Stand and Deliver (9 page)

“That was a damn fine eel pie, girl. Almost makes up for you being a highwayman’s whore.”

She gritted her teeth. “I am no man’s whore.”

He tapped the side of his nose and winked at her, a look of malice in his eyes. “A little birdie I know tel s me something different. He tel s me that you’ve been spreading your legs for Jack Hal himself, who’s wanted the length and breadth of England. And the little birdie says more. He tel s me that Jack Hal is on his way back here tonight as soon as he’s finished a robbing of coaches. Back to his bonny Bess, waiting for him at the window.”

He cackled at his own wit, an evil sound that echoed through the rafters. “But bonny Bess isn’t the only thing that’l be waiting for Jack Hal now, isn’t that right, boys?”

He reached down and caressed the barrel of his musket obscenely. “There’l be a little welcoming party for him when he returns. He’s worth a golden guinea apiece for us al – dead or alive.”

One of the soldiers eyed Bess with a scowl as she poured him another mug of ale. “If what the lad says is true, she’s been whoring for him. What if the bitch gives us away afore we can nab him?”

The magistrate grabbed her by the hand. “She won’t have a chance.” Ripping the leather thong that tied back his hair, he pul ed her wrists behind her back and tied them together so tightly that the thin strip of leather cut into her flesh.

She cried out and tried to wrench herself free, but he backhanded her viciously across the face. “You’l stay like that until your Jack is hanging from a gibbet, as he deserves.”

The soldiers laughed and jeered at her as the magistrate dragged her behind him up the stairs and into an upstairs chamber that looked out over the road across the moor. “We’l see him coming from miles away,” he chuckled. “There’l be no escape for Jack Hal this time.”

Bess could only watch in horror as they arranged themselves around the room, one man stationed at the window with his musket at the ready, the magistrate slumped in the room’s only chair, and the others sprawled over the floor.

The magistrate pul ed Bess roughly onto his knees.

“We could be in for a long wait, lads. Just as wel we have some entertainment with us.” He pawed at her bodice, pul ing it down until her bosom spil ed free. The soldiers gave ribald catcal s at the sight of her nakedness.

With her hands tied behind her, Bess could not fight him off. She could not even get off his lap. His cock was stiffening underneath her and pressing sharply into her buttocks and his breath was hot on her neck, and stil he held her there, his greedy hands pawing at her breasts, pinching her nipples viciously between his thumb and forefinger until she gasped.

He mistook her gasp of pain for one of appreciation.

“The whore likes that,” he said, to sniggers from his men. “I wonder what else would take her fancy? What do you say that we find out, eh?”

He put his hands on her skirts, slowly sliding them above her ankles, displaying her calves in their woolen stockings to the grinning men below.

Bess shut her eyes to block out their avaricious stares.

She knew what would come next, she knew it in her bones.

A robber’s whore, that’s al she was to them now. Not even a person anymore, and worth nothing but a moment’s fun.

The magistrate would rape her casual y, as he would take a tuppenny whore, and then he would throw her to his men to use in the same fashion.

When they were done, he would toss her aside in the corner and leave her there, uncared for, until Jack was captured. If she even lived that long.

Treating her like that was a worse sin than holding up a coach and relieving some aristocrat of a few valuables that he would hardly miss, but no one would think to hold the squire to account for it. He was the magistrate for the country. He
was
the law, there was no other.

Her skirts were around her knees when she heard a strange gurgling noise coming from the magistrate’s stomach. His stomach muscles tensed and he let fly a great fart that fil ed the air with a stench fouler than the rotten eels she had served him for dinner.

The men on the floor closest to him scooted away, making coarse jokes about the vile smel .

Bess’ burgeoning hope that her rotten eel pie was doing it work already was fading. The eel disagreed with him, that was al .

The magistrate gave a great bel y laugh. “It’s the eels. I love ‘em, but they disagree with my innards something terrible.”

Another loud gurgling from his stomach interrupted him, and he screwed up his face. “Damn eels,” he said, as he pushed Bess aside and staggered to his feet. “Our fun wil have to wait. I need the damn privy.” He fixed them al with an evil glare as he wrenched open the door. “Leave the girl be until I’ve done with her. I’l cut the ears off any man who dares touch her before I do.” With that, he clapped his hands to his stomach as it gave another, even louder, gurgle, and clattered off down the stairs.

Bess claimed the chair the magistrate had vacated, devoutly hoping the eels were giving him a dreadful stomachache. As long as he remained glued to the privy, she had a temporary reprieve.

The departure of their leader sobered the men, at least temporarily. Though the crude comments flew thick and fast, none of them dared to approach Bess, or do more than cast covetous glances at her out of the corner of their eyes. The magistrate was clearly a man to be feared.

Her hands hidden by the back of the chair, Bess worked at the bonds holding her tied. If she was to have a chance of escape, she needed to be free of them.

A sharp splinter on the back of the chair gave her the leverage she needed. Working as fast as she could, but surreptitiously, so as not to attract the attention of the soldiers sprawled out on the floor, she rubbed the leather thong backward and forward along the sharp edge until at last she felt the leather break.

With the thong cut, it was the work of only a few minutes to shake the bonds away from her wrists. Stil she kept her hands hidden behind her, knowing that surprise would be her al y. She would keep her success hidden until the opportune moment for escape arrived. She had to succeed on the first attempt, because if she failed she would not get to try again.

