The Rogue (33 page)

“There is the spirit,” he said approvingly. “Come now, into the carriage.”

The moment the door closed she reached for the dagger.

She had known he would expect her to resist, but he was quick to grab her. She did not, however, expect him to block her nose, to force her lips apart, and to fill her mouth with wine. Lorian had always been so obvious; she had not anticipated guile from him.

Her father, if he ever knew, would be disappointed.

But Saint, she thought in her last lucid moment, would understand.

T
HE DOOR SWUNG
open and Reeve entered, a cloth tied around his head, bloodied at the eye. He carried Saint's saber like a man who'd never had a sword in his hand before.

“How do you like your handiwork, Mr. Sterling?” he grunted, pointing at his eye. “I'm none too happy with it.”

“You attacked me unsuspecting.”

“Aye. But you'll be getting yours.”

“Where is the solstice ritual?”

He grinned and his crooked nose canted to the side. “Sorry you're not invited?”

“I have a fortune in a bank in London. Free me, and it is yours.”

“Sir Lorian said you'd offer money.” He swung the saber from side to side like it was a toy. “He said he'd give me twice your offer.” He scratched his whiskers. “How much?”

“Forty thousand pounds. That is more than you will ever see in your lifetime. Trust me, I have been a thief. I know. Though I have never been such a stupid thief. You know they will turn on you. As soon as they need a man to take the blame. Westin. Hughes. The Master.”

Reeve's brow grew tight.

“The Master's above it all,” he said with a round eye. “And I like the other choice Sir Lorian is giving you anyway.”

“What choice?”

He tossed the saber aside with a clatter and hefted the cudgel. “A trade: your freedom for your hand.”

Saint drew in air through his nose. “Immediate freedom?”

“Aye.”

“How can I trust you?”

Behind Reeve, Patience slipped silently into the room.

Reeve swung the cudgel now against his boot. “I could smash both your hands and leave you here all night, if I liked. But he told me I was to give you the choice, and I promised.”

Hughes wanted him beaten, maimed, helpless; a shameful prelude to his hanging by mob.

“All right,” he said.

Reeve grinned. “Stretch out your hand now.”

He flattened it against the wall, his stomach tightening.

Reeve's lip curled. “Sir Lorian said you'd try that. I'll be having the
other
hand, sir.”

“Mr. Reeve.” Patience came forward. “My husband wishes me to say a word to Mr. Sterling.” She halted by his boots. “You will never reach Arthur's Seat by midnight. Do not accept any bargain Mr. Reeve makes for your freedom now.” She whirled around. “Mr. Reeve, this is barbarism.” In her hand concealed by the folds of her skirt, his knife glittered. “Whatever Sir Lorian has said to you, the Master would not approve of it.”

“How would you know what the Master approves of or not?”

“I have spoken with him about such matters. He does not approve of needless violence. If you doubt it, go speak with my husband. He is in the Sanctuary now. I promise that I will not untie Mr. Sterling while you are gone. My husband will tell you that I tried that already, and my fingers are not strong enough. You tie a formidable knot.”

He grumbled. But he went, leaving the door open.

She threw herself upon her knees and set to the knot at his wrist with the knife.

“It is too thick,” she whined. “There is not time.”

“It's a very sharp knife,” he said, keeping his voice calm over the drumming of his pulse. “You are halfway through it already.”

Reeve appeared in the doorway.

“Patience, go,” Saint said.

She dropped the knife and leaped to the side as Reeve lunged and lifted the cudgel above his hand still bound to the wall. Snapping the final strands of cut rope on the other, Saint grabbed for the knife.

The cudgel came down. Swiftly. Twice.

The world spun into an explosion of pain.

He thrust the knife into Reeve's upraised arm. Reeve hollered and the cudgel flew again.

Reality disappeared into agony. Blackness descended.

He fought against it.

“Stop!” Patience's voice, screaming. “Stop!”

A door slamming. Heavy footsteps.

