Escape with A Rogue (3 page)

The only hope in her heart came from that statue. He couldn’t hate her and so lovingly craft an image of her. Could he?

He grabbed a potato from her cart.

Beausoleil slammed his fist into Jack’s shoulder, but despite the force of it, Jack did not move an inch. “You’re a madman, Travers. They’ll throw you back in—and all for the sake of a potato?” A mocking grin touched Beausoleil’s mouth, as he looked between Jack and her. “You’ll miss the night’s production of Othello in the cockcroft of Block Four.”

Jack growled, a low rumble in his throat that silenced Beausoleil at once.

She tried to remember what she’d planned to say. She’d hoped to be able to speak to Jack alone. “Is there something you would like?” she asked softly.

“Would you sell me a few . . . for the statue?”

“Yes, I would, sir. For that statue, I’d help you in whatever way you wish.”

She heard his breath catch. Then she saw raised rifles at the back of the crowd—guards trying to shove their way through the crowd of men. They must be searching for Jack. Beausoleil moved to stand in front of him, shielding him, an action that surprised her. Beausoleil couldn’t know who she was, or what she planned, but she had to make use of the chance he’d given her.

She moved close to Jack, holding up a turnip as though she was trying to convince him she held a tempting delicacy. Even though he smelled of sweat and dirt, her nostrils flared. His scent was unique, alluring even now, and she tripped over her words. “G—Grandfather told me you were innocent. Word has swept through the village, and now all eyes are looking elsewhere for the murderer. People think . . . they think Philip did it. No one accuses, not outright, but everyone looks at him with hatred and suspicion, and it’s destroying him.”

She had to stop.

Impassive as the granite walls. That was Jack’s face.
Just as it has so obviously destroyed you,
she wanted to add. Her brother Philip was drinking heavily and lashing out in anger, crushed by the weight of suspicion. But Jack must be more deeply enraged than she could imagine. He seemed to have barricaded the anger inside him.

But his beautiful eyes softened. “You aren’t a dream, then? I’m not going mad?”

 “What do you mean?”

“You’re real. And here.” A ragged groan. “Why?”

“I was wrong about you. Grandfather insisted you are innocent. Is it so?”

 “It would be easier for you and for your brother,” Jack said, “if you believe I’m guilty, my lady.”

“
My lady?
” Beausoleil jerked around, but at Jack’s scowl, he turned back to be lookout.

She wanted to smack the turnip against Jack’s chest, but it would be as fruitful as trying to batter her way through the prison gate with the wretched vegetable.

“I believe my brother is innocent. If you are also innocent, then someone else killed that young woman. And you do not belong in here—”

“Go away, Lady M.” His gaze slid from her to the militiamen who stood on the walls surrounding them. More guards were pushing through the crowd of imprisoned French soldiers and English tradesmen haggling over prices.

“It’s not so easy, Mr. Travers,” she snapped back. “I cannot let Philip’s heart and soul be destroyed. I cannot let you suffer because my words put you in here. I need the truth—”

Callused and warm, his hand closed hard around hers, crushing her palm to the dirty side of the turnip. He’d never touched her before. Not during any of the times she’d spoken with him at the stables and wished he would—

Beausoleil watched them, curiosity plain in his blue eyes. But she wouldn’t have pulled her hand away for the world.

“You don’t need the truth to save your brother.”

“I’m not going to let you rot in here. I’ve gone to every magistrate from London to Plymouth, Jack. I’ve even petitioned to the Prince Regent.” Every magistrate had refused to listen to her, and she was still waiting for a response from Prinny. She feared one would never come.

“Don’t. Let this alone, my lady. Go home.”

“It’s not safe there anymore. Someone shot at me. They almost hit me in the head.”

Jack’s face went stark white. “Christ Jesus, Lady M. What have you done?” Then he held up his hand. “Don’t tell me. We don’t have time. I can’t take the risk they’ll catch me with you.”

“I have a plan.”

“No, you don’t.” He braced his arm on her cart and lowered his mouth close to hers.

In the past, she’d yearned a thousand times to kiss him. Just being near him always made her hot and anxious and aroused. She’d dreamed of kisses, and passion, and even making love. But she’d never dared even touch him. It would be a scandalous act, and she had always tried to be the perfect lady. Here, it didn’t seem so impossible.

