Escape with A Rogue (14 page)

“I see.”

Two simple words and he felt thoroughly chastised. “It’s the truth, and you deserve it. You deserved it from the very beginning.”

“This is so very different from what I thought,” she said softly.

He hated himself. Lady M. had endured the shock of learning her grandfather had lied to her. The horror of discovering a man she thought hanged was alive—and innocent. Now, he’d stripped away his gloss as a potential hero. “I’m sorry, my lady. I wanted to keep you from doing anything else mad and dangerous over me, because I’m not worth it.”

She tore off a piece of bread and brought it to her lips, holding it with both hands. Her head was ducked. He’d never seen Lady M. with her head down. She was the type of woman who looked up, always observing the world around her.

“Well, it is done now,” she said.

Hades. Of course, she was not going to argue that he was worth it. But his heart twisted with disappointment. Like a madman—or a stupid, hopeful child—he’d wanted her to see some good in him still. Even after he’d ensured she would not.

“I could understand why a man would commit a crime in desperation. I’ve done it myself, haven’t I? But I cannot imagine why you would systematically take advantage of people, use them and destroy them, simply to gain wealth.”

He could give her a dozen reasons. Survival. Anger. The horror of being unable to save his mother. The drive to know he would never be beaten, hungry, or frightened again. But he wouldn’t try to explain himself. His goal was to make her hate him—to make sure she never wanted to touch him again.

“If you want me out of your sight, I’ll do it, but I won’t leave you, Lady M. You can’t be left alone out here on the moors. Someone
shot
at you. It’s my intention to protect you, and I’ve got to do it both here
and
at your home—”

Jack heard it then—the faint baying of a hound. The soldiers must have rounded up some dogs to help in their hunt. His scent would have been taken from his prison bedsheet.

He strode over to the shuttered window and opened one wood panel a few inches. In the fickle light, he could make out the road. Yards away, a group of men walked along it. One had a dog on a leash. The animal’s nose skimmed over the ground. It stopped, then tracked back on itself and the men followed. No sign of rifles. No redcoats either.

“Bring me the knives, Lady M.,” Jack requested, watching the slow progress of the men. They seemed in a jovial mood. One slapped another on the back in a friendly way. The dog had left the road. It had found their track.

He looked back into the room.

Lady M. had pulled off her nightdress and was hauling her black gown over her head. Her shift clung to her rounded breasts, her slim hips, the long, sleek lines of her smooth thighs. He jerked his head around so he wasn’t watching her dress, and he had to force his words through a suddenly dry mouth. “What do you think you are doing?”

“Preparing to run, of course. The knives are on the table. Get them while I make ready. If the men are on the road, we should go through the barn. It opens out onto the moor. There isn’t much cover out there—”

“They have a hound and he’s following my scent, my lady.” Her self-possession astonished him.
Get them
, she’d calmly said. A gently bred lady should be swooning. He admired her, but he hated himself for bringing her into a situation where she was growing calm about violence.

Jack stalked over to the worktable and grabbed the small paring knife and the larger butcher’s one. It was an unwieldy weapon, but it would make for a good showpiece to buy him time—time to hopefully save his sorry rump in an attack.

The men in pursuit didn’t have rifles, but they wouldn’t be unarmed.

Struggling with her buttons, Lady M. was at his heels, so he pointed the knife toward the bed. “Stay here. Do not move an inch. I’ve got enough time to tie you to that bed if you plan to defy me.”

“I thought I was to be your hostage in this situation.”

“I have another plan, one that keeps you well away from the danger.” Commanding her wasn’t going to work. What in blazes would? “Do this for me,” he said gently. “Stay here for me. I’m pleading with you, my lady, and I’ve never pleaded with anyone in my life. For the love of God, for the sake of my soul, stay here.”

She nodded. “All right, then. I will.”

It couldn’t be that easy, could it? A shove of his hand drew back the bolt on the rear door. Jack ran through the empty stable tacked onto the back of the cottage.

His mother had never listened to him. Nor had the one other woman he’d tried to help—

Stephen’s wife, Juliette.

