by Sara Bennett
It wasn’t there.
Disbelievingly he began to search, and then search again, more desperately, but he found no familiar comforting shape to place his hand on. The pistol had gone.
He saw one of the ruffians nudge the other with a grin and his heart sank. They knew he was unarmed. That meant that this meeting wasn’t an unfortunate coincidence but a calculated assault. Someone had taken his pistol and sent word of it to their companions.
With no weapon there was nothing he could do but continue to play the duke, using his authority as a threat. Some people found that more frightening than a gun.
“Move aside at once,” Sinclair demanded loudly.
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ve come to relieve you of your savings,” the other man retorted, the one with the scrappy beard. “You was flashing it about in the tavern back there, so we heard. I reckon we have more need of it than you.”
“I am the Duke of Somerton, a peer of the realm,” Sinclair said angrily, “and you will regret it if you molest me.”
The two men looked at each other and snorted with laughter. “We heard you was a duke. Some of the other travelers seen you in your pretty coach with your pretty horses.”
“My man will be here soon. He’s following behind us.”
“You haven’t got no man,” scrappy beard sneered.
His glance moved toward Eugenie and Georgie, and Sinclair’s stomach twisted. They would not harm Eugenie and the child, not if he had to fight them with his bare fists. But who had taken the weapon? He knew there was only one way to find out.
“I have a pistol and I will use it,” he said and waited to be proved right.
“No, you ain’t.”
Was it the slippery landlord? But then a new solution came to him, one that sank his spirits even further. As if to confirm his guess, Georgie leaped nimbly off Eugenie’s horse and scampered toward the two outlaws. The grin he gave Sinclair was pure mischief. “I relieved the duke of his pistol,” he informed his friends, and reaching into the pocket of his new coat, he took out the weapon and carefully handed it up to scrappy beard. “Here you go, Seth.”
Seth weighed the pistol in his hand, grinned back, and then slipped it into his own belt. Suddenly his eyes narrowed as he spied Georgie’s new clothes. “Where’d you get them boots, Georgie? You been thieving again?”
“The lady there, she got them for me,” Georgie said, looking uncomfortable. “And the clothes, too. I was that cold. She’s been kind to me. They both have,” he added in a mumble.
“Maybe you’d rather stay with them then, Georgie. What do you think of that?”
“Yeah, maybe you’d get better pickings with them, eh, little brother?”
Georgie looked from one to the other, his thin face anxious. “Course not,” he said, with an attempt at a sneer. “I want to stay with you and Seth. You’re me brothers. I wouldn’t go off and leave you, now would I?”
“We’d miss you if you did,” Seth said, and there was a threat implicit in his voice that Georgie seemed to understand.
“I said I wouldn’t.” Georgie shuffled his feet and edged away a little. When the other brother lifted a hand as if to strike him, the boy ducked, and both men laughed.
“All right then. So tell us, where’s this duke of yours keep his blunt?”
Sinclair glanced back at Eugenie, still and white-faced, shocked into silence by the revelations. He could see she felt betrayed, her kind heart broken, and he wanted to hold her in his arms. But this was not the time for maudlin sentiment, he told himself.
Their very lives were at stake.
Georgie swaggered up to Sinclair. “Where’s the blunt?” Georgie said, mimicking his brothers’ menacing growl. “We won’t hurt you if you give us your blunt.”
But there was something in the boy’s eyes, a plea to do as he was told. Georgie may have betrayed them but suddenly Sinclair knew he was as much a prisoner of circumstance as they were. Slowly Sinclair reached down and untied his bag and tossed it to the ground. Georgie ran to where it fell, opening it and rummaging through it. He held up a couple of items to show his brothers, and they greedily snatched them from him, slipping them into their pockets. The money wallet was at the bottom and he fumbled with it a moment before finally holding it up with a triumphant grin.
They grabbed that from him, too, emptying it and sharing the notes between them. Sinclair knew, with an impotent sense of rage, that the loss of his money meant he would have difficulty continuing his journey. Not everyone knew him and he could not rely upon the goodwill of those who didn’t. How would he find Annabelle now? How would he save the family honor?
“Did you really see my sister come this way?” he said harshly. “Or was that a lie, too?”
Georgie looked hurt. “ ’Course I saw her. She and the bloke and the other girl, the yellow-haired one.”
The yellow-haired one? Then Miss Gamboni was with them. Well, at least that was one piece of good news. A chaperone would help still the wagging of scandalous tongues.
“Get down off your horses.” Seth was waving his pistol, keen to regain control. “You won’t be wanting them. I reckon that thieving bastard at the tavern will give us a good price for horses like this.”
It went against the grain for Sinclair to give up his horse so easily, but once again he knew he had no choice. He jumped down and went to help Eugenie. Her hand was cold through her glove and he squeezed it in his, trying to give her courage.
“I won’t let them hurt you,” he said quietly.
Her eyes fixed on his and she managed a shaky smile. “I know you won’t. But, Sinclair, who will stop them from hurting you?”
“Hey, are you listening?” Seth blustered. “Your ring and your pocket watch, Your Dukeship.” He chuckled at his own joke.
