Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (5 page)

His vision was beginning to blur. Duncan nodded fee
bly toward her skirt. “Isn’t that something I should be doing?”

Beth ripped at the petticoat a little too hard and rent it completely. “If you don’t shut up, the first bandage will be applied to your mouth, sir.”

Damn the man’s eyes, did he think her flattered by this? Did he feel he had to play a role for her? She wanted only to get him to his home, tend to his wound, and be off, her debt repaid. She didn’t want her feelings stirred, or this strange, nameless warmth seeping through her body.

“Duncan,” he corrected her. “My name is Duncan Fitzhugh.”

She swiftly tore the petticoat into strips, then seated
herself next to him to apply her handiwork. “Well, Dun
can Fitzhugh, if you don’t take this seriously, you will shortly be the late Duncan Fitzhugh.”

He watched as her fingers worked swiftly, capably. She’d done this before, he thought, and often. “You do this well.”

Beth continued binding his wound, taking care to make the bandage just tight enough to stem the flow, but not so tight as to cut it off completely. “I’ve had practice.”

How did a young woman become versed in bandaging wounds? “Men dueling over your favors?”

She raised her eyes for a moment. “No, I’ve shot men who have been after my favors, then felt moved to prevent them from bleeding to death, much like you.”

Duncan laughed at her serious tone, then groaned as pain seared through his shoulder.

“Be still, sir, or it’ll go hard on you.” He had no sense at all, she thought, with a shake of her head. She inspected her work. “There, that’ll have to do until I take the bullet out.”

“You—?” He drew his brows together. The closest he’d come to being ministered to was by Samuel. The man, his mentor and surrogate father from his street urchin days, after his mother had died, lived in the manor with him now and was originally a barber by trade.

She didn’t know whether to be insulted or amused by the astonished expression on his face.

“Me,” she replied. “I will have to get you to your home. A shot of whisky might help the pain.”

“A shot of you might do the same,” he guessed. This one would be an adventure, he’d wager. An adventure on a path he would like to explore.

Before she could respond, a bloodcurdling scream echoed just beyond the coach. It jarred Beth’s very bones.

Duncan looked startled. The cry sounded as if it was only half human.

“That would be Sylvia,” Beth told him with a sigh. Poor thing had probably awakened befuddled to see the carnage about her. “Sylvia,” Beth called over her shoulder, her voice stern. “Calm yourself. It’s all right. I’m in the coach.”

The next moment, there was the sound of clawing at
the door, sounds made by a frightened animal seeking to
escape. Beth opened the door and looked at Sylvia’s face. It was paler than a sheet.

The shock she felt intensified when Sylvia saw Dun
can lying sprawled on the seat. Her breath hitched in her
throat as she tried to speak. Sylvia pointed behind her, her hands shaking.

“There are—there are—“

Very deliberately, Beth bracketed the woman’s wide
shoulders between her hands. She spoke in a measured cadence to calm Sylvia down.

“Yes, I know what ‘there are.’ They’re both dead. This one,” Beth nodded toward Duncan, “is obviously not. Bleeding like a stuck pig, he insists on behaving like a rutting one instead.”

Duncan felt himself sinking and fought against slipping away into a numbing darkness. He hadn’t the
strength to sit up. With a sigh, he resigned himself to his
position for the moment. “You wound me, mistress.”

“Not I. ’Twas the highwayman’s sights you were in, not mine,” she said pointedly.

It was not wasted on Duncan. He smiled. “It is ‘mistress,’ isn’t it, and not ‘madam’?”

The man’s nerve staggered her. Here he was, bleeding
badly, a bullet lodged in his arm, and rather than think of his wound, he had attached his thoughts to that part of his anatomy that was, in all likelihood, less than useful at the moment.

Sylvia was quick to stop her when Beth opened her mouth to reply. “Don’t tell him anything, Beth.”

“Beth, is it?” Her name was Beth. It was a beginning, Duncan thought.

She was far from afraid of a wounded man. One well-placed blow would leave him unconscious. Beth saw no
harm in answering his question. ‘To satisfy your curiosity, it is Elizabeth Beaulieu. Mistress Beaulieu.”

The smile was arrogant and cut to the heart of her, mocking her bold stand. “That only whets my appetite.”

