Escape with A Rogue (8 page)

More gunpowder exploded from muskets and several shots struck the roof. Jack lay flat, and as best as he could tell, Simon, Black, and Wycliffe were doing the same. A thud sounded as Faulkner hit a lower roof, followed by a frantic scream. Jack clamped his hands on the ridge and looked down. The ground was lost to fog, but he could see Faulkner sliding down, trying to grasp anything to stop his tumble.

One last scream rose up, then the fog parted on a gust of wind. Jack caught a glimpse of the ground about forty feet below. Faulkner lay on his back, his arms spread wide, his legs bent at sickening angles.

A volley of shots surrounded them. Shouts and curses came up as the mist obscured them again. “Move,” Jack commanded.

“Apparently they’re not so concerned with keeping us alive now,” Black shouted.

The crisp sound of rifle fire came then, a weapon more accurate than a musket. Simon cried out in pain, and dropped onto his arse on the roof, clutching his leg. Jack grabbed him, but Simon cried, “I can’t move.”

The others continued and Jack realized he was stuck there, a perfect target.

Hell.
He began to back his way along, dragging a moaning Simon, though the boy was a dead weight. The roof sloped away on each side, leading to the forty-foot drop that had claimed Faulkner. They were almost at the end wall, where they would climb down—then they had to run between the prison blocks to be near the granite wall that divided the prisoner’s yard from the hospital.

“His leg.” Jago Wycliffe pointed. “There’s no blood.”

Jack slowed. With his left hand, he pried Simon’s hands away from his shin. The boy’s pant legs were torn, but his leg was unmarked. Jack’s heart thundered. “You had to know you hadn’t been hit, Simon.”

Sweat beaded on Simon’s brow. “I—I thought I was shot. I felt pain in my leg and thought for certain it had been grazed by a bullet.”

“You must have known there was no wound when you didn’t feel more pain.” Jack remembered the deceptions he’d been capable of as a young lad. Hell, he’d covered up a murder at a younger age. “What was your plan? To slow us down? Make me a target?”

Simon shook with fear. Hades, if the boy had betrayed them, it was too late. He would have already revealed the plan—at least as much as he knew—to the guards. On the other hand, Simon was scared witless and he’d never appeared to be a cool-headed lad. Would the Crown have used a terrified boy as a mole?

“You can crawl,” Jack said to Simon, who was shaking so much his shoulders were jerking. He glanced to the end of the roof, where Wycliffe was slowly sliding down. Wycliffe dropped onto the lower privy roof, then onto the ground. Black followed. Jack glared into Simon’s frightened eyes. “Go or stay. It’s your choice.”

“I—I’m scared,” Simon said. “You think I talked to the guards? I swear I didn’t. I want out of here. My ma was sick when I was sent here, and there’s been no one to look after her. I need to get to her.”

“Good reason to betray us.”

Simon’s face changed, his mouth twisting in a scoffing look. “You think I’m stupid? I knew they wouldn’t reward me for informing on you. They’d have what they wanted and they’d kill me.”

“What do you mean they’d have what they wanted?”

Simon gulped. “They wanted me to spy on you. I said I would—” He jerked up his hands. “Not to give you up, but to give them false information.”

Jack couldn’t believe Captain Livingston would trust his mission, whatever the hell it was, to a boy who trembled and shook with every word he spoke. “Did you spy for the French, Simon?”

“Of course not. I love my country, even if it bloody well doesn’t love me.” Simon looked desperate. “Believe me, Jack. You looked out for me. There’ve been times you stopped me from getting whipped, many times when you stood up to Blenchley for me. So I helped you. I told them you were going to tunnel—and I gave them a bunch of false places where you’d do it.”

Jack pointed to the roof below. “Hurry up.”

The rest of the men dropped down, then Jack followed. From one of the sentry platforms, a soldier shouted, “I see them.” More shooting came, but it was erratic, and they were now hidden in shadow and mist.

“We’ve got them trapped,” a guard shouted. “There’s no way out but to climb the wall.”

“Not true,” Jack muttered. He ran for the door in the granite wall that separated the prisoners’ yard from the section that housed other prison buildings. Here he had to use a lock pick—he hadn’t seen the lock often enough to make a key. He worked the strip of metal in, worked it, and heard a soft click. Then he tugged on the padlock, and threw open the door. It took seconds. A dozen shots hit the ground close to them. But they were through the door, running like madmen.

