Escape with A Rogue (20 page)

“No.” She grasped his arm to pull him back. “You aren’t to force him. I forbid it.”

“What makes you think I’ll answer to your command?”

“Because if you are doing it for me, you’ll listen when I tell you no.”

Would he listen? She wasn’t to find out, for the door abruptly flew open. The man carried a jug, a blanket, and a basket with bread and more food. Tucked under his arm was a shotgun. He pushed by them, striding toward the rear of the long, stone house.

“If yer ’usband and wife, you won’t mind a bed in the straw, now, will you? Plenty of ways to keep warm.” He paused. “Just so you know, there was another man came before you. On horseback and riding as though the devil himself was in pursuit. Wore a soldier’s red coat.”

Madeline froze, but Jack grilled the man for a description of the rider. He’d been a balding, hulking sort of man.

She heard Jack’s quiet exclamation of surprise—after the farmer left the barn. “Blenchley?” he muttered. “What in the blazes would he be running from? Why here?”

* * *

“Will you tell me now who Blenchley is?” Madeline fastened the last of the buttons on her borrowed dress. One candle threw light inside the barn, illuminating a pile of hay, sheep dung, and the bare stone walls. She had her back to Jack so he could wash, and he had his back to her so she could drag her dress over her somewhat cleaner body.

The low rumble of laughter came from behind her. She felt ready to fly apart from nerves and tension—just what did he find so amusing? Impatient, she turned. What she saw sent all breath hurtling from her chest.

Jack no longer had his back to her. Rich brown hair hung around his face. Wild locks of it dangled in front of his eyes. Water—splashed on from a basin—dripped from his cheeks, his nose, and his lips.

Her gaze dropped lower. Droplets glinted on his chest like tiny diamonds amidst the swirls of deep brown hair. His chest, which she had seen only dimly in her cottage, was a sculpture of muscle. All across it, though, scars bit into his flesh. Awful, angry-looking scars.

He jerked the shirt in front of him as though she should be offended by seeing the torment inflicted on his flesh. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t appalled by his body; she was appalled by the cruelty he’d endured. “I—I think I should know who Blenchley is,” she said instead.

He pulled on his shirt, then rubbed his face with one of the cloth scraps they were using as a towel. “You are like a hound on a scent, Lady M. Nothing deters you. Not even almost sinking in a bog, not even the prospect of a night in a shit-filled barn with the coldest water in creation for bathing.”

“If it’s so cold, you should stop rinsing yourself, then. You appear completely clean.”

“It’s the dampening effect of the water I need.”

“Dampening? Your face and your—your chest are both thoroughly wet.”

He laughed again, the sound ribald and risqué, but she snapped, “If you won’t tell me, I’ll guess. Blenchley must be a soldier—was he a guard?”

At his nod, she sagged against the wood post behind her. “They’ve followed us this far? I’d hoped they’d given up at the bog. I thought they would assume we’d drowned.”

“You’re forgetting he got here before us, so he’s not in pursuit of us. If Beau and Simon took this route, he could be following them.”

“The third man at the stone circles,” she gasped.

Jack picked up her muddy coat and began to rinse it in the water. “It could be, and they managed to evade him again. I’ll wash this for you, then take all our clothes to the cottage.”

The lady of the farm had told them they could dry their clothes by the fire. Their hostess had given her a dress and fresh shift to wear in the meantime, along with some of her husband’s clothes for Jack. The gesture had almost broken Madeline’s heart. “They’ve both been generous and kind.”

Jack squeezed out the coat, shook it, laid it over some clean straw, then began to wash her shirt. “I’ve not met many selfless people in my life. Maybe two before this, including you. I hope there’s some way I can reward them for this—beyond your sovereigns. I intend to repay you.”

Including you.
She wondered who the other was. “I have an enormous income, Jack. I can well afford the money and these people more than deserve it.”

He finished washing her shirt and gathered up the wet clothes. She remembered Beau and Jack talking at the stone circles—and the question he hadn’t answered. “What does the Crown want from you, Jack, that they would pursue you with such determination?”

