Page 3 of The Rebellious Countess (The Ruined Duchess #2)
Two
Dearest Iseabail,
If these comments were not a display of witticism, please send me everything you know.
Forrester should be there soon, and he will track down the blackguard and hang him in short order.
I shall be home within the week after this session is complete.
Give our little one a big kiss for me—I will deliver yours personally.
I cannot wait to hold you both in my arms.
Your loving husband,
Nash
—A letter from Nashford Xavier Harding, Duke of Ross, to his wife, Iseabail Blair Handcock Harding, Duchess of Ross, regarding her sister’s wedding to the Earl of Dorset
N o.
Máira closed her eyes. Why had she wished for an adventure? She wanted to go home. She wanted tea cakes, and parties. She wanted the ton.
That might be going a bit far, but she wanted her sisters and cold drafty castles. She wanted thistles and blustery winds blowing her bonnet away and her coiffure into a rat’s nest.
Okay, no rats. An empty nest. She didn’t care, anywhere but here, where the barkeep was suddenly two women approaching her with pistols in their hands and the people around her were fighting as if a dead man wasn’t bleeding out onto the floor.
She couldn’t see straight, her head ached worse than ever before, as she put her hand to it and felt a knot the size of Scotland forming on her forehead.
She tried to shake the dizziness away, and then there were four women with guns walking in her direction.
She jerked when an explosion tore through her hearing, becoming suddenly mute to everything but an incessant ringing, as smoke filled the tavern and her lungs.
Yet for a mere moment, there was only one menacing barkeep starring down at her, and a bloody hole in the back of the dead man next her.
Máira coughed, and the motion churned her stomach as she tried to scurry away, more blood staining her dress even further.
The look on the woman’s face was pure malevolence, until she surveyed the silent crowd frozen in place around her and began to laugh.
Laugh.
It was only then that the raucous crowd cheered the barkeep like a hero, not a murderer.
What world was she living in? Máira clutched her head as the people around her went back to their mugs of ale as if the brawl and subsequent homicide had never occurred.
The barkeep closed the distance between them, keeping her bold, territorial gaze fixed on Máira as she stepped on the dead man’s shoulder, bent over, and pulled the knife from his face, the moist sound seemingly silent to everyone but her.
The woman was a cold-blooded killer.
She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t witnessed her walk up and shoot the man in the back while he laid dead on the floor. Was it necessary to kill him twice?
Afraid to move, Máira stood still and waited for the woman to look at anyone…
anyone other than her. She had thought her beautiful when she’d first arrived and seen her running the bar with authority.
Her cat-like green eyes filled with mischief as she toyed with the sailors waiting for a pint.
With those same eyes now scrutinizing her from head to worn slipper, there wasn’t a hint of mirth.
“Do you have a problem with Hag’s justice?” The woman asked in a heavy French accent, as she cleaned her bloodstained knife on the dead man’s shoulder.
There was no humor, no camaraderie, nor a hint of compassion in her question. Nor were there any answers as to how she knew Máira did not speak the native language of the village occupants. Nothing but wariness, and judgement that Máira suspected found her lacking.
She shook her head in response and instantly regretted the move as her head pounded and her stomach lurched, yet she’d been unable to even contemplate a response.
Standing in front of the woman she was supposed to seek out for assistance, Máira was fairly certain Hag was the last person she would ask for help, even though she needed help desperately.
Hag turned to say something in French to a huge man on the other side of the bar, and Máira didn’t wait for it to translate into murder.
More specifically, her murder. It didn’t matter if the woman had been defending her or had killed the man because he was merely a man in her bar, Máira needed no further proof that hesitation meant death.
She was not going to be next on Hag’s list for disposal.
Grabbing her skirts, she ran for the door, only to bounce off the stomach of a large, sweaty man entering.
“ Pardonnez-moi, mademoiselle ,” he said, as he started to steady her, only to pull back at the sight of her bloodstained dress.