“Mr. Sterling, you must stand up.
Now.
”

Then she was gone, and he was pushing himself up from the cold floor, gripping the knife, cutting the rope about his wrist, blind with pain, sounds all around him—a woman's sobbing, a man shouting. His crushed hand hit the floor and he doubled over.

A fist cuffed his brow. “Not so confident now, eh?” Reeve's voice was thick.

Saint staggered toward a spot of light, found his footing, and reached for the light. His fingers cinched around the lamp handle. He swung.

Reeve crumpled to the floor. Oil spread in a swift circle from the overturned lamp. Fire burst upward, darted across the puddle, and caught on Reeve's clothing.

In the corridor, Patience hung over Miranda. “She is alive, but she won't move.”

“We will carry her.”

“Your hand—”

“Remove my neck cloth and bind it. As tightly as you can.”

She did it without comment and the pain buckled his knees. Constance would have talked, teased, tried to distract him. He needed to hear her voice again. Her laughter.
Smoke rose inside the bedchamber, fire spreading, consuming linens, flying into fury when it found the draperies.

When the hand was bound, he took Miranda over his shoulder and held her with one arm. Inside the bedchamber, Reeve was struggling to his feet, wailing, flames dangling from his coat.

“Miss Edwards,” Miranda mumbled. “That door.”

He grabbed for the handle. It was locked. Behind them, Reeve ran from the bedchamber and toward the stairs. Flames licked at the bedchamber's threshold.

“Come,” he ordered, turning toward the stairs. “Quickly.”

“But—”

“
Come.
I will see to her.”

The foyer below was now sunk in darkness. He set Miranda on her feet and Patience wrapped her arms around her.

“Go now.”

“But, Mr. Sterling, you cannot—”

He turned back up the stairs and into the corridor that was a funnel of heat and smoke. Clamping shut his mouth he went to the locked door.

Like Constance's hairpin, the knife did its work easily in the lock. He shoved the panel open. The air inside was clean, and he gulped it. A young woman stared at him from a chair across the room, a gag tied in her mouth, her eyes round with terror.

“Saint! God damn it, Saint!” Dylan's shout came beyond the flames.

Her eyes flared wider and filled with tears.

He cut the ropes around her wrists and ankles, and hauled her from the chair. She tore at the gag, but he halted her, drawing it swiftly over her mouth and nose against the smoke. Clamping his arm around her, he pulled her from the room as the fire burst into the corridor. On the stairs, she fell upon Dylan with choked sobs.

Outside, rain pummeled the darkness lit by the stable in flames. Its doors were wide open.

Dylan clasped Miss Edwards to him in the downpour. He lifted his face from her hair to meet Saint's stare.

“Fellow came at me with a torch,” he shouted through the rain. “The animals bolted.”

Patience knelt above Miranda sprawled on the ground.

“Is she all right?” Saint barely recognized his voice.

“Yes. She is breathing.”

“You will be fine now.” He searched the rain washed darkness for his horse, any horse, pain and desperation tearing at him. “Lord Michaels will assist you.”

A window shattered in the house, flames crawling out to battle the rain. His saber was inside. And the knife—dropped when he grabbed Miss Edwards.

“Your sword!” he shouted at his cousin.

Dylan snatched a pistol out of his pocket, soaking it with rain, ruining the powder.

No horse. No weapon.

He ran. It wasn't two miles to the mountain. He had run farther across battlefields strewn with bullets and canon fire, with a bullet in his thigh. He had never run with only one arm. Lodged tight in his waistcoat, his hand had gone beyond pain into hell. After a half mile he gave up and pulled it free, and nearly lost his footing, every broken bone screaming. He sucked in mouthfuls of air saturated with rain, cinched the linen tighter about his palm and fingers, and fell to his knees as darkness surrounded him.

His hand found a fence post. He grabbed it and dragged himself to his feet. Distantly, a horse whinnied over the rain.

Chase down a loose paddocked horse for precious minutes? Or run?

He ran. Scorched from the fire smoke, his lungs burned.

Hoofbeats sounded behind him, then by his side. He slowed, reached out with his hand, and grasped the scabbard of his other sword strapped to the saddle. His horse halted abruptly. Silently blessing the man who had trained the animal, he jammed his foot into the stirrup and, before
he was fully in the saddle, urged it across the field toward Arthur's Seat.