He twisted her shirt to wring out the water and shrugged. “They’re relentless in their pursuit of any escaped prisoner, Lady M. Remember you told me about Louis Vanhille, the man who escaped under a woman’s dress? They caught up with him in Jamaica.”

“Why won’t you tell me, Jack?”

“There are some things that are too dangerous for you to know. Don’t continue to pursue this. I’m not going to tell you.”

“I’m risking my life over it. It’s something I deserve to know.”

“No.” He walked out, the wet clothes hanging over his arm, leaving her alone in the barn. She admired him for wanting to protect her, but it made her impatient now. How could she help him if he would not be honest?

All her life, her mother had warned her that listening to her heart was a dangerous thing.
Do what society expects of you
, Mama had said.
Perhaps it won’t bring you happiness, but neither will risk.

Every day, she’d remembered that and had adhered to it. But then Jack had come into her life, and she’d begun to chip away at her resolve to be perfectly ladylike and faultlessly proper. First, she had gone to visit him. She had begun to tell him about her restlessness and her private dreams of travel. Then, she’d taken enormous risks in the name of justice, and because she could not let an innocent man suffer.

She had listened to her heart and had plunged into disaster. Now she would likely die for her foolishness. But even with that fear, she could not go back to the person she had been.

“Stop being so melodramatic,” she said, in the firm voice she would use with a shirking maid. “There’s a way out of this. You’re here to right a wrong, and then you’ll find the truth.”

She grabbed a blanket and stomped to the pile of straw.

* * *

A hand shook him. “My husband’s spotted a group of riders,” a frantic voice cried by his ear, jerking him out of sleep. Jack blinked to see the farmer’s wife, her eyes wide with fear. “They’re coming through the woods from the east. You both must leave at once.”

She clasped her shawl around her, then ran out of the barn. Her cry of shock and dismay reached him as he shook Lady Madeline. Shouts resounded across the yard—the crisp commands of someone in authority. The farmer answered, keeping his voice sullen and slow.

They’d shared the straw for warmth, each wrapped in a separate blanket. Madeline had rolled over and snuggled her bottom against him. He jostled her harder, hating how rough he was being, knowing he had no choice. Her eyes flickered open. Confusion flashed on her face, then relief as she saw him. The blatant trust in her eyes lanced his heart.

He clasped her hands and began lifting her off the straw. “Someone’s found us, love.”

She had all her clothes on, right down to her boots, but she was still sleep dazed. There had to be somewhere safe he could leave her.

“Where can we run to?” Intelligent and fully awake, her eyes met his.

“No running yet. Not until we see what’s happening.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist, led her out the low door at the back of the sheep’s barn. Together they crept to the corner, and from there, they could see the yard in front of the house. Two men sat on steaming mounts and held the reins of another two horses. The farmer and his wife, both in their bedclothes, stood together. The farmer, waving his shotgun, was belligerent. The door to the cottage flew open and two men stomped out.

“Empty. There’s no one there.” Even as one soldier spoke, the other went across to the front of the barn. It was tumbledown and hidden by bushes and shadow. Holding his finger to his lips, Jack pointed at the house. He waited and watched clouds scuttle across the sky. The instant one blocked the moon, he grasped Lady M.’s wrist. They ran and passed through the dark, behind trees and bush, to the rear of the cottage.

“We must be able to get away. To run from here,” she whispered.

“You can stay. I’ll lure them away, then you could rely on our farmer to get you to the road—” He broke off. No, he couldn’t leave her alone. She needed protection. “All right,” he agreed. “We’ll run together, but move quietly. There’s no need to alert them yet.”

A cry splintered the night. A woman’s scream of terror.

“No,” Madeline gasped. She rushed to the corner of the cottage, and he grabbed for her, to stop her. But her shock and panic—her concern for their saviors—overwhelmed her sense.

“There!” shouted one of the men, the one still mounted on his horse.

The farmer was doubled over, with the unknown rider sneering down at him. The other stranger jerked around at his superior’s shout and ran for Madeline.

* * *

Madeline was running wildly again. Her legs screamed with the strain, her lungs burned. Jack had his hand clasped in hers, and they were making a headlong dash over the rough ground behind the cottage.

