Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (25 page)

Quince went as far as she could before her strength deserted her. She could only hope she was completely concealed by the thick bramble. She could only pray she would catch her breath enough to think, and take stock.
 

She was alone—the mare had kept running. Smart horse to run when someone was shooting at her.
 

And not just someone. Strathcairn.

Damn the mon.

He was out there. She could feel the heavy vibration of his footfalls, and hear his harsh breathing and muttered curses as he ran past her, chasing the runaway mare.
 

He wouldn’t catch Piper. She was as wary of being caught as her owner. Warier, even.

Quince thought of trying to push deeper into the thorny bracken, but couldn’t seem to summon the wherewithal to move. Her arm was strangely numb, but throbbing with a sort of livid soreness.
 

She could think enough to claw the bright white mask off her face and shove it deep into the peaty dirt to hide it, but couldn’t think of what she should do next. She blinked the sluggish bleariness from her eyes, and shook her head to clear it. She had bashed and bruised herself up pretty badly in the fall. Her hat was gone, either tumbled from her head in the flight, or stuck on a gorse branch—hopefully far enough away that it wouldn’t lead Strathcairn straight to her hiding spot in the brush.

“Fuck all!” His roared curse filled the night.

He was closer than she thought—she could hear him kick the bushes no more than ten or fifteen yards away. She crawled away from the thrashing bushes—grubbing inch by stubborn inch through the thorns, retreating as far as she could into the thicket to curl up into a tight ball and pray that he came no further. She felt strange, and disembodied, and in terrible pain all at the same time, staring upward through the brambles, waiting to see his ire-filled face loom out of the night.

“I know you’re out there, damn you. I can feel it.” Strathcairn was livid in his rage, but farther away.
 

At least he hadn’t called her by name. And he didn’t seem inclined to get down on all fours, and crawl the twenty-five thorny yards nearer, and drag her out.
 

Quince squeezed her eyes shut against the ache that crept through her bones, and closed her mind to everything but the need to breathe quietly.
 

Time stood still. Or perhaps she slept. Or passed out. Either way, she must have waited for a very long time, because when next she opened her eyes and listened, there was nothing but the low moan of the wind across the heath. She braced herself against the pain lodging in her middle, and slowly pushed herself upright enough to look through the bramble. Across the heath, the carriage—lanterns, equipage, team and men—was gone.
 

Quince didn’t entirely trust her vision—she could barely see for the red spots dancing across her eyes. And she oughtn’t trust her judgment while the pain was working its way up her jaw and around the back of her skull.
 

And she certainly couldn't trust her luck—it had clearly run out.

She let herself sag onto the uncomfortable support of the bramble and waited for her vision to clear. But there really was nothing—Strathcairn was gone.
 

Clever, interfering, bloody, relentless man. He must have secreted himself in the coach long before it drew up to the front of Winthrop House. She should have noticed that the curtains were all drawn closed, and the interior lamps put out. She should have remembered that he had baited the ball with his conveniently lost items, and was likely to bait a coach with a fat purse as well. She should have realized he was that clever. That determined. That relentless.

But she hadn’t.
 

She had not done the one thing she knew, knew, knew she must—she had not clearly ascertained from whom she was stealing, a man who was, in hindsight, an associate of Strathcairn’s.
 

She had let Strathcairn become her nemesis.

And she was most sorely sorry now.

Quince sat for a while longer contemplating her stupidity, husbanding her strength, and feeling her heart thump a weak tattoo in her chest. Waiting for the terror to subside.

After a while, when she could no longer hear her own blood in her ears, she tried to grapple her painful way to her feet. She ached in every bone and sinew of her body, and the pain left her dizzy, grappling onto a tuft of gorse to stay upright.
 

But the moment she tried to hold on to the bracken, savage pain tore up her right arm—from her wrist to her elbow—which had recovered from the strange temporary numbness, and was now radiating agonizing heat that rose up like a wave, drowning the breath from her lungs, and hitting her hard enough to knock her to her knees.

She tried to cradle her arm close to her body, but the moment she did so, she could feel that her sleeve, and indeed the most of the right side of the black velvet suit, was sticky with warm wetness.

Quince held her open hand up to the fitful moon light—her palm was red with blood.
 

She was bleeding and in pain because she had been shot. Strathcairn had shot her.
 

Oh, holy bad, bad, bad, stupid luck. Stupid, stupid girl to get herself shot. Stupid girl to deserve it.

She was going to bleed to death on a heath miles and miles from home because she deserved to die. And they were never going to find her body, because it would be eaten by ravenous scavenging wolves, and no one would ever know it was she from the scattered, gnawed-upon bones.
 

And if she did die out on the heath, she would bloody well haunt him, and drive him mad with guilt and grief at what he had done.

But she did not die. The pain stayed strong, reminding her that she was indeed, miserably alive. And as she seemed not about to die at that moment, she had much better get herself home before she dripped to death on a gorse bush. If she could just get home, she would be all right. Her family would help her no matter what she had done. No matter what.

