The sound of the cart crashing onto its side.
Then the ground rose up. Too fast.
He slammed into the dirt, taking the worst of it, grunting as his bruised ribs hit something hard and unyielding. The girl’s scream cut short with a yelp of surprise and pain.
And they tumbled down the side of the ravine.
The forest floor fell away beneath them at a sharp angle and they fell with it. Trees and sky and grass blurred in an insane jumble as they plunged down the slope. Out of control. A spin of legs and silk skirts and flying blonde hair and jangling iron shackles. The girl was helpless with her hands tied behind her back. Nicholas grabbed for branches. Missed. They kept rolling, faster and faster. He could only hold on to her, one arm locked around her. Branches and thickets snapped and scraped as if the forest itself were trying to kill them.
Until by some miracle they reached the bottom, rolled to a stop.
The girl had gone limp in his arms. Nicholas released her, falling onto his back, feeling as if every inch of his body had been battered into fragments. He lay dazed.
Until a bullet whizzed over his head.
The report of the pistol shot cracked through the woods a second later.
“Don’t move, ye bloody bastard!” Swinton snarled from somewhere above them.
Nicholas could hear him crashing through the underbrush, one of the other marshalmen close behind him.
He opened his eyes. Blue sky and branches tilted dizzily in his vision. The girl groaned.
“Get ’em, Swinton!” Leach shouted.
Nicholas could see them, out of the corner of his eye. Swinton and Leach, charging down the hillside. They had left their mounts at the top. The animals couldn’t make it down the hill—not through the tangle of low-hanging evergreen branches and thick underbrush.
He had counted on that.
He closed his eyes, let his muscles go lax. This would have been an excellent time for prayer. If he believed in that sort of thing.
Forcing all pain to the edge of his awareness, he used every ounce of control he possessed to hold his breath and keep absolutely still.
“Help me, lad! I think me arm’s broken!” Bickford’s voice drifted down from the top of the ravine. “Get this thing off me, blast ye!”
Tucker would be occupied above with the portly gaolkeeper. Good.
Swinton reached the bottom of the hill first, panting, cursing. “Leach...” he wheezed. “I think he’s dead!”
“Bloody hell. After we come all this way?”
“There goes our fifty quid.” Swinton kicked Nicholas in the side.
Nicholas didn’t make a sound. Remained absolutely lifeless.
“What about her?” Leach growled.
Just then the girl moaned softly.
Thank you, Nicholas thought warmly.
Their attention shifted to her—he heard the crackling of leaves as they moved around him. He opened one eye to a slit. Heard Leach’s voice grow closer as he bent down.
“Looks like her ladyship is still—”
Nicholas exploded into action.
He kicked out with his free foot and sent Leach’s pistol flying. Jumping to his feet, he attacked Swinton with a vicious right cross followed by a double-punch to the kidneys. Swinton went down before he knew what hit him, dropping his gun with a yowl of pain and surprise.
Nicholas lunged for the fallen pistol. But he couldn’t move fast enough—not chained to the dazed, unmoving girl. Leach grabbed him from behind before he could reach it.
A burly arm closed around his throat. The marshalman yanked backward and with his other hand landed an agonizing blow to the ribs, once, twice. He tried to wrestle Nicholas to the ground, snarling curses. Nicholas jammed his elbow backward, high and hard, catching his adversary in the chest.
Leach gurgled in pain but held on. His grip only tightened. “Tucker!” he screeched. “Get down here!”
The girl came fully awake and sat up with a moan. Blinking, she gasped at the scene before her.”
“Get...” Nicholas didn’t have enough breath to complete the command. He fastened his hands around Leach’s heavily muscled arm, pulled with all his strength. He could feel blood pumping hot through his veins. But he couldn’t break the choke hold. Couldn’t get any air. His tortured lungs burned.
And the girl only stared up at him with a look of panic.
Nicholas glared down at her, trying to say it with his eyes. Get Swinton’s pistol. He dropped it right there. The pistol! Get the blasted thing before he comes around!
Even with her arms tied behind her, she could keep it away from the marshalmen, kick it out of reach.
But she didn’t move. Remained frozen. A useless weight around his ankle.
Nicholas tried to hook his left foot behind Leach’s, knock him off balance. But the marshalmen kept his legs braced. Unmovable.
“Tucker!” Leach bellowed again. “Where the devil are ye?”
Swinton moved. Growling a curse, he lurched to his knees, to his feet, staggering.
Then he reached down and scooped up his gun.
Nicholas heard the gut-wrenching sound of the pistol being cocked. Felt his only chance to escape slipping away.
No, damn it.
“Shoot him,” Leach snarled.
Nicholas clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, drawing upon an arsenal of nefarious tricks learned in a lifetime of fighting at close quarters.
He used his opponent’s own grip against him.
Nicholas suddenly bent at the waist, roaring with the effort, lifting one shoulder to toss the marshalman over his head.
Flung through the air, Leach cried out—a wail cut abruptly short when he landed, hard.
Nicholas dove sideways the second he was free. Threw himself out of the path of the pistol aimed at him.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
The explosion of the shot at such close range sounded like a full broadside. The familiar, acrid stench of smoke and powder filled the air.
