Words were useless. He’d not convince the man to pull over. So he did the only thing that had any chance of succeeding. He pulled the trigger.
His shot was not entirely successful. The bullet caught the man in the shoulder, throwing him off his perch, causing him to drop one of the reins. The coach horses, startled by the gunshot, jerked forward and veered off course. But the man must have been made out of iron, for he soon shook off his injury and picked up the fallen rein, pulling the horses back on course.
Montford was not so lucky. His own mount was more than startled from the shot. It whinnied in terror and began to jump wildly beneath him, jerking abruptly to the right, nearly colliding with the coach. Montford cursed and attempted to bring the creature back to its senses. It was all he could do to keep his seat.
Then the window of the coach shot open, and a dark, balding man, purple-faced with fury, leaned out, shouting abuse at him and leveling a gun at his head. Montford tried to reach for his second pistol, still stuck in the saddle behind him, but his mount was too out of control to let him. He cursed and attempted to pull his mount back, out of line of the man’s aim. But the horse was determined to keep pace with the coach, instinct pulling it along with the team of four. The damned beast was going to get him shot.
The man at the window pulled the trigger, the explosion so close Montford could feel the acrid, burnt gunsmoke choking his lungs. He flinched and braced for the impact of the bullet with his flesh. But the bullet went whizzing over his head, his hair parting in its wake. A fraction of an inch, he feared, and he would have had a bullet in his brainbox. He could barely believe his luck.
But his relief was short-lived. His mount was now beyond control. It bucked so violently that Montford was thrown from his seat. For the second time in as many days, he went flying through the air, then smashed to the road on his back. The impact took the breath from his lungs and jarred every bone of his body. He couldn’t breathe, could barely focus his vision. He knew nothing but the dust of the road, the ache of his bones, and the searing, burning sensation of his body being dragged over sharp stones. He was still moving, and it took him several moments to realize why. His left foot was still caught in the stirrup, and the horse was galloping onwards, pulling him along.
Adrenaline coursed through his veins, powering his battered body, as some part of him recognized that he was fighting for his life. He had to get loose, unless he wanted to be dragged to his death. He clawed at the road, twisting on his stomach, feeling every rock and rut scrape the length of his body, but he pushed aside the pain. Nothing mattered except getting loose and saving Astrid.
He kicked out with his foot until at last – by chance, or the grace of God – it fell free of its prison. He skidded forward a few more feet by sheer momentum, and then finally stopped moving. He lay sprawled for a moment, his face in the dirt, every bone, muscle, and tendon he possessed in agony, and his hands and arms scraped raw from the road.
He realized he’d not breathed since he’d been thrown. Black motes danced in front of his eyes, presaging oblivion. He rolled onto his back and schooled his lungs to work, trying to bury his pain enough to focus on his next move.
Which was to sit up. All of his muscles were in revolt, and his hands burned. He didn’t dare look at them, knowing they would be bloody and mangled. His vision spinning, he looked down the road. He saw his mount prancing nervously fifty yards ahead, throwing its head from side to side and neighing in distress.
Bloody useless creature! he wanted to shout. But he couldn’t find his voice. It was hard enough to breath, much less form words.
He turned his attention to the coach. It raced down the lane at a dangerous pace, careening erratically from left to right. Whatever the state of its driver, however, it didn’t seem in any danger of stopping.
Something inside of him withered. The coach would get away, and with it, any hope of Astrid’s rescue.
He rose to his feet and attempted to walk, but his legs felt disconnected from his body, his left ankle throbbing. He dropped to his knees and watched helplessly as the coach moved farther and farther from him. He’d been so close. He’d even heard her screaming inside the coach. The pain and terror in her voice had been palpable. He could hear her voice even now, reverberating through his mind, filling him with renewed fury and a sense of helplessness.
His heart clenched in his breast and a strange moisture filled his eyes.
