The Perils of Pleasure (29 page)

When the man’s pistol came out of nowhere.

And before Colin could draw his own, the man’s thick arm clamped like a python around Madeleine’s waist and his weapon pointed at her head.

“And I will be a legend and rich, by God! Good God, I found a penny this morning, I did, and I thought, well, yer due for some luck, Will Hunt, and I wished on that penny, and ’ere ye are, Mr. Eversea.”

The air Colin drew into his lungs tasted charred and bitter. His pistol hand twitched ever so slightly.

“You will put your pistol down, Eversea, and come with me, or I will blow a hole through her head. I’ve no qualms, ye see. And to show you just how few I have . . . ” The man’s hand crept upward then lay fl at, like a great spider, over Madeleine’s breast. “Rather nice, these,” he approved.

A deep red haze floated before Colin’s eyes. Every
thing around him seemed etched in crystal; he saw it with preternatural clarity: Madeleine’s dark eyes bril
liant with fear and fury, her skin blanched, her fi ngers clutching vainly at that hairy snake of an arm wrapping her, her pistol trapped futilely at her side. Time seemed to alter peculiarly, allowing him to assess the situation through the metallic rage that singed the back of his throat.

This was a brute of a man, a soulless man, and a dangerous man.

But not a clever one.

“Oh, by all means, shoot her, Mr. Hunt. But I will at the same time shoot your balls off. I’m sorry. I meant to say I’d shoot your horse.”

The man frowned, his eyes flew wide and he swiv
eled his head thinking, no doubt:
What horse?

It was just a split second. But it was all either he or Madeleine needed.

Colin snapped out his hand for the man’s pistol wrist and twisted it back just as Madeleine sagged hard enough to bite the man’s arm. He screamed at the dual attack, his fingers loosened over the grip of his gun, and Colin took his right hand and yanked the man’s trousers up hard and high enough to cause
considerable
pain to the man’s testicles, assuming he had them.

That did the trick. Will Hunt screamed, the gun fell from his grip, and thanks be to God didn’t fi re.

A split second later Colin had his own pistol pressed between Mr. Hunt’s eyes. He still had the man’s trou
sers gripped hard in his other hand.

“I have one shot, Mr. Hunt,” Colin said with glacial politeness, “and nothing would give me more pleasure than to use it to blow your head clean from your body. Have you any interesting diseases?”

“Wha— No! I—” He was gasping, wheezing in pain.

“Pity. You won’t be any more useful after death than you are in life, then.”

Colin let the pistol barrel touch the man’s forehead.

“Mr. Eversea—” Mr. Hunt was quivering, rather ge
latinously, everywhere now. Great droplets of sweat tra
versed the rocky terrain of his face. Colin gave another tug upward of the trousers, and the face went whiter.

“Would you like to die right now, Mr. Hunt?” He said this casually. As if offering to pass the salt. “Or perhaps a few seconds from now?”

“Colin—”

From somewhere in the land of sanity, Madeleine’s
voice was calling softly to him. He didn’t hear her. He liked it here, in this haze of rage. He was torturing Hunt now. It felt wonderful. He couldn’t seem to stop.

“It’s a lot of money, isn’t it, Mr. Hunt? One hundred pounds is. I almost sympathize. But I didn’t kill Roland Tarbell. I would never have let you take me, but if you’d tried to take me honorably, I could
almost
respect you. But now I’m tempted to shoot you just for sport. How ironic if
you
should be the one to make a murderer of me. As it is, I’m not certain your death will even plague my conscience. I might even be happy enough to hang for it.”

“Colin.” Madeleine’s soft voice had gained urgency.

“Tie his arms, Mad,” Colin ordered her, for all the world as if she were a subaltern. “Put your hands behind your back, Mr. Hunt, do it now, and do it slowly.”

Mr. Hunt complied, shaking violently.

And Madeleine, her face taut and expressionless, fished the cords out of the pack and nearly vanished behind the width of the man. Colin saw her elbows jerk out with the force of the rope pull, saw Hunt wince a little.

How about that: she could tie ropes as well as he could untie them.

“Now sit down on the ground, Mr. Hunt.” Colin made it sound like a suggestion.

The man hesitated, which was a mistake. Colin kicked him in the back of the legs, and he went down hard on his knees.

And then Colin gave him another little nudge to tip him over onto one side, and knelt so the pistol barrel was even with Mr. Hunt’s eyes. The man now had a nice glimpse of the road to eternity.

“Tie his ankles, Madeleine.”

“But I’ll . . . ” the man stuttered.

“Starve? Freeze? Be devoured by squirrels? Some
one
might
find you. In a day or so. Perhaps. Or maybe you’ll thrash yourself free. Maybe someone will come along and fondle your body, Mr. Hunt, while you’re tied and helpless. Don’t even think of twitching. I
will
shoot you.”

Madeleine tied his ankles with the other length of cord, too, winding it around and around those thick boots, pulling it taut by pulling back on it.

And with a sense of unreality, Colin slowly stood.

He felt himself shaking as he looked down at Mr. Hunt. The man was now bound with the very same cords that had bound him on the way to the gallows.

“Let’s go, Mad.”

They strode off, leaving Mr. Hunt trussed and mark
ing their passage like a milestone on the side of the road.

