Escape with A Rogue (4 page)

And because most happened that way, his would not.

Jack dropped to a crouch as though inspecting the crack he had started in the five-hundred-pound rock. Under his direction, the French had re-opened one of the old tunnels that had been first dug years ago by American prisoners of war. A week away from the interior wall meant it would take them many more days of digging before their tunnel passed beneath the two circular walls that enclosed the prison—and the twenty-foot strip of no man’s hand that ran between them. He couldn’t wait that long anymore. “We’re going early. Tomorrow night.”

“What in hell? The plan was to time our escape to coincide with theirs, when the militia is distracted by a bunch of Frenchmen on the run—” Beau broke off. The sudden, sly grin on his mouth made Jack’s jaw clench tight. “She means a lot to you, then, her mysterious ladyship?”

“Put the wedge back in the rock. We have to look like we’re working.”

“Is she married?”

He revealed too much, he knew, in the sudden jerk of his chin. The truth of it? He didn’t know. It had been two years. It wouldn’t have made any sense for Lady Madeline Ashby not to marry. She was too lovely, too perfect a potential bride . . .

But would a
married
lady of the ton make her way into Dartmoor to rescue a convicted, albeit innocent, murderer? He doubted she’d ask her husband’s permission. Lady M. was the sort of woman who would defy a husband—but not the sort to lie to one.

Bloody Beausoleil was licking his lips. Jack suddenly remembered that one of the charges against Beau was bigamy.

“If you touched her,” Jack threatened, “I’ll rip your arms off.”

Beau shot a nervous glance to the twenty-pound sledgehammer gripped tight in Jack’s white-knuckled hands. “No need. She’d do it for you.” Beau grimaced. “I once tried to get my mouth as close to hers as you did, and she smacked me in the cheek with a turnip. She almost knocked my jaw out of joint.”

Good for you, Lady M.

But the deep feeling of admiration and the spark of lightness in his heart instantly vanished.

Someone shot at me,
she had said.

It could have been an accident, but a stray shot directed at her head while she was poking into an old murder seemed too much of a coincidence. She’d claimed she had pressed magistrates to accept his innocence and recognize they’d imprisoned the wrong man. But whoever had strangled the governess Grace Highchurch and young Lady Sarah Sutton in the hedgerow maze on Lady M.’s estate believed he’d gotten away with it.

Lady Madeline had made the killer realize he hadn’t.

Rain fell harder.

“We’re not going to be ready to go tomorrow night.” Shaking droplets from his hair, Beau thrust his lip out in a pout—a look that apparently melted women’s hearts and made them want to drag him to the altar.

Jack knew he would never understand women. He would never figure out why a woman would want a scoundrel. “I’m going, Beau. You can wait around if you want to. I’ll even leave you the second key—” He stopped. The back of his neck prickled, and he looked behind him.

He could see the top of the quarry—the ridge of grass and scattered rocks that marked the edge of the moor, before the quarry plunged down a sheer face of smooth granite. Sentries patrolled the edge, muskets at the ready.

A few yards beyond the red coats, a slim, dark figure stood, unmoving against the rolling cloud that looked ready to swallow her whole. Rain hammered ruthlessly on her slender form, and her cape fluttered and snapped. A gloved hand was at the throat, holding a cowl hood in place against the whip of the wind.

If a lock of hair were to blow free of the hood, Jack would bet his soul it would prove to be a unique color of blonde that blended both sun-gold and starlight silver into a bewitching shimmer. Her eyes would be dark, almost the blue-black of a deep, cool lake. Yet steal a long enough look at them, and a man would see, in their depths, glints of tempestuous gold.

Her eyes were the deep blue he’d used on the walls of his last and most elegant gaming hell—the way that color looked when reflected on a gold sovereign.

Lady Madeline.
She must have taken a path up from Princetown, then crossed the moor below the tor to reach the pit.

He should have known. Not showing up at the market this morning did not mean she had finally given up. No, she was plunging deeper into trouble.

But Lady M. was doing all this for a man she believed was a good-hearted groom with a gentle touch with horses, not a former gaming hell proprietor who had needed to run away from his old life, his guilt and his sins. She thought he was an innocent man caught up in hell. In truth, many of the things he’d done to make his fortune should have got him in jail. Or hanged.

