Lois Greiman (18 page)

T
hey froze. The inn was absolutely silent. No reason to think there was trouble. No reason whatsoever.

“They’re coming,” he whispered, and somehow she knew it was true.

She nodded jerkily. And then they were scrambling, throwing on clothes, grabbing possessions. They glanced at the door, turned in unison toward the window.

“Go,” he whispered, snatching the chair from the floor and propping it against the door.

She swung the window open. It creaked. They froze, staring at each other, hearts pounding. The door latch groaned rustily. They shot their attention in that direction, but he was already pushing her through the opening.

It was as black as sin outside their window. She searched for purchase with her fumbling
toes. A crack. Too small. Vines. They gave way beneath her weight.

The chair rattled against the door, but did not give.

“Chetfield,” Keelan hissed.

And then toeholds no longer mattered. She scrambled downward, praying and gasping. Something bumped. She glanced up in time to see Keelan turn slowly toward the door.

“Come on,” she rasped, but he moved away, out of sight. Beneath her shivering foot a vine pulled free from the wall. She stifled a gasp, searching desperately for another toehold. There, there. She crept lower. Almost to the street.

“Lord Tempton.”

She heard the nasal voice from above, stifled through the door and her own terror.

“I need a word with you, sir. I fear there’s been a bit of trouble.”

She froze, listening. Not Chetfield’s voice at all. The innkeeper’s. Wasn’t it?

Another vine gave way. She scrambled to the earth, legs shaking, breathing hard, trying to hear.

“I thought I might find you here.”

She spun about and he was there. The nightmare made flesh. “Roland!”

He appeared as a shadow in the darkness, stepping forward. “We’ve been looking for you.”

She tightened her grip on the staff and shimmied away, skirting the wall. Where were the others? Upstairs? Outside the door? Or was it truly the landlord who’d spoken?

“You’re not scared of me, are you, girl?”

Her head was spinning, grappling for ideas. “You weren’t very…y’ weren’t very nice back at Crevan.”

“No.” He chuckled. “I apologize for that, but Lord Chetfield was distraught. I was only trying to detain you.”

“You weren’t trying to…to…”

He shook his head. “Of course not, Cherie. I wouldn’t do that to a sweet maid like yourself, but I was too rough. My apologies. I wasn’t myself.”

“Who was you?”

His teeth gleamed in the darkness. “I was a fool.” He took a step forward. She forced herself to stand her ground, lifted her chin.

“Truth is…” She made her voice tremble. It wasn’t difficult. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Are you?”

She nodded upward. “The Scotsman, he took me hostage.”

“I thought you two were friends. That you’d been planning this theft.”

Dammit! She’d lost track of her lies. “He made me say them things…back at the cave. It was his plan, should we be found. Said he’d kill me if’n I didn’t play along. I tried to get away. Thought I was free and clear once I got on that horse. But he found me again. Threatened me with…with horrible things.”

Roland tsked as he took another step. “Well then, I’ll make sure he suffers for that. Not to mention the rap on my head.” His eyes gleamed. “Chetfield’s a mite put out, you see. What with his staff gone missing and all.”

Her stomach cramped up hard. Her fingers trembled on the lumpy gold. “I was out of me mind with fear. Grabbed the first thing what came to hand.”

“Of course you did.”

“Didn’t know it was important to him.”

“How could you?” He grinned. “You’re little more than a half-wit.”

Where was Bear? And what of the others? “It’s true I ain’t never been too smart. Me mum—”

A noise rustled in the bushes. She shot her gaze toward it, and suddenly Roland was on her, fingers tight on her throat.

She stumbled sideways, clawing at his hand. Her shoulder struck the wall. His grip tightened, squeezing off her air, crushing her windpipe.

“Damned lying bitch,” he snarled.

She tried to break his grip, but her knees were giving way. Terror tore at her insides. But her mind was still kicking.

Jerking her gaze to the side, she snarled, “Hit him!”

Roland twisted sideways. A moment’s reprieve. She brought her knee up with all the strength she could muster, driving it between his legs, but her aim was off. The blow caught his thigh, knocked him backward. She scrambled away, but he was already following. His fingers tangled in her hair. She screamed as she tumbled backward. Straddling her head, he pulled a knife from his coat. His eyes gleamed.

