Regency Rogues Omnibus (45 page)

Alas, when all things came to their conclusions, he was but a man with all the powerful masculine tendencies that involved, despite his wiser intelligence. He had several fencing swords on the seat before him and the ever present pistol in his right boot. Providence had the swords in front of him. It was a sad occurrence, because he was taking them to his estate to retire them. Actually, to banish them from his apparently faltering one-eyed gaze. To use one of the swords was preferable, because he was less likely to fatally harm someone with a sword. If a man picked up a pistol it was his belief that man had best be prepared to use it, and he did not care for the idea of a pistol around Nia at all.

All of these thoughts flashed through his mind in mere seconds as he covertly pulled the pistol from his boot. However, none of his fleeting thoughts mattered in the end, because in the short seconds from thought to actions, his self-preservation overrode any logic. He was vulnerable now, as he had never been before losing his eye. So by instinct alone he reacted, cocking the pistol as he pushed open the door to the coach, trying to illicit surprise by jumping out the door on the opposite side from Nia. He would learn to regret his new found cowardice.

“He has a pistol!”

“Stand down!” Radford shouted at the same moment the stoutest robber shouted his warning. Events appear in a person’s mind to move slower than they are at dangerous times. It had happened to him a hundred times or more and still caused to amaze him each time. He saw clearly that as he was raising his arm to point his pistol at the stout robber, the robber was in motion with a pistol of his own.

A high-pitched feminine screech of anger and alarm came from his left, on the other side of the carriage, along with the beginning sounds of pistol reports.
Three?
Even as he fell to his side from a lashing sting across his temple, Radford wondered at the sound of three pistol shots.

Chapter Eight

“No!” Nia screamed, as the smell of burnt gunpowder filled her nostrils from the pistol she had just fired.

“You bitch, you shot me!” Jake roared as he swatted at a red stain on his upper arm. “You made me kill him!”

Nia heard Jake’s bellow, but the mare beneath her was trying to bolt and all her concentration was on trying to calm the nearly bucking horse. Oh lord! She had seen Jake raise a pistol toward Radford! It was then, she had raised her pistol and pointed it toward Jake firing without thought. But Jake had already been firing his pistol and she had glimpsed Radford falling through the coach’s open window. Now, Jake proclaimed Radford dead!

The mare bucked beneath her, nearly throwing her off, as she cried, “No! It was only a charade! A charade!”

“Charade my arse!” Jake bellowed.

Nia screamed, because Jake was there beside her shouting furiously and pulling her off her mare. Jake tugged her struggling body to his side angrily, as he sat on his horse. She was shocked and confused leaving her struggles clumsy and ineffective as he held her aloft, corralled to his side and he kicked his horse into a gallop. At first, all she could do was to hang on, dangling on the side of the galloping horse as she was. Yet, her head bounced so erratically that for one jarring second she thought that she caught a brief, barely focused, glimpse of Radford’s tall body standing beside the coach.

“Radford!” she cried. Yet, in the end she could not be sure that she’d seen Radford alive at all. Then, in the next second Jake pushed her belly down over his thighs with the racing horse loping beneath him. The motion of Jake’s horse trying to gallop through the uneven brush-filled forest, stole any struggles that she could mount. She was left with just desperately trying to breathe, as jolts of pain attacked her from every direction, because of the unnatural riding position she was in.

Sometime later, Nia could do nothing but whimper as Jake finally halted his horses careening run. She felt Jake grasping the back of her shirt, lifting her upward by it alone. But the worn out man’s shirt that she had on was not strong enough to hold her body’s weight. The shirt tore open down the front, even as Jake was shoving her off the side of his horse. The fall buckled her nearly numb legs as she collided with the ground, landing on her knees with her upper body tumbling partially forward. Her hat was long gone and the coppery-red tresses of her wind-tangled hair fell wildly around her.

“They will hang me!
Damn
you. You red-headed bitch! I was set to just wing him without your bloody interference. And now Nat’s gone too!”