One of the soldiers turned and shouted at Lady M., motioning her away with a jerk of his weapon. She backed away, but the soldier took a menacing step, forcing her to spin and run from the edge with stumbling strides.

A hand clamped hard on his forearm. “Easy. You can do nothing from down here but get your ballocks blown off.”

Jack hadn’t realized he had taken a few steps toward her as though he could rush up to the ridge and protect her.

“Get to work,” a guard shouted. Not Blenchley. One of the others. Gray-haired and stoop-shouldered, the guard looked miserable beneath the now-streaming rain. Orders were to shoot low at escapees—to disable and not kill. But the guards were stuck out on cold, miserable days, lived in quarters little better than the prisoners’ blocks, and ate much of the same repugnant food. Shooting a prisoner would be a high point of the day.

“You know, Travers,” Beau’s voice came low and easy by his ear. “You’re going to have to let her know when you plan to run. You’d better pray she comes back to the market again.”

Blenchley was studying the ridge, scratching his chin, an appraising look on his beefy, scarred face. The guard must have caught him staring up there.

Fortunately, Lady M. had vanished. Jack hoped Blenchley thought he was staring up at the ridge to think about escape, not staring at the cape-clad woman who had stood there.

Damnation, Beau was right. He could not escape until he had a chance to let Lady M. know. He couldn’t run and leave her in Princetown alone.

“She won’t be able to run fast,” Beau warned.

“No.” Jack kept his voice terse. “She won’t be with us.” He would send her ladyship home on her own.

“There’s nothing more troublesome than a woman who cares about you.” Beau grinned.

Jack did not like that smirk. Beau figured he had Jack’s measure. Now that Beau knew about Lady M., he believed he was in control.

“I have to change my plan,” Jack said slowly. “I want to run north, instead of south to Plymouth. I need to go toward Exeter.”

“North takes you across the moor, Travers. You want to go through the bloody bogs? You’re a madman.”

“I know it’s your plan, Beau, even though you agreed to head with the rest of us south to Plymouth.”

He knew Beau intended to strike out on his own, hoping the soldiers would assume all the men had run together. Beausoleil had grown up on the moors. He was the only one of them able to make his way between the stretches of peat bogs without falling in one and sinking to his death.

Originally Jack’s plan had been to go to Plymouth, but instead of jumping a ship for the West Indies or America as a prisoner of war would generally do, he would head along the coast, then make his way to Lady Madeline’s home.

But that would take too long now. What if he did end up encumbered with Lady M.? The most direct approach to her home was to travel northeast.

“How much to get you to take me with you?” he asked Beau.

Surprise sent the bigamist’s brows upward. “No blunt, Jack. All I want is to know who your pretty lady really is. Tell me that, and I’ll lead you safely across the moor.”

That was the one price he would not pay, damn it.

“At attention, Travers! Put the hammer down.” The bark came from Blenchley. The guard stood at attention. Heavy-set and, blond Captain Livingston stood at the entrance to the quarry. Rain dripped down the captain’s ruddy, morose face. Livingston glared at Jack, then turned and strode away.

Jack whistled softly and crossed his ankles, leaning on the handle of the hammer.

The captain kept travelling from Exeter to question him, and Jack continued to keep his mouth shut. He flinched at the thought of another whipping on top of the wounds on his back made by the cat-o-nine-tails—his punishment for his supposed attempt to climb the wall. But he’d learned a long time ago how to survive the blinding pain of a beating. So far, nothing they had thrown at him had overpowered his resolve.

“March,” Blenchley ordered him, motioning with his rifle. “Fontainbleu, take Travers’ place.”

Had Blenchley seen Lady M.? There was nothing in his face to show he had, save for the slight sneer curling his thin lips.

“Where are we headed?” Jack asked casually, as Blenchley fell in behind him, and he began to march along the narrow path with the guard’s musket at his back. Livingston would have already left in his carriage to return to the prison.

Blenchley leaned by his ear, breathing out stale smoke. “If I had my choice, it would be to the whipping rack.”

