by Daria Vernon
“What do you make of that?” he asked.
“Of what?”
Rhys squinted, as if trying to shake off a trick of the darkness. No, it was real. He was certain he saw a figure struggling between the horses and the felled tree. Shapeless as an inkblot. A cloak, a large one, was draped on a figure that twisted and writhed within it—trying to detangle from something.
“There.” Rhys pointed.
Harry sucked in his breath when he saw it. “Is it . . . is that a lady?”
Rhys turned Harry by his shoulders and gave him a gentle shove.
“Go see about it.”
Rhys lifted his hat just high enough to drag a gloved wrist across the sweat of his brow. Despite the cold, the excitement of this mess had made the insides of his greatcoat feel downright Mediterranean.
He fiddled with his cuffs, trying to ignore the ball of regret that dropped into his stomach like a stone as soon as he’d sent Harry to investigate. They should just get out of there. Just leave. The uncommon coldness. The unexpected shot fired. The runaways. And now this. He should have let it be. But he couldn’t do that, could he? This was who he was. This sort of thing was the way he damned himself and all those around him.
A voice rose up near the carriage, spewing vigorous objections—a woman’s voice.
The staggering footfalls of his cronies grew louder behind him.
“Captain, they’re—”
“Lionel, did you actually look inside the compartment before you got a ball through your sleeve?” asked Rhys.
“I didn’t—how’s that my fault?!”
Rhys stepped away from Lionel and Solomon. As useful as billy goats, the both of them. Crossing his hands in front of him, he waited for the delivery of the remaining traveler.
“What are we waiting for?” asked the typically silent Solomon.
What indeed. The curiosity that was already making a stew of his thoughts began to boil as he saw Harry emerge from beyond the carriage, guiding a woman at the elbow and holding his lantern aloft with the other hand.
“Holy mother o’—”
“Be quiet.” Among other vile qualities, Lionel could be a lech. Rhys had no intention of letting him talk to her.
A grim-faced Harry deposited the lady in front of him. The boy withdrew his hand from her as though she burned him.
Her hood had fallen, and the blue moonlight made her face glisten like a pearl as she set her stern, dark eyes on Rhys. Tendrils of brown hair flopped down into her face, lending her a feral look. It belied what she really was—just another pretty toff.
Rhys took her in, curiosity tightening on his temples like a vise.
Unmoving eyes. A nose, pink from the cold. A white stock at the top of her dark traveling habit. A cape, askew from her shoulder. Chest heaving with exertion and possibly—fear, he realized. Then her hands, which were—
“Harry, was it necessary to tie her?”
“I didn’t, Captain. I found her as such.”
Rhys lifted her hands to investigate, and she did not so much as flinch. He ran a finger along the strips of fraying fabric, sloppily tied. A small shiver charged through his wrists. Her hands were so cold that he could feel it through the leather of his gloves. He took her hands between his.
Her eyes darted up, even more piercing than before. As she breathed in and out against the hair fallen in her face, he resisted the urge to clear it away. She slid her hands from his.
“You meanin’ to tell me that she was in there the whole time? Not possib—” Rhys put up a hand and gave a warning look to Lionel, who miraculously held the rest of his opinion.
“What’s your name?”
“Need we be acquainted for you to rob me sufficiently?”
And here he’d thought her afraid. A rueful smile tugged at his lip, behind the scarf that concealed him.
“Not typically.” He shrugged. “But then, I don’t often come across marks who are already tied up, and it makes me wonder why.”
She broke her gaze and scoffed before turning back.
“I just thought I’d make myself as convenient as possible. Now, are you going to liberate me of my belongings, or shall I call for tea while I wait?”
A coarse and ugly “Ha!” pierced into the pause between them. “I agree with the lady,” said Lionel. “Let’s get on wit’it.”
“This explains all the pretty things in the chest,” said Harry.
A shiver racked the poor girl but she didn’t break her straight-backed posture.
“What was found on the men?” asked Rhys.
“Several shillin’, a couple o’ middlin’ time pieces, nothin’ o’ note.” As Lionel listed his report, Solomon calmly passed something forward.
The moment the crisp packet crinkled in Rhys’ hands, a change passed over the woman’s face. Her eyes followed the document as he unfolded it.
“The Last Will and Testament of Dahlia Kathryn Halliwell.”
His insides froze as he read the header aloud. The cold sensation was familiar to him.
“Are you a Halliwell?” he asked carefully.
Lionel pushed forward. “That’s a fat set o’ papers. Just how much’re you worth?”
Rhys pushed the foul man back into his place.
“No,” she said. “I am not a Halliwell.”
He believed her, but the answer didn’t stop his thoughts from congealing around a theory. He passed the papers to Harry. “Tell me what you make of these.” Then he turned his attention back to her. “Those men you were with didn’t seem very nice.”
“Neither do you.”
“Tonight—” Rhys looked up to the stars as if they could help him. Why on earth was he about to explain himself? “Tonight isn’t how things usually go. It’s typically a more polite affair, where smart traveling parties hand over their decoy purses and everyone moves along peaceably.”
To his astonishment, the woman took a step forward, craning her neck upward at him.