She would stay off the roads and take a circuitous route, because Strathcairn was clever and determined and relentless, and sure to come back. Sure to collect torches and those troopers from the Castle’s garrison who had been acting as footmen, and roust them out to beat the bushes and track her down.

Just the thought was enough to get her moving.

She would have leaned upon her father’s rapier like a cane, but she seemed to have lost it somewhere in the hedge. But she still had the sash, so she rigged it up as a sling the best she could, and she slowly, painfully, painstakingly set off in the direction the mare had been going when last Quince had seen her disappearing into the night.

She followed the rolling contours of the links, lurching along as she called to Piper with low clucks and quiet whistles. After a long half hour of stumbling progress the chill breeze finally brought back a low nicker, which led Quince toward the dim silhouette of the mare standing upon her own broken rein.

It was hell to hoist herself back into the saddle with only one good arm to pull herself upward, especially when the smell of blood made the mare skittish and jumpy. But she held on, clinging to Piper’s mane as if it were a lifeline, because that would be all she needed—to be dumped back upon the heath concussed so she might be found by Strathcairn at first light.
 

Because he would be back. He was tenacious that way.

And if it had been bad enough to have him deduce she was his petty thief, it would be ten times as bad to have him finger her for a highwayman.
 

So she had best keep him from knowing.
 

Quince turned the mare southeast across the heath and rode for home. Except that she couldn’t really ride—even at a walk, every bone in her body ached. Every stride jarred and drove the pain deeper until it was everything she could do just to grit her teeth, and hold on.

But hold on she did.
She
was tenacious that way.
 

Because she knew if she could just get home, everything would be all right. If she could just get home, she would never do it again. She would learn her lesson. She would give it all up and be good. If she could just get home.

Of course, Quince was realist enough to know there was no hiding what she had done—and had been doing for three long years now. She had been shot, and it would take more than just getting home to hush that up.
 

But if there were anybody who could keep Strathcairn at bay, it was her mother. Mama was no foolish, daft, reckless lass to give in to whatever intimidation Strathcairn might try to bring to bear. Nay.

Quince tried to keep that idea firmly in her mind, but it was so hard to concentrate. The narrow streets seemed to twist and waver in front of her, and Quince had to shut her eyes to the bilious queasiness, and trust the mare to find her way around the foot of Abbey Hill and into Canongate, and stride by laborious stride, make her way home.

She only realized she had arrived when Piper stopped in the empty stable yard. Quince had only the strength to slide to the ground, and somehow shoulder the stable door open enough for the mare to walk in.
 

 
She abandoned Piper to her own devices, knowing the mare could find her own stall, and trusting that someone would eventually tend to the animal, and groped her own way along the stable wall to the garden gate. She was so close—nearly there. Nearly home and safe. All she had to do was cross the long lawn of the garden to reach the house.
 

The torches that had illuminated the terrace had burned out, and the garden was quiet and empty. Quince set her good arm against the wall that ran the length of the garden, using it to steer her home.

She walked onward, one step at a time as if in a dream, focusing her narrowing gaze on the glass house. Knowing that once she made it there, she could use the pump to draw water to wet her lips that had long since gone dry, and cool the hot ache in her arm, and wash away the worst of the blood. She could rest there, and recover, before she made her way into the sanctuary of the house.

If she just made it there, it would be all right. Because she would be home.

But she wasn’t going to make it. Because the moment she finally reached the glasshouse, she heard that deep, deceptively even tone.
 

“I think you’ve gone far enough for one evening, don’t you? You dropped your father’s sword, wee Quince Winthrop.”

Chapter Sixteen
 

Alasdair was livid with something more towering than rage. He had thought to find a feckless youth robbing his coach, but the moment he heard her characteristically inventive oath, he knew his highwayman was none other than wee Quince Winthrop. So it would only been a matter of time before he caught her—he knew she would go to ground like the vixen she was. Animal instinct only ever got a person so far.

But wee Quince Winthrop wasn’t listening. As usual. She staggered a little, but tried to open the locked glass house door.
 

“I’m warning you, Quince, I—”

The key fumbled from her hand. “Aye,” she finally said, as she raised her empty hand in front of her, placating him. “I heard you the first time. There’s no need to carry on.”

“There’s every need.” His voice was as black as thunder. “You’ve crossed a line.”

“Aye.” She let out a strangely disassociated laugh that didn’t match the dire seriousness of her predicament. “I crossed it a while ago. But first, I—”

“No explanations. No excuses. No—”

“Nay,” she agreed before he could finish. “You’re quite right.” She wavered slightly. “He’ll never forgive me.”

“Who?” Alasdair pressed, hungry to get to the bottom of this ridiculous affair—a nineteen-year-old lass riding about Edinburgh, stealing from the rich, and robbing coaches at will. The broadsheets would have a field day. “Who will never forgive you? Whom are you working for? Give me his name.”

She turned her face toward him, and the fullness of the moon painted her face a ghostly white. “My father.”
 

Charles Winthrop, the Gardener Royal? A man who never seemed to speak unless it was of plants?