Calder strode along the road, Meggie on his shoulders. He’d tried to run, but she couldn’t keep her grip. The best he could do was to walk fast, his racing thoughts spurring him like thorns.
He’d lost Deirdre because he’d judged her too harshly. So sure of himself, so sure everyone else in the world lacked his own moral fiber, so ready to be judge and juror and hangman. People were flawed. His father was flawed. His brother was flawed.
He himself outshone them both. He’d judged his brother unworthy of Miss Phoebe Millbury and had stepped in to claim her for himself, despite knowing his brother’s feelings perfectly well. He’d isolated Meggie because she didn’t live up to his exacting standards. He’d imprisoned his bride of only hours because she didn’t meet his absolute approval.
And yet Deirdre was the one who’d never betrayed him, who would never betray him. He knew that now—now when it might be too late!
Dear God, don’t let it be too late!
Desperation coursed through him. He ached to undo, to replay, to turn back the hands of the clock, to be a
different man who would cause a different course of events—
Miraculously, he heard the rattling wheels of a carriage approaching them. He swung Meggie down and then stepped out into the road to wave it down.
It creaked to a halt just before him, so close he could feel the hot breath gusting from the horses.
The driver tipped his cap up. “You lost, guv’nor?”
Before Calder could answer, a shriek came from inside the vehicle. “Humbert, how dare you stop! He could be a highwayman! Drive over the rotter if you must!”
Calder held his hands wide and approached the side of the carriage. “No, please! You must help us! My wife’s been kidnapped. If you let us on, we can catch them still!”
A round, angry face framed by a silk turban appeared at the window. “We’ll do no such thing!” The woman shook her finger at him. “We want nothing to do with such matters, do we, Harold?”
Calder tried to put on a soothing mein. “Please, madam, sir! They are only moments ahead but if we delay—”
“Humbert, drive on!”
The driver raised his hands to snap the reins, then he halted, his eyes wide on Calder. Or rather, what sat in Calder’s grip, black and shining and deadly. It was Baskin’s spent pistol, which he scarcely remembered tucking into his shirt. Calder regarded it with some surprise himself. That had been entirely too easy to do.
“Oh, dear,” he said mildly. “It seems I’ll be taking the carriage after all.”
There came a muffled squeak from the general direction of Meggie. Calder sighed. All those hours of etiquette lessons, gone in a flash. Oh, well. There was no help for it.
He waggled the pistol at the occupants of the carriage. “Madam, sir, out you come.”
The small wiry man helped his large gasping wife from the vehicle. Calder looked at the driver. “I fear you’ll be coming with us, my good man. I’ll give you fifty pounds if you’ll do so willingly.”
The woman shrieked. “Humbert, you wretch, it’ll be the end of you if you do!”
The driver looked at the couple with a slight smile, and then back at Calder, his grin widening, and nodded. “I’d have come for five.”
The small man paled further. “You—you cannot mean to leave us here alone! Why, it might be days before someone else comes this way!”
Calder looked at the driver. “Is that true?”
Humbert shrugged. “Might be. The weather’s turnin’. Not much call to come this way when there’s mud for a road.”
Meggie folded her arms. “Can’t we leave them, Papa? The lady’s voice makes my teeth hurt.”
Calder glanced at the couple. They were ill-suited to last more than an hour on their own. “What if they don’t survive?”
Meggie shrugged. “I’ll bet no one likes them anyway.”
Humbert grimaced in agreement.
When Calder still hesitated, the woman shrieked in rage. “You horrible man! You wouldn’t dare! What sort of father are you, to commit such a crime!”
Calder rather doubted that the woman was truly concerned for the state of Meggie’s moral character. “It cannot be helped,” he replied shortly.
“You should be ashamed of yourself! You’re a horrible influence on the child!”
He grinned at his daughter, feeling fierce and free and hopeful for the first time. She grinned back at him, a matching light in her eyes, so like his. “It’s quite the other way about, you know.”
He tipped his hat at the couple. “So be it. You’ll stay here. I’ll send help, once I’ve accomplished my mission.” He swung Meggie into the carriage and clambered aboard. “Drive on, Humbert!”
It didn’t take long, going at speed, to catch up to his phaeton, for it lay abandoned in a ditch. Calder and Meggie leapt from their carriage and examined the broken phaeton, but it was empty—
Except for a great deal of blood.
They have to be close by, for Baskin can’t get far carrying Deirdre, but the Heath is so large and so dark, they could be anywhere!
They needed manpower.
Driving fast, Humbert had them at the outskirts of the Heath in moments, but it seemed like hours. He ordered the driver to stop at the only sign of life, a grimy public house that still seemed to be serving.
He had no choice but to leave Meggie to watch over the carriage. He didn’t think the driver would disappear without his fifty pounds, but he could not afford for the man to escape and call the watch down upon him. The consequences for tonight’s madness would come eventually and he would face them gladly—if he had Deirdre by his side.
The outrageousness of leaving a nine-year-old to hold a grown man at the point of a pistol faded next to the thought of bringing her with him into this scabby, stinking cesspit of humanity. A child shouldn’t even know places like this public house existed.
The noise—composed of drunken male shouting, drunken female shrieking, and drunken puking from both sexes—forced him to give up on any civilized form of communication. Oh, well. In for a penny, in for a pound.
He leaped to stand on the most crowded trestle table, casually kicking mugs of stale ale into the laps of the unsavory clientele. It was likely the closest they had come to a bath in months, so he counted it as a favor to the world in general. He hefted one of the tipped mugs, then threw it across the room to shatter against the stone fireplace. It exploded loudly enough to catch the attention of all but the most cataleptic sots.
