Kathryn Caskie (34 page)

Bluidy hell.
It wasn’t Hawksmoor.

“What the blazes are you on about, man, breaking in on us?” the gunman asked, his hand trembling under the weight of the moment.

“Percy, are we to be robbed?” Lying skewered beneath him, quivering thighs spread, was a buxom brunette, struggling to draw down her skirts. “Do something,
please.
Save us!”

Not Eliza. Thank God.

“I… uh … beg yer pardon,” Magnus stammered, trying to avert his eyes from the evidence of passion he’d interrupted. “Thought ye were someone else. Sorry to be a bother. Carry on then.” He flung the door closed again, wincing at his ill-chosen words. Then, with a wave of his hand, Magnus beckoned the startled driver on his way.

At last the carriage rolled over the gentle rise in the road and disappeared from sight, Magnus shook off the tenseness of near disaster.
Damn it all.

This carriage was the second he’d forced from the road within the past hour. But for all his exertions, he’d only mistakenly stopped no less than three eloping couples, one of which he’d caught coitus interruptus.

But Magnus would stop at nothing until he found Eliza. And that had to be soon. He usually traveled at nearly twice the speed of a carriage, even on the best of roads, which the road he now traveled certainly was not. He must be close.

Shoving his dusty boot into the stirrup, he raised up and swung his leg over the saddle, then urged his horse down the pitted and pocked highway.

His mouth was parched and gritty from the road, so when a quarter of an hour later he neared St. Albans and came upon the White Hart Inn, he decided to avail himself of a quick refreshment. He was about to dismount when an enclosed landau wheeled around from the side corner of the brick establishment, sending a stinging spray of gravel into his face.

When he opened his eyes a moment later, he seized upon the crest emblazoned on the landau’s black door.
Hawksmoor.

Got ye now.
Magnus nudged his horse into a gallop and struggled to draw alongside the carriage until finally he was able to reach out and pound the door. “Stop! Stop, I say!”

From inside, Hawksmoor’s voice called out to the coachman and within moments the carriage stopped in the center of the road.

Billowing clouds of dry saffron dirt rose into the air around the landau forcing Magnus to squint his eyes. He wasted no time and leapt from his horse, pressed the brass handle on the carriage door, and thrust his hand inside the dim cabin.

The moment he felt a soft arm, he wrapped his fingers around it and pulled its owner from the carriage.

“Well, you had better have a riotous good explanation for yanking a woman from her fiancé’s arms,” its owner hissed.

Magnus stared in disbelief. ‘Twas not Eliza at all. But her sister Grace! And she was snarling mad at him now.

Dumbfounded, he ignored Grace’s sputtering rebukes and lowered his head to peer inside the carriage for Eliza. He saw nothing, except for Hawksmoor’s livid eyes glaring back at him. At once, he felt the tapered end of a walking stick poke the hollow of his throat.

“Explain yourself, Somerton, before I run you through!” Hawksmoor demanded.

"With a walking stick?” Magnus lifted his brow. “That, sir, I highly doubt.”

“What? Oh,” Hawksmoor muttered, as he unsheathed a thin blade from the hollow of the cane.

“There ye go man, much more menacing.”

Magnus eased himself backward into the daylight, guided by the point of Hawksmoor’s tiny saber. The moment they both cleared the coach steps, Magnus slapped the blade from Hawksmoor’s hand and shoved him to the dusty road. “I would not try that again if I were ye.”

Turning around to Grace, Magnus found himself in the path of a whirling reticule. The heavy bag came down with a whoosh, slammed into his middle and knocked the breath from his lungs.

“Leave him be!” Grace cried. “You are not going to ruin this for me, Somerton. We
will
be married. No one can stop us!”

“God on earth, Miss Grace,” Magnus gasped, as he clasped his hands over his stomach. “What the blazes have ye got in that bag, paving stones?”

She tilted her nose upward. “Twenty guineas.” With an exasperated huff, Grace helped Hawksmoor to his feet, then turned back to Magnus. “Now, if you please, I demand to know why you’ve delayed us.” She narrowed her eyes and raised her reticule threateningly.

Hawksmoor moved closer to her side, as if for protection—
his.
“Yes, who sent you to stop us? My mother?”