He’d failed her. He’d never see her again – at least, not as she had been. He’d known her so briefly, yet it felt as if it had been forever. He could not recall what he’d been before he’d met her. She’d changed something inside of him, jarred something loose. She’d made him feel. Rage. Confusion. Doubt. A thousand ugly emotions.
But for all of her faults, she did not deserve this. No one deserved this.
Montford let out a ragged moan of frustration, defeat, and sorrow.
How could he have failed?
Then something caught his eye up ahead. The coach lurched to one side, and the door sprang open. He saw Astrid standing on the runner one moment, then sailing through the air. He was too far away to see anything but the haze of her fiery hair, the vibrant orange color of her pelisse, a pale face. Whatever she felt – her terror, her urgency, her pain – was hidden from his view, but he could feel it all the same, as if it were his own. She landed in a ditch, tumbling head over heels until at last she came to a stop in a mangled heap of legs and skirts and hair.
The coach continued to roll away, the sound of a man bellowing with rage reaching Montford’s ears.
He ignored the screams and clambered to his legs, his stomach hollow and his mouth dry. He felt no relief that she was free of the coach’s prison. In fact, he was choked with fury. The foolish creature had jumped from a moving carriage and likely killed herself in the process. He’d throttle her!
Somehow he made his body work, though every fiber of it cried out in protest. He ran, his lungs burning with the effort, his mind sinking by increments into his worst nightmare. He could not but help recall the coaching accident that had killed his parents, the way his mother had lain, in a ditch so very similar to the one he now approached, her body twisted, bloody, and unmoving. He’d been there with her, in the blood, clinging to her corpse, wondering why she would not wake up, not understanding why she would not hold him or comfort him.
He could smell the old terror, the muck, the blood, the decay of death, as if he were still there. The thirty years that had passed since then were stripped away, and he was that four-year-old boy once more, filled with confusion and fear. His eyes burned and clouded over, and an inhuman sound was ripped from his lungs as he fell to his knees beside the orange lump.
She didn’t move. He couldn’t see her face. He feared that when he did, he would see his mother.
But the hair was not right. His mother had dark hair, like his own, and the hair he glimpsed through his clouded eyes was the color of a bonfire, spiraling and twisting out of control. And his mother would have never worn such a hideous, orange coat. No one of his acquaintance would have worn such a garment. Except for one.
“Astrid!” The name was torn out of him. The past and present collided in his mind as he seized the prone figure by the shoulders and pulled her into his arms. She smelled of lavender and sweat and the dirt of the roadside. She smelled wonderful.
He held her tightly against him, not daring to breathe or move. She was warm in his arms and limp. Her head flopped against his shoulder. His heart pounded with fear. Was she dead? He hadn’t the courage to discover for himself. All he could do was rock back and forth, trying to master his rollicking emotions. She couldn’t die. Not her, not now, not ever. He didn’t think he could bear it.
But then he felt her chest expand and contract underneath his hands and the warm, feeble brush of her breath against his nape.
He shuddered in relief. He could hardly believe he was holding her and that she was alive. He pulled back and dared to look at her.
He did not like what he saw. One of her eyes was swollen and beginning to go black. He brushed back the halo of her wild hair and discovered an ugly red welt on her temple. God knew what the rest of her body had suffered.
A blind rage swept through him. He’d kill Lightfoot. He’d chop him into pieces and feed him to Petunia.
He clutched Astrid tight against him and lifted his head to stare down the road. The coach was still racing away. Lightfoot was leaning out of the door, shouting at his driver to turn around.
Montford rather hoped that they did so he could exact his revenge. But at the same time, his rational mind knew this would be very difficult under the circumstances. Lightfoot was armed. Montford didn’t even have a horse anymore. The damned beast was about as useful as a sack of manure.
He turned his attention back to Astrid. She was coming around, her uninjured eye opening. He noted somewhat hysterically that it was her blue eye. She stared up at him unseeingly for a moment, then she seemed to realize who he was. Relief – fear – pain – flashed across her swollen face, and her eyes welled with tears, her lips trembled.