He had to hope that Lady Madeline was different.

* * *

Confront three men, who must be armed—likely with pistols—with nothing but a paring knife and a dull kitchen blade?

Madeline’s blood felt like ice water moving through her body and her heart thundered with fear. Jack should have more sense than to race out into certain danger. It was if he was determined to get himself killed.

With trembling fingers, she fought to fasten the buttons of her dress. Why had he run out half-cocked? If he’d waited long enough to let her speak, she would have reminded him of her pistol. With her dress secured and her boots laced, it took her precious moments to prime the pan with powder and drop in a shot. Her fingers shook so much she spilled most of the powder.

If she was truly strong, she must prove it now. Taking a deep breath, she hurried out the back of the cottage.

Nothing but unpopulated moor stretched ahead of her: undulating green-brown hills that met the purplish-pink sky. The cottage was perched on the side of a hill that rolled downward directly in front of her. Shrubs massed toward the bottom of the valley; chunks of granite covered the ground. A rook cried overhead, but otherwise it was eerily quiet.

How many minutes had passed since Jack had dashed out through the barn at the back of the house? How could he and his pursuers be out of sight so quickly?

There were three men. One was large and bulky, like the pugilists who fought at the illegal fighting matches her brother held. The other two were tall and thin.

One pistol shot wouldn’t deal with three men, but she would be there to help Jack—if she could find him.

Her hand betrayed her with a tremble. She must stay calm. She would not think about the possibility of having to kill a man.

Being chased, Jack would likely run downhill. Ahead, Madeline heard a mournful baying, followed by gruff barks. Heart in her throat, she started that way.

* * *

One down . . . soon.

Jack’s chest heaved from his downhill sprint and thorns ripped at every inch of his bare skin. His wild momentum had sent him leaping from rock to rock, until he’d reached the edge of a small cut in the earth, and before he could stop, he’d plunged down into it, landing in a mass of prickly gorse. He lost the big butcher’s knife in his fall.

But his bad luck quickly became his good fortune. Heavy breathing sounded from above, along with the thudding of boot soles on granite. The three men had split up and fanned out across the open moor to spot him again. One of them had seen him and chased him. Alone. Without calling out to the others.

That was damned strange, unless he was looking to be able to claim a reward alone.

Greed had always been Jack’s friend.

From his low vantage point in the bushes, he could see the man’s boots, then the hulking body towering over them as his pursuer tried to run faster downhill. Jack waited.

“Bleedin’ Jesus!”

The man’s feet slid out from beneath him and he fell. A shoulder slammed into a granite boulder. The man’s head smacked hard on the ground. Jack jumped out of the gorse. Thorns tore through his skin, but the pain only made him mad enough to kill.

He’d snapped the man’s face to the left with his right fist when the man drew a pistol.

Slowly, Jack rose to his feet, and his pursuer did the same. The man was a stranger and definitely no soldier. He wore a heavy greatcoat over a straining waistcoat, crisp white shirt, and dapper trousers that showed the big muscles of his legs. He had the flattened nose of a boxer, a gleaming bald pate that led into a bulging forehead, and thick, black brows.

He looked like the sort of bruiser Jack would have hired at one of his rougher gaming hells.

“I’d advise you not to shoot,” Jack remarked conversationally. “The sound would alert your friends. I take it there’s a reward for me—alive.”

“For you, Hart, there’s a bloody good one. Now let’s not be giving me any trouble, Jackie boy. Start marching up toward the road.”

Jack held up his hands, shrugged, and began to struggle uphill. Over his shoulder, he said, “You know who I am. Want to return the pleasure?”

“Don’t remember my name, now, Jackie? I’m surprised.”

Had the brute worked for him before?

Jack suddenly stopped. He had to use all that lumbering weight to his advantage. Launching around, he kicked the man in the gut. He followed up with another kick to the wrist that sent the pistol flying. It hit a boulder and discharged with a roar.

One last kick sent the bald-headed brute tumbling back down the hill. His head hit a stone and he lay still.

