The Highwayman (Rakes and Rogues of the Restoration Book 3) (4 page)

Jack’s head whipped back toward them. Curious, assessing, interested again.

“
You
arranged my abduction. You know that isn’t true!”

“Yet it could so easily be seen to be. And who would marry you then? My staff witnessed you arrive, clutched in his arms. It is all very romantic, but hardly the behavior one expects from a countess entrusted with a title and her father’s holdings. It’s just the reason young women need guidance and are not to be trusted with managing an estate, even if a doting parent would have it so. The priest is here. I am giving you one last chance to repent your foolishness. We will marry and return to London immediately. We will explain your flight as our elopement. You will cease fighting me and obey and—”

“You put me through five days of hell so you might steal my inheritance and you think that will make me marry you?
I’d rather marry a sheepherder.”

He responded with a vicious blow that dropped her to her knees, and then he began to lay his whip about her back and shoulders.

A wave of memory came unbidden, freezing Jack’s breath so it came in jagged shards. Drunken curses, piteous cries, the image of a woman’s body lying broken and still amidst a heap of shattered crockery and splintered wood. Hatred and murder flashed in his eyes before he ruthlessly suppressed it. He clenched and unclenched his fists, mastering himself.
I would very much like to kill him,
he thought with mild surprise.

“Come and hold her still, priest!” Hammond snapped. “The girl needs discipline.”

“I think not,” Jack said calmly, cocking his pistol. “I think you should put that down before someone gets badly hurt.”

The guards by the door stepped forward, readying their own weapons, but their master waved them back. Jack suspected the footmen had pistols too. Four on one, and it wouldn’t be wise to discount their master or the priest.

“Do you fancy her then, highwayman? I thought you might. You can have her here and now if you like. I’ll even pay you for your pleasure. She is useless to me as she is. Rebellious, disgraced, yet still too proud to marry. But a highwayman’s seed in her belly would suit my purpose well enough.”

“You are indeed a generous host,” Jack said, giving him a mocking bow. “But I am accustomed to finding my own women.”

“Are you? Surely not ones as fine as this.”

Taking her upper arm in a cruel grip, Sir Robert hauled her to her feet. She stood mute and rebellious, her head high and her back straight, stony green eyes refusing to see them, her gaze fixed firmly on the far wall. It was Jack’s first real look at her. She might once have been pretty but it was hard to tell. She had an angular face with high cheekbones and there was a stubborn tilt to her jaw, but she looked drawn and haggard, her lip was puffed and bleeding, and one side of her face was battered and swollen.

“I tend to prefer mine without all the cuts and bruises.” He felt an uncomfortable twinge he didn’t care to examine, and reminded himself yet again that the odds were against him, and he was not the author of her troubles.

“What does her face matter? She’s a lady, and unless those idiots dared cross me, a virgin still. She has a nice trim waist, hips meant for hard riding, and what man wouldn’t enjoy these?” He cupped her breasts, lifting them slightly while she stood stone-faced, not moving a muscle. “Would you like to see more? Have you ever had a virgin? You could be the first to ride her.”

“I’m told those rare, some say mythical beings are highly over-rated,” Jack said, hiding his revulsion. It was clear now why Hammond had wanted a known highwayman for this venture. He doubted Rat-faced Perry knew or he’d have recommended someone else. His concern for the girl was steadily growing, but after refusing his host’s offer he’d be lucky to get himself home safely, never mind the girl.
Damn Perry anyway!

“What I
would
like to see is some gold, some brandy, and a meal.”

“You disappoint me, Jack.”

“My
friends
call me Jack.
You
are not my friend.”

“If you won’t have her, I assure you, someone else will.”

“Aye…well…if that’s your plan, I’d advise you clean her up, feed her, and leave off beating her.” He leaned closer and whispered. “It won’t work very well if she’s dead.”

“You’re a brazen bastard,” Sir Robert said with a chuckle as he tossed him a purse. “Phelps!”

“Yes, my lord!” One of the footmen hurried over.

