Naughty in Nottinghamshire 02 - The Rogue Returns (5 page)

“Stop arguing,” Helen whispered from behind him. He didn’t dare glance at her, didn’t dare take his eyes from the men pointing their weapons.

Trust me.

“Who am I?” The shorter man stepped closer, his eyes alight with anger. Good, the emotion would confuse him. “I am the Midnight Rider, a man of great cunning and danger.”

Roane scoffed. He widened his stance and felt the solid English soil beneath his feet. “You, sir, are not the Midnight Rider.”

“Yes, he is,” the other man argued.

“No.” Roane shook his head. “He most assuredly is not.”

There was something familiar about these two. Perhaps he’d met them before, Roane thought, in his decidedly lawless past.

“Oh, I have heard
wonderful
things about the Midnight Rider,” Helen sang.

Was the woman bloody
daft
? Roane twisted around to face her and considered covering her chatty mouth with his muddy hand.

“I must tell all my friends I met you. They shall be green with jealousy. Why, there has been no news of the Midnight Rider for
years
. I’ll be coveted by every hostess.” She curtseyed—curtseyed!—to the robbers. Roane shook his head at her, hard, but she ignored him and kept smiling at the men. If she smiled any harder, they were certain to get ideas. Ugly ideas.

“Helen,” he muttered with a dire warning in his tone.

She made a sharp brushing away motion with her hand, telling him to be quiet. He clamped his teeth together so hard they hurt.

“Certainly there has been some mistake here, gentlemen,” she continued with a forlorn look on her face. She was all softness and helplessness. An act, to be certain. “We’ve all been terribly fooled, and I don’t know what I shall do. My brother was fond of his drink, you see, and played a terrible trick on us. Now we’ve nothing and I shall simply faint…” She clutched her heart and swayed for effect.

“Ah, the girl would like to be helpful. Good evening, missy.”

“Good evening.”

The shorter man paced to the side and Roane shifted, keeping himself between the gun and Helen.

“Don’t move.” The man waved his weapon. Roane froze.

The man kept walking until he had a clear shot at Helen. “I don’t think there has been any mistake. You have a map. We want it.”

“I see, but…” Her voice faltered and she sounded truly afraid now, not playing a part.

Roane dared take his eyes from the gun to dart a glance at her. Her face was pale, her eyes wide as she stared down the barrel of the pistol. Something flipped over in his chest, worry or some other god-awful feeling akin to it.

He was going to kill these men.

Roane turned to the man who was aiming his weapon at Helen. “Sam, is it?”

The robber said nothing.

“Sam, do listen well. Point your gun away from the girl, and I will let you live. Keep aiming at her, and I will kill you before the night is out.”

“You hear that, Billy?” Sam chuckled, but it was without humor.

Roane’s fists ached. They held the weapons, yes, but he was dangerous. More dangerous than he wanted to admit. “I said lower your gun.”

“You givin’ order to the Midnight Rider?” Sam spat on the ground.

“If you are the Midnight Rider, I am the king of England.” Roane was tense, alert. He was a leaf bent and waiting beneath a drop of dew, ready to spring into action.

“I don’t like him, Billy.”

“Neither do I,” Billy agreed.

Billy and Sam stepped forward as one. The dewdrop rolled from the tip of the leaf. Roane uncoiled his muscles and launched himself at Helen.

She cried out as he pushed her to the ground and rolled, covering her with his body. Both men, angry and impulsive, deployed their weapons without proper aim. The bullets were lost in the mud.

Roane leapt to his feet and lunged forward. He punched the shorter man in the nose, then kicked him in the gut.

Helen cried out and Roane spun toward her. Sam held a knife to her lovely white throat, but his hand was shaking. Roane stalked forward, his eyes on the attacker. He would not look at Helen, he would not look at the knife.

“You cut her, Sam, and I will string you up in the trees and let the birds eat your entrails.”

The man glanced at his friend still lying on the earth. Blood gushed from his nose and poured over his hands.

“Give her to me,” Roane said the words as calmly as he could. Once again, Sam’s wide eyes looked to his companion on the ground and back again. Then, suddenly, he let loose a sharp grunt of pain.

