Behind the Marquess's Mask (The Lords of Whitehall Book 1) (13 page)

“Kathryn,
go.”

The way things were looking, Grey would soon be bleeding out on the road, and she would be in the hands of these
charming
gentlemen.

Grey would be bleeding out on the road.

No!

She mentally inventoried everything she had packed or was wearing, anything at all which might be useful. She wore several articles that inflicted pain, but were classified under lady’s apparel, not weaponry. They were hardly helpful here.

Then again, there might be something useful.

She slowly removed her hatpin, keeping her eyes locked on the two riders, and secured it in her hand with the riding crop.

“Kathryn,” Grey ordered. “
Now
.”

Deep breaths, Kathryn.

She counted to three in her head before forcing herself to act.

She walloped the rear of her horse with her crop, yanking back the reins as forcefully as she could. Firefly started forward, stomping scant inches from the highwaymen and rearing on hind legs. The horses spooked, causing only mild panic at the unexpected interruption, but it was enough.

When she was close enough, she took the pin and jabbed it in one of the highwayman’s legs as hard as she could. He jumped nearly out of his saddle, and the pin was flung to the ground.

Kathryn clung to her horse as both mounts stomped and reared dangerously close, putting Kathryn within grabbing distance more than once. Thankfully, the pin distracted the highwayman from her.

“A bloody bee!” the man screamed before letting loose with a string of curses Kathryn had never heard before.

The other rider turned toward his comrade. “For Christ’s sake, it’s only a bee!”

Suddenly, a bullet rent through one highwayman’s chest, and the caterwauling stopped. Another shot was fired immediately afterward. The second highwayman swung his pistol wildly as he attempted to stabilize himself on his mount, which was made frantic by the gunfire.

Grey threw two pistols to the ground and drew a knife from his boot, almost too fast for Kathryn to see it. The blade was sent whistling through the air just as the last shot rang out.

Her horse spooked again, becoming more and more difficult to control. By the time she steadied the animal, she was lightheaded and beginning to lose her grip.

She breathed in deeply, slowly, forcing herself to calm. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to focus, but light and dark spots began dancing before her eyes, and her ears were pounding or cracking, like bones beating against each other.

Kathryn shook her head and opened her jaw wide to pop her ears. Finally, the pounding or cracking stopped. Just the dark spots and lights remained.

The whole confrontation had happened so fast she wasn’t sure how the men had ended up on the ground in such a horrific way. And where had that knife come from? Or Grey’s second gun, for that matter?

“Kathryn, are you all right?” Grey asked from where he crouched on the ground, concern lighting his eyes. How the blazes had he gotten down there so fast?

“Am I all right?” She gestured incredulously to the blurry figures on the road. “Yes, of course,” she answered sarcastically. “I do this all the time.”

Even dazed, she was leagues better than those two unfortunate gentlemen. Still, she would be much better if these dashed lights would stop dancing in front of her eyes so she could focus. Perhaps then, she wouldn’t feel so incredibly annoyed. They were getting in the way. She would be able to think if she could only assess the situation clearly, but how could she do that with these damned fairies flitting about her head? And why was it getting so dark all of a sudden?

Perhaps if she just looked down. Yes, that was better, less fairies down there. It was a bit darker, though.

* * *

G
rey vaulted
from the saddle as soon as his knife found its target. He wasn’t about to assume them dead so easily. He hoped they weren’t dead. Though, he was positive the one who was hiding in the trees had taken a bullet to his brain.

The man was not coming back from that.

Grey was a damn good marksman and he let anger get the better of him, aiming a tad too close to the other blackguard’s heart. That fact, along with the rapidly expanding puddle of blood under him, didn’t give Grey much hope for that man’s survival, either.

The last took a knife to the gut. Painful, but his mouth should still work.

He was lucky Kathryn was there. If not for her, the bastard would be losing appendages, slowly being cut to bits for aiming his pistol at her. The jingle-brained gypsy could have killed her!

Grey sat on his heels, studying the shallow breathing of the highwayman, his own hot breath coming out in temporary puffs of fog from the cold air. It was the only sign that he was a bit overwrought, and not only from seeing his own life flash before his eyes when Kathryn had nearly gotten herself killed. Again.

This man was much larger than Grey had thought and a heck of a lot stronger from the looks of it. The mistake could have cost him had they been in hand-to-hand combat.

Grey made mistakes very rarely and paid very dearly for them. This was borderline messy.

With quick, deliberate movements, he retrieved his knife, wiping it off on a clean bit of the highwayman’s coat. Then he went to raise the knife to the blackguard’s throat. Before he could touch steel to skin, though, a solid blow knocked Grey several feet over and to the ground, blurring his vision with dots and lights.

The bruiser had a devastating fist. Too many more of those and Grey might need a new thinker.

Grey was on his back, and he soon felt his hand clasped in an iron grip. It was beaten against a rock twice before Grey tossed the knife several feet and, lifting both legs, kicked the giant away. At least the brute didn’t think to pin him down.

Big and stupid. How lucky.

Grey rolled several feet from where the burly man was beginning to stand, farther away from the knife, taking the chance that he might look like easy pickings to a man of that size, and the knife might be forgotten in favor of pounding Grey to a bloody pulp with his bare hands. Even wounded, the man’s pride might demand it.

It worked. The highwayman turned to face him instead of darting after the knife.

Grey’s chances had just improved.

Crouching low, he charged, powering his shoulder into the highwayman’s gut and sending him back to the ground.