Beth glanced outside. The rain, once again, was abating. It seemed as if it would continue this way indefinitely, surging and retreating like a band of marauding Indians.

“I was speaking of your curiosity, not your appetites, sir.”

“ ‘Duncan,’ “ he urged, wanting to hear his name on her tongue.

“Sir,” Beth repeated obstinately. “All right, I’ve done what I can with you at the moment.” She needed fresh water, preferably boiled, and fresh bandages, as well as a knife to remove the bullet with. “Did you say you lived somewhere close by?”

“Yes.” He was going to lose consciousness, Duncan
thought with growing alarm. He gripped it tightly, like a beggar his only coin.

He was growing pale, Beth observed. The ball had to come out. And she needed poultices before a fever began to claim him. She leaned closer to him. “Where?”

His voice was growing faint and he cursed himself for it. “Three miles from here, due east.”

“East?” Sylvia bleated, as she peered out of the coach. Directions were all one and the same to her. Despair began to grow. All was lost. The driver was dead, and the only man who could help them looked as if he was going to die at any moment.

The poor, silly goose, Beth thought. She would have been infinitely happier at home, talking to her pets, tending to her garden.

“I know which way east is, Sylvia,” she assured her gently.

“Somehow, I knew you would,” Duncan breathed, his
world shrinking quickly to a small, rounded spot.

“But how will we get there?” Sylvia wailed. She caught herself, knowing she was whining. But her look implored Beth for reassurance. “He can’t drive us, and the driver is—“ She covered her mouth suddenly as her stomach rose to her mouth.

“The driver is past helping us,” Beth agreed. She bit her lip. The last thing she wanted to do was leave the man out here. It wouldn’t be right. He would be fodder for animals. She motioned Sylvia out of the coach. “Since you’re awake, you can help me with him.”

Sylvia nearly stumbled as she climbed out. “Help you
do what with him?”

“Get him into the coach.”

Sylvia’s eyes grew large as she shrank back against the side of the coach. It was slippery with rain. “But he’s—“

She wasn’t getting anywhere by coddling the woman. Beth took a sterner tone.

“—Most likely a Christian who deserves a decent burial. I can’t bury him here. I’ve no tools to do it with. But perhaps he has a family, people who need to mourn him and place him in his final resting place.” Please God, she thought, don’t let it be that way with Father. “At any rate, we can get him to Mr. Fitzhugh’s house. Once there, someone can contact the proper authorities about this and our consciences will be clear.”

Sylvia knew it was useless to say that her conscience was clear now. She glanced toward the driver. The man was dirty, bleeding, and dead. She cared for none of that, least of all the last. In her heart, Sylvia bewailed the timidity which had prevented her from resisting Dorothy Beaulieu’s request to accompany her eldest on this journey. Much as she loved Elizabeth, Sylvia had no illusions as to her influence over the young girl. Traveling with her would only bring one chaotic disaster after another.

Tiny black eyes looked at the young girl in supplication. “But how—?”

Beth could only shake her head. Sylvia was always defeated before she ever began. “Between us, we can do
this, Sylvia.” She stared at the dark haired, faint-hearted
woman as if willing some of her own determination into
her. “Now.”

The last thing Duncan remembered thinking was that,
wounded or not, he shouldn’t just be lying here. He was
a man and Beth was just a wisp of a thing, though she
possessed a tongue as sharp as any cat o’nine tails. He
should get up and help the headstrong little vixen before
she hurt herself dragging the driver to the coach.

Duncan got as far as reaching for the coach door before darkness slipped over him again. It consumed him.

“Damn,” he muttered, as he pitched into blackness.

Chapter Five

Getting the driver into the coach proved to be a far more arduous endeavor than bringing Duncan to the same destination. The other man was built like a barrel; because he was dead, he was about as maneuverable as one filled with lead. There was no way they could carry the man between them. Though it seemed irreverent, Beth finally resorted to dragging the driver by his feet until she reached the coach.

Uttering a cry low in the back of her throat, Beth managed to right him and pushed him into the coach,
but his lower body still dangled without. She circled the coach and climbed in from the other side. Grasping his
hands, she struggled to get him completely inside. It was as if she were pitting herself against a boulder.

“Push, Sylvia,” she growled at the inert woman. “For pity’s sake, push. He can’t feel you doing it!”