Máira looked over her shoulder and stumbled against the door frame, her head striking the frame and her vision blurred with the pain.
When her vision started to clear, Hag was watching her and she didn’t wait for her to order the man to grab her.
She ran into the bustling streets where merchants were heading home and sailors were heading for the tavern and more unsavory places, where women sat on windowsills and displayed more skin than Máira had exposed to her maids.
Men leered and said things no young lady’s tutor would teach a young student, but their meaning was loud and clear, and suddenly Máira knew she was in a bog with little leverage to extricate herself from the muck and mire. Instead, she grabbed her knees and retched in the middle of the road.
God in heaven, where was she to go?
A butcher shop across the street still had its lanterns lit, and she ran for it.
She hit the door with a loud thud. It slammed open and into the wall, only to bounce back, nearly striking her in the face.
The man inside took one look at her and began yelling in French while pointing a meat cleaver in her direction.
His yelling may have frightened her five days earlier, it certainly assaulted her splitting head today, but it was the cleaver that sent her back into the streets, heart pounding, breath coming in short gasps and her head throbbing with so much pain she didn’t want to go on.
She remembered her sisters and the pain they had known when each of their parents died.
She refused to bring even more tragedy to her family, and tried the dress shop next with a little less force, then the fripperies store, and finally the baker.
Each one took one look at her and sent her right back out the door without a by your leave .
Even the workers had kept their heads down as if she were insignificant.
She should be grateful for the burnt biscuit the baker had thrown in her direction as if she were a dog. She certainly clung to it just as greedily, slipping it into the pocket of her gown to eat after she was safe.
Lost, with her head throbbing and nowhere to turn, she spun in circles in the middle of the street looking for any route of escape from this nightmare.
Until a man on a horse nearly ran her over.
Stumbling backward across the cobbled stone, she fell on her backside and cowered as his horse snorted hot breath in her face.
The cursing rider shook what appeared to be three fists in her direction as he trotted down the street and out of sight.
There were no gentlemen in France.
For all she knew there were no gentlemen outside of Scotland.
She certainly hadn’t met any during her season in London, and her husband—he was the worst of them all.
She looked up to see Hag leaning against the door jamb of the tavern wearing an inscrutable stare.
Máira jumped to her feet as a group of unsavory men approached her.
The look on their faces was anything but friendly as they smiled and once more tried to educate her into the less savory aspects of the French language.
“ Messieurs, c'est parti pour une soirée de divertissement ,” a woman yelled, and the men looked toward the tavern.
Once more she ran when opportunity arose.
Her head pounded with every wobbly step she took.
Máira glanced over her shoulder to see Hag still in conversation with the sailors, that engaging smile somehow luring them inside without any promise of sexual wares.
But it was the sailors coming ashore that made her turn toward an alley next to a closed fish market to hide.
The stench of dead fish permeated the air, and she gagged as she slumped against the wall, out of sight.
A cat gnawed on a fish head, and her stomach turned once more at the noises the feline made in its rush to consume dinner before something or someone took it away.
Would life ever be easy again? She swore if she made it back to Caerlaverock, she would never look twice at another man as long as she lived.
Other than her nephew, of course. A tear ran down her face as she looked up to the darkening sky and thought of her sisters at home spoiling the future Duke of Ross as they gathered in the library.
A violent quake of nausea nearly knocked her on her arse, and she decided to sit before she fell over from the waves of dizziness. Her body then began to shake uncontrollably. Whether it was from cold, fear, shock or the injury to her head she wasn’t certain. She needed a plan. Now.
Except she couldn’t think. The ringing in her ears hadn’t subsided and the drumming of pain to her injured head was beginning to grow louder than ever.
She turned and found a drier spot to sit, crawled over and wrapped her arms around her knees.
She gasped in pain when she tried to rest her head on her forearms and then turned her head sideways and closed her eyes to quell the nausea threatening to take over once more.
Pain radiated throughout her body, and all she could do was close her eyes.