And he felt a blaze of hot metal rip through his left shoulder, felt the bullet burying deep.
He hit the ground with a hoarse exclamation, falling half atop the girl.
Before he could move, Swinton was on him, a gleaming knife in one hand, the empty pistol in the other, lifted to use as a club.
With a snarl of rage, Nicholas rose to meet him, in pain, cornered. The world dimmed to a blood-red haze of fury. All thought, all reason, all human feeling fell away and he knew only one thought, one need. One he had felt before. So many times.
Kill.
He knocked the knife away with a savage chop of his hand and attacked, pounding his enemy to the ground, striking blow after vicious blow.
It wasn’t until he felt someone tugging at him—small, delicate hands grasping desperately at his arm—that he came back to himself.
“Stop it!” She was sobbing. “Stop it! Stop it!”
Nicholas released his victim, straightening, dazed. Breathing hard, he blinked to clear his vision, unaware even of how much time had passed. The girl’s hands were free, he realized. She must have used the knife.
Swinton lay on the ground at his feet, beaten bloody, unconscious.
Nicholas staggered backward a step. Even with a bullet in him, he had just brought down an armed man. Perhaps killed him. With no weapon but his fists.
And he had felt, heard, seen nothing. Remembered nothing.
Only now did he feel the agony that seared through his shoulder. Only now was he aware of the blood soaking his sleeve.
A few feet away, Leach lay unmoving where he had landed, his head at an odd angle.
Nicholas turned, shaken, staring at the girl.
She let go of his arm as if it burned her, backing away, her features pale and stricken at the display of brutality. “You’re a madman,” she whispered. “You are a madman!”
Before he could say a word in denial—or affirmation—the chain pulled her up short.
And a blast o
f grapeshot rained through the leaves over their heads.
He threw himself to the ground, yanking her down with him, and looked at the top of the ravine.
Tucker stood at the edge of the road, reloading Bickford’s musket. Beside him, the fat gaolkeeper leaned against the broken cart, holding his arm.
“G-give up, both of ye,” the lad demanded in a quivering voice, raising the blunderbuss to his shoulder. “Raise yer hands and... and no one’ll get hurt!”
Stubborn little whelp. He had been too scared to jump into the fray before. Why couldn’t he just stay scared? Nicholas darted a glance around. He had kicked Leach’s pistol away... there it was. In the leaves. A few yards to the left.
“Come on,” he ordered under his breath. Not giving the girl a chance to argue, he slid forward on his belly.
“What are you doing?” she whispered in dismay, forced to follow when the chain pulled taut.
He reached for the gun. Leach hadn’t had a chance to fire. It was still loaded.
But to his horror, as soon as he picked it up, his hand started shaking.
It had been years since he had held a pistol. Six years.
The cold weapon burned him like a brand—the weight in his palm, the smooth surface, the sinuous curves. So familiar. Like a long-lost lover. Sleek. Easy. Seductive.
And he couldn’t keep his hand steady.
But there was no time to worry about it. He rolled onto his back, aimed...
“No!” the girl cried.
... and fired.
He missed by a great deal more than a mile. His hand trembled so badly that the shot went wildly off to the left. But the young marshalman fell to the ground with a shout of panic and covered his head.
“Our mates is done for down there, Bickford,” Tucker cried. “Ain’t it better if we ride for help?”
“Aye, lad. Help me up.”
Tucker obeyed quickly, loading the gaolkeeper aboard one of the horses and mounting the other himself.
“Ye’ll pay for this!” Bickford shouted down the hill. “I swear by me dead mother’s soul, I’ll see ye hang!”
With that ominous vow, the two lawmen fled up the road at a gallop.
Still lying on his back, the smoking gun hot in his hand, Nicholas listened to the fading thunder of hoofbeats.
Silence descended. Not even a leaf in the forest stirred.
The girl lay utterly still beside him.
After a moment, a pair of wary golden eyes turned his way. Trembling visibly, she opened her mouth to speak, couldn’t. Then she swallowed hard and tried again.
“You almost got us killed,” she whispered, her voice dry with fear.
Nicholas flattened his palm against the earth and sat up. “You were already facing a noose, your ladyship. I’d think you might express a little gratitude for the rescue.”
“Rescue?” she choked out. “Gratitude?”
He ignored her indignation. Quickly, before he might have time to change his mind, he stuffed the empty gun into his belt, at the center of his back where he’d worn one for so many years.
It slid right into place. As if he’d never been without one. Seemed to fit there.
Too easily.
For just a second, he couldn’t move. Christ, he could feel it, pressed against him. Hot. Burning. Right through his shirt. Through flesh and bone. Through his body and whatever might be left of his—
“Aye, gratitude,” he repeated sharply, standing.
She came out of her frozen panic as if something had snapped. “Well, don’t hold your breath,” she sputtered, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “I had a perfectly good plan of my own. I was not in need of res—”
He reached down and pulled her to her feet unceremoniously. “Come on.”
“Unhand me,” she demanded. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
“My thought exactly.”