Colin walked with strides so brutally swift and long that Madeleine struggled to keep up with him. She was almost running. It was though he was trying to outpace something and simply couldn’t.

He finally stopped abruptly and sat down hard on a boulder at the side of the road. He looked around at the day, as if surprised to find it sunny and bright, and frowned darkly at it. And then he put his face in his hands and inhaled a long ragged breath.

“I wanted to kill him. I would have
enjoyed
killing him. I was torturing him, Mad, just for the pleasure of it. I was taking
my
trouble out on him. And what he did to you . . . how he
touched
you . . . ”

She could see he was actually trembling a little in the aftermath of rage, and horrified at the shame of it. He looked up. “In short, it was a bad moment, Mad.”

An understatement. He was grasping for the humor that had always sustained him, made everything bear
able, and having a difficult time of it. She wished he knew how strong he was.

He gave a grim little smile.

She leaned next to him against the boulder, not cer
tain whether he wanted to be touched quite yet.

“You may have saved my life, Colin. Again. And you saved your own. You’ve a
right
to save your own life, you know. There’s no shame in that. And he was . . . he was horrible. I don’t think what you did was horrible. I quite sympathize.”

Colin reached out a hand, suddenly, to cup it about the back of her neck, his thumb stroking there. Softly he said, “You’re all right? He didn’t—”

“Oh, I’m quite sound. It was just a bit of a grope. I shall live. I would have killed him nicely if it hadn’t been for you.”

Colin gave a short, humorless laugh, and withdrew his hand from her.

“But there never would have been a ‘little grope’ if it wasn’t for me, Mad. And this . . . this
rage
. . . it wasn’t in me before all of this happened. Prison. Tarbell. Now I’m this . . . ” He made a futile gesture of disgust. “ . . . this person who enjoys torture.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Colin,” she said almost lightly. “Truthfully, I think it’s in all of us. And I imag
ine it was always part of you . . . in some way. Maybe we’re born with a full set of qualities, some fi ne, some not so fine, and none of us knows what will bring out everything that lives within us. And sometimes it’s the fine qualities that cause us trouble, and the not so fi ne that save us.”

“Interesting theory, Mad,” he humored. “I’ll tell you when I’ve worked out your meaning.”

But he was thinking about it, and she knew he understood.

“
I
think it’s interesting,” she said mildly.

He smiled at her. And then the smile faded. “But it means I
could
have killed Roland Tarbell.”

She recoiled as if he’d uttered blasphemy. “You could never have killed Roland Tarbell,” she said fi ercely. “You
didn’t
kill Roland Tarbell.”

And this, at last, won a genuine smile. “Why, Mad. You don’t think I killed Roland Tarbell?”

“No.”

“How long have you thought that?”

“Always.”

“Liar.”

She smiled.

He continued to smile at her.

“Ah, Colin. I think you’re extraordinary.” Madeleine said it so softly, she half wondered if she actually had said it, or merely thought it yet again. She tried to make it sound like a jest. But she couldn’t say it and also look at him, so she’d turned her head away to look up the road.

She’d wanted to be able to say it to him at least once while she knew him. He ought to know she thought so.

Colin had turned to look at her, she sensed. They were quiet like this for a time, Colin staring at her, and Madeleine pretending not to notice.

“I think I need to be kissed,” he suggested fi nally.

She could oblige him: she turned, leaned forward and kissed his forehead, right between his eyes.

Oh, God, she thought, half amused, her lips linger
ing between his brows. What do you do with love when you need to keep it to yourself? When nothing could ever come of it beyond a moment in time, when you could never say it aloud? When you feel like you might implode from it?

You turn it into gratitude, she decided, and send it outward and upward in a prayer. And you kiss the person you love between the eyes.

And then she did kiss him on the lips, because there they were, and they were such handsome and talented lips.

Colin’s arms went around her then. Every muscle in his body still thrummed with tension. She held him hard until the tension eased from him.

“Thank you for saving my life again,” she said.

“You’re welcome, Mrs. Mercenary.”

She smiled.

“We’ve only two more days, Mad.”

Only two more days before Colin would stop Louisa Porter, the woman he’d loved all his life, from marrying his brother, so Colin could marry her instead and live happily ever after on a farm in Pennyroyal Green.

“Then let’s go find Horace Peele,” Madeleine said softly. “We’re almost there, Colin.”

nm

hey’d walked only about a half mile more up the road when the sign proclaiming
mutton cottage
came into view. It was carved into a chunk of driftwood and suspended from chains attached to a post, and the post was entangled with bright climbing wildflowers. The cottage itself was in decent repair, a little weathered but charming enough, and true to English form, was less a cottage than a small manor. Two stories and gabled. A spread of green led up to it, and the cottage itself backed up against a pair of soft green hills, rather like a pendant snug between a pair of breasts.

The grass appeared to have been tended by goats rather than gardeners, and wildflowers had been left to have their way with the yard and the stone path. From the sound of things, the trees were thick with birds, who were, as usual, egalitarian about where and when they sang.

It was a jarringly benign place to stow away the wit
ness to one of the infamous crimes of the decade, and for bodies to stop on their trips to Scotland. But then, perhaps that was the point.