But something streaked down from above, knocking him away.

Charity scrambled to her feet, poised to flee, but Roland lay still. Only Keelan remained, just clambering to his feet, Lambkin tucked into the leather pack tied across his back.

“How—” she began, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her along. And then they were running, racing down a rutted alley. A dog snapped at Keelan’s pants leg, but he shook it off. An
opening appeared on their right. Charity sped down it. Stone walls lay on both sides. She stumbled over unseen objects. The shadows were as black as sin, but she dared not slow down. Dared not fall behind. But suddenly she realized she was alone.

She turned, panting, searching the darkness. Keelan was there, twenty feet back, on the ground.

She rushed to him, grabbed his arm. “Get up!”

“Me ankle—”

“Spread out,” rasped a voice. Chetfield. At the mouth of the alley.

She felt Keelan stiffen beneath her fingers. He pushed her away. She shot her attention toward the faint light at the opposite end of the lane.

“Lass,” Keelan whispered, “ye must—”

“Lie down,” she ordered.

He shook his head, but she was already on the ground, stretching out in the deepest shadows that lay along the wall. She pulled him down with her, yet he was visible, the bare skin of his back, the lamb’s pearly head. Hands shaking, she unbuttoned her tunic, pushed Lambkin to the side, and crept over the top of them, spreading the dark fabric over all.

Footfalls shuffled nearer.

“Where are the others?” Chetfield asked.

“Link is searching the stable.” An unknown voice, dark and low. “Cleve—”

“They’re gone.” Frankie’s voice was an eerie rumble in the darkness. “Disappeared. Like magic. We shoulda never—”

“Quiet,” Chetfield hissed. The world went silent. Charity could feel him drawing nearer. She closed her eyes, held her breath, felt her heart pound like thunder against Keelan’s back.

They passed by, footfalls shuffling in the darkness.

She remained as she was, frozen, barely breathing, until Keelan nudged her off. She managed to rise to a crouch then, peering into the blackness. But the trio was gone from sight. Even so, her knees barely straightened when Keelan pulled her to her feet. They kept to the deepest shadows, slinking forward. Almost there now. The head of the alley loomed. She could feel Keelan’s hand on her back, urging her forward. She turned the corner, ready to bolt, and bumped into Bear.

“Hey.” He grabbed her arm in a meaty fist, imprisoning her, freezing her.

But in that instant Keelan thrust Lambkin into his face. She bleated. The giant stumbled back. Charity leapt away, but the others had heard and
were already dashing noisily back down the alley toward them.

It was naught but a footrace then, darting from shadow to shadow, shivering in holes, racing through forests. It was blackness and terror and pain, until morning found them curled amid the bracken in a dew-covered dale.

Charity awoke first. She glanced about, assessing, remembering. A hundred errant memories stormed through her mind. Keelan lay behind her, arm warm against her ribs. So right. So good. But things were not what they seemed. They were on diverging paths, and she dare not deviate from hers, not on pain of death. She was not safe. Would never be. Not as long as Chetfield walked the earth. Neither would anyone in her company be exempt from the old man’s awful vengeance.

She turned toward the Scotsman. He opened his eyes, as silvery blue as a mountain stream, and for a moment she was struck dumb by the beauty of him, by the gut-wrenching intensity of her feelings, the horrible longing to touch him, to lay her head against his heart, to tell him the truth. But the truth would not save him. Only action would see him safe, only the fulfillment of the promise she’d made to her mother, to herself.

“I’m flattered,” she said finally. “Truly I am, but I’m not that sort.”

He watched her, face sleepy, disheveled hair barely caught behind his corded neck. “What the devil are ye talking aboot?”

She tilted her head and filled her eyes with sympathy. “You’re in love with me.”

“What?” He sat up, scrubbed his face. Lambkin wandered up, still chewing, a buttercup thrust at a jaunty angle from her tiny mouth.

“You’re an attractive man…for a Scot,” she said. “And I’ll admit I’ll not soon forget our night together, but…” She rose to her feet and brushed off her breeches. “I don’t take partners.”

“Partners!” He rose with her but more slowly, favoring his ankle, his back. “I never suggested pairing up with ye.”