After all, some of the English lasses were letting the Frenchmen kiss their hands and cheeks, and one couple was stealing a quick, furtive kiss.

“I want you to get out of here and go somewhere where you will be safe,” she whispered.

She saw fear in his eyes. Then he muttered, “Wherever in hell that may be. Lady Madeline, why did you involve yourself in this?”

“I am going to get you out of here, Jack,” she insisted in a whisper. “I heard about a French officer who was helped by a market trader named Mary Ellis. She smuggled in civilian clothes and he hid underneath her voluminous skirts, then got into the disguise and walked out with her. I can return tomorrow—with clothes.”

Jack caught hold of her chin—a touch he never would have dared when he was the head groom on her family’s estate. Her hope for a kiss
had
been madness. He looked as though he wanted to turn her over his knee and pummel her rump with the flat of his hand. “I’m not going to burrow under your skirts to change my clothes.” His green eyes went horribly cold. “Don’t come back, Lady M. I forbid it.”

“I have to, Jack. I got you in this wretched place. I’m going to get you out.”

“I’m only days away from an escape of my own. I tried it before but I got caught. This time, I won’t. I want you to go home.
You
are not to take any more risks. Not over me. I was just a groom, my lady. I’m not worth it.”

“You are an innocent man sentenced to hell. Of course you are worth it, Jack Travers.”

He looked stunned, as if she’d hit him. Then he shook his head. “I must be insane, but I do want you to know the truth. Your grandfather was right. I’m innocent.”

Beausoleil let out a cautionary whistle. Madeline jerked around to look.

The red coats of the guards flashed through the crowd—they were seconds away from catching her with Jack.

When she looked back to Jack, he was gone.

“Stop!”
someone shouted from within the crowd. The guards abruptly steered their course away from her. They were trying to run after Jack. She was safe, he was in trouble, and there was nothing she could do.

“I’ve got to hop it,” Beausoleil muttered. “He’ll get a dozen lashes with the cat for running off from his guards. And likely go back into the Black Hole. I doubt very much you’ll see him here tomorrow,
my lady
. I doubt he’ll be escaping anytime soon. But if you want to help a man get out—”

She launched the turnip at his chest. With an audacious wink, Beausoleil caught it.

Then he was gone too, vanishing in the crowd.

Tom reached her side and began nervously rearranging his vegetables. “You found him, my—lass?” There was no mistaking the fear on Tom’s normally good-natured face.

She nodded. “I have to come back. He won’t accept the clothes and come out with me.”

Tom shook his head. “Don’t see any other way for him to get out, my—my dear.”

“Then I have to make him change his mind.” Madeline’s stomach felt as though it was spinning like a top.

She knew the soldiers would catch Jack—where could he hide in a prison? He would be brutally punished. Whipped. Locked up in that dark hole. Because of her.

How could she ever make things right?

I’m not worth it,
he’d growled. He’d told her she didn’t need the truth to save her brother.

She didn’t. But she needed it to save Jack.

Chapter Two

“Her
ladyship
came back. The pretty one with the posh voice who offered to hide you under her skirts.”

Beausoleil’s quiet words hit Jack cold—along with the memory of Lady M.’s nervous yet sultry voice advising him to slip beneath her skirts. The weight of the sledgehammer in his hands brought his arm swinging down. Lash welts on his back scraped against the coarseness of his shirt, and his muscles screamed as he tried to stop the misaimed stroke—

“Jesus!” Beausoleil dropped the wedge and leapt back. “You almost smashed in my skull.”

“Your own damned fault.” Jack let the iron head of the hammer thud against the slab of granite they were standing on. With the rest of work party of prisoners, he and Beausoleil were breaking up granite into rectangular blocks, using sledgehammers and chisels.

“When did she come back?” he growled. “She wasn’t in the market this morning.”

He’d wanted to feel relief when he hadn’t seen her. He’d wanted to believe he’d frightened her back into sense and she had gone away.

Of course that would be entirely unlike the Lady Madeline he remembered. She had been an extremely stubborn and determined young lady. The kind of woman who took charge. The sort of managing female he had never liked—before he had met Lady M.