The signet ring was a present from his mother when he’d turned eighteen, and the pocket watch had belonged to his father. Sinclair wavered. As items they were not worth much monetarily, but emotionally they meant a great deal to Sinclair.
Suddenly he knew this was the time to make a stand. He had to show these villains he wouldn’t be pushed about. No matter how foolish and reckless his knew it was, he couldn’t give up his signet ring and his watch without a fight.
Eugenie was watching him nervously.
He stepped away from her.
“No,” he said. “You can’t have them. What are you going to do about it?”
Chapter 26
Eugenie was jumping out of her skin. “Sinclair,” she hissed, tugging at his hand. “Don’t argue with them. Give them what they want.”
“Some things mean more than money,” he told her coolly, watching the two ruffians.
“Sinclair, please . . .” she began.
Sinclair raised his voice and drowned her out. “You have my money. Now go on your way and leave us alone. And make certain you keep looking over your shoulders, because one day I promise you I will be there.”
His words, or perhaps the threatening tone of his voice, seemed to give them pause, but a moment later they were nudging each other and chuckling, reconstructing their tattered courage.
“Sinclair, please give them what they want.” Eugenie’s voice was urgent.
“No.”
Seeing he meant to make a stand, Seth ordered Georgie to hold the horses, while he and his brother climbed down. They swaggered toward Sinclair, making a show of tensing their arm muscles and squeezing their fists. He realized with a sense of fatalism that they were as keen for physical combat as he.
“How are you in a fight, Your Dukeship?” Seth smirked. “I expect you only fight in them toff places where the gents always win, eh?”
“I am rather good in a fight, if I do say so myself,” Sinclair replied, readying himself for the onslaught. “And no one has ever allowed me to win.”
&nbs
p; “So you say, so you say . . .”
“You may test my words . . . if you dare,” he goaded them.
It had the desired effect. They both rushed him.
The unequal struggle was short and unedifying, but Sinclair got in one good punch to Seth’s jaw and another into his brother’s soft middle. Before he could congratulate himself, he received a blow in return that stretched him out on the ground. He lay there, his head spinning, while the two men, favoring their own hurts, hurriedly tugged off his signet ring and removed his pocket watch.
So much for making a stand.
He could hear shouting and screaming. Feeling the brush of Eugenie’s skirts he realized she was trying to push them away from him. He tried to sit up, but one good shove sent her to the ground beside him. He managed to stretch out a hand and hold her down.
“Stay there. You’ll hurt yourself,” he growled, wincing as the movement sent pain ricocheting through his aching jaw.
She crawled closer to where he lay, wriggling up his shoulders so that his head was resting gently on her lap. Her curls tickled his face. He saw the warning in her green eyes as she leaned over him, and didn’t need the press of her finger against his lips, warning him to silence.
“You’ve killed him!” she wailed. “He’s dead!”
Seth looked startled. There was blood on his lip from Sinclair’s blow. His brother backed toward his horse. “You’ve killed him, Seth,” he said. “That’s hanging, that is.”
Sinclair supposed Eugenie’s plan was to save him from more pain and drive the villains away. He was content to allow her to go ahead, but he tensed his muscles, ready to spring back into the fray if it became necessary.
“What about her?” Seth said, nodding toward Eugenie, who was keening to herself like a banshee. Rather overdoing it in Sinclair’s opinion.
Then Georgie spoke up, something which must have taken a great deal of courage. “The lady’s been kind to me,” he said, shuffling from foot to foot. “I don’t want her hurt, all right? Please, Seth.”
The brothers stood either side of him, nudging each other, working on regaining some of their bravado. “And how are you going to stop us, eh, little brother?”
At that Georgie lifted his head, eyes defiant. “I won’t help you no more. I won’t bring you no more toffs to rob.”
They were no longer laughing.
“Maybe the duke’s man is coming,” Georgie went on, with a conspiratorial glance at Sinclair. “I don’t want to end up in gaol. Do you? Can’t spend our blunt there, can we?”
He must have known his brothers well, because the threat of losing their money did the trick. They both sprang into action. One of them grabbed Georgie by the scruff of his new coat and tossed him up onto Eugenie’s horse. A moment later they were all mounted, with Sinclair’s horse tethered behind them.
Georgie followed as they wheeled around and into the woods, vanishing as quickly as they’d come. The last Sinclair saw of the boy’s face was a pale blur before the trees swallowed him up.
He blinked, wiping a hand over his face. It was raining again and he hadn’t even noticed. He groaned and started to get dizzily to his feet, only to have Eugenie grasp his shoulders and push him back down to the ground. Her face was above him, frightened and angry, her cheeks streaked with rain and tears.
“What were you thinking, Sinclair? They could have killed you!”
Sinclair grinned at her, strangely buoyant despite everything that had happened, then winced when his bruised jaw protested again. “I couldn’t give up my watch and ring without a fight, Eugenie. What sort of man would I be if I did that?”
She shook her head at him in despair, and gently brushed the bruised skin where Seth’s fist had connected. “Why are men such fools?” she said, clearly not expecting an answer.
“At least we’re in one piece.”
