If those criminals lay a hand on anyone I care about, I will hunt them to the ends of the earth and grind them into the dust like the vermin they are. There is no excuse for preying upon the innocent in this way, no excuse at all.
He turned his gaze back to the Earl who appeared to be making some kind of a growling sound in his throat as he eyed the bags of money under Tristan’s arm. Blood had dripped from his wounded side onto the sacks. It occurred to him that blood-soaked currency would be trifle more difficult for a villain to explain away and he smiled.
Tristan pulled the knife from his boot and held it to the Earl’s throat. “Cease your noise or I will give you something to growl about.” The Earl stopped growling but continued to glare in silence. “It does not matter to you whether the money is bloodstained. You will not ever be alive to use it.” The Earl’s eyes widened at this. “Did you think I would merely turn you over to the authorities so that you might use your title and wealth to obtain your freedom?” Tristan chuckled. “I think not.”
Tristan removed the knife from the Earl’s throat and sheathed it. Another flash of lightning followed by a clap of thunder rent the air nearby and he turned his head to scan the landscape, using the lightning’s light to look for anyone that might had follow them. A muffled animal-like scream warned him of the coming attack, but he was not fast enough. The Earl launched himself into Tristan’s torso using his tied-up hands to gouge at Tristan’s wounded side.
They wrestled and, in the confusion, lost their footing and rolled down the set of stairs toward Jacob’s sleeping form. “Look out,” Tristan called out to his slumbering friend, but it was too late. They crashed into him and tumbled head over heels down to the foot of the stairs landing hard. Jacob yelled out something in Hebrew that Tristan was fairly certain was not fit for gentler ears. “I think I cracked a rib,” he groaned extricating himself from the pile of limbs.
“I believe that you did so on my skull,” Jacob remarked, gently prodding at his head to assess the damage.
Tristan grabbed the Earl up by his collar but found that he was unconscious having hit his head on the stones. For a moment he thought the Earl might be dead. “You are not allowed to die yet. You will face justice one way or another, but you will not die on me here this day. You will save your daughters whether you wish to do so or not by admitting to your cohorts what you have done to betray them. We will not pay for your crimes of foolishness with our lives.”
Blood dripped from the Earl’s head onto the castle ruin’s stone floor mixing with the rain. Tristan growled and shook his head in frustration. “Will he live to see the morn?” Jacob asked leaning against the far wall, holding his own head in his hands.
“I do not know.”
“Did you mean what you said to him about not turning him over to the authorities?”
Tristan sighed. He was not a violent man by nature, but recent events had made him so. “I do not know that either. If there were irrefutable proof against him that would stand up in a court of law, then yes, I would turn him over to the authorities in London. If there is not enough proof, then I cannot allow him to roam free to harm his daughters ever again.” For the time being we need him for explanation and leverage against the kidnappers.”
Jacob nodded slowly, grimacing at the pain. “When the time comes, I will be ready,” he promised. “Say the word and it will be done.”
“Thank you, my friend. I do not wish to heap my own sins upon your head.”
“I would feel nothing for the weight of my own is so great that one more is little enough to go unnoticed,” Jacob brushed Tristan’s concerns aside.
Tristan smiled. “You take life to save it. There is a difference.”
"Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world." Jacob shrugged raising his hands up in front of him as if they were nothing but tools. “According to the Talmud, I have destroyed many worlds with these hands and in doing so saved many more. To destroy the world this man has created so that the beautiful worlds awaiting his daughters might continue, that is a burden I can bear, my friend.”
“Then let us hope it is not needed, but if it is, we shall destroy and save the world in equal measure, together.”
They arose and dragged the Earl’s unconscious form out of the rain, praying that he would live through the night. Do not die on me yet, you scoundrel, not yet.
Chapter 33
Jonathan and Henry approached the Roman ruins together, while Malcolm and Fergus remained at a distance hidden so as not to be caught unawares of any traps or treachery that the kidnappers might have planned. Once they reached the top of the hill, they spotted riders approaching in the distance riding inland along the edge of the ancient wall.
When the kidnappers pulled up in front of them Jonathan nearly cried out at the sight of his sister. “Grace?!” he whispered in shock at the state of her. She hung over the front of one of the horses like a sack of grain her head bobbing loose as if she had no control over her own body. The man riding behind her simply flipped her off of his horse letting her drop to the ground in a pile at Jonathan’s feet.
A noise from behind them showed that Malcolm and Fergus had been discovered and apprehended at gunpoint by Grace’s captors. Both Scotsmen were covered in bruises and bloody scrapes. Henry growled low in his throat and took a menacing step forward, his hand on his pistol. Jonathan stopped him grabbing his arm. “Let go of me,” Henry seethed.