“Find a woman to tend to the lady. And take this man to the kitchen for some brandy and a meal before you see him on his way.”

Jack followed the footman out without once having met his erstwhile charge’s eyes directly.
Arabella
. It was a lovely name. One that rolled sweetly across the tongue. He had done for her what he could short of dragging her with him at gunpoint. With two cocked and loaded pistols pointed at his back that would not have ended well.

As he finished off a meat pie, he wondered how she’d gotten herself into such a mess.
You’re the one who delivered her when she begged you not to
, a nagging voice reminded him. He drowned it with a brandy, set his hat upon his head, and went to collect Bess. He’d agreed to deliver a package and he’d done so. It was barely past midnight. There was nothing left to stop him from making some entertainment of his own.

Arabella Hamilton paced back and forth like a caged animal, testing the confines of her room, noting again and again the same rough stone walls, the same bare cot bolted to the floor, and the same ledge and aperture, ten feet above her, impossibly out of reach even with the aid of an overturned bucket. A part of her knew there was no escape, that she might circle this tower a thousand times and nothing would change.

She’d thought that by leaving for her mother’s home in Ireland, her troubles with Robert would end. Setting out alone she’d felt such anticipation as she ignored years of rules and strictures about what well-behaved women should and should not do. She’d inherited her father’s inquisitive nature, but until recently, she’d shared his curiosity about the world outside her home from the safety of his library. His increasing reclusiveness after her mother’s death had left her little choice. Beyond her country estate, local farms and markets, and their London townhouse, her adventures had unfolded in the pages of books.

Following his death, her cousin’s arrival at her secluded country home in Wiltshire seemed overly intrusive, almost aggressive, and his initial attempts to court her made her wary. She held him in no great esteem and sensed something unsavory behind his frigid blue eyes. Fortunately, as a single woman, never married and over the age of twenty-one, she had the legal right to her own property. What she did or did not do with herself and her father’s inheritance was no concern of Robert’s, but her rejection of his suit had quickly led to stalking and threats.

The kidnapping of heiresses was not unheard of amongst morally and financially bankrupt gentlemen. She was concerned enough to appoint a reliable steward and move to the London townhouse, thinking it safer to be surrounded by relative strangers than to rely on the aid and protection of elderly servants and neighbors who lived miles away. But Robert had followed close behind.

When people began referring to her as his betrothed, regardless of her protests to the contrary, she’d thought it prudent to escape him.
Still,
she would never have taken her fate in her hands so precipitously if Robert hadn’t forced her, and if she hadn’t had a place in mind to go.

As a child, her father, then Earl of Saye, would sometimes tell her stories as she sat upon his knee, of the beauty of Ireland and his love for her mother, Brigid Claire—a woman as wild and soulful as Ireland herself. He’d lost his heart to her whilst serving on one of Cromwell’s Irish campaigns.

Not all who followed Cromwell were religious fanatics. Some, like her father, were levelers and free-thinkers. Basing their opinions on scientific inquiry and logic rather than authority and tradition, they held a general belief in equality for all. It was a popular movement among many in the New Model Army, including some who argued that Irish Catholics had a claim to freedom and equality just as valid as their own.

It didn’t matter to her father that Brigid Claire was Catholic. As a second son, he’d not expected to inherit and he’d married her with every intention of making Ireland his home. But when significant elements of the army refused to embark for Ireland and Cromwell decided they had to be crushed—he had wisely decided to retire his commission, claim his inheritance, and spirit his wife away to the relative safety of his quiet English home. She died while Arabella was just a toddler, but her father’s tales brought her vividly to life, and as Arabella grew older, she wrote them down in a leather-bound journal that she carried with her everywhere she went.

‘She was a bold lass, Arabella,’ her father told her, ‘and a proud one too. Proud of her people, proud of her heritage, but not so proud of anything as she was of you. We’ll go there one day, to claim the lands she set aside for you. And a grand adventure it will be, too.’