“Oh? You fancy yourself a gentleman highwayman? The moral descendent of John Nevison, perhaps? Sir, you are no Swift Nick.”
“John Nevison had bad nights too.”
“Bad nights that saw him hanged at York Tyburn.”
Rhys’ shoulders went slack. If only she knew just how close he’d been to the gallows. How close they all had, because of wealthy people like her protecting one another.
Over her shoulder, Harry held the will close to his nose, reading it by the lantern. If she was worth three thousand, one thousand, anything at all, it could buy them out of this life.
Harry nervously broke the silence. “Pardon, Captain?”
“Yes?”
Harry pointed to a spot on the document. “Perhaps she’s a Clarke?”
Rhys looked to her. She had no response to that. But her eyes took on a deadened look—her fire, extinguished.
“Are you a married woman?” asked Rhys.
“No.” A denial spat with surprising venom.
“Was that pallid weasel in the carriage hoping to change that?”
Her cold silence answered him.
“I see,” he said, taking the will back from Harry.
Folding the document, he noticed something on it—dark streaks that weren’t there before. He looked closer, realizing, before looking back to Harry—
“Harry, are you bleeding?”
Harry shifted on his feet. “Sorry, Captain. She got me good on the hand back there, and it won’t stop.”
“What do you mean got you?”
The young man lowered his head. “She bit me.”
Rhys stepped back, reassessing her.
Lionel let fly another one of his choked cackles before slapping a filthy palm onto Rhys’ sleeve. “Oh, she’s rich, isn’t she, Captain? But ‘haps we should get off the road soon, a
ye?” Rhys was too stunned to shake Lionel off right away.
Solomon pulled off his knit cap to rub his bald head and parroted Lionel with a more serious tone, “Aye. She is rich.”
Rhys’ eyes fixated on the woman’s clenched jaw. The temptation to laugh at Harry’s little misfortune was quelled by some recognition of her ferocity. He could admit he’d miscalculated her.
He should leave her.
He should rob her and leave her, as was their routine.
Yet, fierce though she was, something clamped down on his gut at the thought of riding away from her. She was alone. What would become of her cold hands? What did those other men have planned for her? He imagined himself lying awake at night, wondering forever how her story ended and whether he’d left her for dead.
Another shiver jerked through her and she cast her eyes down. She curled into herself the way a blossom closes for the night.
She’s just another pretty toff. He swallowed the words like a tonic, but suddenly they didn’t go down so easy.
Lionel slapped his arm again. “So, what’re we doin’, Captain?”
He looked down at Lionel and that wretched grin. This was what he wanted to be freed from most of all. If he did this right, it could be their last night riding together. Or it could see them all marching to the gallows again and really deserving it this time.
“Captain?” Harry looked at him expectantly.
Captain, Captain, Captain. He’d be done with that too.
Rhys locked eyes with the stranger and took her wrists in his hands.
“For now, you come with us, until we see what you’re worth.”
“No!”
Rhys looked away from her to direct his men—anything but to see her distress. “Harry, go check the carriage for anything else. Sol, Lionel, go unhitch the driving team.”
The men disappeared, leaving him alone with her in the moonlight.
“Just leave me, please. You have the option to leave me.”
Rhys regarded the foreboding tree line. He wasn’t sure he did have that option. “Do you plan to sleep alone in a broken carriage on the coldest night of the year? Don’t forget, stranger, your kidnappers are unlikely to have gotten very far on foot. There’s little around for miles. They’ll come back.”
She shrank visibly before another inspiration struck.
“Let me take one of the driving horses. I could—”
“Why are you even trying me? Why do you think that I—”
“Because—” she said but stopped herself.
Because? He wanted to know what she was about to say but couldn’t make himself ask it. He was accustomed to being the one to uncover another’s secrets. Yet here was this stranger, making him feel like he’d somehow just tipped his hand.
He pushed the cloak back from her shoulders. The sudden touch made her go rigid.
“Well, I won’t keep you waiting any longer. This is the part where I liberate you of your belongings, as you so finely put it. Do you have any weapons?”
“Wouldn’t I have used one by now?”
“It’s not unusual for a traveling lady to carry a dirk.”
“Be careful, I’m very deft with one when my hands are tied.”
The temptation to engage with her sarcasm was difficult to resist, but Rhys held his tongue.
He took off his right glove and patted the side of her traveling habit. “Are you wearing pockets?” With no response forthcoming, he lifted the edge of her caraco and felt around her waistline for the gap in the side of her skirts. And felt around some more. And—damn women’s fashion, where was it?
The exercise must have grown tiresome, because she contorted herself to grab his hand and guide it to its target.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
His hand slipped past her wool skirt and quilted petticoat, until the backs of his knuckles brushed against fine linen. Her chemise. Warmth radiated from where he hovered near her hip. The hearth of her body—so different from everything cold and horrible outside. But no pocket hung there.
He caught her eyes and held them overlong. A nebulous panic seized him. The edges of the fabric felt suddenly like a fox trap around his wrist, about to clamp down and hold him there forever. He quickly withdrew.