Hesitantly, moaning under her breath, Sylvia laid her
hands on the man’s posterior and pushed as Beth had in
structed her.

“It doesn’t seem right,” Sylvia clucked, shutting her eyes more against the immodesty of the act than against the rain that was falling with renewed vengeance.

“It seems less right to leave him here in the mud,” Beth pointed out as she struggled.

There. Done.

Sylvia looked over her shoulder at the last body on ground. She shuddered. “Are we taking that one with us, too?”

Still squatting beside the body within the coach, Beth
rested a moment before getting down to join Sylvia. She shook her head.

“No, that one deserves to lie and rot here until Saint Peter comes looking for him.”

“Lucifer would be more the way of it,” Sylvia pronounced.

Beth shrugged. “Whomever.” Shielding her eyes, she looked up at the sky. There was no sign that the rain was going to relent today. “We’d best be on our way quickly.” She nodded toward the highwayman. “He might have had confederates.”

Sylvia hadn’t thought of that. She drew closer to Beth, then turned to board the coach. She stopped abruptly, a fresh dilemma presenting itself to her. Both feet on the ground once more, she turned toward Beth and bleated, “But where’m I to sit?”

Beth saw no problem. She gestured toward the interior of the coach. “The other bench is empty.”

She looked around for Duncan’s horse. It was still standing where he had left it. The horse was well trained, she thought. With slow, measured steps, she approached it, holding her hand out. When he didn’t back away, she stroked the fine, silken muzzle.

“Oh, you’re a handsome one, you are.” Taking his reins, she led the stallion to the back of the coach and tied him to it. She had no intention of leaving the animal out here. In all likelihood, the horse was probably the only thing Duncan owned.

Sylvia shadowed Beth’s steps, taking three for each of Beth’s. To a distant observer it would have appeared to be a nervous little dance.

“In there?” She pointed behind her. “You want me to
ride with a dead man and a scoundrel?”

Beth tested the reins to assure herself that they were
securely fastened. Satisfied, she rounded the coach and
looked inside. Duncan was still unconscious. It was better that way; less pain for him. Sylvia tugged on her arm
for her attention.

“That scoundrel,” Beth reminded Sylvia, “saved our lives.”

Sylvia remained unconvinced. She had lived twenty more years than Beth and had seen much of man’s las
civiousness. It had never, of course, been directed at her,
but she was aware of its existence nonetheless. She pursed her lips. “For himself, no doubt.”

Beth gathered up the horses’ reins. “He’s badly wounded, Sylvia. He can do you no harm.”

That was the trouble with this child, Sylvia thought mournfully. Elizabeth knew nothing of the wicked world. A man could always find a way to have his way with a woman. Sylvia raised her chin.

“Any man can do you harm.”

There was no time to stand and argue. Beth shrugged.
“Fine, then you can ride with me.” She placed a hand
on the coach wheel to steady herself as she judged the
distance to the top.

Sylvia watched her young charge wide-eyed. “You’re
driving the coach?”

She said the words in the same tone she would have employed questioning Beth’s sanity if Beth had announced that she was going to throw herself from the Liberty Bell tower in Philadelphia and fly.

Poor Sylvia, such a mouse. “The coach cannot drive itself, and the horses don’t know the way.”

Wrapping the reins around her hand, Beth hiked up her skirts and placed a foot on the first step. The horse closest to her snorted, moving slightly. The coach shuddered as Sylvia squealed, prepared for the worst. Beth held fast and gained the top.

Sylvia released the breath she’d been holding, amazed that Beth hadn’t fallen and injured herself. Agility of this
sort, like a common cat’s, wasn’t seemly. Didn’t the girl
see that? As for her suggestion, that, of course, was pre
posterous!

She attempted to reason with her, knowing it was hopeless. The girl was as headstrong as a wayward mule. “But it isn’t seemly for a young woman to be driving a coach like some common peasant.”

Images and illusions had never been important to
Beth. “Neither is remaining here, shivering in the rain
helplessly while he bleeds to death,” she nodded toward the interior of the coach, “and we catch our death of cold.” Bracing her foot against the brake, she balanced the reins in her hand and then looked down at Sylvia. The woman remained stolidly stationary. “Well?”