Swept Away (26 page)

A brighter light struck the water a dozen feet behind him, cutting streamers through the murky depths like a starburst. They were looking for him. Cipriani would be furious he had escaped. He had been looking forward to gutting him that night, showing him his own intestines as he disembowelled him inch by inch.

Had he told Le Couteau where he put the letter? He didn’t think so. Even if he had, Seamus had already taken the
Intrepid
out of port. The Irish bastard must have known something had gone wrong and had had the presence of mind to save the ship and crew, to get them out before the blockade trapped them in port.

Would he look in the strongbox, though? Would he know what to do with what he found there?

No. No, he wouldn’t. Which meant it was still up to him to save the bloody world. Damn Wessex anyway. He never wanted to be a fucking hero! And damn Seamus for kicking the shite out of that insipid little limp wrist. Damn the king, the queen, the whole bloody country for not even letting him die in peace, without pain... If he just let go, he could sink to the bottom again. He could sink into the blackness, the peace, the silence....

“
Emory
! Emory, can you hear me? Don’t you dare do this now. You have to walk. You have to put one foot in front of the other and you have to walk!”

Emory groaned and staggered out into the street, his hands holding his head, his body doubled over in pain.

Anna ran after him, glancing fearfully over her shoulder, hoping the soldiers were still distracted and Ramsey was back on board his coach.

As luck would have it however, the colonel was just in the process of boarding. He had the door open, his hands on the rail and a foot on the coach step when he caught a glimpse of the commotion further along the poorly lit street.

“What the devil...? Who is that? What is going on?”

One of the soldiers crossed the road and stood beside Ramsey at the coach. “Looks like a gent and ‘is doxy is havin’ a go at each other.”

The colonel raised a hand to shield his eyes against the glare from his own riding lamp. “Does that dress she is wearing look blue to you?” he said slowly. “Never mind. Fetch them both here.”

The redcoat shrugged and shouted, “You there! Hold up. Colonel wants a word!”

Anna cast another panicked glance over her shoulder as the soldier started walking toward them. She twisted her hand around the lapel of Emory’s greatcoat and gave it a violent shake. “Please,” she cried. “Emory...please speak to me!”

He tried to push her away and in desperation, she swung up hard and fast, slapping the side of his face with her open palm. His chin jerked up and his eyes rolled a moment before snapping back into focus, but the pain was still blinding enough that he had to grasp hold of her shoulders to steady himself.

“They’re coming,” she cried softly. “The soldiers. They have seen us and they’re coming. What should we do?”

He blinked, squeezing his eyelids tightly together for as long as it took him to reach down and snatch up the haversack he had dropped. He took hold of Anna’s arm and started leading her swiftly away from the approaching soldier.

“You there!”

Anna risked a quick look over her shoulder and saw the soldier unsling his musket from his shoulder.

“I said
hold
up
!”

Emory stepped swiftly behind Anna’s back, hooking his hand around her waist as he made a hard turn to the right and pulled her after him. She had not even noticed the narrow throughway before he dragged her into it, and before she could cry out in disgust at the horrible spongy debris she felt beneath her one shoeless foot, they had run the length of it and emerged on the other side, onto another cobbled street. She heard shouts and the loud report of a musket behind them, then Emory was leading her down another alley, urging her to as much speed as she could muster.

They veered left and ran half a block before the sound of shouting and pounding bootsteps turned them around mid-stride. There were more shouts off to the right and a solid wall of buildings to the left, which left them only one direction to run, up a steep and relatively well lit section of road that exposed them long enough for some of the soldiers to spill out of the alley way, spot them, and sound the alarm to the other guardsmen converging on the street.

Anna ran as she had never run before, but she still felt as though she was being dragged along by Emory’s longer, faster strides. She was frightened, desperately short of breath; her skirts were hindering her movements, her foot was pricked raw by pebbles and jagged edges of cobblestones. She did not know how much further she could run, or if it was even fair of her to hold Emory back when he was barely winded and could probably fly like a gazelle and be away, free, before the fastest soldier reached the crest of the hill.