But the adventure had never happened. It was Brigid Claire that had charmed her father, not Ireland itself, and with her death and the brutal suppression of the ideals that inspired him, he had slowly begun to fade, first his spirit and then his health. As he retreated from the world, many of his duties had passed on to her. She carried his keys, became his representative with the servants and the tradespeople, and by the time she was fifteen she was mistress of the house.

On her sixteenth birthday, he gave her a carved wooden box brimming with letters. A gift from a mother to daughter nearly grown. They contained magical tales, proud stories of her heritage, and lyrical descriptions of the land she had loved. Every page was filled with love and pride for her daughter, and with her own stories too. Stories of mischief, exploration, daring and adventure, and of course, a story of falling in love. Reading them stirred longings deep within her, for a life beyond the confines of the one she knew. Through those letters, she had come to know her mother, and to feel a kinship for a place she’d never been.

She had wanted to visit for as long as she could remember and now had seemed the time. She had never considered that Robert might know to follow her. But he must have suspected she was up to something. He had known enough about her comings and goings to arrange to have her intercepted, and to arrange to have her brought to him.

Arabella stopped walking and leaned tiredly against the wall, resting just a moment, wincing at the sharp sting as her back touched rough stone. Her instincts about her cousin had proven correct, though she’d never expected he might go to such extremes. She was no longer sure he was sane. After tonight, she suspected he might kill her out of spite if his plans didn’t succeed.

But she had inherited her father’s commonsense and steady nerves as well as her mother’s independent spirit, and she’d had the foresight to write her own will. If she should meet an untimely end, Robert would be sorely disappointed. It was the widows and orphans of her parish who would benefit, and not her greedy cousin. Surely, he must know that if he’d known of her plans to leave. He needed her alive and he needed her to marry him in order to take what he wanted, and that she would not do.

But now he threatened rape. Bile rose to the back of her throat. She shuddered to remember how he had handled her in front of his men and the highwayman. To punish her? To humiliate her as he felt she had done to him?
Yes. But more to the point, to weaken and frighten me and force me into marriage. And if I don’t give him his way, he wants me to be seen in London big with child.
He seemed to think it would help his cause somehow.
Perhaps, he believes that if I am deemed unworthy, he might change the terms of my father’s will
.

He might even be right. If she were paraded through London pregnant and unmarried it was doubtful any court would uphold her claim should it be challenged. So who was it to be? One of his guards? The hulking brute who’d watched her hungrily as she was led from the room? One of the footmen? She hugged her hands across her chest to still her trembling.

But not the highwayman
. He, at least, had refused. He had been kinder to her than anyone else had these past few days, even stepping between Robert and his whip. There had been a moment on the road when he had stopped to see to her comfort. His touch had been careful and his voice had soothed. She had almost dared to hope he meant to aid her. But he was a criminal and no hero, a fact he cheerfully acknowledged. He had accepted payment to deliver her, and then abandoned her to her fate. She had received all the help she was going to from him.

She returned to her pacing. Trying to stay calm. The situation called for clear thinking. Now was not the time for panic. It seemed the dire warnings about the fate that befell women who flouted the rules might be true, though she was hard-pressed to accept it. She was a Hamilton—a free thinker, a nonconformist. A philosophy her father had been at pains to warn her was still dangerous to speak of, even in these enlightened times. ‘Learn, question, think for yourself,’ he’d said, ‘but in all ways be practical, and in all ways discrete.’

Perhaps she hadn’t followed his maxim to the letter, but in marrying her mother, neither had he. She had been kidnapped, manhandled, beaten and nearly suffocated, but at least she had fought back rather than meekly accept her fate. A thing wasn’t finished until you stopped trying. She might not have a father or brother or other champion to defend her, but she was her father’s daughter and her mother’s rebel blood ran through her veins. She would defend herself. There had to be a way to escape. Something she had missed. Something she had yet to notice. But what?

She tripped over the bucket, wincing as it caught her shin, and retaliated by kicking it with all of her might. A white-hot thrill of pain shot through her, radiating in an instant from her toes to her teeth. She fell in a heap, gasping and cursing, and finally gave way to bitter tears.