Through the rain he saw the torches, high up on the side of the mountain at the ruins of the old church. He dug his heels into Paid's sides and the animal flew.

The path bent to the west on a gradual rise around the other side of the mountain before it doubled back. Too far.
Too slow.

In the tower of the church at Duddingston afar off, the massive bell tolled the first stroke of midnight, echoing through the rain over the mountain. Pulling Paid's head around and pointing him dead up the hill, Saint snatched his sword from the scabbard and threw his weight forward. Together they climbed.

S
he counted.

One . . . two . . . three . . .

Her cheeks were wet where Sir Lorian had pulled back the hood of thick satin from her face. Her lips too. Her wrists were bound, palms pressing into the cold stone of the ancient altar.

Idly, distant from her flesh, she wondered what he had done with her gown and petticoat and stays.

Four . . . five . . .

She did not mind it. But Eliza particularly liked that gown.

Delirious. She was certainly delirious.

Six . . . seven . . .

He had removed it in the carriage. All of her garments except her shift. And dressed her in the robe. But he had not touched her otherwise. Strange man. Men. She would never entirely understand the breed.

Eight . . .

And then the torches. And the pain.

Nine . . . ten . . .

Again.

One . . .

The dampness on her cheek seeped between her lips with the rain that pattered all over, filling her ears with sound. Someone was chanting. Peculiar words.

The rain tasted like salt.

Two . . . three . . . four . . .

She must continue counting. The chanting was growing louder.

The clouds in her thoughts slipped, settled, then slipped again. A breath of cold, rain-soaked air stole into her mouth, tickling her nostrils.

Someone was behind her. Touching her. She could
feel
her lips again. Her tongue. The icy rain. Her frigid skin.

She opened her eyes.

Firelight danced on the rain-washed altar upon which she lay. Figures stood nearby, long white robes and rain obscuring them.

“The dead are reborn,” Sir Lorian said behind her and she heard it clearly.

The torchlight responded with murmurs.

“The earth bears new fruit,” he intoned as her heartbeats stabbed the altar beneath her breasts. The hooded ghosts replied again with mumbles.

“We offer thanks,” he declared. “We offer sacrifice.”

The caress of cold metal on her exposed calf drove the air from her. She fought against the panic.

He was talking again, his words blurring inside her ears. Her mouth opened, eyes closed, hands balled, body tensed.

Five . . . six . . . seven . . .

Something was different from before, different from when a man had cut her. Something . . .

Her ankles were
unbound
.

She kicked out hard. Her heels met bone.

She kicked again.
Flesh.

A man was groaning. Another, shouting. The firelight
wavered and a hooded figure jumped backward. Shod hooves beat the earth and clattered upon stone.

She pulled her knees up, twisted, thrust her knee toward her hand, and heard a pop in her shoulder and the scream wrenching from her throat. Her fingers were slippery on the little ivory handle, the rain making her fumble. She grasped it.

A torch dropped to the ground.

Metal crashed to the stone beside her and her hand flew free of the rope. She pulled back her arm, swiveled around, away from the clanging on the other side of the altar. Firelight shifted wildly across the rain. Sir Lorian was doubled over at the base of the altar, his face a pale oval against black.

She leaped at him. He thrust out his arm and knocked her away. Driving her strength beneath the strike, she sliced again. The blade met cloth, jerking her off balance. Her bare feet slipped on the stone, throwing her over the altar's edge, and she fell forward onto him. She struggled, untangling her sodden robe, pushing herself away. She broke free and staggered back. Her hair was a curtain before the rain.

On the ground before her, Sir Lorian was doubled over, writhing. As firelight trailed away with the sound of hoofbeats, he was lost to the dark.

Strong arms banded about her. She jerked her wrist and plunged the dagger backward.

“
Constance,
” Saint growled, pressing his cheek to hers. “It is I. It is over. It is over.”

She heard the rain's patter all around her and a church bell ringing far away.