Page 35 of The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin (The Ill-Mannered Ladies #2)

35

Dark clouds had momentarily blocked the pale moonlight. I bent over Bruno’s neck, straining to see any treacherous holes he might catch his hooves in. My heart pounded in time to the thud of his gallop, my breath coming short and hard, my thighs aching from keeping balance and control upon his unsaddled back. Although it was a freezing night, sweat dampened the front of my chemise and gathered under my cravat, as much in anticipation as exertion. And perhaps a little fear.

A mile back we had spotted Deele’s coach lamps, and now Evan, Kent, and I were making our run to overtake him. A foolhardy gallop across a field on a cloudy, crescent-moon night. Absolute madness, and ridiculously exhilarating.

Ahead, Evan sat back up in his saddle, slowing his horse’s gait into a trot. He held up his hand. In the gloom beyond him, I made out the low jagged shape of a stone stacked fence with a breach in its length of broken slate and tumbled stones.

I drew upon the reins, leaning back into the request to slow our momentum. Bruno obeyed, dropping into a trot, until I could bring him around to stand beside Evan and Kent.

“This is our place,” Evan said, the misted breath upon each word curling in front of his mouth. “I would say we have about five minutes before the coach comes around the turn.” He drew a pistol out of one of the holsters and handed it to me, grip first. “It is loaded.”

I ripped off my glove and took the gun, its metal weight heavy and cold in my bare hand. Beside me, Mr. Kent passed his Baker rifle to Evan, as planned, then drew out his own pistol.

“Should we wear our kerchiefs up around our noses and mouths, like all good highwaymen?” Mr. Kent asked. “I would not wish to break the highwayman code on my first time out.”

Evan was clearly not in the mood for levity. “You do what you must do,” he said, slinging the rifle strap over his shoulder. “I will be showing my face. My brother will know who is stopping his treachery.”

Kent glanced at me, somewhat abashed. “My apologies, Lord Evan. I did not mean to belittle your sister’s peril.”

Evan gave a curt nod.

“Once we have Hester, I think our only choice is to head back to Liverpool,” I said. “Ceredigion Bay is too far. In Liverpool you can always find a ship that is leaving on the next tide.”

Evan blinked at the use of you , then sighed. “I think you are right.”

We looked at each other: a question asked, an answer given. I could not go.

“We should get out there,” Kent said, breaking the tension between us.

We filed out onto the selected section of road—a straight length after a curve to slow them down—and took our positions: Kent riding into the trees closer to the curve; Evan, with the Baker rifle, and I ranged across the road.

Bruno shifted underneath me, no doubt feeling my tension. I held my breath, straining to hear the sound of the approaching coach, my vision narrowed to the rutted and rocky stretch of road ahead. Ah, there it was: the unmistakable jangle of tack and thud of hooves. By my reckoning, an easy pace; no alarm in the momentum of the team of four. I raised my pistol, steadying it. Only one shot: I hoped I would not have to fire it.

The rhythm of hooves slowed as they took the curve, and then the team and coach were coming at us.

“Stand!” Evan bellowed, and shot the rifle above the heads of the driver and footman. “Stand or be killed!”

I saw a flash of the driver’s face—eyes and mouth wide—then he wrenched upon the reins. The four horses, already startled by the shot, plunged and reared in the traps as they were hauled to a stop, haunches straining. The coach behind them rocked upon its springs, swinging and spraying dirt as it came to a cumbersome halt.

Evan slung the spent rifle back over his shoulder and pulled out his pistol. “Hands where we can see them,” he yelled to the driver and footman, the pistol aimed at them. They raised their hands, their fear shifting into disbelief at seeing me beyond him.

“It’s a woman,” the driver said.

I urged Bruno forward, still pointing my gun at them. “It is, and I’ll take your head off if you move.” I was rather pleased with the steel in my voice.

Mr. Kent broke cover just as the door of the carriage swung open and Deele poked his head and hand out, a pistol aimed at Evan.

“Drop it, or I will shoot!” Kent ordered, coming up from behind him.