About one hundred yards away, the other two men, holding pistols, were running toward the sound of the shot. Jack dropped low behind an outcrop of granite, while his chest expanded on fierce breaths.

The last night he spent in London, before changing his name and changing himself from a crime lord to a groom, two men had been sent to kill him.

He’d been drunk—so bloody full of liquor he hadn’t been able to see straight. But still he’d heard two sets of footsteps on the floorboards. The thugs had thought him too foxed to be a threat. They had been two of his best friend’s reformists, armed with knives. It had been retribution for Juliette’s death—

He’d survived. Stephen’s men hadn’t.

Ruthlessly, Jack shoved away the memory of Juliette’s face in death—she had fallen beneath a carriage and her beauty had been shattered. Destroyed.

Lightning might strike twice, but he’d never known a man to survive two hits of it.

* * *

A shot had exploded and two armed men were racing across the moor.

Madeline crouched behind the clump of gorse. Her heart raced so loudly it was a roar in her ears. What did she do every day of her life? She confronted disasters and averted them.

Of course, her disasters had always been of the domestic, not homicidal, kind.

Where was the third man?

She dropped lower. Her knees sank into the spongy, moss-covered earth. She strained to look out again, then she heard it—a breath or a soft grunt, or possibly the slight squish of a footstep.

The scream flew out before she could think to stop it. She whirled, her pistol clamped in both hands.

Wild green eyes, a bronzed face, tangled mahogany hair. Her mind took in all those things while relief and shock and delight made her cry as she whispered, “Jack.”

Dear heaven, she’d
screamed
.

“Over here!” one of the men shouted, and she saw both veering toward their makeshift blind.

“Can you run?” she threw at Jack. If disapproval and a burning glare could make a man fly away from danger, Jack would be soaring to India by now.

“You can’t,” he said flatly. “Not in that gown. I’ll draw their fire. You—Christ, my lady, I don’t know what to do. Stay here and you could be found. Run and—and damn it, you could be killed.”

She thrust the pistol into Jack’s hands, spun so she could lean back against him, and she clamped his arm around her chest. “I’m your hostage. They won’t shoot then.”

“One thing I’ve learned in my life, Lady M.? They might.”

That froze her. She’d never known what it was to be truly terrified until then. “Th—there’s no other way. Not now. You shouldn’t have sneaked up on me—”

“Good Christ, only a field mouse or a rabbit should have been able to hear me.” Suddenly, she was jerked up to her feet. “You’re my hostage,” he growled. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the barrel of the pistol go up toward her head. In line with her head, but behind it, between the two of them.

Shaking with fear, she realized that the two men out on the grass would think Jack held the gun to her skull. Displaying real terror wouldn’t be a problem at all. Her eyes locked on the men. The biggest of them wasn’t there. These two were the lean, tall ones. Nastiness clung to them.

The men strode closer, one wearing a cheery grin, the other leering at her while passing his tongue over his lips.

Jack might be right. She didn’t see anything about them that implied they’d save a woman.

The tallest man of the two, who had black hair plastered down close to his head, made a beckoning motion with his hand. “Now then, Hart. Unhand the lady and step out over here. Even if you were to blow her brains out, it’ll do you no good. We’ve got two pistols. One of us will take you down.”

The man had a pointed chin, a narrow, long nose, and an unlit cheroot jammed in the corner of his mouth. He’d called Jack “Hart.”

“I thought the reward was for me alive?”

“Well, now, there are those who would also pay to see you dead. You know that, I’m sure, my friend.”

Horrified, she saw the other lift his pistol. “I’m going to fire—I’ll either knock her out of the way, or I’ll get you. Wasted too much time on this jape already.” With a confident arc, he brought up the pistol—

She flew to the side as it exploded, and a second roar burst on the tail of the first. Then another and she managed to look up only to see Jack, miraculously still on his feet, vault over the gorse and take off at a run toward the men who were running across the moor.

He’d dropped her spent pistol.

Madeline got up just as Jack caught the man who had fired the first shot. His fists flew.

The other man was not running anymore—he headed toward Jack, murderous fury raw in his face. Madeline rushed around the gorse. Jack could not take on two men.