Ahead stood a row of small stone buildings—a drying house, a wash house, the hospital, surgeon’s rooms, and a dispensary. Beyond them was the circular wall that marked the outside of the prison.

“Run around the hospital,” he ordered. “Keep in the shadows. Make for the surgeon’s house.” He fished a rock from a pocket tacked into his trousers. About the size of a billiard ball, it made a good missile. Using it as a distraction, he threw it at the first-floor window of the hospital and the glass exploded, showering inward.

Shots hit the ground near the window. Jack ducked his head low and ran in a crouch through the swirling mist that filled the expanse of ground between the hospital and the circular prison wall.

Behind him, someone shouted, “Christ Jesus!” He turned to see who had got hit—

A bullet winged past him. Jack dove and rolled around the corner of the hospital. There was one sentry’s balcony on the wall, at the corner where the round exterior wall met the row of buildings.

The redcoat on the post had his rifle raised.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw movement and jerked around. Black raised his homemade pistol and fired. The shot hit the wall below the guard, but it bought them a moment’s pause—

They scrambled for the prison surgeon’s house and Black smashed the window with the butt of his weapon. Jack lifted the sash and the other men jumped inside.

“You couldn’t hit him with a pistol at that range,” Jack said.

Black grinned. His midnight-black hair clung to his forehead and his eyes, a dark ivy green, looked surprisingly mischievous. Not the reaction Jack expected. “I didn’t expect to hit him, Travers. Just wanted to make him think he could get hit. It made him back away for a moment.” Black went through the window, and Jack followed, entering last.

They were at risk here—no doubt the surgeon was armed. Jack left the window up, but they were in pitch darkness. Stealthy footsteps came from a barely apparent doorway.

“Erk! Don’t hurt me!”

Black had grabbed the surgeon, a white-haired man of small stature. The giant pushed the terrified man into a wooden chair and wrenched the pistol out of his hand. Wycliffe pulled the man’s belt from his robe and bound his hands behind him, securing him to the slats of the chair’s back. “That’ll do. Don’t make trouble, and nothing will happen to you.”

A musket ball had grazed Wycliffe’s arm, so Jack bound up the wound with gauze. “Amazing,” muttered the smuggler, “that we got through that volley of shots with only this wound.”

Jack had to agree. They made their way to the front of the surgeon’s house, which overlooked a wall to the west of the prison’s front gate. Here, just that one wall separated them from freedom.

Jack turned to the others. “This is the last stretch. Run for the wall and make for the prison farmlands.” He handed off his rope to Black.

“Godspeed,” Beau said to the others, then he lifted the sash of the window and jumped out. One by one, the men followed, and Jack slipped out last. He ran for the corner—the curve of the exterior wall made a tight angle with the front of the surgeon’s house. Bracing his hands and feet against the sharp, granite blocks on both walls, he could support his weight. He inched his way up.

His muscles screamed at the exertion. His heart pounded as loudly as the gunshots. Stones cut his palms, and hot blood dribbled on his hands, making them slippery. But he kept going. He had no damned choice. A cramp shot through his leg halfway up the wall, and he had to stop, breathing fast in anguish, trying to will the pain away.

Hades, he was not going to put Lady M. at risk because of a damned cramp.

Slowly, it began to ease. Gritting his teeth, he pushed his way further up the wall. His thighs trembled and jerked with the strain. His shoulders ached. But he had only five feet to go. Then just a couple of feet . . .

He caught hold of the top of the wall, and the thrill of victory gave him the strength to haul himself up.

He dropped down to the other side, a twenty-foot distance. Breathing hard, he leapt to his feet, spun around, and ran for the road. Guards called to each other.

“Over there!”

“I saw something!”

“They must be making for the leat.” The leat was the granite channel that brought fresh water across to the moor to the prison. As he’d thought, the guards believed they were heading south.

Jack glanced around, but the fog rolled like a white sheet around him. Then he ran like mad for the Two Bridges Road, toward the place Lady Madeline should be waiting.

* * *

Fog hung heavily on the Two Bridges road—the route that ran southwest and linked the prison village of Princetown to the market town of Tavistock. Jack could only orient himself on it by following the stone and grass wall that ran between it and the prison’s farm fields. There was no sign of Lady Madeline. He fought raw panic. How in blazes was he going to find her in this gray-white soup?

