Yuletide Happily Ever Afters; A Merry Little Set Of Regency Romances

by Jenna Jaxon

  “Ah, some luck at last!” A slow smile spread over Will’s face. He’d anticipated a much longer chase. He never thought he’d have a reason to be grateful for the country mud, but damned if it hadn’t stopped Rowley in his tracks.

  He urged Diablo into a gallop, and before long he caught sight of a hired post-chaise, the yellow paint gleaming dully in the moonlight. As he drew closer he noticed one of its wheels was sunk deep into the mud.

  “Serves you right!” A laugh escaped him as Diablo’s hooves pounded easily through the same muck that had trapped the carriage.

  “One would think you’d have learned your lesson by now, Rowley,” Christopher shouted. “But we’ll be delighted to teach it to you again tonight.”

  Oliver was right on Will’s heels, panting with anger and exertion. “Maddy, stay where you are. Rowley, get out of that carriage this instant, or we’ll bloody well drag you—”

  Crack!

  An ear-splitting blast rang through the air, and something whistled past Will’s head, close enough to trim his sideburns. He tugged Diablo to halt and whirled around, his wide eyes meeting Oliver’s.

  Oliver stared back at him, his mouth hanging open. “Jesus. That sounded like a gunshot!”

  “It damn well felt like one, too! Nearly took my head off!” What the devil? Rowley was shooting at them? “For God’s sake, lay the weapon down before you kill someone, you bloody fool!”

  They waited, but there was no reply. After a moment Oliver urged his horse forward, and Will nudged Diablo into a cautious trot behind him, with Christopher riding on his other side.

  They didn’t get far before a shriek rent the air.

  Will froze, staring at the dark bulk of the carriage in front of him. The shriek had been high-pitched, shrill with terror, and distinctly feminine.

  Maddy.

  “I’m going to kill that bastard.”

  Oliver kicked his horse into motion, but Will grabbed his brother’s reins before Oliver could rush the carriage. “No. Maddy’s in there with him, Oliver. There’s no telling what that scoundrel will do when he’s cornered.”

  He eased Diablo into a cautious walk. As he drew closer to the carriage, he could see the barrel of a tiny pistol pointed at him through a half-open window. Will blinked. Christ, it looked like a muff pistol.

  Rowley carries a muff pistol?

  That was damned odd, but even a muff pistol could blast a hole in a man’s flesh.

  He held his hands up, hoping Rowley could see him in the dark. “Lay your weapon aside at once, before you hurt some—”

  Crack!

  This time the bullet flew wide. Panic was making Rowley careless, and Will didn’t intend to let him get off another shot. He leaped off Diablo’s back and motioned to his brothers.

  They quickly dismounted and hurried to his side.

  “I’m going to shout out to them one more time,” Will whispered. “While I’m distracting them, the two of you creep around to the left side of the carriage. If he shoots again, it’ll take him a moment to reload. I’ll rush the carriage from the right, and we’ll fling open the doors at once and pull out whoever’s inside.”

  “Right.” Oliver nodded.

  “Be careful, both of you,” Will added. “I’ve dug a pistol ball out of one of you already, and I don’t want to do it again.”

  Oliver snorted softly. “I’d just as soon avoid that, as well.”

  Will waited until his brothers were in place on the far side of the carriage, then he walked forward, his hands held up in surrender. “Listen to me—”

  Crack!

  The shot ripped through the quiet night and echoed through the trees, the hollow pop the last sound before a deathly silence fell.

  *****

  “For heaven’s sake, Dinah! Have you gone mad?” Penelope gaped at the tiny pistol gripped in Dinah’s hand, her brain fuzzy with shock. One moment she’d been watching out the window as the post boy poked at the stuck carriage wheel, and the next thing she knew Dinah had hiked up her skirt, fetched a pistol, lowered the window, and fired a shot into the darkness.

  “I’m sane as the day I was born.” Dinah jerked the muzzle of the gun away from the window, her fingers working quickly to unscrew the barrel. “Do you think I scared him off?”

  Penelope stared at her, her mouth working helplessly for several seconds before she was able to produce a sound. “Who, the post boy? I’d say you scared him, yes. He just dove under the carriage!”