Helen knocked the knife from her throat and stumbled forward. Sam swore and folded over, holding his ballocks. He tried to stand tall, to wield the knife, but Helen must have knocked him good. He was red in the face, breathless from the pain. Roane quickly kicked the knife from the man’s hand and punched him in the gut, taking away what was left of his breath. Then he grabbed the knife from the mud and stood watch over the men.

“There’s rope in my saddle bag. And a pistol.” He didn’t look at Helen as he gave the orders. “Get them quickly.”

She ran across the meadow. Moments later she reappeared with the length of rope and his loaded gun. The sound of her sharp gasps sliced the quiet night.

Roane held out his hand for the rope, still not looking at her. He shook with the need to fight the men, to finish what they had started. To see the fear in her eyes would be his undoing.

He took three breaths and modulated his tone in a calm voice. “Buttercup, I need you to hold the gun. Keep it pointed at the men.”

He felt her hesitation, but then she steadied the weapon in her shaking hands. Sensing the danger of the situation, neither man struggled as he bound their hands and feet.

Satisfied the men were tied tight, Roane took the gun from Helen’s hands. “Wait for me by my mount,” he instructed, still not looking at her. His control was a precarious thing.

When she was out of earshot, he palmed the knife in one hand, the gun in the other. “Who sent you?”

Neither man said anything.

Roane approached them, letting anger contort his features.

“No one sent us,” Billy stammered. “We’ve been watching the gel. We knew she was up to something.”

Roane flipped the hilt of the knife in his palm, considering. He could probably drag more information out of the men, but his priority was Helen. He needed to get her to safety before anyone else came.

He ripped apart Sam’s dirty shirt and gagged the men. “I don’t want to see either of you again.”

Calming his rage, he took their weapons, crossed the meadow and tossed the guns into the swift stream. The knife he kept. Finally, he went to find Helen.

She was leaning against a tree by Zeus, everywhere trembling and pale. He grasped her shoulders and hauled her up against him, anchoring her to his chest. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She nodded, then started trembling even worse. She was shaking in his arms like she’d just taken a cold plunge in harsh waters.

“You were very brave,” he murmured into her hair.

“I stomped on his foot and smashed my fist into his…into his… ” She pulled out of his arms and folded over at the waist as if she might wretch.

“Shh… it’s over now, buttercup.” He brushed her hair back from her face and brought her back to standing. “You did fine, sweetheart.”

“I’ve never…I thought you…” She shuddered. “I abhor violence.”

Roane regretted that she had been forced to touch that man. This was an ugly world in which she did not belong. “We have to ride away from here, buttercup.” He held her hand and led her toward Zeus. Quickly, he strapped his saddlebags in place. “I wager the men brought horses with them to make their escape.” Guiding Helen with one hand and Zeus with the other, he picked his way through the trees until he found what he was looking for. The thieves’ horses were handsome beasts, and not what Roane had expected from coarse laborers. He checked them over and chose the smaller of the two. “This will be your mount.”

Helen was frozen in place. She looked even paler, if that were possible. “We cannot steal a horse.”

“One is not stealing if protecting oneself from attempted murderers and thieves.”

“What logic is that?”

“My logic.” He stood next to the mount and linked his fingers together. “Step up.”

She shook her head.

“Hurry, Helen.”

“I cannot.” Her voice was barely audible.

He had no time to argue. He picked her up by the waist and nearly threw her atop Zeus. Then he mounted behind her.

He led both thieves’ horses out of the clearing. “I don’t want to make it easy for them to follow us.”

“So you think they will?”

“They’ll try.” He let go of the larger mount and yelled, sending the horse fleeing into the darkness. The smaller horse strained to follow, but Roane held tight to her reins. Helen would need a mount in the morning. “If we see them again, let me do the talking, all right?”

With a glance up at the dark sky, he headed north.

“I knew what I was doing. It’s not like I was being foolish without a purpose.” Her voice still quivered. “Wait, where are we going? Cromford is the other direction.”

“It’s too late for town, buttercup. We are headed into the mountains.”

