How I Married a Marquess (12 page)

“The devil I will,” he muttered, then gave the ribbons a hard flip and sent the team into a fast gallop to reluctantly return her to the village.

T
homas sat unmoving on his gelding beneath the black cover of the dark woods and tried not to shiver against the cold.

At well past midnight, he had been here for over two hours, unmoving, waiting at the spot where most of the robberies had taken place. He didn't mind. What was one more night without sleeping after the year he'd had, especially when tonight might very well put an end to all his nightmares?

He glanced down at his hands holding the reins, and a crooked smile pulled at his lips. Not one visible tremor.

But then, since he'd arrived in Lincolnshire, he'd felt better than he had in months. This mission for Royston kept him too busy to dwell on the shooting, and even being out here in the cold night, surrounded by darkness, didn't raise the panic and anxiety he'd come to expect whenever he ventured from the safety of home and light.

The frigid night bit into his bones, but after his encounter with Josephine Carlisle in the phaeton yesterday afternoon, he welcomed the cold. The chill kept his blood from boiling in anger at the memory of how unbelievably tempting he'd found her before she gave him that calculated setdown. And at how the blasted woman had been avoiding him since, which he suspected wasn't completely because she'd told him that she was an orphan or that she considered him no different from the men before him who had tried to use that to their advantage.

Bloody hell.

He was losing his mind. Why else would he be thinking of a woman when his chance to prove himself had finally arrived?
This
was his opportunity, the one he'd wanted for a year. The one that would finally bring back the life he'd had before the shooting. And no woman, not even an extremely intriguing, inexplicably alluring one with big green eyes, a kind heart so generous that she scrubbed orphanage floors, and a stubborn streak the size of London, would interfere with that.

He rolled his shoulders in an attempt to shake out the tension but failed. The damned woman was going to haunt him all night with her haughty little sniffs and sharp tongue, that thick chestnut hair, and those full lips that tasted of peaches and had him wondering what other delicious flavors she might—

A sudden movement caught his eye.

He narrowed his gaze and stilled as shadows shifted below him in the woods along the edge of the road. Every muscle in his body tensed. More shadows moved silently through the trees. In the darkness he could discern a handful of men on horseback, all dressed from head to toe in black, and all wearing masks and tricornered hats. A spike of tension licked at the backs of his knees as electricity crackled in the air.

A robbery was about to occur.

His intuition about tonight had proved correct. As the riders stopped moving to blend themselves into the black shadows exactly as he had, he knew his old instincts were still sharp, his skills as an agent still valuable. And tonight he would be vindicated.

As an approaching coach rumbled down the narrow road, a small man with a build not bigger than a boy
rose up from the shadows at the bottom of the hill and waved his arm over his head. A large tree crashed down and blocked the road. The riders in the woods waited unseen in the darkness while two men on foot moved to crouch low in the bushes near the fallen tree, one on either side of the road.

A moment later the carriage skidded to a stop. The driver drew up the reins and motioned to the two liveried tigers to jump down from their seats and remove the log. In the silence of the woods, Thomas heard the grumbles of the two men, followed by muscled grunts as they struggled to push the fallen tree to the side of the road.

A shrill whistle tore through the night. The robbers jumped from the bushes to grab the two tigers and wrestle them to the ground as the riders swooped down from the trees, shouting and waving their pistols in the air. Thomas remained right where he was, unmoving, keenly watching it all unfold around him. Within seconds the driver and tigers were bound at the side of the road.

The masked leader jumped down from his black horse. He threw open the carriage door, pointed a pistol inside, and held up a sack. A moment passed while the mounted men circled the coach and tonight's selected passenger filled the bag. Then the highwayman closed the carriage door and swung easily up onto his horse. Another whistle followed, and the robbers scattered in all different directions while the highwayman galloped away into the woods.

And Thomas set off after him.

An expert rider familiar with the countryside, the highwayman charged through the black woods, while Thomas stayed carefully behind in the shadows, close enough not to lose sight of him yet far enough away to not be noticed. The highwayman slowed his horse to a loping canter and crossed into an open clearing beside a pond. Pulling up, Thomas watched as the man slowed his black horse to a trot and shoved the sack into a hollow tree as he passed, then spun the horse on its hindquarters with a rear and plunged back into the woods.

Thomas followed cautiously, his senses alert to the shadows around him, his muscles tense. No one had been hurt in any of the previous robberies, but he would never risk his life unnecessarily. The highwayman carried at least one pistol, and Thomas couldn't be certain that the man wasn't riding to meet the rest of his gang or leading him straight into a trap.

Tucked inside a small clearing in the woods, the black silhouette of a cottage emerged from the darkness of the trees. Thomas silently reined his horse to a stop and leaned forward in his saddle to watch as the highwayman trotted easily up to the tiny stone house, swung down from the saddle, and led the horse into a small lean-to stall attached to the building. Moments later the man left the stall and entered the cottage.

Careful not to be seen or heard, Thomas slipped from his horse, tied it to a tree, and silently approached the cottage. Slowly he withdrew a pistol from beneath his coat, leaving the second one tucked in its holster. He hadn't lied to Josie. Since the shooting he'd disliked guns, but he dreaded being vulnerable even more. And tonight he would take no unnecessary chances.