  Dinah reached back under her skirts, drew out a small leather pouch and busily set to work reloading the pistol. “Not the post boy. The highwayman!”

  “What highwayman? There’s no highwayman, Dinah!”

  Dinah’s face was as pale as death. “Didn’t you hear the hoofbeats, and the shout? Someone’s after us! Now hush, will you, and let me get another shot off before he kills us both!”

  “What? No! Dinah, put that thing away before you hurt someone!” Penelope held out a shaking hand for the pistol.

  Dinah ignored her. Instead she dropped a ball down the barrel, screwed the barrel back on, and rose to her knees on the seat. “Blast it, it’s as dark as Hades out there. I can’t see a blessed thing.”

  “There’s nothing to see—” Penelope began, but before she could say another word, a shout made them jump.

  “Lay the weapon down!” The voice was deep, masculine, and unmistakably furious. Some more incoherent shouting followed this command, but it was drowned out by the sound of hooves drawing closer to their disabled carriage.

  “If he gets any closer, I’m firing.” Dinah cocked the pistol, her tone grim.

  “But what if it’s not a highwayman?” Penelope couldn’t deny it sounded very much like a highwayman, but shouldn’t they be certain of it before they started firing shots into the dark? “There aren’t any highwaymen anymore, are there?”

  “Not in London, maybe, but what else is there to do out here in the country aside from rob and murder each other?” Dinah was squinting out the window, her hand steady on the pistol. “Of course, it’s a highwayman. Only a highwayman waylays a carriage in the dark!”

  “Maybe it’s Lord Snedley. Perhaps he’s sorry he tossed us out, and he’s come after us.”

  Dinah snorted. “Even more reason to shoot, if it’s Snedley. I’ll aim for his ballocks, shall I?”

  Before Penelope could answer, the highwayman spoke again, his voice calmer this time.

  “Listen to me—”

  He didn’t get any further before Dinah pressed her finger down on the trigger. Penelope gasped, and slapped her hands over her ears to drown out the sudden, hair-raising crack that rent the air. Dinah jerked back from the window, fumbling for her pouch to reload. Penelope sat, silent and motionless, her gaze fixed on the curl of smoke drifting from the muzzle of the gun.

  There was no sound from outside. Not a shout, or single hoofbeat.

  “Did you hit him?” Penelope’s voice was shaking.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. I don’t hear anything.”

  “Oh, dear God, do you think he’s dead?”

  “I hope so.”

  A heavy silence fell over the carriage as they looked at each other, not sure what to do. The moments ticked away, one after the other, but there was still no sound from outside. “He’s either gone, or dead.” Penelope held out her hand for the pistol. “Don’t reload it, Dinah. Give it to me.”

  She didn’t want to touch the thing, but of the two of them she was the least likely to fire it again, so when Dinah offered it to her, she took it. The barrel was still warm. She was about to shove it into her pocket and climb down from the carriage to retrieve their post boy when suddenly the door flew open.

  A man loomed in the doorway, his face half-hidden in shadows. Every inch of his towering frame was heaving with anger, and the part of his mouth Penelope could see was drawn into a fearsome frown. Dinah gasped at the sight of him, then the gasp turned to a scream as he reached an enormous hand into the carriage, fist
ed it in the hem of Dinah’s skirt, and tugged.

  “No!” Penelope threw her arms around Dinah’s legs to keep her from being pulled from the carriage, but then the opposite door suddenly flew open. The second man yanked Dinah’s arms behind her back, and Penelope watched in horror as her friend was dragged from the carriage.

  “Take your hands off her!” Penelope scrambled from her seat to throw herself on top of Dinah’s abductor, but she didn’t have a chance to move before the first man’s roving gaze caught on the pistol in her hand.

  He released Dinah’s skirt as quickly as he’d grabbed it.

  Penelope screamed as his hand snaked out and snatched the pistol from her nerveless fingers. Before she could move or even draw breath he reached in again, and this time…

  This time, he snatched her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As soon as Will threw the carriage door open, all hell broke loose.