***

T
HE RAIN HELD OFF
until the deep dark of night, when it let loose in torrents and buckets. Raindrops pattered on the thick canopy of leaves overhead, and the silent forest became a symphony of rhythm and motion punctuated by gusts of wind. Roane wrapped his cloak around her, keeping her dry, but Helen barely noticed.

That man had pointed a gun at her face.

She wiped away the splatter of a raindrop and burrowed against Roane’s chest. It did no good to recall the scene by the meadow, but she could not wipe the memory from her person as easily as she did the rain.

That man had pointed a gun at her face, had placed his disgusting hands on her, and held a knife to her throat. She’d faced danger before, or so she’d thought. Ugly men, mostly money lenders, who needed to be scolded away from the elegant front door of the Gladstone’s townhouse. Rude, powerful dowagers who disparaged her family and needed to be charmed into place. Handsy suitors who thought, in her dire circumstances, she’d be as fast and loose as her family’s reputation.

But this was something else entirely. She was alone in the woods with only a stranger to help her.

Her plan to find the gold had gone
quite
awry.

Her teeth chattered, and not from cold. Roane’s arms tightened around her, and she pressed her eyes closed, leaning deeper into him. His chest was warm and solid and surprisingly comforting.

“I am being a fool.” Her words came in tight little puffs against his damp linen shirt.

“It’s not foolish to be afraid,” he said. Though she could not imagine him being afraid of anything. He was like a warrior from another time, fierce and confident on his great big beast of a horse, his every instinct attuned to the forest around them as if alert for trouble at any moment. She was very, very grateful he had arrived early for the gold.

The rest, she would think about later when she was not so raw. “I would give anything to be back home in London right now with my eight thousand pounds.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Roane’s voice was a deep rumble that vibrated through her bones. She liked it. Probably too much. “You could be shopping for another gown the perfect shade of puce.”

“You are teasing me.”

“Perhaps a bit. I should know better than to come between a woman and her love for fashion.” He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “But you have stopped shivering.”

His nearness, and his breath against her sensitive skin, sent another round of shivers coursing through her for an altogether different reason.

He said nothing more, just held her tight against him. She would never have thought she could doze while riding precariously high off the ground, but she must have. Suddenly, they were no longer moving, and she jerked awake. His arms were steel around her. “We’re here,” he rumbled.

Helen lifted her head and looked at the dark forest.
Here
didn’t appear any different than the last few hours of terrain. Roane hopped down, then reached up for her. His hands were warm and spanned her waist as he easily lowered her to the earth. She quickly stepped away from the horses and their sharp teeth and fierce kicks.

“Your bonnet, my lady.” He handed her a warped, muddy, sorry excuse for a bonnet. Apparently, she’d forgotten it at the clearing and Roane had dragged it behind the horses all night.

“Thank you.” A lady always remembered her manners, even when her last bonnet had been ruined.

“There is a cave just up the hill.” He nodded toward the steep incline beside them. “We’ll sleep there.”

“Pardon me?” Could this night get any worse? A cave? With bats? And snakes? “Tell me you jest.”

He removed the saddlebags from his horse. “I do not jest. It’s the safest place I know in these woods.”

Tossing the saddlebags over his shoulder, he started up the hill. Helen lifted her muddy skirts and followed. Tears burned behind her eyes but she was
not
going to cry. She’d survived days of digging, being abandoned by her servants, and the horror of a cold knife against her throat. Surely she could survive a cave.

“Come along.” Roane turned and grabbed her hand, then hauled her up a particularly slick section of the hill. The mouth of the cave loomed dark and terrible behind him.

Muttering a curse worthy of her brothers, she followed him into the black mouth of doom. He stepped deeper into the cave, away from the splashing rain, and shook the water from his hair and clothes. Then he rummaged through his bags and withdrew a carefully folded bit of leather containing a tallow candle and tinderbox. With much grumbling, he struck the crosier against the tinder and was able to light the linen wick of the candle. An eerie glow illuminated the cave, sending monsters and beasts flickering in every shadow.

“Come, Helen. I cannot let anyone see this light.”

“Are there snakes?”

The scuff of his footsteps echoed against the stone walls as he stepped away from her, taking the light. “No. The cave is empty.”