Nia could hear the overheated horse snorting with great gulps of air from its long ride as the stallion’s large hooves shifted in front of her. She could tell by the hide of the saddle creaking and the shift of the stallion’s hooves that Jake was dismounting. She tried to gather her thoughts or even her voice, yet all she could do was to gasp, bowled over toward the ground.

The crunch of Jake’s boots in the brush neared, and she managed to pant, “Not dead.” But the effort was merely a whimper of sound.

“What’s
that, Red?” Jake asked with an angry shout. “Damn you’ll pay for this! Yer to stand by yer thiefin’ chums! Not shoot them in the fucking arm!”

Nia managed to peer upward through the skeins of hair fallen over her face and she saw Jake tying a bandanna around the wound on his arm, using one hand and his teeth. There was little blood and she knew the wound had to be only a glancing scratch. The turn of events was alarming and they were just now occurring to her rattled mind. However, her mind was barely grasping and her body was feeble, when Jake reached down and grabbed her by the arms, wrenching her onto her feet in front of him.

“When I go to Newgate,
you’ll
be going with me!”

Jake shook her angrily, as she gasped, “I saw him alive.”

“I saw him dead!” Jake shouted, shaking her so hard that her teeth clicked together sharply as she clawed at his chest trying to push him away. But the effort was useless, and she could not. “And now, Red, yer goin’ to show me how
sorry
ye are ye shot yer thievin’ chum!”

“He is
not
dead and you will never get paid!” Nia cried as Jake grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head with one hand and he began tearing her shirt off with the other. His first grab tore the shirt off her left shoulder and her arm, then his second digging grab got the right side of her shirt and the chemise beneath. Nia screamed in fearful protest as her breasts were bared to Jake’s lecherous gaze, while she tried to stop him with her nails scraping his wrists.

“Ow
, damn you!” He bellowed as he hauled her bodily around by her hair, making her yelp at the sharp pain on her scalp. Then, suddenly her bare back hit the side of Jake’s horse. The force Jake used, bowed her spine backward over the stallion’s sweaty side. “Whoa, boy!” Jake exclaimed to the skittering horse as he snatched both of her wrists into his hands and jerked them upward, forcing them over her head. Nia cried out as her spine bent further over the rounded side of the anxiously shifting stallion. Horsehair abraded her tender flesh as she tried the only defense left to her and she kicked one booted foot outward, but she was only able to hit Jake’s shin.

He merely grunted, as she cried, “Let me go, you pig!”

It was then Nia felt Jake lashing her wrists to the saddle with part of the reins, effectively imprisoning her up on her toes against the side of the stallion. She was stunned and panting at events happening so quickly out of her control.
He meant to rape her
, suddenly flashed through her mind as tears filled her eyes and she tried frantically to think of some way to stop him.

“Now,” Jake said, with great huffs of exertion, as he stepped backward a pace to view her hung helplessly from the saddle of his horse. His gaze was bright and lustful and his eyes were centered on her naked breasts, lifted high in an unnatural position.

She moaned with feelings of defenseless vulnerability shuddering through her body, as she lied desperately, “He is my father! The man that paid you is
my
father and he will pay you a fortune if you let me go now and take me to him!”

“Bull!” Jake spat. “Twas a butler what paid me and promised me more, and it weren’t no gentleman that sent him. Now shut up or I’ll start smacking you each time if you don’t!” Then Jake’s hands were at the waistband of her britches tugging harshly downward and ripping the material with his force.

“No! Please, no!” Nia cried out.

She thrashed her legs trying to deter Jake, but the tips of her toes barely touched the ground and she could not get purchase against Jake renting the britches off her hips and legs, until she was entirely nude except for her riding boots. She cried then, terrified and humiliated as Jake even pulled off her riding boots and short stockings. Then, he stood back once more and she moaned again as he leered at her complete nudity. Even Jake’s gaze made her skin crawl. How could she ever survive him touching her? Then the thought that she was a novice whore rose in her mind suddenly, making her laugh hysterically as she twisted her wrists against the leather reins binding them. She was not that much of a whore! She did not want him to touch her, ever!
Oh God.