“Now is not the time for vengeance,” Jonathan warned for only Henry’s ears. “Later.” He met Henry’s eyes urging him to see reason for Grace’s sake. “She is alive. See, she is breathing,” he gestured toward her crumpled dirty form and saw her torso rise and fall with each shuddering breath.
“I will kill them for this,” Henry swore through clenched teeth.
“And I will help you, but not now.”
Henry nodded with great effort and took his hand from his pistol. He bent down to kneel beside Grace upon the ground but was brought up short by the barrel of a rifle from one of the men. “Not yet,” the masked man growled.
“Do you have the money?” the man who appeared to be leading the masked gang of bandits asked stepping down from his horse.
“Yes,” Jonathan nodded and stepped forward to hand them the sealed bags of money. The bags contained a combination of coins and pound notes from both his father and Henry. Jonathan held his breath as he waited to see if the brigands would keep their word and ride away.
The leader grinned menacingly with delight and backed up a step to open the bags with his knife. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded to know, the grin fading from his lips. “Where is the money?” he turned his steely glare onto Jonathan and Henry.
“Are you blind man? It is there in your hands.”
The man tipped the bags over and let the contents fall to the ground cascading down around Grace’s unconscious form. “Does that look like money to you?”
Jonathan and Henry stared at the blank pieces of paper in stunned silence. They did not know what to say or make of the scene before them. “I do not understand,” Jonathan breathed, looking to Henry for answers.
“The money was there. We watched your father seal the bags with our own eyes,” Henry answered stunned, his eyes looking frantically back and forth between Grace and the kidnappers.
A light dawned on the kidnapper’s face and he jerked off the mask that concealed his features, his mouth set in a grim line of anger so menacing as to cause a shiver of foreboding to pass over Jonathan’s skin. “We have been betrayed. Kill them all,” the leader ordered with a wave of his hand turning from the scene to mount his horse.
“No!” Jonathan cried out stepping forward between his sister and the men. Henry sank to his knees to cover Grace with his own body pulling his pistol from his belt as he fell. “Please, the money was there, I swear it.”
“I believe you, but it is not there
now,” the leader shrugged as if it were of no consequence that they had done everything asked of them and failed in spite of it. He nodded toward his men to finish the job and turned his horse to ride away leaving them to their fate.
“I love you, Grace,” Henry whispered, “in this life and the next. See you soon, my dearest.”
“I am so very sorry, my friend.” Jonathan reached for his pistol as gunfire punctured the air and he collapsed to his knees reaching out for his sister’s hand one last time.
* * *
Amelia and Mrs. O’ Boyle lay in the grass behind the stone wall. They had arrived just as the exchange had turned sour and the distraction had allowed them to crawl up to the bend of the wall without being noticed. She had planned to arrive before the exchange ever took place to warn her brother of their father’s deception, but she had been too late. When the man had ordered that the people she cared about were to be killed, she and Mrs. O’ Boyle had aimed their guns and fired. Two men dropped dead.
All hell had broken loose at this point with Henry wrapping his arms and legs around Grace, and then launching their bodies, rolling down the grassy incline away from the line of fire. Jonathan leapt up grabbing the reins of one of the horses and fired into the face of its rider even as the man pulled the trigger to shoot Jonathan. Malcolm and Fergus wrestled with their captors in an effort to gain the upper hand in the confusion. The man who appeared to be the leader had turned back and circled around.
Amelia and Mrs. O’ Boyle reloaded as fast as they could, but it was not fast enough. The unmasked rider was upon them before she could get her gun raised to aim. Grabbing her by her breeches, he hauled her up over his saddle in front of him, kicking Mrs. O’ Boyle in the face. “Let go of me!” Amelia screamed at the top of her lungs, kicking and lashing out at her assailant.
Ignoring her protests, the rider kicked his horse into a gallop and raced off down the slope toward the forest below. Amelia struggled to get her arm back over the horse’s body so that she might pull the knife from her boot, but the man stopped her, pinning her arm between them instead. It felt as if her arm was being wrenched out of its socket. She cried out again, to no avail. She looked back as her friends and family disappeared from view.
* * *
Tristan and Jacob arrived to a scene of blood and chaos. Hearing gunfire, they had urged their horses to such a speed that Tristan feared they might collapse from the effort. Clearing the trees, they had charged up the hill guns drawn and joined the fray. Jonathan lay on the ground shooting at his attackers from beneath. Blood seeped from a wound in his leg, but he fought with such ferocity that Tristan was fairly certain he would recover.
Tristan searched the landscape for Henry and saw him leaning over a pile of fabric at the base of the hill. He found his Grace.
Tristan turned his attention back to the fight at hand. Malcolm flashed him a toothy grin as he bashed in the head of one of the brigands. Tristan nodded with a smile. The Scotsman was in his element, a warrior to the core, no more out of practice with gun and blade for his years shepherding in the mountains than the most skilled of soldiers. Fergus was right behind him giving as good as he got.