“Montford …” she rasped.
She sounded as terrible as she looked.
“Fool! Little fool!” he cried, shaking her shoulders. “Throwing yourself from a moving coach! What were you thinking!” He knew it was a stupid thing to say as soon it was out of his mouth, but it was better said than the thousand other half-formed words hovering on his tongue.
She looked at him with disbelief. Then, in a move that shocked him, she let out a laugh. Or a croak. “I’d no other option.”
“You could have killed yourself.”
“Rather that than remain where I was.”
He shook his head, but he couldn’t refute her. He raised his hand and cupped her chin. She winced and drew back as if his touch pained her, which it probably did. He wanted to howl.
“You came for me,” she said, smiling feebly at him.
“Of course I came for you!” he said with great irritation.
The flurry of movement up the road intruded upon his consciousness. He raised his head and glimpsed the coach turning around in the road, preparing to return in their direction. Damnation, what was he to do now?
Astrid followed his glance and inhaled sharply. He could feel her grow rigid in his arms. “Tell me you have a plan to get us out of this, Montford,” she said.
Montford glanced at her battered face, her torn, soiled dress, then down at his own ragged clothes, scraped arms and hands. He raised his eyes and met her wild glance, and saw in it that she knew just as well as he did they were doomed. They had nothing but each other and the rags on their backs. No wonder she was smiling.
He couldn’t help himself. He began to laugh.
EVEN THROUGH the fog around her brain, Astrid knew that Montford had become hysterical. He was on his knees in the dirt, shredded, scraped, bloodied, and looking like something that had come out the business end of a sieve. And he was laughing.
Astrid could barely focus her vision, and her head was pounding. Her relief at having escaped the carriage was greatly diminished by her aching body, the renewed threat thundering down upon them, and her mounting irritation at Montford.
But oddly enough, she felt like laughing too. Their situation was hopeless. He knew it just as much as she did. And it was funny, in an awful sort of way.
Her mouth lifted at the edges of its own accord, but she soon regretted it. The muscles in the left side of her face howled their protest, and her vision went black with pain.
He must have seen her wince, for his laughter ceased, and his face went grim. He glanced down the road, then around them, and she could see the cogs churning in his brain. “Can you run?”
She didn’t know. Her doubt must have shown in her eyes, for he gave her a weak, humorless smile. “Me neither,” he muttered. He took her by the elbow and hauled her to her feet.
She cried out from the pain in her cramped arms, realizing they were still bound behind her.
His expression darkened with fury. He spun her around and worked at the knots at her wrists. Her hands finally sprang free of their bonds, and she gasped as pinpricks of feeling rushed back into them. She rubbed them together in front of her, her wrists chafed and ringed with ugly black bruises.
She raised her eyes and saw Montford studying her wounds with a thunderous rage gripping his features. “I shall kill them,” he said in a strangled voice, emotion thickening his words. “I shall rip them apart.”
Some part of her thrilled at his words, another part of her went cold. He was quite serious. “As much as I would enjoy that, it’s neither the time nor the place,” she said as evenly as she could.
Montford tore his eyes from her, into the thick forest bordering the road. “Come on,” he said gruffly.
He tugged her arm, and together they stumbled into the undergrowth. She could hear the coach behind them and the sound of Lightfoot’s angry voice. The thought of being caught again was enough to make her sore legs work. Her head spun, and she could barely keep from falling over. Only the strength of Montford’s grip on her arm kept her from pitching headlong to the forest floor. He pulled her over bushes and logs, ever deeper into the gloom, their pace as slow as it was frantic.
She thought she heard the sound of breaking twigs behind them, but she didn’t dare turn around to see if they were being pursued. She concentrated on keeping upright. Her senses swam, the forest little more than a blur of green and brown and shifting shadows, the prickling of brambles and sharp leaves brushing her legs and arms.
