,” Elias whispered but when he looked at his colleague saw that Morgan was staring blankly at the floor as if also in a confused stupor.
To his alarm, the maid slid a seductive hand up his chest. Elias wanted to push her away but when he tried to lift his arm could get no further than placing his palm over hers. To Morgan, it looked like Elias was accepting the whore’s persistent offers. Morgan opened his mouth to object, to warn his colleague that they had work to do, but the words wouldn’t leave his lips. His concern grew when Elias was tugged and coaxed into the hallway behind the bar, and almost pushed up the back stairs.
“Let him go,” Morgan growled when it became evident that something was wrong with Elias, who stumbled on the stairs and was pushed upright by the inn keeper following him. “Elias,” Morgan called only to realise that his voice was just a whisper.
Morgan reached out to swipe Elias’s goblet off the bar but only so he could sniff suspiciously at its contents. Before he could identify what the strange odour of the liquid was, pain exploded in the back of his head and the world went black.
The only sound that could be heard in the bar then was the heavy thud of his body hitting the floor.
“Damn it,” Elias cursed when he heard that dull thud and looked through the open door leading to the tavern only to find that Morgan had disappeared. Despite the darkness that was swirling around him, Elias reached for the second gun that everyone had apparently forgotten. He dug deep for every ounce of self-control he possessed and forced himself to touch it but wondered if he had the strength to lift it or use it even if he could get it out of its holster. Even his fingers were difficult to move now.
“You need to come upstairs with me, darlin’. You will feel better when you lie down for a bit,” the maid assured him seductively.
But the hardened tone of her voice warned Elias that if he went upstairs with her, he wasn’t likely to come back down again – alive in any case.
“I am not interested,” Elias snarled, wondering if Morgan had gone outside. He had to find him. He had to locate his friend. Elias knew that if he didn’t then neither of them were going to be alive by the time dawn lit the sky again.
“Oh, you will,” the young maid announced firmly, forcibly propelling him up the remaining stairs until they reached the upper landing.
“Whatever you think you are doing isn’t going to work,” Elias warned through lips that he struggled to move. Strangely, he was struck by the realisation that although the rest of him was hard to control, his feet could still move even though he didn’t want them to. “We are Star Elite. Kill us and you will be the most hunted criminals in England.”
“We are not going to kill you,” Carolann chided gently, sliding an indefinable look at the inn keeper hovering behind Elias. Despite her assurance, she spoke in a tone that had a hardened edge to it that matched her eyes. “I am just going to have some fun with you.”
“The boss didn’t give you permission for any of that,” Alfred huffed, knowing what the sly look on Carolann’s face meant.
“Why not?” Carolann shrugged. “What other chance will I have to say that I bedded one of the Star Elite?”
The inn keeper grinned toothlessly at her but shook his head. “The boss will have a fit if he finds out.”
“How will he know?” Carolann shrugged. “Besides, I have to have some reward.”
Alfred didn’t take long to consider this and eventually shrugged. “Go on then, but he doesn’t look able to offer you much from the looks of him. You had better be quick too. Maybe we can kill them both, eh? That should make the boss happy.”
“Morgan,” Elias moaned, listening to them with a growing sense of deep distress that was heightened by the sheer frustration of not being able to speak properly.
“You are coming with me,” the maid informed Elias before dismissively announcing: “Don’t worry about your friend. There is nothing you can do to help him now.”
“What?” Elias forced himself to focus on the young woman, who propelled him along a dark hallway and into a dimly lit bed chamber with Alfred’s help.
“He has gone. Just focus on me.”
“Gone?” Elias began to shake. He stared at the young woman who shoved the inn keeper out of the door before closing it firmly and rounding on him.
Elias remained frozen to the spot and refused to even touch the woman who plastered herself to his chest and placed a kiss onto his lips that was slippery and forceful. Her fingers worked frantically on the laces of his shirt, which she tugged determinedly out of his breeches while shoving him backward toward the wide bed located in the centre of the small square room. Elias gritted his teeth against her when he felt the persistent probing of her tongue. It took effort, but he forced himself to at least try to push her away, but his hands managed to get no further than her waist.
The second the woman felt him touch her, she seemed to consider it his acquiescence and redoubled her efforts to yank his shirt off before turning her attention to his boots and breeches.
“Where in the Hell is he going?” Al demanded when he stepped into the busy tavern and saw Elias disappearing upstairs with one of the tavern’s whores.
“Where do you think?” a patron seated beside the door drawled with a wolfish grin.
“Is that-” Al tried not to call the woman a whore but that was what she was. He knew she was.
“Where is the man he was with?” Reuben demanded, scowling at the other patrons in the busy tap room. None of them should even be in the tavern much less engaging the services of
whores.
The customer blinked at him. “What?”
“That man wasn’t in here alone.” Al knew that Morgan and Elias would never split up.
“No, he was with her,” the customer muttered before turning his attention to his ale, seemingly losing interest in the conversation.
“Where has his friend gone?” Al demanded dourly.
The customer sighed heavily and glared at them. “What friend? There was nobody with him.”
Reuben and Al scowled at each other because they knew that Elias and Morgan were coming to the recently opened tavern to investigate the highwaymen’s old meeting place. It was highly unlikely that either man would leave the establishment and not return to the temporary safe house the Star Elite were using on the outskirts of Mivverford. Further, Morgan and Elias knew that Reuben and Al were supposed to meet them in the village. If they needed help, or were moving somewhere else, they would have waited and told Al and Reuben where they were going before they left so Al and Reuben knew that they were alone in the village too.
“Something odd is going on,” Reuben breathed when Al joined him beside the bar, inadvertently standing in almost the exact same place as Elias and Morgan had stood in moments earlier.
“I don’t like it,” Al muttered.
While on the surface, everything in the tavern looked calm and ordinary, the odd customers made both of the Star Elite men watchful and wary. It might have been that there wasn’t an ordinary mix of customers in the tavern. It might have been the wary looks the customers shared, or the fact that the patrons didn’t appear to be talking but merely watching and drinking as if waiting for something to happen.
Or hiding something.
The tense atmosphere that hung like a deathly pall over the entire room made Al start to wonder if they were all involved with the highwaymen’s thieving. That being the case, the Star Elite now had over thirty men to arrest. Given how many men were in the tavern, it was hard to believe that all of them were involved in the highwaymen’s crimes, but it was the only explanation Al could come up with for why they were all glaring at him and Reuben as if they were despised and unwelcome in the tavern.