Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (24 page)

This time, when she shed the innocent white of her ball gown, and unceremoniously stuffed the wad of muslin into the trunk, she did so with defiance, and the knowledge that this was a change in character as well as in clothes. The last time she had donned her disguise, she had still felt like she had everything to lose in the attempt. But this time, she had already lost everything. This time, when she pulled on the black velvet coat and rakish breeches of the highwayman, she clothed herself in recklessness.

Reckless, because she didn’t have a plan. Not that she couldn’t make one up as she went—it was one of her greatest strengths, improvisation. So she took stock. She knew
what
she was stealing—the purse full of gambling winnings.

But the tricky bit was always
from whom
one stole, wasn’t it? And she knew nothing about the dark-skinned gentleman, except that he had a fat purse. She did not know where he lived, or what his carriage looked like. She did not know where she might best relieve the fellow of his winnings.
 

She would have to watch, and think, and plan out her opportunity.

Once dressed, it was easy to slip out of the glass house, and sneak along the shadow of the hedge toward to back gate of the stable. The stable yard was so full of guests’ unhitched, idling carriages and teams, it was child’s play to tiptoe to the dark end of the stalls unnoticed. It was the work of only a moment to tack Piper up and lead her out into the crowded close.
 

Quince pulled her hat down low over her eyes, walked the mare along the shadow of the wall where the muddy edges of the pavement muffled the horse’s hoof falls, and blended unobserved into the mist that rose with the moon.

It was almost too easy. But she would take whatever beneficence fate was prepared to hand her and be glad of it.

Away from the torchlight, the night felt closer than it had in the garden. The waning moon was obscured by clouds, and the low fog rising from the ground deepened the dark, hiding her more completely as she approached the end of the close.
 

To the right was the front gate and drive leading to the house. Across from the gate was Calton Hill, rising in all its steep splendor to preside over all of Canongate. It was the best vantage place from which to watch for the African gentleman’s departure. From there, she could sit hidden in the mist-shrouded undergrowth, and keep a close eye on all the comings, and especially the goings.

The front of the house was a hive of activity. Carriages and sedan chairs came and went as passengers arrived and departed. Light from torches danced across the stone facade, jewels sparkled, and silks glistened. Footmen hied to and fro, escorting people in and out of the house, and running messages back and forth to the mews, calling for carriages.

 
Quince tethered the mare to a gorse bush, and sat on a rocky basalt outcropping, letting the angry determination that had sent her storming into the glass house recede enough to let something resembling common sense take its place.
 

Except there was nothing common about her situation. There was nothing common about the itchy compulsion that had first set her down her present road—a dark, increasingly twisted path. And if she continued—if she did what she set out to do this night—the path would likely get darker yet.
 

Yet how did she stop? How could she leave the past behind? How did she disappoint the Reverend Talent? How would she ever face Strathcairn again?

But as fate would have it, she had no time to think it out, because the man with the winning purse was already coming out of Winthrop House, and already mounting his waiting carriage. There was no mistaking him for someone else. He was not the only dark-skinned man at her mother’s ball—Edinburgh was an international, cosmopolitan city with traders of every nation and stripe—but he was clearly the richest, attired in exquisite, embroidered satin, and his bearing—with elegant, faultless manners—marked him as a gentleman of considerable means.

A means she meant to take.
 

One man’s gold spent as well as another’s, and the possessor of that gold had already climbed into a plain, unmarked black town coach with four horses in hand and only a young groom and an ancient-looking coachman hunched over the box, and was already off, trundling east down the road behind Canongate, picking up speed.
 

Quince was on her feet, already snatching up Piper’s reins and running down the twisting scrubby path with the mare in tow, already chasing the retreating coach before she had come to any sort of decision. And before she could think about mounting the horse, the coach was over shoulder of the hill, passing through the Watergate, and swinging north onto the Easter Road toward Leith. And she was after it.

She threw herself up into the saddle and urged the mare down the dark hillside as quickly as possible, joining the Easter Road at the bottom of Abbey Mount. There, Quince kicked Piper into a hard canter, chasing the swinging carriage lights as the coach disappeared into the swirling dark.

There wasn’t much along the narrow road between the Auld Town of Edinburgh and the walled seaport, Leith, some two miles north. If she didn’t catch the coach before the road ran out, or the gentleman arrived at his address, she would be dead out of luck.

Quince put her heels to Piper’s flanks and let her fly toward the wide heath of the Leith Links, where the Royal and Ancient Company of Golfers had once kept their course until the lot of them had moved north to St. Andrews.
 

Tonight, nothing but the north wind filled the empty grounds as she charged blindly through the dark.
 

Until suddenly, out of nowhere, the coach was upon her—the jangling team loomed up out of the darkness, headed toward her at a run.

Oh, holy flintlocks. They had changed direction as well as putting out their lights, so the whole ruddy equipage was bearing down upon her where she had reined the mare to a hasty halt in the middle of the roadway. And thinking of flintlocks—she drew her guns out of her waist and pointed it at the coachman. But she really wasn’t thinking, because if she were, she would have ridden straight off into the darkness at the side of the road, and stopped her headlong descent into madness. But she did not.