“My Lord! My Lord!” Mrs. O’ Boyle’s voice came screeching across the hillside. She ran toward them stumbling, blood running down her face from a broken nose. “He has taken Lady Amelia!”
“Who?! Where?!”
“The man without a mask! He has taken her into the forest!”
Tristan turned to meet Jacob’s eyes. “I have this, go,” he shouted over the din of battle. Nodding, Tristan dumped the Earl from his saddle out to the ground, kicked his horse into a full gallop, and rode toward the place Mrs. O’ Boyle had indicated.
Weaving in and out of the forest’s obstructions, Tristan followed the trail left by Amelia’s captor. The horse, having to carry two passengers, had left deep tracks in the soft dirt of the forest floor. Away from the sounds of battle, Tristan began to hear Amelia’s voice crying out through the trees ahead of him. Amelia, I am coming. Hold on. His heart beat the message pounding through his veins.
When he caught sight of them through the underbrush, his heart leapt in his chest. Amelia had been thrown over the back of the horse in front of her captor. Tristan attempted to get a shot but could not shoot the man without risking hitting Amelia. Urging his horse faster, he came up behind them. The rider turned and fired at Tristan but missed, hitting a tree trunk by his head instead. The shattered wood fragments hitting the rear of Tristan’s horse scared it causing it to bolt forward with renewed energy that he did not know it had left to give.
Coming up beside the other horse, Tristan leveled his pistol as best as he could at the brigand and pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded like ripened fruit, blood flying everywhere. It had been an impossible shot given the speed they were going and the terrain, but he had made it. The man fell from his horse stone dead. The horse, terrified, bolted off in the opposite direction with Amelia holding on for dear life.
Tristan raced after her coming up beside the horse once more. He attempted to get ahead of it to grab the reins, but the horse was too wild with fright to allow it. They emerged into a clearing and Tristan took advantage of the moment. Gathering all of his strength, he launched himself from his horse and onto the back of the one carrying Amelia. He hit the saddle hard knocking the breath out of him, but he did not let go.
Grabbing the reins, he pulled back commanding the horse to slow and then stop. “Amelia?” he breathed the question as he pulled her into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and cried into his shirt, drenching it with the warmth of her tears. “It is over, my darling. You are safe.”
Amelia’s head snapped up as she overcame the shock of her ordeal. “Grace?!”
“I do not know. I saw Henry with her at the base of the hill, but she did not appear to be moving.” Tristan could feel her heart racing against his chest.
“We must go back,” she demanded, already turning in the saddle to urge the horse to turn back. Nodding, Tristan dismounted and handed her the reins, retrieving his own horse. They rode out of the forest together back to the hill.
* * *
Amelia moved with silent urgency as she dismounted and raced up the hill, the horse too exhausted to go on. She climbed over the wall to find Jonathan lying on the ground wounded, but alive. “Amelia,” he exclaimed at the sight of her and pulled her down to the ground to embrace her in relief.
“Grace?” she asked searching the other side of the hill.
“I do not know,” Jonathan answered. “The fight has only just ended, and Henry has not returned.”
Amelia followed where he gestured and saw the outline of two bodies in the grass below. She scrambled to her feet and propelled herself down the slope as fast as her legs would allow.
“Careful, My Lady!” Mrs. O’ Boyle’s voice called after her, but she paid it no heed. She could hear feet pounding on the earth behind her, but she did not look back to see who followed.
When she reached Henry’s side, she collapsed to her knees in the grass beside him. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he clutched Grace to his chest. Amelia’s heart hovered on the precipice of shattering as she looked into his face. “Henry?” she asked afraid of the answer.
“She is alive,” he sobbed out in desperate joy. “She is alive!”
Amelia cried out in joyous rapture and gathered her sister into her arms. “Amelia,” Grace whispered. Her skin was as hot as fire, but she was alive. “Is it really you this time? I dreamt of you so often, but you were not real.”
“Yes, I am here, little sister. I am here.” Amelia bent her head and sobbed into Grace’s hair. Strong masculine arms encircled them both and Amelia looked up to find Tristan smiling down at her, tears in his eyes.
“You did, love. You saved her. You kept your promise to your mother to keep her safe.”
“We did it,” she whispered through her tears. “Thank you…” her words were choked off by the
magnitude of the emotions that cascaded through her body. The heat of Grace’s body burned through her clothes causing Amelia to come to her senses. “She is burning with fever. We must get her to a physician.”
Nodding, Henry gathered Grace into his arms and carried her to the waiting horses on the hill above. Tristan helped Amelia to stand and they followed close behind. Henry mounted his horse with Grace in front of him and Amelia took her own horse’s reins from Mrs. O’ Boyle. “I will join you as soon as I can,” Tristan promised kissing her hand, before she and Henry kicked their horses forward toward the nearest town.
The Haunted Knight 0f Lady Canterley Page 26