Escape with A Rogue (7 page)

She swept up into the carriage. She had barely been able to sleep since learning Jack Travers was in Dartmoor prison, all because she had made a grave and dreadful mistake. How could she live with herself if he drowned on the moors while trying to protect her?

Fingers drummed against the door. “I’d advise ye wait, miss.”

“No,” she stated in a clear voice that brooked no argument. “You are to follow my instructions.”

“I can’t agree to take ye close to the prison. The escaping men will be ruthless and will stop at nothing to ensure they get away. There’ll be guards everywhere.”

“Do not worry. I am armed with a pistol and a blade. I am not afraid of prisoners—or of guards. And I’ll pay you for any inconvenience you incur.”

She could not see her driver’s face through the fingers of mist, but the door began to swing shut and she caught his last grumbled complaint. “An armed woman—if indeed, ye really are female. Nothing worries me more than a woman with weapons.”

* * *

The bells were clanging.

Jack dropped the handful of forged notes he was sliding into his pocket. His cell boasted a window, but it was a narrow opening far above his head, so he could not see anything more than a strip of foggy sky.

Someone had got out.

And it wasn’t any of them.

Lady M.

Jack scooped up the notes, stuffed them in his trousers. “Give me a leg up,” he snapped to Wycliffe, who had used his key to leave his cell and enter Jack’s.

After flicking back his loose black hair, Wycliffe made a stirrup with his hands. Jack winced as he lifted his leg—the wound the Frenchman had put in his side still ached. Fortunately, he had got out of the fight without his gut being sliced to ribbons. He launched up, braced his feet against the stone wall and the iron bars, and shinnied up to see out the window.

An explosion of powder flared where the fog was thin. The retort echoed in their cells.

Still locked in his cell, nursing a black eye and a swollen nose, Hammond Faulkner gave a chilling laugh. “It’s the French—they’re making a bolt for it. Their tunnel was closer to the wall than they admitted to you, Travers. Hell, they tried to kill you today—obviously they weren’t going to tell you the truth. They’ve gone under the wall. I would’ve been with them if it wasn’t for you, you bastard.”

Jack did not acknowledge Faulkner. The mist drew back and he could see puffs of smoke following the flashes as muskets fired. The sentries appeared to be shooting into the no-man’s land between the walls.

The Americans had once tunneled upward on the inside of the interior wall by mistake. Had the French made the same error and emerged between the two circular walls or had they made it out?

That was irrelevant, he reminded himself. Only one thing mattered. Was Lady Madeline waiting for him on the road past the quarry?

“They’re on alert,” Wycliffe growled.

“Another escape means the sentries are distracted,” Beausoleil called from his cell. “The fog makes for good cover.”

No, it bloody well meant Lady M. was going to rush right down a road crawling with armed soldiers. Jack dropped back to the floor. A half dozen pairs of eyes stared at him. Waiting.

Faulkner wanted to escape to the West Indies. Beausoleil was determined to return to the wife he’d betrayed—to win her back. Young Simon, who claimed to be wrongly accused of spying and treason, had a mother who’d been deathly ill before he had been thrown in Dartmoor. The smuggler, Jago Wycliffe, was accused of being a wrecker who lured ships to their doom and had a missing wife to find.

Black prowled in his cell like a panther. “I want to get out,” he muttered, speaking for the first time. His voice was hoarse, rusty, and his coal-black eyes glinted with rage. “There’s a woman I want—one who is responsible for me being in here.”

“We’re going now,” Jack ordered. He was putting five men who trusted him at risk—for one earl’s daughter who should have turned around and gone home when he first demanded it.

Of course, almost all of them wanted to escape because of a woman.

Black picked up his homemade knife, fashioned of scrap metal obtained in workshops, and tucked it into his trousers’ waistband. “We were brought together here because the Crown wants something from each of us. Any one of us could have made a bargain with them. That means not one of us can trust the others.”

The narrowed eyes and hard line of Black’s mouth said it all. He would stab Jack if he had to—or if he wanted revenge for a botched escape.

For Lady M.’s sake, and the sake of his own arse, Jack couldn’t fail.

Chapter Four

More musket fire exploded outside. The smell of the burnt powder and the sounds of men’s screams came in through the open windows. Jack blocked out the distraction as he worked the key into the lock of Simon’s cell. In his mind, he could see Lady M. racing to him in her carriage, stubbornly throwing herself into danger.