The ground crunched. A shape made its way slowly through the mist. Human, tall, and clad in a black cloak that snapped in the wind. Jack didn’t know whether to laugh in relief, or smack his forehead in frustration. “My—”

He broke off abruptly. The walk bore the swaggering gait of a male, and even if Lady M. were in disguise, she would not manage so long a stride, so arrogant a roll to the shoulders.

Fingers of fog parted to reveal a tall, hulking body and a low-slung beaver hat. Obviously not a member of the militia. Jack drew back without a sound and disappeared into the shadows by the damp, cool stone.

The man stopped moving. Jack heard a low chuckle.

“Got you,” crowed an unfamiliar male voice. “You cannot hide any longer, Jack Hart. This time you are mine.”

Chapter Five

Jack Hart.

His old name—the name he’d walked away from when he’d left his gaming hell empire in London and had become a groom at Lady Madeline’s home. When he’d tried to put his past behind him to live a simpler life.

The only ones who used it now were the men of the Crown. Agents like Livingston who grilled him in the governor’s offices of the prison.

“You can’t hide, Hart.” The man’s boots crunched on the grit of the road.

Swathed in fog and darkness, Jack remained still. He could hide easily. His problem was that Lady M., if she were here on the road, had no idea she should hide. She’d be unaware of the danger.

Jack listened beyond the approaching footsteps for other sounds—for a hint she was near. What could he do if she blundered upon him and his would-be captor?

“Grant this one boon, Lord,” he muttered up to the sky. “Don’t let her come rushing out of the fog right now.”

“Jack?” Her voice came softly from somewhere to the left of him.

His heart stuttered to a stop. God owed him no favors, after all, and had let his mother and then Juliette, Stephen Bells’ wife, die in front of him. Why not sacrifice another?

Hell,
no
.

“Got you,” the man said. Through a break in the fog, Jack saw the pistol arm straighten. The muzzle wasn’t pointing at him—it would be Lady Madeline the man took down in cold blood.

Jack jumped to his feet. “I’m here, you bastard,” he shouted. “Can’t you see me?”

The arm swung in his direction. “I’ve been waiting for the chance to do this, Hart.”

A flick of the thumb toward the trigger—

Desperate, Jack dove to the right. The gun did not fire, and the arm and the pistol’s muzzle relentlessly followed him. He’d slammed back against a damp, stone wall and had nowhere to escape.

An explosion roared into the murky night from somewhere behind the cloaked man. His arm—and his weapon—jerked suddenly downward. His shadowy form stumbled forward.

The cloak waved through the mist like frantically beating wings. The man had taken flight on foot. He ran too smoothly to have been shot. Nimbly, he jumped over the wall and vanished instantly in the fog-filled field.

Jack strained to see who had rescued him, but he couldn’t see a thing. No doubt it was the militia, who probably thought they’d just shot at an escapee. Given his luck, it would be Blenchley, and he’d find himself staring down a rifle barrel this time.

Please, Lady M., run for your life.
He couldn’t risk shouting to her. Couldn’t risk alerting guards that she was there.

Footsteps sounded again. Slow ones, muffled by the mist. But there was no masculine chuckle of triumph as the person approached him. Instead, a soft, shocked, feminine sob broke the stillness. It gave him a direction. Heart lodged low in his throat, Jack quickly found Lady Madeline standing in the road—her face leached of color, her eyes cold and grim.

Before he realized what he was doing, he roughly dragged her into his arms, in the middle of the road. She collapsed against him. He’d never seen her swoon, never seen her lean on another person. Hades, he’d never seen Lady Madeline Ashby show any weakness whatsoever. Not even on the afternoon when she had found the bodies of Grace Highchurch and Lady Sarah Sutton in the maze.

On that afternoon, he had caught a glimpse of her three hours later, when the magistrate’s men took him away. She had been rigid and controlled with her shoulders straight, her face astoundingly calm and expressionless.

Now she was shaking as though she might explode into a thousand pieces.

He understood. “It’s all right, love.” He cradled her tightly. Her head, shrouded by a veil, tucked just below his chin. She smelled like violets and gunpowder. He gently pried the pistol’s handle from her tight grip.