“You like it,” Jake declared.

He must mean her shrill laughter, Nia thought crazily, as he stepped forward and put one of his rough hands between her thighs. She screamed, crying openly now, even thrashing against the stallion, hoping to get the horse to gallop away, because as bodily dangerous as that was, it was preferable to Jake touching her.
Raping her.

“Whoa!” Jake exclaimed to the horse as he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her head to the side, shouting, “Quit that bloody screaming!” He jerked her head again, but still she screamed and his horrible hand that was stuffed between her thighs and groping her bare pussy, suddenly became a clamp squeezing tight. Her screaming stopped, as she cried out in pain.

“You want more?” he demanded, shaking her by his hand squeezed over her mound.

“No!” she squealed with pain, and defeat. His hand loosened and returned to its crude invasive groping with his fingers prodding near the entrance to her dry cringing sheath. “Please, no!
Please
no!” she begged him, left with nothing but to plead as she tried to squirm her body away.

“Aw, come along, Red, you’ll like my big cod poked inside ya! I’ll give ya a hard ride!”

“A
short
ride I’m afraid. Bastard!” The cultured male voice came out of nowhere.

Nia barely heard the voice as Jake exclaimed and she heard a crack and thumping sound. Something around the stallion jerked and it started to prance forward dragging her with it. She clenched her eyes with tears splashing out against the harsh tugging on her wrists and the scraping of her toes. She could not stop crying.

“Whoa up there, boy! Whoa.”

It was Radford! When Nia realized that it was Radford’s voice, she started truly bawling. Great gulps of it that she could not stop.

Chapter Nine

“Damnation!” Radford cussed, trying to still the horse that Nia hung so naked and powerless from. He cursed himself for not finding her sooner and he damned all bad men terrorizing and harming any woman. He could not say that there was a time in his life that he’d felt more helpless. Frightened and bawling women, was certainly not his forte. The vulnerability of Nia’s stark nudity stirred his compassion deeply, and seeing the ruffian, now lying unconscious at his feet, grope her, and so abusively, made him furious.

He was not certain that Nia understood that he was with her now or that she was saved as he steadied the horse and reached upward to unwind the reins binding her wrists. “Hush, cherie,” he soothed, unable to conjure up anything more brilliantly comforting. The welts left from the reins around Nia’s wrists drew his lips back in further anger.

“R-Radford,” she sobbed with a frightened and questioning sound that tore at his feeling.

“You are safe with me, cherie,” he muttered through his constricted throat. Then, she was free and he reached to catch her, before she fell to the ground on weakened legs.

“Oh,” she sobbed. Then, she gasped as he lifted her up into his arms with one arm under her thighs and one at her back. Her eyes were still clenched with great watery tears dampening the thief’s mask she wore. The softness of her naked body shuddered in his arms.

“Put your arms around me, cherie,” he compelled gruffly, however she appeared incapable of anything more than a stiff-bodied posture as her weeping with hiccups now combined, continued on. “Sweetheart.” His chest constricted on his own impotent plea of compassion and he strengthened his embrace around her. He was overturned emotionally and he stumbled to the base of a large oak tree, where he ungracefully lowered to the ground to sit with his back to the tree and Nia cradled in his lap.

He used gentle but firm hands to tug Nia’s stiff body into his encompassing embrace. First the side of her waist and hip, hitched to his belly, then the pressure of his hand carefully forcing her upper body to unbend and lean against his chest. With the same hand he caught the side of her head and pressed slowly, until she yielded it with a tense tremor to rest on his shoulder. He took the open edges of his jacket and pulled them as far as he could, to wrap around her tightly as his cheek came to rest on her feverish temple.