Gusts of wind dropped into the quarry, whipping at the prisoners. Jack glanced up. Clouds massed along the ridge above—black clouds that stretched wide as though ready to gobble up the land. A storm must have flung itself up against North Hessary Tor. Rain spattered, cold on his sweaty face.

Beau flexed his shoulders. “Every day, while you were in the Black Hole, she came.”

Damn his soul for the flicker of delight that came with learning that.

A soldier glanced over—Blenchley, the head guard he’d evaded on the day Lady M. had first come. Blenchley had been reprimanded for letting Jack get out of his hands. Pure hatred now flashed in the guard’s eyes.

A long time ago, Jack would have answered the vicious glare with an act intended to prove his power. He would have crushed a man like Blenchley under his boot.

Now he had no choice but to obediently heft his hammer to his shoulder. The guard was armed and he wasn’t. He couldn’t throw his life away. Not when he had Lady M. to protect. The problem was that he couldn’t protect her if he was in prison, but he refused to involve her in his escape.

“Fetching thing, isn’t she?” Beau repositioned the iron wedge in the fissure the last pounding had made.

Fetching?
She’d haunted him for his ten-day stay in the dark of the Black Hole. He was tormented by the memory of delectable, pink lips that pursed and frowned and curved into smiles that could turn a grown man into a baying, lust-driven fool. He could still smell her perfume. She had touched it to her neck. All the time he had been warning her to walk away from him, he’d been breathing in her field-flower scent as though his life depended on it.

Alone in the dark of the
cachot
, he’d had to shake his head at a woman who thought to dab herself with scent while plotting to break a worthless rogue out of gaol.

But he could not push desire for her out
of his head. It had been his constant companion, making his breathing ragged, his heart pound. It had sapped his strength and flooded his mind at a time when he needed to think. All his life, he’d been able to control sexual need—he’d seen what happened to men who were consumed by it. Yet Lady M. had shattered his control ever since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her.

It had been two years ago, when he had left London to escape the Crown. Crown agents suspected him of funding traitors. It was not true—he had been set up by his former business partner, Stephen Bells. He had changed his name, walked away from his fortune, and found work as a groom at the country estate of Lady Madeline’s father. Jack had walked away from his wealth to punish himself for the accidental death of his partner’s wife.

Back when he’d been a notorious gaming hell owner in London, he would have pursued Lady M. He hadn’t given a damn for propriety then. But he had changed.

“What’re you skiving for, Travers?” Blenchley shouted, his hand on his rifle.

Hammer up. Jack’s muscles protested at the speed he brought it to his shoulder, and he threw his weight into the stroke. The blunt nose of the hammer slammed to the mushroomed top of the iron wedge. Pain shot up his wounded back. Rain splattered harder.

She hadn’t come today. Maybe it meant she actually had given up and gone home.

Beau shot a glance around, likely to ensure they were still alone in this part of the quarry. Armed guards were situated on a small ridge above them.

“The key didn’t work, did it?” Beau muttered beneath his breath. “Last night, I saw you filing another out of bone by moonlight.”

Jack brushed back his hair. “No, the key worked.”

“Christ Jesus, Travers, why were you making a copy, then? Where did the soldiers catch you? Was it with your hand on the bloody door handle and your key sticking out of the lock? They got the first key, didn’t they? That means they’ll know our plan. Hades, I’ve got to get
out
of here—”

Jack lifted the hammer in warning and jerked his head toward Blenchley, who was pacing closer to them. Last night, his first night out of the
cachot
, he had tested the replica key he had filed out of a tin fork. “I made a replica of the successful key,” he murmured, “for insurance. The guards caught me at the wall. Once I heard their voices, I headed to the corner, and had scaled about six feet when they found me.”

“So they think you were trying to escape by climbing out?” Beausoleil gave a low whistle of relief. “I’ve heard the French are close. Another week of tunneling will take them to the wall. They’re going bloody mad with desperation to get out. No one has successfully tunneled out of here.”

Blenchley had turned to watch the groups of working prisoners who were closer to the track that led out of the quarry. Most escapes happened when the men took advantage of opportunity on a work party.