She did not pause. She did not quaver. She held her ground as if she were made of stone, and willed the carriage to grind to a screeching halt.

And when it did, she lowered her voice to her version of a masculine growl, and shouted, “Drop your ribbons, and put your hands high in the air where I can see them.”

The coachman and groom said not a word, but immediately did as she had requested, reaching their empty hands into the air, so she was emboldened to go on. “Set the brake,” she instructed. “Climb down from the box, slowly and carefully. No sudden movements. And come forward so I can see you.”

And amazingly, they did so. Except that the two men started the climb down on opposite sides of the carriage.
 

“No,” she stopped them. “You’ll go together.” She gestured with her barrel for the groom to follow the driver down the left side of the box. “And come out here”—she urged Piper to a better position, where she could cover both men, and gestured with the gun again—“and lie down in the center of the road.”
 

Yes, that was a much better idea than letting the driver stay up on the box as she had auld Rackham with Sir Harry’s carriage. Much less to worry about. Yes, that was perfect. She would add it to her new list of larcenous rules—remove driver from box and proximity to potential weapons.
 

As if there were going to be more larcenous occasions. As if she had already decided to become
Monsieur Minuit
on a permanent basis.
 

Except that she had forgotten to use
Monsieur Minuit
’s spurious French accent.
 

Oh, holy foppish Frenchmen. But because Quince lied as easily as she breathed, on her next breath she was already formulating a new plan—an exaggerated English accent. Perhaps a new accent would even add to the mystery and confusion, giving credence to the rumors that there really was a gang of highwayman of various and sundry nationalities roaming the roads. Perhaps next time she should be an American.
 

Another rule for her larcenous list.

Once the coachman and groom were safely on the ground, Quince kneed the mare cautiously toward the near side of the carriage, keeping the dark, empty expanse of the heath at her back, easing toward a spot where she could comfortably cover both the men prone in the road, and also the door of the coach. Which remained steadfastly closed.

“It won’t do, my good fellow.” She imitated that clipped, Member-of-Parliament accent that had made Strathcairn sound so English. “I know you’re in there, old man. And it will be in your best interest to stand and deliver.”
 

The response from the coach was silence.
 

Quince’s heartbeat kicked up harder in her chest. But she ignored the warning hiss of fear scratching its way across her skin, and firmed her voice. “Open the door slowly now, keeping your hands where I can see them,” she called loudly, but her voice was as strained and creaky as an old stair. “Or I shall be forced to shoot it open.”

“One moment,” came the response. But no movement. The door remained firmly closed.

Quince could feel her heart churning in her throat. A sheen of sweat broke out between her shoulder blades. “Come out, damn you!”

At last, the door swung slowly open. The dark man finally emerged, moving at a snail’s pace, every movement of hands and feet slow and cautious and deliberate, as if he had taken her command entirely to heart, and was moving as slowly as he could.
 

She waited patiently until he finally stood next to the open door. And looked straight at her with his wide, solemn eyes, as if he were memorizing what he could see of her face in the night.
 

And then he smiled. “My Lord Cairn,” he called over his shoulder into the coach. “You’re going to want a look at this.” He met her eye again. “You would have done better, young sir, to have loaded those pistols.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Holy fucking flintlocks.”
 

Cairn. Bloody, inconvenient, interfering—
 

Quince did not wait to see her Lord Ruddy Cairn emerge from the coach, nor wait to hear what his lordship might have to say on the subject of young highwaymen who didn’t know how to load their bloody pistols.
 

Quince abandoned all thought and took immediate instinctive action, digging her heels into poor Piper’s flanks, wheeling and spurring the mare into a dead gallop straight into the heart of the dark expanse of the rough heath. She leaned low over her neck, and rode as if the devil were at her heels.
 

Which he was. A devil with loaded guns.
 

Which she knew because she heard the muffled roar of a pistol discharging, and listened as it grew louder and louder, until the deafening noise caught up with her at the same moment that her right arm was suddenly flung into the air so forcefully that her own pistol flew out of her hand, arching high into the air.
 

The steel engraving on the pistol glinted as it spun upward in the moonlight slashing through the clouds. She lunged out to catch it, but it was impossible. The air turned thick and impenetrable, and her body grew strangely heavy, filling with pain that weighed her down even as she reached upward.
 

And then she was on the ground, hitting the turf hard enough to crack her teeth and knock the wind out of her. Agony ricocheted throughout her body, leaving her ears ringing and red blotches dancing before her eyes. And the pain was everywhere, everywhere, swallowing her whole.

She curled into herself to try and block it out, hold it back, and breathe, just breathe. But she had no time to breathe—she couldn’t just lie there and wait for the world to right itself. Strathcairn was likely after her already, and would find her in a trice.

Quince struggled onto her knees, and dragged herself into the gorse bracken—
Ulex
damn
europaeus
—that covered the links’ undulating hills. The thorny brush scratched her face, and clawed at her eyes, but she pushed on blindly, diving headlong into the demon dark.