“Oy!” The innkeeper, identified by an apron that ought to have been burned for violations of basic human cleanliness, strode forward. He was a big fellow, nearly as big as Calder himself. He was backed by enough men that the sheer poundage would be enough to defeat Calder’s desperation and fighting skills. Then again, he could be quite the bastard when he drank. He swept up another mug and drained the nasty ale in one swallow. Then gagged.
Bloody hell. “Bloody hell.” It felt rather relieving to say it out loud. He tried it again. “Bloody fucking hell.” He wiped his mouth. “This swill isn’t fit for fucking pigs.”
The innkeeper reddened. “Toff bastard. Let’s teach ’im what for, lads!” The mob, well-lubricated by
swill-ale and general hatred for the Quality, moved forward en masse, surrounding the table.
Bloody hell.
Calder jumped high and grabbed the beam overhead with both hands. He took out the innkeeper with two bootheels high in the chest and then swung himself up to stand on the beam, bracing himself with one hand on the ceiling. Dirty, sweating, upturned faces swirled beneath. He saw a pair of eyes just like his own …
Meggie
.
“Bloody
hell
.”
Meggie frowned up at him. “What’re you doing up there?” Her high voice piped clearly above the murderous mutterings of the crowd. “I thought you came in to get help for Dee.”
The surly rabble turned as one to gaze in astonishment at the tiny, well-dressed girl-child in their midst. She glared back at them with equal or perhaps even superior surliness, but they were a hardened lot and scarcely seemed to notice. They had no idea who they were dealing with—a fortunate thing, for Lady Margaret Marbrook, daughter of a wealthy marquis, would make for a fetching bit of kidnapping—witness the reason he was here in the first place!
“Meggie, up!”
She didn’t hesitate but clambered right onto the table he’d emptied with his ill manners. She stood and reached her hand high. He dropped to his knees on the wide beam and swept her up beside him before any of the scum realized what she was about.
Meggie balanced calmly next to him and surveyed their situation with no apparent fear of the height. “You’ve buggered it now, Papa.”
“Yes, it would seem so.”
She patted his arm. “Don’t worry.” She reached into the puffed bodice of her little dress and pulled out the pistol.
He reached for the firearm, but she pulled it out of his reach. “Wait …” She gazed up at him soberly for a moment. “Papa, do you trust me?”
God, she couldn’t do any worse now than he had. And she was right. They
were
buggered. He nodded. “I trust you.”
She grinned evilly. “Just pretend you’re … well, not you. All right?”
“I think I can do it. I’ve been practicing,” he said seriously.
She patted his arm again. “I’ll help you.” Then she turned to face down into the pub. “Oy!” she shouted. Again, her clear childish soprano cut through the noise like a fine knife through privy-muck. The mob gave her their surly attention.
She waved the pistol. The attention grew more sullen but the room quieted somewhat. “We need men to search the Heath. You’ve all just volunteered.”
The innkeeper was still down, so the second largest man took it upon himself to be the leader of the mob. “Who’re you t’be tellin’ us what to do? You’re a child.”
Meggie laughed rudely. “I’m not a child. I’m the meanest pygmy you’ve ever met.”
It was so ridiculous that it would have been laughable—if the dwarf hadn’t been waving a gigantic pistol with complete ease. There was something rather convincing about cold steel and gunpowder.
The man, who also seemed to be the mental giant of
the crew, came up with what he thought was a vital point. “Yer wearin’ a little girl’s dress.”
Meggie widened her eyes gleefully. “Stole it, I did,” she growled. “Right off’n the little girl I killed with this very pistol!”
Calder closed his eyes briefly in apology to anyone who had ever tried to get Meggie to speak properly. It was going to be a long road back to propriety after this. Then he joined in—in his own voice. “She did. I saw her. She killed several people, actually. She killed the man I stole these clothes from. She kills often. I think she likes it.” He glanced down at his little daughter in her stockings and tiny buttoned boots. “She wears the dress to make ladies think she’s lost—and then she robs them.”
Meggie shot him a glance of respectful appreciation. He nearly took pleasure in it, until he remembered it was for spouting atrocious untruths. She grinned down at the men. “So, who wants to try me aim first?”
The big fellow shifted restlessly as his gaze flicked about him. Now that he’d taken up the job of spokesman, he seemed to realize that this also made him something of a target. “Well … what you searchin’ the Heath for anyway?”
“My—me sister,” Meggie replied. “She was took by a man—a bastard toff—and he’s hidin’ in the Heath.”
The man rubbed his unshaven chin for a moment. “I had me a sister once. I reckon I’d want to find the toff what took ’er.”
The man next to him snickered. “Yeah, so ye could hit the blighter up for a quid!”
With a swing of his giant fist, the spokesman struck down the wit standing next to him without so much as
glancing at him first. Then he gazed up at Meggie and Calder. Calder could almost hear the clockworks grinding away in his head.
“Say we find the toff and yer sister—you say you been out robbin’ ladies. What you got to trade?”
Desperation welled up, choking Calder. God, they were wasting too much time here! He pulled his purse from his pocket and jingled it. “Gold. We stole gold from the ladies. You can share it all if you find my—her sister. I have more elsewhere I can give you after.”
Meggie closed one eye and aimed the pistol directly at the big man. “Or you can die now.”
Damned if she didn’t sound completely serious. Calder hid a slight shudder.
The man held up both hands. “No need for that, missy—er, ma‘am. Why, we’ll be ’appy to ’elp, won’t we, lads?”
The ridiculous story, the pistol, the gold—Calder didn’t much care what had convinced the lot of them to try. He simply took the gun from Meggie, swung back down to land feet first on the table and reached to catch his daughter as she flung herself trustingly into his arms. Unwilling to put her down in the milling herd of heavy boots, he put her on his shoulder. She wrapped her hands under his chin to hold on.