They were only a few feet in front of the men. She couldn’t run fast enough. “You’ll have to leave me,” she shouted to Jack.

“God, no,” he yelled back.

A rifle shot exploded against a tree over their heads. “Stop! Or the next one will go into one of your backs. Don’t want your lady to get shot, do you, Travers?”

Jack stopped running. She tried to keep going, tried to pull him with her, but he refused to move.

“Running isn’t the way,” he said beneath his breath. “They’ve got us.”

“No!” But she swung around, to see the men were only a few yards away now, each with weapons trained on them. Jack was right. It was over.

Chapter Twelve

“So you were his hostage, my lady?”

Madeline laid her hands in her lap. She flicked her gaze between the two men who stood in front of her in the farmer’s cottage.

Both looked authoritative, determined, and formidable. The tall one, Mr. Oberon, paced before her. Thin, bespectacled, with a prominent nose on a chiseled face, he looked intelligent and possessed the same ruthlessness as her grandfather. Fortunately, there were many times she had stood up to Grandfather—who was more formidable than half the peers in England put together—and she did not find this man intimidating.

In the background, the other man leaned against the wall, arms crossed over a broad chest. Though he wasn’t tall, he had a powerful build and the look of a soldier. He was the reason her palms were damp with perspiration, her back rigid with fear. She suspected he often used violence to get what he wanted.

The second man had not given his name, though both men had claimed to be agents of the Crown. Had she been wrong to reveal who she was? They’d threatened to shoot Jack outright if she did not. She knew they could, then trump up a story that he’d tried to escape.

If they even bothered to invent an excuse.

“I was
not
.” Madeline fought to find her vaunted composure. “Jack Travers has committed no crime. He did not murder Grace Highchurch, who was my mother’s companion, or Lady Sarah Sutton. He was convicted wrongfully.”

Mr. Oberon paced in front of her, a lean, dark shape between her and the fire in the grate. “You helped him escape?”

“I did not. What a ridiculous accusation.”

 “So how, then, my lady,” Oberon continued, “did you come to be running away with him?”

“I had a carriage and was leaving Princetown.”

“Caught you on the road, did he? Or was it an arranged meeting? Though, if that were the case, you’d have the conveyance now, wouldn’t you?”

Not necessarily.

The second gentleman prowled forward, impatience written on his beefy features. With issues such as crops and lumber on the estate, she often dealt with men of business who thought they could unnerve and browbeat her. But those men, she knew, would never hit a lady.

With this man, she could not be sure.

“You would be charged with the crime of aiding in an escape, my lady,” the second man snarled. “Maybe, given your position, you could avoid the noose or transportation. Or maybe not. There’s many a blueblood rotting in prison—”

“You have not been introduced to me, sir,” she interrupted archly. She was terrified but couldn’t show it. How on earth was she going to get out of this? She refused to make it look as though Jack had taken her prisoner on the road—it would only get him into more trouble.

But Jack had managed to whisper some parting words to her before they had been separated. He had been dragged to the barn; she’d been brought into the cottage.
Sotto voce
, he’d commanded,
Tell them I took you hostage. I’ll hang. I want you to save yourself.

She couldn’t sacrifice him to save herself. There had to be another way.

Without blinking, she watched the second man. After a few moments of her haughty scrutiny, he ran his finger around his collar. “I am Captain Henry Livingston.” His voice sharp, he continued, “Did you or did you not assist Jack Travers in his escape from the Dartmoor War Prison?”

“I came to Princetown to petition for Mr. Travers’ release, as he was wrongfully convicted. That means, as I am sure you gentlemen appreciate, a true murderer is still free. I hoped Jack Travers could help me—or help the law—to capture that person. But, of course, I was not allowed to see Jack.”

“You didn’t help him out of the prison, my lady,” Mr. Oberon said. “You helped him afterward.”

She managed to glare at Oberon.

“I know that’s the truth, my lady. I can easily destroy you with it, if I wish to. But I appreciate you must have been in quite a severe state of shock, if you believed the murderer of your governess and neighbor was still free. Your fragile mental state would be held in consideration in a court of law.”