Tilting her head, she gave him a pitying glance from the corner of her eye and walked away, heading south.

“It was naught more than a bit of sport,” he said.

“Then why did you save my life?”

“I never—”

“Jumping from a window.” She shook her head. “’Tis said love can make the greatest coward brave.”

“Be ye calling me a coward?”

“No.” She stopped, eyes wide as she glanced back over her shoulder. “I’m calling you brave,” she said, and continued on. “But I have no time for a husband.”

“Husband!” he hissed. “I fell from the damned window.”

“And coincidentally crushed Roland. Of course.” She laughed. “But regardless, I think we should hasten to London and sell the staff. I’ll take my sixty percent and we can—”

She heard his footfalls stop.

“What’s that?”

She turned, stared at him. “Surely you don’t think you won that wager.”

“Ye agreed to concede together.”

She gave him a look. “I said we could consider conceding together. I would have explained further, but you seemed in a terrible rush to…Well, you know,” she said, and turned away.

He hurried after her.

“If I recall correctly, ye were in a bit of a hurry yerself, lass.”

“I didn’t mean to sully your reputation as a lover,” she said. “Indeed, should someone ask, I will say you were quite good.”

He opened his mouth to object, but she strode away, keeping a careful distance between them.

The weather turned cool that night, but they did not dare risk a fire. Keelan sat some yards away with his back to a tree, knees bent. Lambkin lay with her head on his lap. His shirt had been left at the inn. Charity could see a broad patch of lean, tight-packed muscle, and just the suggestion of a wound. She could touch that muscle, could kiss that wound. Of course, Lambkin would have to be convinced to give up her spot on his crotch. The idea of fighting the little creature for his attention made her feel fidgety and ridiculous.

“Steak,” she said. “I’m going to have a pound of steak for every meal once I sell the staff.”

Keelan turned toward her, magic eyes shining in the darkness. “Ye mean once
we
sell it, sure.”

She shrugged. “What will you do with your share, Highlander?”

He glanced down, stroked the lamb’s ears. “Mayhap I’ll buy meself a fine town house in Mayfair.”

“Mayfair?” She said the word with surprise. The world was her stage. “Whatever will you do with Lambkin in Mayfair?”

Keelan rose restlessly to his feet. The lamb did the same, gazing up at him. “Might ye be thinking I’ll be building me life around her?”

The little animal pressed her body lovingly against his leg.

“It seems quite likely, actually.”

“Well, ye dunna know me well, lass.”

“Don’t I?” Probably not. Still, despite it all, she would like to. But he would not forgive her, not when she’d done what she must. “Because it seems fairly clear that you’d…” She paused, playing her part and drawing her name in the dirt with a broken twig.

“What?”

“Nothing. Perhaps we should be off. How far to the nearest port?”

“What were ye aboot to say?”

She shrugged as if loath to speak. “I only thought that it seems fairly obvious you’d give your life for us.”

He scoffed. “For you?”

“And the lamb,” she hurried to add. “I mean, don’t misunderstand, Highlander, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s simply that…I’m not that sort.”

He tilted his head, watching her. “I ken the truth, lass,” he said finally. “There be little need to pretend.”

“Oh? And what truth is that?”

“’Tis ye that be in love with me.”

And wasn’t that a fine joke at her expense? There was a time, not so long ago, when she could have had her pick of husbands. But that
was before she’d learned the entirety of the terrible truth—that some bastards don’t die. They simply took what belonged to others, their dreams, their futures, their essence. She hid a shudder. “What an interesting theory.”

He smiled. “When I fell in the alley, ye stretched atop me, hiding me from Chetfield.”

“But of course I did, for if they had found you, they would surely have found me as well.”

“Is that what ye tell yerself, lass?”

“I never lie.”

He snorted. “Ye do nothing but lie.”

“True,” she said, and laughed.

He opened his mouth to object, but she continued on. “I’ve been thinking.”

“God save me.”

“I believe it would be best if I went alone to sell the staff.” She was building a world. Brick by brick, constructing a universe he would believe. What would happen when it all tumbled down? When the staff was gone? When he hated her?

His expression was blank. She hurried on. “Not as I am, of course. I will transform myself into a lady. A baroness perhaps. From Coventry. Lady Boughton.”