One slow turn and—

Nothing.
Hell.
He withdrew the key, eased it in again. Turned, but the lock refused to engage.

What would happen if he couldn’t get out? Would Lady Madeline leave? Would she do something blinking stupid? Sweat dripped into his eyes. Damnation. The key had worked two days ago.

“W-what’s wrong?” Simon stammered, looking pleadingly at the lock. With his long-lashed blue eyes and unruly brown curls, the seventeen-year-old lad looked even younger. But then, there had been boys of twelve kept in the prison.

“Don’t worry, Simon.” Jack fought his own rising panic to reassure the boy. He remembered what it was like to be scared witless. Before he was Simon’s age, he’d killed a man. He’d survived by pretending to be tough, but he’d been terrified that he would be caught and hanged.

“We should’ve fixed the bars,” Simon moaned.

“Keep quiet.” There’d been no hope in fixing the bars to be easily removed when they’d built the cells. The guards had tested them—shaking and kicking them.

“Faulkner can’t be trusted.” Beausoleil came up behind him and leaned on the bars. “He admitted to setting up the attack in the market. He said he bribed the Frenchman to attack you so he could steal the keys.”

“No one can be trusted,” Jack snapped. Hopeless as it was, he gently worked the key into the lock on Simon’s door again. He couldn’t leave Lady M. out there, alone, for much longer. “I don’t believe Faulkner did it,” he muttered. “He admitted it because you and Wycliffe threatened to kill him if he didn’t. Any man would admit to a crime he didn’t commit after having a make-shift noose dropped around his neck.”

“Wycliffe’s idea. Said he’d seen smugglers do it.” Beau grinned. “As to Faulkner’s innocence . . . none of the rest of us want you dead.”

There was a sentiment he didn’t believe. Since he had kept the cell keys—and much of his plan—close to his chest, Jack knew each man distrusted him. He’d dangled hope and freedom, but kept it under his control. A man who did that had to watch his back.

But right now, he didn’t care who wanted him dead.

Beau groaned as the key failed again. “We should’ve tried to run from the quarry one day when the fog came in.”

“Would you shut up?” Jack growled. “That would have got us killed in an instant. Just be patient and let the key work. You’ll have your chance to run in a fog once we’re out.”

Beau’s broad grin flashed again. “You still want me to lead you and your lovely lass to the north?” he asked quietly.

Jack hesitated. He couldn’t reveal Madeline’s plan—or that she had a carriage.

Fortunately Simon interrupted. “The bloody key isn’t going to work.” The boy was shaking. “Y-you’ve got to go,” he whispered. “I’ll stay. I promise I won’t reveal a thing.” Blue eyes filled with a volatile blend of youthful fear and bravado. “No matter how long they whip me, I promise I won’t break.”

Hell and the devil, he didn’t
want
to leave Simon behind. When he’d been fourteen, he’d been saved from a vicious beating being given by four large, thick-necked street urchins. The man who’d saved him, William Hart, had been the owner of a half dozen gaming hells, along with a stable of priceless racehorses. Hart had taken him in and become his mentor. Jack could still remember the amazing sensation of being saved.

It was something he wanted to bestow on young, frightened Simon.

“The boy would break.” Wycliffe had his ear by the small grille in the iron-clad wood door—the door that should have been their only way out, but wasn’t.

This was Block One, the building nearest the wall that ran between the prison yard and the hospital. They’d been put in the cockcroft of the block, the attic space just below the roof, a place originally intended for prisoners to exercise in. The judicious weakening of a few of the ceiling boards gave them the means to get through them. They would then use the boards to smash the roof tiles and make a hole. Jack had ensured the boards had been left strong enough to fool the guards until the last moment. A bit of work with some makeshift blades he’d carved from scrap metal would be enough to finish the job.

Faulkner laughed uproariously from his cell. “You’re a bloody sentimental fool, Travers.”

“Shut the hell up,” Jack growled. “Or I’ll leave
you
here.” He ran his thumb along the key, and felt the notch in the bone—the key had broken. Hades, he’d made a second key to get them through the wall. He should have made a second key for Simon’s cell.

He took his own key, held it against Simon’s. If his idea didn’t work, he’d have to leave Simon. He couldn’t put Lady M. at risk—

Abruptly, he went back to his cell, while Simon gave a small cry of despair.