The force of the blow knocked the wind out of the larger man, giving Grey time to pin him down and get in two hard punches across his jaw. Twice, he dodged a set of enormous hands hoping to squeeze his neck until his head popped off before he was able to land another set of devastating blows to the brigand’s temple.

The highwayman’s arms fell limply to the ground. That was when Grey should have stopped. Instead, his fists came down repeatedly, blindly buffeting blows against the battered face underneath him, fury bubbling up from deep inside.

He had killed again, proving the sort of monster he had become, the monster he would forever be. The kind who lived whilst lads like Johnny were cut down left and right. The kind who survived by ruthlessness and apathy.

And Kathryn had seen it all.

The raw flesh and bone he had been beating away at was barely recognizable as human. Ugly. Sickening. Just as Grey was. Bile rose in his throat for the first time in years. His arms ached, his breathing was labored, and his head pounded like Hades.

With a forced calm and a deep breath, he wiped his hands off on his coat and forced himself up. He still had to check the bodies for information, but he would start with the other one. If he had to stare at his handiwork any longer, he might just retch.

He ought to be interrogating right now, not sifting through a dead man’s threads. He ought to have carried more than two bleeding pistols. He ought to have listened to Pembridge and purchased one of those new revolvers from John Evans & Son of London. He could have shot their kneecaps and kept them alive. Then he never would have had to use his fists. His bullets would not have needed to count as they had.

Had Kathryn left as she ought to have, he could have resorted to other painful but effective methods. Grey could have done all that in the privacy of the servants’ quarters off the main house where his Runners were lodged.

Where the devil were
they,
anyway? Not following at a safe bloody distance; that was for certain. A great help they were.

Now they had no information, and Kathryn was likely terrified of him, which meant his near impossible mission had just reached mythological levels. He needed to gain her trust so she would tell him whom it was she had met in the alley the instant she regained her memory. He hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening now.

The dossier for this mission had just shrunk considerably. Now he would never know whom he was after, how many he was looking for, why anybody did anything, or what anybody had to gain by doing it. What the bleeding hell kind of mission was this?

He had been up against harrowing odds before, some downright suicidal, but his chance of success here was laughably nonexistent.

That troublesome cactus doing whatever the bloody hell she wanted didn’t help matters any.

She was supposed to follow orders. She was supposed to leave.
Beat that horse to the ground getting back
were his words, and she had said she understood. But what did he expect? The woman was as unpredictable as she was beautiful.

“I seem to remember you agreeing to obey till death do us part, not disobey so death will part us,” he chided loudly enough for her to hear whilst looking over the mess in the road. It could have been her mess.

She could have been
killed!

He shook his head, his anger drowning out the fear that coated his throat like bile. “You could have been—”

The words died on his lips when he turned to Kathryn. She was pale, decidedly so, in fact. If he were honest, chalk might give her color. She was staring at the men lying in their own bloody mess with a look of complete and utter horror. Surprisingly enough, she was acting as any normal lady would.

“Kathryn, are you all right?” he asked concernedly.

She mumbled something back incoherently. At least she could speak, somewhat. He had better finish up quickly, all the same, and get her back to Roseleaf.

He turned to search for correspondence. Under the neck cloth, cuffs, and boots were all checked first. Then he deftly felt through the pockets.

He had barely finished with the first body when he heard something hit the ground. He spun around on his haunches, instantly locking eyes on where she had landed. For a moment, he watched her, waiting for her to, by some miracle, stand up and dust herself off.

That did not happen, obviously.

On a silent curse, he forced himself up to go to her, every footfall pounding loudly in his brain. It was his fault. He should have tended to her first. An imbecile could have seen she wasn’t well. What decent person would be after witnessing such a display?

Hopefully, she hadn’t broken her neck.

Oh, God, what if she had broken her neck?

Once he crouched beside her, it took all of three seconds to determine she had a heartbeat. It took another thirty to regain control over his.

With military precision and steady hands, he executed a basic examination to determine her injuries, which seemed to be minimal. He removed her bonnet, carefully checking her skull and neck, finding them intact. He felt her sternum, shoulders, arms, spine, ribs, hips, legs, and ankles. Everything seemed to be in working order. Though she wasn’t able to tell him if anything hurt, he didn’t feel any broken bones.

He lifted her effortlessly, crossing over to a soft patch of grass beside the road to set her down.

“Kathryn, wake up,” he commanded, gently shaking her shoulders.

Thick, black lashes fluttered open to frame brilliant blue eyes. They peered up at him sleepily then snapped fully open.

“Grey, were you wounded?” she gasped.

“Wounded? Why would you…?” His voice trailed off as his brows snapped together. “How’s your vision? Can you see clearly? How many fingers am I holding up?”

He lifted two fingers close enough she ought to be able to see them if she could see at all.

“I can’t see anything with your giant paw in my face,” she said, swatting away his hand. “Are you all right?”

Was he all right? He wasn’t the one lying on the grass, unconscious. He wasn’t the one who had fallen from his mount. He wasn’t the one who had just witnessed violent deaths for the first time.

She had knocked herself blind. Good Lord, Grenville was going to murder him.

“Just have a lie down.” Grey began creating a mental checklist for an impromptu and remarkably anonymous excursion abroad, which would be much better accomplished if the newly blinded female would stop fighting him.

Kathryn’s elbow found a particularly sore spot in his ribcage. Grey winced and, with a hand on either of her shoulders, pushed her to the ground.

“Lie down,” he ordered through clenched teeth.