“Leave me,” she gasped. “Go! Get away!”

He glanced over at her once, but his hand only tightened on hers. “Come on. A little further. Just a little further.”

They went a little further and heard the sound of a carriage coming up the road toward them. Just before they ran around a twist in the road, they saw the gleaming eye of a riding lamp and the black silhouette of Ramsey’s head and shoulders leaning out the window. He was shouting orders at the soldiers to move out of the way, screaming at the driver to whip the horses into more speed.

“Leave me!” Anna cried. “You can still get away if you leave me!”

Emory snarled and dragged her in the direction of a side street where a hackney was just about to make the turn onto the main road. He had his gun in his hand as he vaulted up into the box and pushed the startled driver off the other side. In an unbroken movement, Emory flung the haversack into the back and swung Anna into the passenger seat, then took up the reins and slapped them on the rump of the startled horse, who jumped instantly into a trot.

Ramsey’s coach came thundering around the bend. He was still hanging out the window, still shouting orders when they drove by. He glanced quickly at Emory as the light passed over the smaller vehicle, then swivelled around again with a red-faced scream when he saw the ousted driver staggering to his feet yelling, “Thief! Thief!”

Emory snapped the whip over the horse’s flanks, stinging it into a gallop. Many of the soldiers who had been following on foot were still pressed against the fronts of the buildings from Ramsey’s perilous dash past. Those who thought to venture boldly into the path of the oncoming vehicle dove ignobly back into their nooks and crannies when Emory took aim and fired his pistol over their heads. One or two had the presence of mind to shoulder their muskets and fire after them, but the majority were too stunned to do more than stare in disbelief at the escaping carriage.

Holding the reins in one hand, Emory balanced precariously on the boards of the seat and swung around, using the butt of his pistol to shatter the small coach lamps that hung on either side of the hood.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Anna gasped. “Are
you
?”

“We will find out in a few minutes. Find something to hang on to. We might be in for a bit of a wild ride.”

He flashed a devilish grin and cracked the whip in the air again. It had cost Ramsey’s heavier coach valuable time to turn around and by the time Emory saw the yellow eye of the coach lamp, he had gained three, four hundred yards. With the next crack of the whip, he turned the hackney down a narrow street on his right, pelting past dimly lit doors and swaying tavern lanterns until he came to a second, even sharper turn onto a winding lane.

Anna clutched at the leather hand strap and held on for dear life as the carriage seemed to careen around each corner on a single wheel. There were shouts from startled pedestrians as they galloped past, and curses from men who had to scatter to one side or the other to avoid being run down. Emory was shouting as well, cracking the whip at everyone who moved too slowly to suit him. He sent frequent glances over his shoulder and each time he did, his hair blew back in the windstream, all but covering his face.

Anna did not have to look through the tiny rear window to know their pursuers were gaining. The sudden hail of musket fire told the tale.

“Hold on,” he shouted again and pulled the reins, commanding the horse to take a hard left. The body of the coach pitched sickeningly to the right, slamming Anna against the far side and nearly ripping her arm out of its socket.

“Do you know how to load a gun?”

Oh dear God, she thought! “Yes. Yes, I know how.”

“There is powder and shot in the haversack,” he shouted, leaning back to hand her the spent flintlock, “as well as a second pistol. Load them both for me if you can.”

“What are you going to do? You cannot possibly shoot them all!”

“I don’t particularly want to shoot any of them,” he said. “Just scare them back a little. Quickly now. Another turn coming up on the right.”

Anna ground her teeth, clutched the strap in one hand and clamped the other around the gun in her lap while the coach roared around another impossibly abrupt turn in a road never built for breakneck chases. When the wheels settled again she groped at her feet for the haversack and found the round tin powder horn, the canvas sack of shot and thin strip of silk wadding. She loaded both pistols and was about to call out to Emory when a wooden curlicue at the upper corner of the carriage hood disintegrated in a shower of wooden splinters. A second shot thudded into the back of the carriage alarmingly close to Anna’s head.

Emory reached around. “Give me the guns!”