Someone shouted behind them – Lightfoot – and her heart nearly leapt out of her chest. Montford’s grip tightened around her arm, and he practically dragged her onwards, down a sharp incline, over a creekbed. They stumbled up a gully, her knees scraping against stone and fallen limbs, her hands rubbed raw from the bark of trees and the sharp rocks jutting from the loam. On and on they went, until she lost all track of time and place.
They reached a pine forest, the ground covered in a blanket of brown, rotting needles. Their footsteps swished and crunched, breaking the stillness surrounding them, sending birds squawking into the treetops, betraying their every movement.
She risked a glance over her shoulder but could not see any signs of pursuit. Her anxiety eased only fractionally. They were far from being out of danger. And she shouldn’t have tried to turn. Her head spun, tilting the world around her on its axis. She stumbled over a tree root, her legs flying out from beneath her.
Montford gripped her tightly and spun around to catch her with his other arm. He held her tightly against his chest. He was hot and damp, his heart thumping erratically against her cheek. He smelled terrible, but she didn’t mind.
He set her from him and studied her face, his expression impenetrable. “Can you continue?”
She nodded wearily.
His brow furrowed, his mouth pinched into a grim line. He turned from her and tucked his arm around her waist, half-carrying her. She hated being so weak, she hated having to rely on him, but she had no choice. She was too weary and broken to protest.
He lifted her over a fallen tree, tucked her against him, and continued onwards.
“I don’t suppose you know where you’re going,” she said.
He snorted. “Of course not. East? We are bound to figure out something eventually.”
It was a question more than a statement. She heard the anxiety in his voice. He had no idea what he was doing. She should have been more alarmed than she was. They were lost in a forest in the middle of nowhere, a lunatic pursuing them, and nothing to aid them but their wits. But the further they went with no sign of being overtaken, the less she worried. She was free of Lightfoot, and that was all that mattered.
Montford had come for her. And they were bound to figure out something, just as he said. She allowed herself to hope, and to dream of the life she had thought she had lost forever.
And gradually, those dreams o
vertook her awareness and sucked her into oblivion.
MONTFORD WAS not certain how long they had been in the forest. It felt like years. Hours had passed, for the sun was now behind them, their shadows lengthening, the forest steadily dimming. He’d noticed no sign of pursuit and could only hope their trail had been lost. The henchman, at the very least, would be in difficulties with a shot through his arm.
Montford’s own ankle was throbbing, along with the rest of his body. He didn’t know how he had managed to make it this far, much less haul Astrid alongside of him. She was no pocket Venus, and she was in even worse shape than he, relying upon him to support most of her weight.
He now realized that he was supporting all of her weight. Her feet were dragging behind her, her head hanging low. He stopped and tilted her head up. Her eyes were closed, her face drained of color. She had fainted on her feet, and he had not even noticed.
He carried her to the base of a large knotted oak, ignoring his aching limbs, and set her down in the crook of one of its roots. He patted her uninjured cheek in an effort to rouse her.
Very slowly, she came around, her eyes fluttering open – or at least one of them. She tried to sit up, but he urged her back down. The knot on her head was worrying. He’d seen Marlowe sustain a similar injury in a tavern brawl, and it had laid him low for a week.
Montford sat down next to her, pulling her against his side to conserve their warmth. Now they had stopped moving, he was aware of the chill in the air.
He stared up at the darkening sky with a sinking heart. It would be a cold night. Yet another obstacle he had not considered. He’d not slept outside since he’d been a boy and he and Sherbrook had decided to run away to the Barbados. They’d left Harrow on foot and spent the night just outside a small village on the border of Kent. They’d given up by the next morning, Sherbrook having lost interest in the idea, and Montford having nearly passed out at the wrinkles in his clothes after a night spent under the stars. He’d not cared for the experience.
The Duke's Holiday Page 31