The panic left him shaky under her persistent gaze, yet he succeeded in finding the other access without her pitying assistance. Here she wore a pocket. It jangled promisingly as he slipped his hand in.
From it, he withdrew a healthy handful of guineas, a pair of kidskin gloves, and a delicate gold watch, but most interesting to him was a tiny notebook with a short pencil wrapped up in its strap. Her eyes followed as it dropped into his pocket. Perhaps its pages would shed some light on who she was.
He unfolded the gloves, and she offered up her hands. Taking them in his ungloved hand, he felt her skin for the first time and realized that he too had grown cold. He tugged the gloves onto her narrow fingers, wondering if her soft knuckles always turned so pink in the cold.
She wore but one piece of jewelry—an enamel pendant at her neck. She’d seemed indifferent when first he’d reached for it, but the moment that its weight fell from her neck, she emitted the smallest, most pathetic sound, as though a pebble had struck her heart. It made him want to replace the thing immediately, but that would only leave it for Lionel to take later.
He wrapped her cape back around her and pulled up her hood. Without a thought, he pushed the hair from her eyes as he’d wished to do before. Beneath his fingers—cold and numb—her soft cheek felt like air.
Harry approached them, leading one of the driving horses and Rhys’ chestnut gelding. “I tied the mare to yours, Captain.”
“Well done, Harry.”
“Ready?” Rhys asked her, not anticipating an answer. He lifted her to sit aside on the black hackney mare and guided her bound hands to one of the harness’s rein terrets, where he secured the tail of her fabric manacles with a firm knot.
She studied the process from above him. “Hook my heel into the trace, would you? Or I think I’ll not survive an accidental trot.”
He did as he was bidden.
The other men were done loading their own horses and had ridden up to join him, leading the other hackney horse as part of their take.
“If our captive’s ready, then let’s not linger any more, eh?” said Lionel.
Captive. Rhys wanted to take Lionel to task for the word, but the ass was right. They were kidnapping her.
Rhys checked that her foot was secure and peered up at her from under the brim of his hat. She sat rod-straight, with all possible dignity as she rode practically bareback on the side of a driving horse.
“Yes,” said Rhys, finding it hard to peel his eyes from her. “Let’s go, mates.”
Chapter 3
Beth’s tied hands clenched and unclenched, tightening the delicate kidskin against her knuckles. The purposeful movement helped to push the slurry of wintery blood back into her fingertips. Every time she unclenched, the brief flood of warmth reminded her of where her hands had been some hours before—blanketed by the heavy, hearth-like palms of her abductor. Her second abductor. She huffed out a gentle scoff of disbelief at her uncommon misfortune.
What a fool she’d been to imagine rescue—to hope for it. Her prayers had been heard and answered in terrible irony. Here she was, released from the burden of Desmarais’ shadow . . .
And worse off than before.
Colder, and at the mercy of lesser known evils.
Not to mention the impenetrable ache going up her spine from her interesting seat on the hackney horse. She thought she’d ridden every way possible in the course of her life. When Beth was a little girl, Dahlia had even helped her stand up on her pony once or twice, the way they’d seen the acrobats do at Astley’s Circus. But bareback and to the side? The combination was no
vel. And uncomfortable.
It was a strain to look forward without a pommel to hook a leg on, so she resigned herself to gazing aside and watching the landscape pass by. The sky had grown gray, and her eyes could drink up just enough moonlight to see the entire ghostly horizon.
They didn’t ride on roads but cut through scattered woodlands and leas. Early morning rides were typically where Beth found her peace, but never had she ridden across a stretch of England so desolate at so quiet an hour. To lay her eyes on the country in so foreign a manner—as though she had it all to herself—was more satisfying than sticking her nose in her uncle’s atlases. But for all the maps she’d once devoured, she now found herself completely untethered from any concept of their whereabouts. Adrift.
She flicked her thumb distractedly at the knot that tied her to the harness. Another futile exercise in keeping her hands warm and her fears tamped down.
A patch of trees became a forest. Denser and darker, until the ranks of tall timber sentries obscured almost anything beyond them. The void of darkness was broken only by the slow plod of their horses on damp ground and heavy drops of snowmelt sloughing from the tree branches.
The one they’d called Captain rode alongside her, but she gave him her back. Even when stealing quick glances forward, she didn’t dare catch his eye.
But she felt him there.
The others lagged behind. They slumped in their saddles, looking more like grain sacks than men. It seemed that the late hour and the cold air were taking their tolls indiscriminately.
Back on the road, she’d stolen a good look at most of them as their faces had passed in and out of the lantern light.
The coarse one, Lionel, had an appearance as rough as his tongue. His lack of any obvious eyebrows led her to suspect that he was towheaded, but an abundance of filth made the true nature of his hair color anyone’s guess. It sprung, haphazardly, at different lengths from all about his face and neck. What larval creatures must be thriving in that beard? When she’d picked up on a fetid smell back on the roadside, she had known it to be his breath.
The lumbering man still had no name. He was older, and the removal of his knit cap had revealed mostly baldness but for some close-shorn grays. He was the only one that rivaled the captain in height, but his proportions were different. A broad torso was sewn to lanky limbs, and a belly pressed at the lowest buttons of his jacket.