But Anna was already on her knees, aiming the snout of one pistol out the narrow window above her seat. She thumbed the hammer into full cock and squeezed the trigger, shutting her eyes tight against the flare of powder igniting in the pan and the almost instantaneous kick and blast from the gun as it discharged. The recoil sent her sprawling in a painful heap against the back of the driver’s seat, where she might have remained wedged if Emory did not reach down and haul her up by a fistful of crushed blue silk.

“You little fool! Give me the other gun!”

“You just drive, dammit,” she cried, climbing back onto the seat. She snatched up the second gun, cocked, aimed and fired it, this time braced for the sparks, the
pooft
of acrid smoke, the explosion and recoil. The shot did not come within twenty feet of the following coach, but it did zing off the side of a wrought iron rail and ricochet back into the street, where it found the arm of one of the soldiers clinging to the boot of Ramsey’s coach. The unlucky fellow screamed and lost his grip, falling to the side of the road and rolling in a blur of
red and white in the coach’s wake.

“I need time to reload,” Anna gasped.

Under any other circumstances, Emory might have laughed at the irony of a kidnapped heiress loading and firing guns to keep her rescuers at bay. But all he could see was Anna’s pale face and huge dark eyes, and he knew he would never laugh again if so much as a hair on her head was harmed on his account.

Anna caught a glimpse of his grim expression and asked no more questions. She did as she was told without a second to spare as he sent the carriage slewing sideways off the road and onto the manicured green of a park. Clods of dirt and sod flew out from behind the spinning wheels. Without regard for the rows of flowers and neatly planted gardens, Emory steered the horse through the fragrant beds, blazing a new trail across the soft earth, aiming as near as Anna could see for a solid black line of trees. Her mouth dropped open and her stomach lurched into her throat as the carriage hurled toward what looked like certain doom at breakneck speed.

But Emory had seen what she could not: a paler shading of black that indicated what he hoped might be--in daylight--a riding path, the entrance marked by a stone archway. He had to slow the charging beast by a hair until he could be reasonably certain, but a glance back at Ramsey’s coach told him he could not afford to veer away and look for a more plausible route. The bigger vehicle had followed them onto the parkland, the two horse team gaining ground as their hooves found greater traction on the earth. Moreover the soldiers were reloading, firing as soon as they were able, and Emory heard whoops of triumph as someone on board guessed that they had trapped the fleeing carriage against the trees.

Seconds later, the whoops turned to curses, then screams as the driver was forced to rein sharply back and throw his full weight on the brake. The smaller, slimmer carriage vaulted through the arch, the axel caps scraping both sides of stone and sending a shower of sparks into the darkness. There was no heavenly way Ramsey’s coach could squeeze through without slicing off all four wheels and likely one side of the conveyance. They pulled to a rolling stop instead and at the occupant’s screamed orders, the soldiers discharged their muskets at the rapidly disappearing carriage, several of the shots finding their mark and chipping holes in the wooden frame.

Emory was not lulled into thinking his pursuers would be deterred for long. He suspected the moment the soldiers were back on board, the wheels would be chewing into the earth again and they would circle the park, hoping to pick them up again where the path emerged from the trees.

They had to get rid of the carriage. He did not like their chances on foot, but the horse was unaccustomed to such mad dashes and was starting to blow like a bellows. One of the wheels was grinding on the axel as well and would not bear much more strain over uneven cobbles.

“When we break through these trees,” he said, leaning back to help Anna onto the seat again, “we are going to abandon ship. Be ready for it; we will only have one chance to jump clear.”

“Jump?” she gasped weakly. “We are going to jump?”

Emory saw the edge of the trees and drew back on the reins. The carriage scraped through a second arched gate and rolled onto the square of another well maintained park. Ahead were the winding terraced streets populated by the more respectable hotels and cafes, and higher still, the elegant villas owned by the wealthiest residents of Torquay. An image came into Althorpe’s mind and this time he did not try to shake it away. He tried to concentrate on it instead, to focus on landmarks that seemed vaguely familiar.