Hauling her along beside him, he stalked over to Leach’s prone body. He bent down and rifled through the fallen man’s frock coat, taking a small coin purse. A powder horn. And a pouch of bullets.
“He’s dead,” the girl gasped, studying the fallen marshalmen. “They’re both dead. You killed them!”
“It was them or me, lady,” he grated out. “Faced with that choice, I generally choose me.”
He moved on to Swinton, stooping to pick up the discarded knife along the way. He slid it into his boot.
Swinton didn’t present any better pickings than the other marshalman, unfortunately. There was as precious little ammunition as intelligence between the two.
But, Nicholas decided, it would be worth one bullet to be rid of the girl.
He reloaded the pistol.
She inhaled sharply. “W-what are you doing now?” Her eyes searched his face. “What do you intend to—”
He flicked off the safety and stepped away from her. Two paces. His hand seemed a bit steadier now.
She looked stricken, her panic returning. “What are you going to—”
He aimed and fired before she finished the sentence. The sharp burst of noise wasn’t nearly as loud as the girl’s scream.
The smoke cleared. She was still standing there, her expression utterly stunned. Gulping repeatedly, she looked down at herself and ran her hands over her body, as if surprised not to find any holes.
Ignoring her, Nicholas knelt down to examine the chain, muttering an oath.
The iron was still intact. Not only had the bullet not broken it in two—it had barely left a scratch.
“Well, bloody hell.” He scowled.
So much for his perfect plan. Apparently it was going to be a great deal more difficult to get rid of his charming companion than he had anticipated.
He glowered up at her. His shoulder hurt like the devil, he had precious little money or ammunition, and he had to make it to York in a matter of days.
With the law out searching for him in full force.
And now he had to take her along.
She stood there, dappled by light that glimmered through the trees, her face whiter than a sheet despite the fact that she had been in the sun all day.
She shook her head rapidly, a leaf falling from her tangled hair. “You are... y-you are... an absolute...” She seemed barely able to breathe, let alone summon a word to describe him at the moment.
“Madman,” he supplied helpfully. Standing, he slipped the gun back into place, fastened the powder horn to his belt, and stuffed the coin purse and bullet pouch into his pockets. Then he tore off his bloodied left sleeve and wrapped it around his shoulder as best he could. It wasn’t bleeding too badly. Yet.
The makeshift bandage would have to do for now. There was no telling how long it might be before Tucker and Bickford showed up with reinforcements.
Perhaps an hour. Perhaps less.
He glanced up at the sun. “Contrary to what you said before, your ladyship, it looks like you are going with me.” He tested the wind, chose a direction. “So let’s go.”
Taking her by the arm, he headed into the forest.
Chapter 6
Madman.
The word echoed through Sam’s mind, louder than the lingering report of the pistol shot. But when he turned and set off, the chain that bound them and his unyielding hold on her arm gave her no choice but to go with him.
He headed into the woods as if the dogs of hell were howling for his blood, seemingly oblivious to the bullet in his shoulder and the blood soaking his shirt. But the shackles hampered their every step. She couldn’t match his stride or his speed. And the jangling chain caught on every root, rock and fallen branch in their path.
She stumbled alongside him, struggling to keep up, still bruised and dazed from their fall down the hillside. Tree trunks and swirling shafts of sunlight danced before her eyes in a blur as they fled, her mind reeling with images of the unspeakable violence she had just witnessed.
The rogue’s fists mercilessly beating Swinton into unconsciousness. Blood. Pistol shots. A flashi
ng knife. Leach’s lifeless eyes staring skyward.
The pictures ricocheted through her head, sent the world spinning around her just as it had when they plunged down the ravine. In shock, she ran for several minutes before reason finally penetrated her daze. Like one of the beams of sunlight breaking through the trees, it hit her with stunning clarity: she was no longer on her way to London to face the magistrates and her uncle’s retribution.
She was in far worse trouble. Racing headlong into Cannock Chase with a madman.
And she was going along like a sheep.
“N-no!” She tried to wrest her arm from his grip, stumbling.
He held her up and pulled her forward with him, giving her no choice but to keep moving.
“Stop!” She resisted again, desperately trying to shake him off. Running, gasping for breath, she tried to think of some way to reason with him. To get the shackles off so she could get away from him. “W-we should go toward a town—”
“Every town for miles will be crawling with lawmen before the sun sets.” He ducked under a low-hanging branch and kept going, his blunt, strong fingers holding fast to her arm.
“But I d-don’t think—”
“I don’t give a damn what you think.” He swept her along with him.
“Well, I don’t give a damn what you say! I am not going into Cannock Chase with you!” She stopped suddenly, digging in her heels.
And he was moving so fast, she yanked him off balance.
The chain jerked taut, tripped him. He went down face-first and the sudden tug on the shackles pulled her feet out from under her. Arms flailing, she fell backward with a startled cry and landed flat on her back in a carpet of leaves and pine needles, sending a shower of both into the air.
She could hear the rogue groan a low sound of pain as she lay there struggling for breath, coughing on the cloud of dust that billowed up from the forest floor. Every inch of her felt pummeled, scraped, aching. Her left ankle throbbed painfully from the sharp pull on the tight iron cuff.
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