  Blood-curdling screams erupted, and there was a mad scramble of arms and legs and flying skirts as the ladies inside darted about in a panic. He didn’t know who to grab first, and every moment he expected a ball to land between his eyes.

  He managed to seize a handful of pink skirts and was about to pull whatever lady was inside them from the carriage, but then he saw Oliver fling open the opposite door and twist the lady’s arms behind her back. She tumbled backwards, and Oliver dragged her, shrieking and kicking, out the door.

  Relief surged through Will—that was one problem dealt with—but then he caught a glimpse of something in the corner of his eye that made his blood go cold.

  A dainty hand, and in it…a tiny pistol, a plume of smoke still curling from the end of the barrel.

  He didn’t think, and he didn’t hesitate. He leaped for the pistol, grabbed it from her hand, then wrapped his fingers around her wrist and with one mighty tug, hauled her out of the carriage. She let out a faint cry as she stumbled, but Will caught her by the waist before she could fall to her knees in the mud. “Now, don’t do anything foolish, like—”

  Smack! “Let me go, you blackguard!”

  “…like slap my face,” he finished, his ears ringing from the blow she’d landed on his cheek. For God’s sake, wasn’t Christmas meant to be a peaceful holiday? Because so far, it had been one bloody skirmish after the next. His sister had been abducted, he’d been shot at, slapped and insulted, and the termagant in his arms was even now aiming her foot at his shin.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Will held her against the carriage and crowded into her, trapping her between the carriage and his body. “Now be still, will you, and let me think.”

  He had a much bigger problem than this squirming, kicking female.

  Neither of these ladies was his sister.

  They’d chased the wrong bloody carriage.

  “Christopher!” He had to shout to be heard above the uproar. “Maddy isn’t here. Go after her, and go quickly, brother! Rowley will have her halfway to London by now!”

  Christopher spat out an expletive so wicked it made the lady in Will’s arms gasp with outrage. Will held her fast until he heard Christopher’s horse’s hooves pounding away, then he jerked his attention back to his captive.

  The lady who wasn’t his sister was still fighting like a feral cat to get free of him. Christ, he had to have a least a foot’s advantage on her in height, not to mention six or seven stone, yet she’d still managed to land a blow on him.

  What the devil were she and her friend doing out here in a hired carriage in the middle of the night? No one ever passed by Cliff’s Edge Castle. It was a good two-hour carriage ride east of Colchester. It remoteness was the very reason Will had chosen to come here in the first place.

  “Damn it, I told you to be still!” He had the pistol in his hand, and he had no idea whether or not she’d had time to reload it before he snatched her from the carriage. “If you keep struggling, one of us may be celebrating Christmas with a pistol shot through the skull. I’d just as soon live to see Twelfth Night, if it’s all the same to you.”

  This time the warning got through to her, because she ceased struggling.

  Will took a moment to catch his breath, then called out, “Oliver? Everything all right on your side?”

  “Splendid,” Oliver called back cheerfully, as if this were all great fun. “I’ve got a lovely young lady here who isn’t Maddy, who’s stomped twice on my foot and kneed me in the thigh. That is, she got my thigh, but it wasn’t where she was aiming.”

  “You deserve a kick in the ballocks, you scoundrel! I’ll see you two hung for this!” Oliver’s lady squawked, her voice shaking with fury.

  “The crown tends to frown upon those doing the shooting, madam, not those who were shot upon.” Will glanced down at the pistol, which was so small it fit into the palm of his hand. “A muff pistol, Oliver,” he called to his brother.

  Oliver groaned. “Good Lord. You mean we were nearly sent to our graves by a muff pistol? How humiliating.”

  Will unscrewed the barrel and checked the chamber. It was empty. He slid the pistol into the back of his waistband, under his coat, and scowled down at the lady he’d trapped against the side of the carriage. “There. That’s much better. Now we’ve take care of that, perhaps you’d be kind enough to explain why you tried to shoot me tonight.”

