Page 41 of The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin (The Ill-Mannered Ladies #2)

41

He stepped out from the dark shadows at the side of the road: a tall, muscular figure holding his rifle under his arm, as if he were on a pheasant shoot.

“Dear God,” Julia whispered. She seemed about to crumple.

“Stay still,” I murmured. We could not show our fear to this man.

From my seat, I looked down at Evan. He held the bridle of the nearside horse, his eyes fixed upon me.

A tiny jerk of my chin: Step back. I can run them down.

An infinitesimal shake of his head: Too many men.

And too many guns. Besides, I could not trust these horses and the attempt might get Julia or Evan shot.

I sighed and gave a slight nod: Too many men. Still, we had to do something. I scrunched my toes to rid my body of the abandoned plan and its desperate energy.

Two of the men, one of them Pritchard, for I had now recognized Mulholland’s henchman, had collected the Baker and pistols from Kent’s saddle and were now beside Weatherly. With a jeer, Pritchard jerked the blunderbuss from his grasp.

The man holding Evan’s horse removed the pistols from its saddle. Eight men in total, including Mulholland. Now all armed with multiple guns. Mulholland was not taking any chances this time.

“His sword too,” Mulholland instructed his man, gesturing to the saber my brother wore buckled at his waist.

“I beg your pardon!” Duffy said, drawing himself up into all of his importance. “Do you know who I am?”

“I do, my lord. Do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do not,” Duffy said with magnificent disdain.

“Allow me to remind you, then. I am James Mulholland. We met at your sisters’ house.”

Duffy frowned down at him from his saddle, recognition dawning. “The thieftaker?”

“That is correct, Lord Duffield,” Mulholland said. “Please give my man your sword.”

Since Pritchard had a pistol aimed at him, Duffy complied.

Upon seeing the last weapon collected, Mulholland strolled past Duffy. I drew a steadying breath, for he was making his nonchalant way to the side of the phaeton.

He looked up at me and bared his yellowed teeth into the wolf smile I remembered from the drawing room.

“Still not afraid, Lady Augusta?” he whispered. “You really should be.”

He continued on to Evan and murmured, “Make any move, and my men have orders to shoot Lady Augusta and Lady Julia. In the guts. As I’m sure you are aware, a very long and painful death.”

He turned back to Duffy and said loudly, “Your sister told you that this man was her groom. But he is not. He is Lord Evan Belford.”

“I am already aware of that,” Duffy said condescendingly.

“Then you must be aware he is a wanted man, my lord. I have been waiting for another chance to bring him to justice, since you interrupted my last effort.”

“Well, I was misled,” Duffy said, glancing across at me. “I do not see why you have taken my sword, Mulholland. This is a very irregular arrest.”

“Duffy,” I said urgently. “This is not an arrest. He is going to kill Lord Evan. Charles Whitmore has ordered it.”

At Whitmore’s name, Mulholland squinted up at me with an odd smile upon his face. I glared at him: Yes, Mr. Mulholland, I know it all.

“Do not be ridiculous, Augusta,” Duffy said. “Whitmore is an Oxford man and a trusted member of Liverpool’s government. You cannot fling around preposterous accusations about men of good standing.”

“Your sister is telling the truth, Lord Duffield,” Evan said. He moved to take his hands from the horse’s bridle, but one of the riflemen stepped closer to me, the barrel of the gun aimed squarely at my midsection. Evan froze.

“My sister is delusional, Belford, and you are taking advantage of her,” Duffy snapped. “I am a magistrate, Augusta. Mr. Mulholland is hardly going to murder a man in front of me.”

“As his lordship says, my lady, I am hardly going to murder a man in front of him.” Mulholland’s wolf smile appeared again. He scratched his sandy-red stubble as if making a decision. “I will take Mr. Kent, too, my lord. He has assisted Belford and so must answer for that crime back at Bow Street.”

“No!” Julia said. “Duffy, you must see something is wrong,” she implored. “Mr. Kent is a Bow Street agent. Not a criminal.”

“All I see are two desperate men who have been using my foolish sisters for their own nefarious ends,” Duffy said. He had, it seemed, settled upon our womanly weakness as an explanation. “Where do you take them, Mulholland?”

“To Wrexham. It has a lockup house. We will take a shortcut through the woods.”

Duffy waved them into action as if he were in charge. “Go about your business, then. We will be on our way too.”

Mulholland nodded, as if receiving the order. He knew how to manipulate a man as pompous as my brother. “Thank you, my lord.” He nodded to his men. “Bind Belford and Kent.”

One of the riflemen brought out rope and stepped closer to Evan.

“Hands behind your back,” he ordered.

Evan’s jaw muscle bulged with his desire to turn and fight, but he complied, his eyes upon me: Do not follow us.

I drew a breath through my teeth: Try to stop me.

He lurched back a step as the binding wrenched his shoulders back, but his eyes still did not leave mine. His lips curved into the smallest of smiles: My darling Renegade.

I drew a shaking breath. Good God, that was a good-bye.

I shook my head: No, I will find you.

Julia had twisted in her seat, her hands clenched on the sides of the phaeton. “Duffy, Mr. Kent is a Runner! Please—”

“Be quiet, Julia. You are embarrassing yourself,” Duffy said.

Mulholland leaned against the side of the phaeton. “No bleating on behalf of your own man, Lady Augusta?” he asked me sotto voce. “Maybe you don’t really care.”

“If you hurt him, I will kill you, although you will wish I had.”