The minutes slowly ticked by, and stil the magistrate did not return. Bess blessed her good luck that he was so partial to eels, but his stomach was too weak to digest them.

The soldiers were getting increasingly restless, going so far as to voice their irritation with their leader in muffled imprecations. As the last of the daylight faded from the sky and the evening stretched into night, Bess grew increasingly confident that her eels had done their work— on the magistrate at least.

The man at the window with the musket was the next to go. With a muffled curse, he set down his piece barrel up, and made a hasty departure out of the door.

Though the others swore roundly at him for leaving his post, he paid them no heed.

It was no wonder. The glimpse of his face that Bess caught as he hurtled out of the door showed him to be an interesting shade of green.

The stomping of his boots on the stairs was coupled with another unmistakable noise – the noise of violent retching. He had not even made it outside before his sickness overtook him.

Her mouth twitched into a smile that she could not for the life of her repress.

Definitely the eels.

Within minutes of the man on guard leaving his post, al hel had broken out in the chamber in which they were closeted.

One of the men clutched at his stomach, and then, evidently knowing he would not make it to the privy, threw open the casement window and emptied the contents of his stomach out on to the ground below.

A second scrabbled under the bed for the chamber pot, set it in the corner of the room, and sat heavily on it, his breeches around his knees, groaning violently as he emptied his bowels.

A third lay on his back on the floor, his eyes closed, his face contorted in agony.

None of them watched out the window for Jack riding across the moors. And none of them cared two straws that she stil sat among them. Other, more urgent, matters occupied their minds. It was time to make good her escape.

She rose from the chair, taking care to ensure her hands remained hidden behind her so the break in her bonds did not show. Not that it made any difference to them in their current state whether she was stil tied or not. None of the men paid her any heed, not even when she stepped to the window and grabbed the musket that the guard had left propped against the sil . She could have shot them al where they lay, and judging by their groaning and moaning and the expressions of agony on their faces, they would have thanked her for it.

Stil , there was no sign of Jack.

Taking the musket with her, she picked her way gingerly over the prostrate bodies and out of the noisome air of the chamber.

And then, in the quietness of the corridor, she heard the quiet, but unmistakable, noise of hoofbeats, coming insistently closer.

Ducking into an empty room, she peeked out of the window. In the moonlight, she could see a lone horse and rider gal oping hel for leather along the road that led to the inn. A huge horse, she could see that much in the moonlight, and a rider wearing a cocked hat.

Her heart leaped into her throat with both fear and joy.

Joy that he had kept his word and come to see her for one last time. And fear that this visit might yet prove his undoing.

Immobilized with sickness or not, the soldiers would not wil ingly let Jack escape them. Not with a price of twenty guineas on his head. One of them would be sure to stagger to his feet and fire off a vol ey of shots in his direction. And the closer she al owed him to come, the more danger he was in.

The casement window creaked on its hinges, but by dint of much pushing and shoving, she was able to open it far enough to poke the barrel of the musket through. It was loaded already—she had seen for herself the soldier fil ing it with a twist of gunpowder. Al she had to do was to pul the trigger to alert Jack that the inn was no safe harbor for him tonight.

Bracing the end against her shoulder and pointing the barrel into the air, she hauled backward on the trigger. It exploded with a report that left her ears ringing, and recoiled with such force that it knocked her to the ground.

Staggering to her feet, she stared out of the window.

The horse and rider had come to a stop at the noise.

As she watched, the rider tugged on his reins and wheeled away back in the direction from whence he had come.

She heaved a sigh of relief and sank bonelessly to the floor.

Jack was out of danger.

Which was, however, more than could be said about her. The magistrate would be furious that his prey had escaped him. Her safety would last only for as long as he and his men were incapacitated, and not a moment longer.

The report from a musket shattered the night. Jack pul ed hard on his reins, his horse rearing up under him with an aggrieved whinny.

Fighting to keep his seat, he clamped his thighs on the horse’s flanks like glue.

Whoever was shooting at him from the window of the inn was a damned poor shot. There was no sign that the musket bal had even come close.

He hadn’t lived for so long outside the law without a healthy cynicism about coincidences. The shot had been aimed at him without a doubt. If he lingered, there were bound to be others.

He cast one last look at the darkened windows of the inn. They stared blankly back at him, giving nothing away.

Not even the light from a single candle flickered in the darkness. That in itself told him al he needed to know.

Someone was waiting for him in the darkness, hiding behind the shutters, murder on his mind. It was pure dumb luck that he’d been too impatient and had fired off a shot before Jack was properly within range.

Even now his unknown assailant would be feverishly reloading his musket, ramming in the powder and bal in haste, desperately hoping to get off another shot while he stil had a chance of hitting his target.

His heart ached with a disappointment that could not be plastered over. It ached as badly as if the musket bal had found its intended home in his chest.

Bess had been different, or so he’d thought until tonight. She had loved him, begged him to return to her before he sailed off to the Americas. She had begged him with tears in her eyes to take her with him.

Could it be that she had played him for a fool? That her tears were as false as her mercenary little heart? He could not bear to think so il of her, but what other explanation could there possibly be?