  She kept her head down, hiding her face. She was wearing a dark, somewhat shabby cloak, and an ill-fitting bonnet. In the light of the half-moon above Will saw a few tendrils of wavy red hair had escaped, and he felt himself softening, despite his anger. He had a weakness for red hair, and the nape of her neck was so white and delicate…well, what sort of cold-blooded murderess had such a dainty, fragile nape?

  Still, red hair or not, she had shot at him, and she’d struck him in the face, as well. “Miss? I asked you a question.”

  She hesitated, then raised her face to his. “We thought you were highwaymen.”

  “We still think so!” The other lady yelled, but Will didn’t answer her. He didn’t even hear her. He was staring at the lady before him, his breath catching in his chest as the moonlight fell on her face.

  It was her.

  The red-headed actress from the Pandemonium. The one with the wide, dark brown eyes, creamy skin and lips so plump and red every time Will saw them he was overwhelmed with a mad craving for summer strawberries.

  Penelope Hervey.

  She’d told him her name a few weeks ago, the night of the fire, but Will had already known it, even before then. He’d seen her once, one night when he’d been waiting in his carriage for Florentina after a performance. She’d passed by with a group of other actresses, and one of them had called her by name. He remembered thinking at the time the name Penelope suited her.

  He hadn’t forgotten it, and he hadn’t forgotten her face, either.

  Silas Bragg tried to keep her out of sight. Penelope Hervey, with her tempting lips and dazzling red hair was shoved as far to the back of the stage as possible. She always played a bit part—a whore, or a bar maid—and she never had any lines. Her face was frequently half-hidden behind a mask, and her hair covered with a hat or wig.

  Silas might have saved himself the trouble. He could have rolled her up in the stage curtains, and Will still would have noticed her. He doubted he was the only one.

  There was no hiding Penelope Hervey.

  She didn’t fit in at the Pandemonium, that much was certain. There was something different about her. He couldn’t have explained what it was, but she’d caught his attention, and once she’d caught it, she’d held it.

  But that was before. Before Christopher had crashed his phaeton, and Oliver had been shot in a duel. Before Maddy had nearly been ruined. Before Will realized his own scandalous behavior was to blame for Maddy’s troubles, and for his brothers’ unchecked debauchery.

  Before he’d vowed to become something more, something better than a Tainted Angel.

  He’d left London behind for a reason. Penelope Hervey, for all her loveliness, was f
rom a world he wanted to escape. He also couldn’t think of any innocent reason she’d be here, in this remote part of Essex, less than a stone’s throw away from the doorstep of Cliff’s Edge.

  He could, however, think of a number of nefarious ones.

  Florentina might have sniffed out where he’d gone and sent Miss Hervey here to put a ball between his eyes. Or between his legs, more likely. No doubt Florentina was furious with him for ending their liaison so suddenly, and God knew she was a vengeful creature.

  “Well, Miss Hervey. This is an unexpected pleasure.” He didn’t bow, but settled his hands on her shoulders, his grip firm to keep her still. For all he knew, she could have a second pistol secreted away in her bodice.

  Her throat worked, but it took several tries before those red lips produced a coherent word. “Lord Archer. We…we fired on Lord Archer.”

  It took Will a moment to understand she wasn’t speaking to him.

  “We fired on Lord Archer,” she repeated, her voice rising. “Lord Archer. We might have put a ball right through his heart!”

  There was a brief silence, then her friend called out, “Did we put a ball through his heart?”

  Miss Hervey swept a panicked gaze over him, her big brown eyes wide. “No. I—I don’t think so.”

  “Another part of him, then? His arm, or maybe his leg?”

  “No. There’s no blood, and he seems…vigorous enough.”

  “Well, I don’t see what all the fuss is, then,” came the disgruntled reply. “No harm done.”

  Miss Hervey’s gaze caught his, and she swallowed. “I do apologize for mistaking you for a highwayman, and for, ah…well, for trying to kill you.”

  Will stared down at her, assessing every twitch and tremor in her face, but as suspicious as he was at her sudden presence here, he couldn’t quite convince himself she was a bloodthirsty murderess. Her face was as pale as death, and her slender body was trembling with delayed shock.

  Whatever reason she had for being at Cliff’s Edge, it wasn’t to shoot him.