Page 27 of The Duke of Swords (The Highwaymen #4)

“THAT’S HIM, THE one that ravished Sir Luke’s girl,” said one of them, and there was a rumble as they all started towards him.

Rutchester couldn’t help but smile. They’d decided to come for him when she wasn’t with him, which was fortuitous. He hadn’t wanted her to watch, for her to see his bloody behavior, but he was alone, so that hardly mattered.

He gestured with his head. “Let’s take the mess out of the inn, everyone,” he said and went out the door.

Outside, he drew his sword and waited.

For several moments, no one came out of the door.

And they all burst out at once.

Some of them drew pistols, and he lunged forward and put the tip of his sword into the barrel of one. “Not very fair, all of your bullets against me, is it?” he said. He jerked the blade and pulled the gun out of the man’s hand.

When it hit the ground, it went off, but no one was hit.

“Put up the guns!” cried one of the men, and they all pulled out blades and tucked away the pistols.

Better, he thought.

But there were a lot of them.

Well, he thought. I did rape her. Maybe I deserve to die. Let’s see how it goes.

He beckoned with one hand, brandishing his sword with the other. “Come on, then,” he said to them.

They hesitated, apparently having not expected him to try to take them all on at once.

But there were quite a few of them and only one of him. They started for him and he drew in a breath in anticipation.

His blade struck another blade with a clang, and then it began.

He liked this sort of physical activity, because everything got very simple and very focused. There wasn’t time to think or to contemplate. The world narrowed into splintered images of danger, one after the other, and he had to move and block and stab and parry and eliminate each one.

If he made one mistake, it was over, so he had to be there, right there, quite perfect.

The thing he made sure he did was to constantly retreat, then.

He could not take them all on if they were coming at him from all sides.

He kept backing up, keeping his back clear, and they kept coming from the front—whether because they were idiots or because of a sense of honor or because he was moving too quickly for them to get back there—he didn’t know.

So, he did all right. When he stabbed, he stabbed true.

He wanted each stab to take a man down, entirely down, so that he would not get up and would not fight him anymore.

This didn’t have to mean death, but if he saw an open throat, he slashed it.

He might have put his sword into one man’s eye and another’s temple. He wasn’t thinking. He was moving.

Just as often, however, he stabbed nonlethally. But nearly every cut he made knocked someone out of the fray.

And he protected his own body as best he could, though he was bleeding when one of the men screamed out, “Break, break, stop .”

Rutchester backed away, dragging his blade on the ground in front of him. He was breathing hard, hair pasted to his forehead, and he could feel all the places he’d been knicked and stabbed, all the places on his arms and shoulders and chin and fingers that he was bleeding.

But they hadn’t gotten him anywhere vital, anywhere important. He was all right.

The man who’d yelled looked out over the grounds in front of the inn, which was littered with more than one motionless body and even more men doubled over in pain, clutching their stomachs or chests or their wounded sword arms.

The man turned on Rutchester, baring his teeth. He yanked out his pistol and began to work on loading it. “Run,” he said in a low voice. “Run or we shoot you down like a dog.”

Rutchester squared his shoulders, looking around as the remaining men were getting out their own pistols.

He would not run. His pride wouldn’t let him do that.

But he did back away until the shadows swallowed him up, until he was far enough away that they could not make him out and that they were nothing more than distant forms on an chilly autumn night.

“WHAT DID YOU do?” Rae said, gaping at her father.

He was grim as he glared at her, but a tad bit too triumphant for her taste. She’d attempted to speak to him this morning about how she wished him to allow the marriage to Rutchester to go forward uncontested.

Her father had said that she wouldn’t have to worry about that man bothering her anymore.

“What did you do?” she repeated, planting her hands on her hips.

“I made inquiries to see where he might be staying. There are only two inns nearby anyway, so it wasn’t hard to find him.

I stayed here last night, to make sure you were safe, but I sent others to deal with him,” said her father.

“He’s dead now. It was thirty men against one. No one lives through that.”

Rae wavered on her feet for several moments, and then something inside her lit up, as if it had burst into flame.

She didn’t know what came over her, but she ran at her father, letting out a high-pitched scream.

She leapt on him and she raked her nails over one of his cheeks and beat her fist into his shoulder.

He threw her off quickly enough, but he was stunned. “Out,” he said, wiping at his face. Her nails had drawn blood. “Get out of my house this instant. You’re not my daughter, you’re a demoness.”

She staggered to her feet, out of sorts, angry, devastated, and left the keep, her breath coming in gasps. She wouldn’t stay under that man’s roof for anything in the world.

Outside, she wasn’t sure where to go or what to do.

The enormity of the situation sank in, and she realized that she had just been cast out of her father’s house with nothing and that she had nowhere to go.

It was exactly the same way this had all begun, she supposed.

She should never have come back here.

She would have to wait until later, she supposed, after her father was asleep. Then she could get back in and take some of the coin they’d gotten from rents. Her father never would have collected nearly as much without her help, after all. She thought it was only fair. She had earned that coin.

She’d take it and go back to London, throw herself back on the mercy of the duchesses.

And they’d come back for Rutchester’s body and find some way to—

God in heaven, he could not be dead.

She hugged herself, unable to even fathom it.

Well, she must wait, and she would do it out of sight of the house, so she ran down to the wood, back to the place where she had met him last night, and—

There he was.

He was seated on the forest floor, leaning up against a tree trunk, bloodied and dirty, but still very much alive.

He smiled as she appeared. “Oh, here you are. I was just thinking I was going to have to go and seek you, but I was wondering what I was going to do if your father decided to shoot me on sight.”

“You’re alive,” she said and fell down to her knees next to him on the ground.

“I tried not to kill too many of them,” he said, reaching out to touch her face. “Sorry about that.”

She shook her head. “You have no reason to apologize, not when he sent men to attack you!”

“So, about Scotland?” he said.

She let out a laugh. “Oh, dear God.”

“Still opposed?” he said.

“I can’t believe you still wish to marry me after all of this,” she said.

He smiled at her. “Yes, you can.”

She bit down on her bottom lip. Yes, she could believe it, couldn’t she? He wanted her. This man wanted her.