“Why, no one,” Magnus said, looking to Grace as he raised a hand against any possible swing of her lethal bag. “I thought Eliza had run off to marry Hawksmoor here. I was trying to stop
her,
so I could convince her to marry
me.”

“You did not marry Miss Peacock then?” Grace asked, though she did not wait for an answer. “How wonderful!” The tightness around her eyes relaxed and she let out a small laugh. “But why would you believe my sister was off to marry my Reggie?”

“Why? Because Eliza … yer meddling aunts—” Magnus stopped then, and blinked stupidly back at her. Why had he thought it? Had anyone ever told him outright that Eliza was to marry Hawksmoor? He tumbled the question through his mind for several seconds.

The answer was …
nay.
But their engagement had been deceitfully implied, by Eliza and both of her aunts.

Why, those cunning little ladies. They’d tricked him into heading for Gretna Green. He’d been entrapped by another strategy from that misused book of rules!

No doubt the two old ladies had hoped to orchestrate a double wedding in Gretna Green.

Still, as frustrating as their games were, he could not be angry with the two conspirators. What they wanted so badly to achieve, a match between he and their niece, was no less than what he wanted with all his heart.

Magnus looked back at Grace, growing ever more frustrated with the situation. “Yer aunts told me Eliza was headed to Gretna Green.”

“Did they? How odd.” Grace shook her head then. “No, Eliza might have led our aunts to
believe
she was coming to Gretna Green, perhaps to stand witness for me or some such nonsense, but actually coming, no, that is highly unlikely.”

With an exasperated huff, Grace tilted her blue eyes up at the cloudless sky, then pulled at the satin ribbon bowed at her throat and removed her bonnet. “Even if she wanted to, Eliza wouldn’t have reached us in time. You, yourself would not have caught us so quickly had we not stopped to break our fast at the inn.”

“Why are ye so sure she wouldna come north?” Magnus prodded.

From the corner of her eye, Grace glanced tentatively up at Magnus, making him confident that she knew more about Eliza’s flight than she was letting on. Grace shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

“Today is the thirtieth, no?” she seemed to wince a little. “A few weeks ago I gave her a billet of passage to Italy. The ship was to set sail on the evening tide—
tonight.
I believe our Eliza may be headed for
Italy!”

Eliza stood on the gently swaying deck of the tethered ship that would soon spirit her down the Thames and away from all she knew. All she loved.

It was an odd sensation, her world shifting beneath her feet. But Eliza knew, in time, she would become accustomed to it.

A forlorn sigh slipped from her lips as she gazed out at the bustling London docks, at her aunts’ town carriage still waiting below—"in case you change your mind,” the coachman had said. But she would not.

For now it was too late to reverse her destiny.

Early this morn, instead of heading north for Gretna Green, she’d directed the coachman to take her to the small chapel where Magnus was to wed Miss Caroline Peacock. It would be torture to wait outside as Magnus pledged himself to another, but she could no more ignore the draw to the place than a moth could disregard the beckoning flame.

Eliza sat alone in the carriage for nearly an hour, until she saw the vicar open the doors to the congregation and invite them inside.

It took great strength of will for Eliza to remain several minutes more. But she waited, though hopelessly teary-eyed and wet-nosed, until she was confident that Magnus and Caroline had exchanged their solemn vows. Until she knew Somerton was saved.

Only then did she signal the coachman to drive onward to the docks, to her future, however bleak it now seemed.

Ship hands, burdened with trunks and bags, filed up the gangplank and disappeared into the dark hull one by one like an army of great ants. The sun-bleached deck planks creaked and groaned under their loads, and the ship tugged against the hemp ropes that bound it to the pier, as though protesting the delay in leaving.

Eliza wanted to cut the ropes herself, wanted to unfurl the sails, so painful was the thought of remaining in London a moment longer knowing Magnus was married to another.

She turned her back to the dock and walked to the stern, preferring to stare out at the lapping gray water and imagine her new life in Italy instead of lamenting what could have been.

Suddenly, strong hands seized her shoulders.

“Come with me, lass.”

Magnus.
She spun around and looked up into his sterling eyes as his hands slid down her ribs to cinch her waist. A whirl of emotions, thoughts, and words sped through her mind as he held her so tight she couldn’t move. “What are you doing here?”