But he would not go there at first, Jack knew. He would be led, in chains, to the governor’s office. There, Livingston would ask him more questions, make more demands. Jack knew what they wanted—he had been the one to dangle it in front of them. It had been the only way to spare his neck from the noose.

But once again, he wouldn’t give them any more information than he already had, and they would drag him to the whipping rack.

With Blenchley breathing hard behind him, Jack trudged along the track that led away from the quarry and back toward the pony cart. The quarry was a few miles along the dirt road from the prison.

Two years ago, he had been in Exeter Gaol, locked in his tiny cell. The verdict from his trial had been ringing in his head.
Guilty . . . he will be hanged by his neck until he is dead.

It had been insane. He had been convicted of murdering two young women. He was innocent—he had committed many crimes but he had never harmed a woman. Given what he’d seen his prostitute mother endure from her “protectors,” he never would.

He was damned if he was going to let the Crown hang him for the most heinous crime he could imagine, when he was not guilty.

It had come to him then, as he paced in his rank, pitch-black cell. His way out was to tell the magistrate who he really was. To reveal that he was not a groom, not a man named Jack Travers. So he had hollered for a guard.

When the sweaty, pot-bellied man had lumbered angrily to the cell door, Jack had used the one ace he knew he had: temptation.

“How would you like to get promoted out of this wretched job?” he’d asked the guard. “My name isn’t Travers. I’m Jack Hart. Talk to your superiors. They’ll know about me. I owned a dozen gaming hells in London. I was worth about one million pounds. And the Crown believes I used my wealth to fund groups of reformists.”

Reformists wanted to destroy the monarchy and the peerage, and share the land amongst the people. The guard scowled.

“The most notorious group in London is the Spencean Philanthropists. They’re radicals who advocate revolution. The Crown has been trying to infiltrate them for years. I can give the Crown the leaders’ names.”

Beady eyes had peered at him through the bars. “You know who they are?”

“I do.” He’d never been involved with traitors, but he did know exactly who they were. For one very good reason.

Money had been disappearing from his hells, so he’d hired investigators. Through them, Jack had learned his best friend and his partner in his gambling hells, Stephen Bells, had joined a group of radical terrorists and was embezzling money from the clubs to fund them.

“I can give them the names of these men and evidence against them, but not if I hang tomorrow.”

With those words, he’d won his life.

For two years, he’d kept himself alive by feeding information little by little. He had not revealed Stephen’s name. He never would. They had been partners. Even though Stephen had stolen money and set him up, he could not betray his former friend. Stephen had saved his backside too many times—

Jack’s foot skidded on slick stone and the musket’s muzzle drove hard into his back. Jabbing his raw wounds, Blenchley shoved him forward. He longed to slam his fist into Blenchley’s beefy jaw.

He had to keep his temper. Tomorrow, he would be free.

Ahead, he saw the gleaming black carriage that belonged to the Crown and had brought Captain Livingston. The pony cart stood beside it—Blenchley would travel in that, while Jack walked behind it, with the rifle trained on him.

“I know you’re planning something, Travers,” Blenchley snarled from behind him. “And I’m going to find out what it is.”

* * *

“Yes, Jack. Yes. I’ve wanted you for so long,” Lady Madeline whispered huskily. She lifted one of her long legs—long enough to make a man weep with desire by the time he’d savored the view from her ankles to her thighs—and hooked it around his legs to drag him closer.

Her dress was open. Jack’s fingertips savored silk, the satin edging, the complex textures and beauty of a woman’s fine clothes. There was nothing beneath her gown. No rigid corset or shift. Just her naked, petal-soft, desire-warmed skin.

He was naked and, like a kitten, she purred and stretched against him, as though trying to press every inch of her skin to his. Her nipples to his chest. Her hot, sweet cunny against his aching, rigid pole.

“
Madeline
.” Her name. It was all he could manage to say. Over and over. Spilling out of his mouth as though if he didn’t say it, she would disappear—

“Travers.”

Something shoved him hard enough to knock him into the next room. “Wake up, Travers.”

“Huh? What?” It wasn’t a beautiful woman’s face hovering over him. The blurry hair he could see was coal-black and tamed in a long queue. A gaze from narrowed black eyes drilled into his forehead.