The front door stood ajar, the faint light from a single candle slanting out into the darkness. As Thomas reached for the door, he considered sneaking around to the rear of the cottage to hunt for a back entry or open window, but from this vantage point, he could clearly see that the cottage was shuttered tight, not even a hint of light shining through any cracks around the windows. The highwayman didn't know he was there, which gave him the advantage, but if he started prying open shutters and picking locks, the noise would give him away. Coming in through the doorway was dangerous, but there was no other choice. If he waited for a better opportunity, the man might slip away, taking with him Thomas's best chance at arresting him. No, better to come through the front door with the element of surprise than lose this opportunity by cowardly waiting.

Standing carefully to the side, he slowly nudged open the door with his foot just far enough to slip through. He paused, listening carefully. No sounds, no rustle of movement—nothing. Keeping his back against the wall, he stepped further inside the cottage.

“Stop where you are.” The click of a pistol broke the silence. “Or I'll shoot.”

For a beat he froze, frustration flooding through him for falling for such an easy trick.
Damnation
!
Inwardly cursing himself and raising his hands slowly, he turned to face the end of a pistol.

And the woman behind it.

Josephine Carlisle stood across the room in the dim glow of the candle and pointed the pistol directly at his chest. Dressed in solid black from head to toe, she blended well into the shadows, the boy's clothing covering her lithe figure from the oversized coat hiding her feminine curves right down to the boots on her feet. Her hair fell loose in a wild mass of chestnut curls around her slender shoulders, the tricornered hat tossed away to the floor, and from her left hand dangled a black mask.

“You?” he murmured as he stared at her, unable to hide his disbelief. “Impossible.”

For a moment she did nothing but stare back, as if just as stunned as he. Then, her voice husky with surprise, she answered, “Well, you're the one who said I was a puzzle.” Despite the brave tone of her words, her hands trembled. “Puzzle solved, then.”

“Not even close,” he muttered with a scowl, then angrily slammed the door closed with a shove of his hand.

A curse snapped from his lips, and ignoring the threat of the pistol still pointed at him, he crossed the room and stopped directly in front of her. She wouldn't shoot him, he knew that; she would have pulled the trigger the moment he slipped through the door if she'd truly wanted him dead, and as the highwayman, she'd never before fired a shot. He was willing to bet his life she wouldn't start tonight.

She raised her chin as he approached but didn't step back or cower. He had to give her credit for that, although he wasn't certain if she was brave for standing up to him or just plain mad.

“You followed me,” she accused, her voice slightly unsteady. “Why?”

“There was a robbery tonight.” He slowly bent down to set his pistol on the floor at his feet, then removed the second one from beneath his coat and did the same with it. One raised gun was more than enough, in his opinion. “A coach leaving Blackwood Hall.”

Then he stood to his full height and stared down at her, forcing her to look up at him as he towered over her. His heart raced at the sight of her, although he didn't know how much of that was because of the pistol still pointed at his chest and how much because of the untamed way she looked, with her wild eyes flaring and her face flushing, standing so close he could stroke her cheek if he only raised his hand.

And if he did that, then the blasted chit
would
pull the trigger.

So he folded his arms across his chest in irritation and tried not to do anything that would get him shot. “But you know about that, don't you? Because you were there.”

“Yes.”

“Then you know why I'm here.”

Her head tilted slightly as she studied him. “You mean to arrest me?”

“Yes.” He'd meant to arrest the highwayman. But Josephine Carlisle, of all people—
Christ
!

“You can't, you know.”

She said that so matter-of-factly that he blinked. “Actually, I can.”

“No one would believe you.” With a shake of her head, she lowered the pistol and slowly released the hammer. “You can hardly believe it yourself, and you saw the robbery with your own eyes.”

His jaw tightened. The surprise he'd experienced at entering the cottage and finding her instead of the man he thought he'd been chasing turned into anger for being played a fool. Her admission in the phaeton of being an orphan, that comparison of him to the other men who'd pursued her—all of it had been done only to throw him off her scent. And it had worked. Because he never would have guessed she hid a secret this big behind those stormy green eyes.

“I'm placing you under arrest,” he told her as she crossed to the stone fireplace and set the gun on the mantel.

“You can't,” she repeated, confident in her assertion. “The well-respected daughter of a baron, one who can't ride well and doesn't know how to use a pistol, arrested as a highwayman? You'd be laughed out of England to even suggest such a thing.”

“You're an expert rider,” he scoffed.

“I fell off my mare just last week on High Street in front of several witnesses.”

He clenched his teeth. She was right, damn her. No one would believe him. Even at that moment, he didn't know for certain himself what he'd seen tonight in the woods—or was still seeing in front of him.

His chest tightened as the full realization of the situation washed over him. Of all the people to stand between him and solving this investigation for Royston…the pretty woman with the proclivity for spilling punch, the one who led everyone to believe she was clumsy, unassuming to a fault, and so fragile that her simply declaring a headache had her brothers stumbling over themselves to care for her. The same one who successfully distracted him from the darkness that had surrounded him since the bullet ripped into his side a year ago. And whose skills of subterfuge and deception matched his own.