Magnus smiled at her, but his eyes were deadly serious. “Why, I should think that obvious, lass. I’ve come to take ye home.”

“You will do no such thing!
I
am going to Italy. My new home. And
you,
my lord, should return to your
wife.
It is your wedding day after all.”

“Aye, ‘tis my wedding day, but how can I enjoy the afternoon when my bride is hell-bent on sailing away?”

“Your bride?” Eliza blinked. “What are you saying? You did not marry Miss Peacock?” An errant pang of elation shot through her middle.

“Nay, I didna.”

"But you must! You can still save Somerton.” After all her sacrifice, her heartache, here he was with her— throwing it all away. “It is not too late.”

“Aye, ‘tis. Ye see, I spoke with Miss Peacock yesterday and found she wanted to wed me as little as I wished to wed her. Something I said must have found a home in her heart, for she eloped with another last eve.” He smiled then. “Christ, I thought no news could make me happier—’til I discovered ye were not betrothed to Hawksmoor after all.”

Eliza turned away and refocused her gaze on the leaden water. “I am sorry for my deception. But I had to do it. I could not allow you to lose Somerton because of me.”

Magnus spun her around to face him. “Because of
ye?
What are ye saying, lass? Somerton is lost because of my brother, not ye.”

“But if you married Caroline Peacock—”

“Then I would have forfeited my future, my happiness, all for a pile of stone. Eliza, my life is with ye. Without ye, I have nothing. And if ye’ve yet to understand that, ye soon will.”

Magnus cupped her cheeks in his hands. “Eliza, I
love
ye. Och, ‘tis true, I have no riches or a fine house to offer. But I have a few quid and a wee cottage in Scotland. And if I work hard, and swear to ye I will, I can bring back my mother’s family saltworks on Skye. It willna be much at first, but enough, if ye love me as I love ye.”

He reached inside his pocket then and drew out a folded paper. ‘"Tis a special license to marry. I spent a fair bit of what I had left to make clear our way. The vicar is waiting, lass. Ye need only say ye’ll marry me.”

Eliza began to shake. Every part of her screamed
yes, yes.
But giving into that voice inside would be wrong, and both of them would live to regret it. She could not live with his resentment for losing Somerton.

Once the ship set sail and she was far away, Magnus would be free to offer for a more worthy, wealthy woman. And in time, he would understand how wrong it would have been to let his heart rule his head.

In the moment her decision was made, Eliza felt a rip inside her chest. “I am sorry, my lord, but I cannot,” she whispered.

Magnus shook his head. “Now see, I knew ye’d need a little convincin’, so I asked yer footman and driver to wait for us.” He caught Eliza’s arm and began to drag her across the deck toward the gangplank.

Eliza was so stunned that she barely registered what was happening. She never dreamed Magnus would use such extreme measures to detain her.

Other passengers, and indeed the captain himself, turned to stare.

“Help me! Please, help me!” Eliza screamed as she struggled fiercely against him.

Magnus turned around in time to see a group of angry-looking ship hands closing in on them. Then, Eliza saw a flicker of mischief spark in his eyes.

“Now, lass, what will the children do without their dear mother? I canna raise them all alone,” he said, in a most convincing tone. “Think of the bairn, only three months old. She’ll never know her ma.”

Eliza’s mouth fell open. She couldn’t believe what he was saying, much less that these strangers seemed to take him at his word. The encroaching crew turned away and returned to their own business.

“No, ‘tisn’t true. I have
no
children!” she cried out, but it was futile. No one was listening anymore.

She heard Magnus chuckle softly and then felt herself being lifted and thrown over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

"Let me go, you great oaf!” she howled.

“Now, is that any way to refer to yer husband and the father of yer six children?”

“Six?”
she repeated, earning her another chuckle. “My, you must think very highly of yourself.”

As he headed down the wobbly plank running from the deck to the pier, Eliza clung to Magnus. From this upside-down view of the world, her sky became a slurry of murky water and muck.

“You may be able to kidnap me, force me to miss the sail, but you cannot make me marry you.”

“I canna?” he asked, seeming quite pleased with himself.

“I should like to see you try,” Eliza shrieked, feebly pounding her fists against his broad back.