Eugenie had been brave up until now, but now her emotions overwhelmed her. Her lips trembled and then she pulled away from him, crumpling onto the ground in the damp leaves, her head in her arms.
She was weeping. Sinclair watched her shoulders shaking. His limited experience of women told him she’d be better off when she got whatever was bothering her out of her system.
He waited.
But when her sobs began to grow louder and more violent, he was worried enough to kneel over her. “They didn’t take anything that mattered,” he insisted untruthfully. “We’re alive, that’s all that counts, isn’t it? Eugenie, please be calm. You’ll make yourself ill.”
He rested his hand on her hair and after that it seemed natural to stroke her soft, damp curls. That seemed to do the trick because her sobs stopped and eventually she lifted her head. She was a mess, he thought pragmatically. Her green eyes were swollen and pink, her skin was red and blotchy, and she seemed to be very damp about the bodice of her dress.
She seemed so vulnerable. His protective instinct urged him to gather her up in his arms; he resisted.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped.
“Why on earth are you sorry?”
“This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have trusted Georgie. I thought—I thought—” The tears began to spill over her lashes again.
Sinclair gave in and wrapped his arms about her and held her close. Yes, it was her fault, but only because she was too honest and trusting, too good at heart, and she could not see there might be wickedness in a child’s heart.
“He fooled me, too,” he said. “And if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think he enjoyed robbing us.”
“Did you see that, too?” she asked hopefully, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.
“Yes, I did,” he said, and found his handkerchief—at least they’d left him that—using it to mop at her tearstained face. After she’d blown her nose and restored herself a little, she looked around at the woods and the gathering darkness.
It wasn’t late, but the rainy weather and the thick forest reduced the light so that they could have been in a twilight world.
Eugenie shuddered. “This is a horrible place,” she said.
Her wet lashes were spiky against her flushed cheeks, her lips still turned down at the corners, and slowly, but with increasing heat, it occurred to him that he wanted to make love to her.
“It will be all right,” he said, knowing he was babbling and not caring. “I promise it will be all right.” He leaned closer to her and his lips brushed the soft skin of her cheek. “I promise, Eugenie.”
She turned her face, and he was gazing into her remarkable eyes, telling himself there was no one else in the world who looked at him like that. He kissed her damp eyelids, gently. He knew that if she opened her eyes again he would probably have to stop, but she didn’t. She lay in his arms, snuggled against his chest, as if she was sleeping, except that her breasts were rising and falling very quickly. There was a telltale flush of desire on her cheeks.
He knew, with a sense of triumph, that she wasn’t going to deny him.
Eugenie felt his warm breath against her cheek, and then the feather light brush of his lips. If she kept her eyes closed then she could pretend this was a dream, one of her very best dreams. It felt right that this should happen now, after their brush with death.
With a happy sigh she surrendered herself to his kisses.
He began to undo the fastenings on her bodice, his mouth warm against her chilled skin as each inch was exposed. She shivered. She heard him get up and spread out her cloak, and then he was lifting her, cradling her close, and laying her down in a warm nest he’d made. The rain was still falling but the heavily leafed branches above them gave them protection.
His body was heavy on hers, but she welcomed his weight and his strength, her arms slipping about his waist. His mouth was on her breast, closing on the rigid peak. Pleasure shimmied through her and she wriggled against him, wanting to get closer, wanting to fe
el his naked flesh pressed to hers until she couldn’t tell which of them was who.
The emotion and trauma of the past days was replaced with the need to be held and loved, to feel alive, and she reveled in Sinclair’s touch.
Feeling her way, Eugenie discovered the ties to his shirt and began to undo them. His flesh was masculine and warm, and when she pressed her face to his chest she tasted salt and sweat and man.
Her hands moved lower, finding the hard rod in his breeches, and she set about freeing him. He groaned against her, pushing into her palm as she held him. And then he was kneeling, drawing up her skirts and petticoats, his fingers exploring her darned stockings and closing on her bare thighs.
“You are so beautiful,” he said, or perhaps the words were in her head. It was the sort of thing he always said in her dreams.
His mouth closed over her most intimate place, his tongue caressing her, and she arched upward, pleasure spiraling through her. Her body readied itself for climax, but then he was lying over her again, easing himself inside her, taking her.
As she moved to the rhythm of pleasure, her body gripped by the fever of need, she no longer felt as if they were duke and commoner. There was no gulf between them. They were Sinclair and Eugenie.
Just man and woman.
He could hardly breathe, the pleasure was so strong, so all-consuming. Sinclair held her as the world came back into focus and knew he didn’t want to let her go, no matter what he had said to her and to himself.
For the first time he thought of marriage without instantly dismissing it.
Would it be fair to her, to raise her up so high and bring her to the attention of the gossips and the subtle cruelties of his class? And what of him? Could he bear the laughter of his friends and the mockery of his peers? His mother had threatened to turn her back on him . . . never to speak to him again. Could he live with that?
Right now, as he lay with the sweat cooling on him from loving her, he felt as if he could put up with anything. But later, what of later? Would he still feel the same in a month, a year, ten years? And then there was the letter she had written. Was he prepared to forgive her for humiliating him like that? Could he trust her not to do so again?