Page 6 of Escape of the Highwayman (Escape #3)

He peered around him, but they weren’t here.

He had told them to scatter and hoped the law would concentrate on pursuing him.

After all, he had more chance of evading his pursuers.

In any case, they already knew his name, thanks to the girl Noddock had bashed on the head and who turned out to be the wife of Lord Wolf, whom he had played cards with at the Duck and Spoon. Funny name for an inn...

Anyway, this girl should not be taking his clothes off for him.

He hadn’t let his own mother do that when he couldn’t walk.

Somehow, he managed to get them all off, even his boots and his one stocking.

Then he rolled one of the blankets under him to stop the hay jabbing his skin.

He wrapped his bottom half in what was left and draped the other blanket back around his shoulders.

There . Now he could go to sleep. Only his shoulder hurt like the devil and so did his head, and his bad leg was aching so much he knew he should remove the wooden prosthesis. She never needed to see it.

He unfastened it and hid it beneath the blankets. What was left of his leg throbbed, in rhythm with his shoulder. For a moment he thought he was back in the army hospital tent having a chunk of his leg cut off, and then she was there again, and he found himself smiling at her in relief.

This time, she carried a bowl, a plate and a cup, with bandages and what looked like clothes clamped under her arm. How on earth had she brought all that up a ladder? With several trips probably, and he hadn’t even noticed.

“You got your wet clothes off,” she said. “Good. I’ve brought you some fresh water and some food. But first, you had better let me see your arm.”

He felt for the blanket to be sure it was covering his shoulder. “It’s fine. I dealt with it myself.”

He liked the way she moved, setting down her load, kneeling by his side. She smelled of summer flowers and happiness, which made perfect sense to his woolly brain. She brushed his hand and the blanket aside and cut away the filthy bandage with scissors.

He summoned a protest. “You shouldn’t see that. It’s ugly.”

The catch of her breath told him she agreed, but she cleaned away the blood around it with deft, gentle hands. He concentrated on her face and barely noticed the pain.

“How did you get this?” she asked.

“A lucky shot.”

“Unlucky for you. It needs to be stitched, but if the ball is still in there...”

“It isn’t,” he said. “I took it out.”

Her gaze flew back up to his, startled and appalled.

“I’ve done it before,” he said with the vague if not entirely successful aim of lightening her distress.

“I suppose one is shot frequently in your line of work,” she said at last.

“One is.” As a soldier, at any rate. This was the first time he had been shot as a highwayman.

He tried to make himself focus on what she was doing, but he found her face far too fascinating.

When he had first seen her in the market, he had thought she had the eyes of a dreamer.

Now they were fixed and purposeful, as though her whole being concentrated on his wound, and on the equipment necessary to deal with it.

She had brought the lantern over and now adjusted its position. A needle glinted in the glow.

“You don’t need to do that,” he protested. “Give me the needle.”

“Don’t move, I’ve just got the light in the right place.”

“Have you done this before?” he asked, not so much from fright as from vague concern for her, a knowledge that she should not be involved in anything so unsavoury.

“No,” she admitted, “but I watched Dr. Coleman stitch Richard’s head when he fell off Papa’s hunter.”

“Who is Richard?”

“My little brother. Not that he is so little now.”

“What’s your name?” he asked dreamily.

“Chloe Barclay. What is yours? I very much doubt it’s Xanthippos Bear.”

He smiled without meaning to. “You heard that?”

“I was coming to find out how to pay you back. For what you gave to the bird seller.”

“Why did you free the birds?”

“Because they were trapped.” She was still concentrating hard on stitching his wound, but something in her tone brought his gaze from her so kissable lips to her eyes.

“Are you trapped, Chloe Barclay?”

“Not yet. There.” She cut the thread and dabbed the wound with something that stung. Then she reached for the bandage.

“You are aiding a highwayman,” he said. “You could be more than trapped for that.”

“I doubt it,” she replied. “Though it may give some people a disgust of me.”

Oddly, that appeared to cheer her, and he found himself smiling. She really had the most expressive face.

When she passed him a cup of water, he drank obediently, though he would rather have had brandy. Everything hurt. Still, he was probably quite dizzy enough.

A soft shirt landed over his head.

“It’s old and much too large for you,” she said. “I took it from the charity box we’re meant to give to the vicar tomorrow. I think it was my father’s. But at least it is loose enough to get your arm into.”

She helped him with that too, and somehow he didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps this was all a dream after all, and he was asleep somewhere else entirely. He found he didn’t much care, being curiously content where he was, in spite of pain and—

He caught the breeches from her fingers and whisked them under the blanket.

“I’ll do that later. And I will leave in just an hour.

..” Or maybe two... He must have closed his eyes, for he definitely had to open them to watch her tidy up his torn shirt and the bloody bandage.

“You have more than paid me back and now I would be grateful if you could forget me.” No, I wouldn’t. Had he said that aloud?

“You must be quiet,” she said firmly. “I shall make sure no one comes up here. Small movements we can blame on the cat, but don’t speak.”

Don’t speak. Good advice. In any case, the world was fading again and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

***

C HLOE SAT BACK ON HER heels and watched him sleep for a few minutes.

He seemed peaceful enough, though how he could be after such a wound and her own ministrations, she had no idea.