Beau raked back his hair. “You’re going to leave Simon behind, and take Faulkner? He’ll probably start screaming for the guards as soon as we reach the roof. Trade us for his own neck.”

Jack picked up the metal file he’d stolen from the prison’s workshop. “Then we’ll push him off,” he answered grimly as he adjusted his key to the shape of Simon’s. “His triumph will be short lived. And I’m not leaving Simon.”

Wycliffe grimaced, his black eyes flashing. “All our lives will be short if we don’t move.”

Faulkner had sunk to the edge of his plank bed. His face had paled. Jack heard it then—an unnatural stillness. The firing had stopped. Frantic noise still rose from the yard—cries of rage and anguished screams, but the escape attempt must have been quelled.

 “Go to work on the roof boards,” he instructed Beau. He nodded to Black. The man rose to his height of six-and-a-half feet and his hair brushed the iron ceiling of his cell. Beau unlocked Black, who snarled and emerged looking like a half-tamed animal.

With a swipe of his large hand, Black could probably rip off a human head.

Jack ran back to Simon’s door. His re-cut key slid home. One turn and the lock gave. As his door swung open, the lad shook with relief. “Thank ye, Jack. I owe ye my life for not abandoning me.”

Black, Beau, and Wycliffe broke through the roof boards, then the tiles.

“It’s not over yet, Simon.” Jack gave an encouraging grin. He didn’t need the young lad in a panic. “The fun is just beginning.”

Indeed it was. He prayed Lady M. had seen sense and driven her carriage well clear of the prison and Princetown. But he guessed she hadn’t.

Damn him, but the thought that Lady Madeline Ashby was waiting for him, disregarding risk and her reputation
for him
, made him stupidly, arrogantly, selfishly happy.

* * *

Jack made a cradle of his hands, and Wycliffe planted his bare foot there, slung himself up through the hole and out onto the roof. The smuggler popped back into the opening. “The fog’s as thick as my mother’s stew and the air’s filled with musket smoke. Nobody will see us.”

They had made rope by knotting together the strongest of their bedsheets. Beau handed one rope to Jack and Jack flung it up to Wycliffe. A smuggled piece of iron made a grappling hook at the end of it. Jack looped more rope over his shoulder. These would be what they’d use to rappel down the end wall, toward the rear of the prison. The escape by the French would help them here. The sentries would be occupied, looking for men either in the strip of no-man’s land or outside the wall, and the smoke and fog would make cover.

Black went next. Jack strained as the large man’s foot pressed against his hands, but Black moved swiftly and launched himself gracefully through the small hole. Jack sent Beau and Simon, then he went himself and hauled Faulkner up using the rope. Within seconds, they were all on the roof, crouched along the ridge. Fog swirled around them. Jack could barely see Beau, who was right in front of him.

“Go now,” he directed, and he began to move as he heard Black’s shoes slap against the roof tiles. With his hands and feet, he felt his way along the ridge.

Heavy breaths came from behind him, then a muttered curse. Jack recognized Faulkner’s voice. It was better to keep a man they didn’t trust in the middle, but unease prickled Jack’s neck. It would be easy enough for Faulkner to kill him here, with a blade.

“Christ!”

The cry came from Faulkner. Jack swung around and grasped the forger’s wrist as he slid down the side of the roof. Jack’s feet, in his tattered shoes, skidded on the roof tile. He quickly lay flat, hooked his body over the ridge and held onto Faulkner, who was sprawled along the sloped roof. Faulkner pulled on him in panic and the forger’s desperate motions were going to drag him over.

Beau grabbed Jack’s leg and held tight. Faulkner screamed again, apparently sliding, but Jack couldn’t be sure.

A shot rang out. The ball slammed into the roof a few yards in front of them.

“They’ve heard him,” Liam Black shouted. “Let him go. We’ve got to move.”

But he couldn’t release Faulkner. If he let go, the man would fall.

“He tried to kill you. Now he’s set us up.” Wycliffe spat.

“Then you’re a bloody madman,” Jack cried down to Faulkner. “You’re going to get yourself killed along with—”

On a roar of anger, Faulkner wrenched his hand free. Jack lunged forward to grab again, praying Beau held his legs. But the forger slid down too quickly. From the sudden panic in Faulkner’s face, Jack knew he hadn’t expected to move so fast.