Deele looked over his shoulder and, upon seeing Kent’s pistol pointed squarely at his head, lowered the gun.

“I said drop it,” Kent ordered again.

“Damn you!” Deele tossed the gun to the ground. “Do you know who I am?”

“Indeed I do, brother,” Evan said. He dismounted as Deele jerked around to face him again.

“Good God!” Deele sounded genuinely flabbergasted. “Is that you, Evan?”

“Go see to the driver and footman,” Evan said to Kent. As the Runner passed him, Evan handed back the Baker rifle.

That was my cue. As soon as Kent took over guarding the two men at the front, I slid off Bruno, my cold feet jarring upon the hard road, ready for my part.

“What are you doing here?” Deele said. “Why are you pointing a gun at me?”

“I am saving our sister,” Evan said.

“Saving her? What do you mean? I am saving her.”

Gun in hand, I skirted the blowing horses and made my way around to the other side of the carriage. It was a large traveling coach, with windows set into the door as well as either side of the cabin. Carefully, I peered into the bodkin window, gun at the ready.

On the other side of the carriage, I heard Evan say, “How can you think consigning our sister to a madhouse is saving her in any way?”

Hester sat propped next to the window I looked through, either asleep or, more likely, unconscious, for no one could have slept through that tumultuous halt. Either she had been drugged or the ordeal of being snatched by her brother had been too much. Extracting her from the coach would be more difficult than anticipated.

Deele caught sight of me through the window. He turned, peering intently across at me, the physical similarity to his brother uncanny: a younger version of Evan but without any strength or character carved by hardship in its lines. “Lady Augusta Colebrook? Is that you? I was told you were interfering in my affairs!”

So Mulholland had told him that Hester was with us but had not told him about Evan’s return. Unsettling, yet I did not have time to trace that dangerous map of motivation.

I opened the carriage door. “I am not interfering in your affairs, Lord Deele,” I said. “I am helping Lady Hester escape your brutality.”

“This is none of your business, Lady Augusta. You have no idea what my sister has done.”

“All she has done is love someone,” Evan said. He must have crossed the short distance between them, for now he stood at arm’s length—and a gun’s length—from his brother. Through the carriage, he met my eyes, a swift confirmation that I had all in hand. Then he saw his sister, unconscious in the corner. “Good God, Charles, what have you done to her now?”

“Just laudanum. I did not want her to attack me and my men again. She is violent, Evan.”

“Balderdash!” Evan said. “If she fought you, it is because she is fighting for her survival.”

“Is that what she told you? You should know she has been bewitched by a woman,” Deele said. “A woman. It is ungodly. A monstrous thing.” He shook his head. “I tell you, we Belfords are cursed, brother. First you, a convict, then our father’s debts, and now Hester.”

“Our father’s debts?” I heard the flex of disbelief in Evan’s voice. “He was never one for cards or the bones. What debts?”

“After you were transported—his beloved firstborn—all he did was gamble. Then he died, and I”—Deele thumped his chest—“I had to pay back all his IOUs. It nearly ruined me. I had to use everything in the estate and borrow too.”

“Everything?” Evan demanded. “Did you use Hester’s portion as well? Is that why you put her away?”

“That is not why I committed her. She is mad. Anyway, I am her guardian; I can use her and her portion any way I wish, and I used it to drag this family out of disgrace.”

“There is only one disgrace here, brother, and it is you,” Evan said coldly. “Look what you have done to our sister.” He motioned with the gun at the prone Hester. “She is not mad. And yet you abandoned her in a madhouse. When we found her, she was near dead!”

Deele lifted his Belford chin. “Better she is dead than without the grace of God or bringing more scandal upon our name.”

I sucked in a breath. Such a terrible thing to say—did he truly mean it?

Evan stared at him. “What has happened to you, Charles? Your piety is all twisted and foul. I do not recognize you.”

Deele was about to answer but stopped at the sound of hooves and wheels approaching at speed. I could see the anticipation within him; perhaps this newcomer would offer an opportunity to overcome us.