Perhaps he was just used to pain, for she had seen jagged scars on his chest, arm and hand, and there was surely another, smaller one near his temple.

Or perhaps it was the fever she had felt in his tight, hot skin.

Either way, he was a handsome devil, the endearingly boyish flop of his straight fair hair across his lean cheek contrasting with the breadth of his muscular shoulders, all those scars of experience and violence.

And yet his was not a brutal face. When one was not distracted by his smile, one could see the deeply etched lines around his eyes and mouth that seemed to speak of suffering.

And he spoke like a gentleman, not like a rough criminal.

If she had to guess, she would say he was a soldier.

Despite his limp, he had that upright sort of posture.

One of Lord Wellington’s brave young officers of the Peninsular War, no doubt, probably invalided out.

Though what on earth would turn a brave young warrior fighting for king and country into a thief?

Could he really be a highwayman, or had the Bow Street runner just made a mistake?

In which case, what was “Xanthippos Bear” running from?

Whatever, she should not hide his presence from her father. Tending his wounds was one thing—Christian charity surely demanded it—but she should definitely report his presence.

Even then, she knew she would not. Still, it was common sense to look in his saddle bags, and confiscate the pistol, so she did.

Oddly reluctant to leave him, she went to see Molly and the babies who were all crawling around over each other to be fed. If I had not come to see you, Molly, would he be dead? Might he die anyway?

She would not think of that. She took the bowl of bloody water that had bathed his wound, and, with a last, doubtful glance at his still person, she climbed down the ladder.

She emptied the bowl in the herb garden and rinsed it at the kitchen yard pump before taking it inside.

She pushed the bloody bandages, shirt and bathing cloth into the dying embers of the kitchen fire and watched them flare and burn, with a little judicious poking.

Then she swapped the flickering lantern for her lamp and finally made her way to bed, where she fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

***

N EARLY TWO HUNDRED miles away in Worcestershire, Edward Berry, respected country gentleman and Justice of the Peace, sat by the fireside in his study, staring into the empty grate, a letter almost forgotten in his fingers.

Discovering him there well after midnight, his son Robert came into the room with concern wrinkling his brow.

“Papa? Are you well?”

“Hmm? Oh, Robert. Well? Yes, yes, quite well.”

“It’s late, I thought you had gone to bed and forgotten about the lights.”

“No,” Edward said, unnecessarily. He sighed. “I was trying to reach a few decisions.”

“About what?” Robert sat in the chair on the other side of the fireplace, and abruptly Edward came to one decision at least.

“This,” he said, leaning forward and holding out the letter. “What do you make of it?”

Frowning, his son took the letter and quickly skimmed it. His eyebrows flew up, and then he read it more carefully. “Who is this Grandison?”

“Landowner, over in Essex, and, like me, a justice of the peace. Seems they had a problem with a burglary at his home, and a spate of highway robberies.”

“Yes, so he says, but why on earth should he pick Jon’s name out of the hat? The man’s clearly demented.”

Edward’s heart eased. “That’s what I thought. Either that or it’s a different man with the same name.”

“So what decisions were you trying to reach?”

“Mostly whether or not to tell your mother about it. Or just travel over there to see Grandison without telling her why.”

“There’s no point in upsetting her for nothing,” Robert said, frowning. “She’s anxious enough since Jon bolted.”

“He did not bolt,” Edward said ruefully. “We drove him away by treating him like an invalid.”

“He is an invalid,” Robert said reasonably.

“And to have that pointed out to him every day, how do you think that makes him feel? Jon is a man of action and fierce independence. He does not want us wiping his nose and helping him in and out of chairs and—”

“I have never wiped his nose,” Robert interrupted, “and frankly, he needs to get used to the idea that he can no longer do all he used to. He would not have chosen it, none of us would, but facts are facts. He had no cause to bolt just because we were kind to him!”

“And what if,” Edward said, “this highway robbery start is Jon’s reaction to our kindness?”

Robert looked at him intently, as though searching for a different meaning.

“Then he’s a bigger fool than even I thought him.

Depend upon it, this letter refers to a different Berry.

But you are right. We can’t have this kind of rumour circulating about the family.

Why don’t I tell Mama that I’m off to visit friends in Cambridge, so that she does not worry, and instead, I’ll go and call on this Grandison fellow, and put him right about Jon. ”

Edward eyed him doubtfully. But Robert was now four-and-twenty years old, and much more serious by nature than Jonathan had ever been. And Nigel, the youngest, would still be at home to help look after things here.

“Maybe you should,” he said curtly. “I’ll give you a letter to Grandison to take with you. Beyond that, the family honour will be in your hands. And Robert?”

Robert had already risen to his feet to return the letter to the large desk. “Yes?”

“If you hear a whisper of Jon, find him and make sure he’s well.”

“I’ll bring him home,” Robert said with a trace of grimness.

“No,” Edward said with another twinge of pain.

“Don’t. He must come because he chooses.

” Besides, Edward knew his sons well enough to be sure that there was no way in the world that Jon’s brother could force him to do anything against his will.

There had always been a strong streak of obstinacy in his apparently happy go lucky eldest. But still, Edward needed to know that the boy was well. And safe.