He ran a surreptitious finger along the outside of my thigh, the light pressure sending a sickened blaze of fury through my body. “Follow me and my men, Lady Augusta, and I will finish what I started in the laneway, and let my men have their turn too. And I will not kill you, although you will wish I had.”

I thrust his hand away. “I know who has ordered this,” I said. “I am not going to give up.”

He lifted his heavy shoulders into a shrug. “You cannot win, and right now you are irrelevant. I advise you not to become relevant.”

He levered himself lazily from the phaeton. “Take their horses,” he ordered his men, jerking his chin at Mr. Kent’s and Evan’s mounts. “And give his lordship back his sword.”

Duffy received his sword and inspected the blade to make sure no harm had come to it.

“My apologies for the unusual method of detaining Belford and Kent, my lord,” Mulholland said, bowing. “I hope we did not inconvenience you too much.”

Duffy waved away the apology. “It was unusual, but I do not take offense.”

Dear God, how could my brother be so foolish and misguided?

“Do something, Gus, do something,” Julia said. But a lone rifleman still had his gun aimed at us. More precisely, at Julia. All I could do was watch as Evan and Mr. Kent, their hands bound behind their backs, were surrounded by Mulholland’s men and pushed toward the dense, dark woodlands. And, without a doubt, their deaths.

The lone rifleman stayed, watching us along the barrel until the sight and noise of his compatriots making their way into the depths of the forest disappeared. Then, with a sure-footedness that spoke of some kind of training, he backed into the darkness and was gone too.

My body slumped, the strain shaking through every muscle. For a second, my gorge rose. I forced down the sour nausea. Beside me, Julia slammed the flat of her hand over and over again against the phaeton’s dash rail, the thuds startling the horses again.

“Julia, stop that,” I said, steadying the pair. “You’ll have them off again.”

“I cannot bear it. That man. What are we going to do? We must do something.” She whirled upon me. “You must have a plan. You always have a plan.”

“Plan?” Duffy echoed. He had walked his horse up alongside the phaeton. “The only plan you have is to return to Davenport Hall and apologize to Lord Davenport for the upset you have caused.”

“You are an idiot, Duffy,” I said, which did nothing to conjure a plan but did much to relieve my feelings. “How could you ignore the fact that Mulholland had us at gunpoint the entire time? They are not going to march Lord Evan and Mr. Kent to Wrexham. They are going to shoot them in the woodlands and bury them.”

“Oh, Gus, no,” Julia said, pressing her hand over her mouth.

We were outmanned and outgunned. I felt a rise of despair. We had three people—for I did not count Duffy—and no weapons. When in fact, what we needed was an army to—

Dear God. That was exactly what we needed.

I thrust the reins and whip into Julia’s hands and found the step with my toe, swinging to the ground. “Weatherly, help me turn the phaeton.”

Weatherly immediately climbed down. We ran to the offside horse’s head. I took hold of the bridle and Weatherly grabbed the collar and together we half led, half pushed the recalcitrant beast around, the other horse and the phaeton following slowly with it. The road was just wide enough to manage the turn without going into the ditch.

“Get out of the way, Duffy,” I said.

He walked his horse beyond the phaeton. “Augusta, what are you doing?”

I ignored him and looked up at Julia. “Drive back to Captain Morland and tell him Mr. Talbot and Mr. Kent have been taken by armed Luddites and need their assistance.”

“Luddites?” Julia echoed. “Why would Luddites take them?”

“It does not matter. The troop will come at just the whiff of the word. Bring them back here and point the way.” I hoped it was true. It had to be true. I wrenched my riding hat off. “I’ll leave this as a marker. Make sure they know that we are in the woods—”

I realized I had not actually asked Weatherly. “Will you come with me? You do not have to. It will be dangerous.”

“Of course I will, my lady.”

I touched his arm for a second in thanks and continued my instructions to Julia. “Make sure they know that Weatherly and I are in the woods too. We do not want to be accidentally shot. Do you have that?”

“I do,” Julia said.

The phaeton was finally pointing back toward the army we needed.

“I forbid this,” Duffy said, bringing his horse around. He raised his voice. “Julia, stop! Do as I say! Augusta, you cannot be seriously planning to go after those men!”

“As fast as you can, dearheart,” I said to Julia. “Keep an eye on that gray, it will try to take you to the right.”

She gave a tense nod and snapped the whip, the phaeton lurching into motion.

I turned to face our brother. “Give me your sword, Duffy.”

“No. I will certainly not,” he said.

“So you are going to let me go into the woods unarmed?” Not entirely true; I still had my little dagger, but a sword would be far more reassuring.

“I am not going to let you go into the woods at all.” He held out his hand. “Get up behind me. We will follow Julia. Stop her from reaching Captain Morland and making a fool of herself.”

I eyed the sword—too dangerous to try to wrest it from him while he was on horseback, and I could not waste the time to argue it out of him. I drew my fob watch out upon its chain. A quarter past three. Morland and his men were about ten minutes away if they had not marched on, and then give or take time to persuade him, another fifteen to twenty minutes to return here. Half an hour until help arrived. If it did arrive.

“Weatherly, we must go.”

“I am ready, my lady.”

I flashed him a smile, which he returned. We were no longer mistress and servant, but comrades in arms. Well, not enough arms, as it happened. Together, we headed toward the edge of the forest, where Mulholland and his men had forced a way through. Hopefully their path would not be hard to follow; Mulholland had two horses as well as seven men and no belief that we would dare enter the forest behind them.

“Augusta!” Duffy bellowed behind us. “Come back this instant. You will get lost, you stupid woman.”

And on that message of good luck, Weatherly and I pushed our way through the scraggly roadside undergrowth into the forest.