I had to admit to a second of malicious pleasure at what was about to arrive.

The phaeton emerged from around the curve at a smart trot, Julia fixed intently upon handling the reins, Weatherly with blunderbuss at the ready, and Miss Grant sitting forward, searching the road. At the sight of us, Julia deftly maneuvered the phaeton to one side and drew the horses to a stop, just in time to avoid Miss Grant’s going under the wheels as she clambered down from her seat and ran forward, injured arm clutched to her chest.

“Hester!”

I held up my hand, halting her headlong dash toward us. “Miss Grant. Wait!”

She stood, stranded between the phaeton and the coach. I did not want her to distract Evan or come between any guns.

“You!” Deele said to Miss Grant, his voice deep with loathing. He turned back to Evan. “You are helping the creature who is dragging our sister into perdition?”

“Come this way,” I said, waving Miss Grant over to my side of the carriage. “You, too, Weatherly. Help me get Hester out of the carriage.”

“What is wrong with her?” Miss Grant asked as she obeyed my urgent summons. “Did he hurt her?”

“Drugged,” I said, opening the door. We both looked inside at Hester: still insensible. It must have been a hefty dose of laudanum. At the corner of my eye, I saw Weatherly climb down from the groom’s seat and hand Julia the blunderbuss. It seemed my sister always ended up with Hades in hand.

Miss Grant glared through the carriage at Deele. “You are despicable. All you do is hurt her!”

“Me, hurt her? You are destroying her chance of salvation,” Deele hissed back.

“She hates you!” Miss Grant lunged forward, as if to launch herself through the carriage. “Hates you!”

I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back from the door. “There is no time for this. We must get Hester out now!”

She drew a quivering breath. “Of course.”

At the front of the coach, the clink and jangle of tack told me Mr. Kent was well on the way to achieving the next part of the plan: unhitching the lead horse from the coach and letting it loose farther down the road to delay pursuit.

Weatherly jogged up to us. “Did you wish me to retrieve Lady Hester, my lady?”

At the other side of the carriage, I heard Deele’s profane outrage as he saw his horse free from the harness.

“No, not a man,” Miss Grant said abruptly. “I am sorry, Mr. Weatherly, but she would not like to be touched by a man.”

Indeed, Hester had suffered so much at the hands of the brutal basketmen and mad doctors at the asylum, and by her own brother forcing laudanum down her throat. We could not subject her to more. Even the kindly hands of Weatherly.

“I’ll pull her out,” I said, and found a firm foothold upon the coach step. I levered myself halfway into the carriage. “Hester? Can you hear me?”

No response, but I had not expected one. I dug my hands between her lax arms and slumped body and pulled her upright by her armpits. With a heave, I dragged her off the seat and into the doorway, her head lolling over my shoulder, her arms hanging inert. Although malnourished and bone thin, she was still a deadweight, the imbalance upon my chest teetering me on the coach step.

“Steady,” Miss Grant said, and I felt her hand pressing the middle of my back, guiding me as I felt for the ground, pulling Hester with me.

“I think you will have to carry her to the phaeton, Weatherly,” I said. “I am sorry, Miss Grant, but she is too heavy for me and we cannot delay.”

Miss Grant hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod.

I swung Hester around as if we were in a drunken dance, and Weatherly neatly gathered her up into the cradle of his arms.

“Do you think this is going to change anything?” Deele demanded. I could no longer see any resemblance to my love: Deele’s teeth were bared, his face puffed and dark with choler. “I am not going to stop until she is far away from that woman. I am her guardian and she will submit to my will. She will not ruin our name again!”

“If you do not stop, brother, then neither will I,” Evan said. “You will not ruin Hester’s life again.”

I slammed the carriage door shut and followed Miss Grant and Weatherly—carrying his burden with infinite care—to the phaeton.

I believed Deele; he would not stop his relentless persecution of Hester and Miss Grant. Ever. We only had one choice now. Liverpool, and a ship that would take them as far away from him as possible.