“Divers … " Her breath snagged the back of her throat. Jesus Christ, don’t tell him it was her last. Or, if not, it wasn’t far from it. “Divers … Please … The boat … the boat, now … "
“Well, isn’t this nice? The nicest thing I’ve ever seen. And given my line of work, that’s quite a great deal.”
He froze. Lyon. How could he have forgotten Lyon and the gun he'd had? Especially now that gun, silvered by moonlight, was pointed at them.
“Argue, argue, argue.” As Lyon stepped forward, Destiny’s heart lurched. “Do you know how much of an old married couple you sound? Divers this, Destiny that. Of course I knew from the start there was something between you. I just wondered when you were going to get round to running away together, as I know Mr. O’Roarke here wanted to do with Eirwin St. James on that last little job he messed up.”
“Really?” Destiny spoke with a confidence she was oceans away from feeling. Messed up were not words she wanted to hear here when her side was dying on her. But if she didn’t speak she never would. “And you somehow think this is of interest to me because … well, why? No-one ever wanted to run away with you, is that it?”
“I considered you, Miss Rhodes—"
“Really? In your dreams was it?"
“--despite the sharp tongued bitch you are. Uh—" Divers O’Roarke lunged forward. “Stay exactly where you are, or I’ll shoot her where she stands.”
“Look, it’s me you want not her. Let her go and I will come with you. I swear it. Look, I’ll even do this.” Leaning forward he set the pistol slowly down on the sand. “There. Just … just … "
“Divers? What the hell—?" Had he done that for? Given away their insurance? “When I went to all that sodding trouble to get that? How could you? Are you mad?”
“To hang for treason, theft?” Lyon didn’t move. “Possibly he is. Because that’s what’s going to happen. Even nobler, don’t you think, Miss Rhodes, which is why, really when it comes to throwing yourself in with a man, you should have a little more care and consideration?”
“I’ll have what I sodding well want. And that won’t be you, you prune-faced--"
“Destiny. Much as I share your sentiments, now is not the time—"
“Then when is the time? Because I’m telling you now. You can’t … you can’t give yourself up. I won’t … I won’t let you.”
Actually she could. She easily could. In fact shock waves rocketed to her core to see how easily she could and it would be an end to everything. But that was her, wasn’t it, push things as far as she could, because she could rise again and in that second she was done with all these things, every fall she had taken, every storm she had walked in, every harsh word she’d uttered, uncaring shrug, always so easy to hand out when there was always tomorrow and nothing could break you. In that second she rose from the ash that was everything she’d given Ennis—dead, gone, he couldn’t break her fall. But this was life and maybe this man could? Why else would she cling to him when her side . . . her side plainly had eight spent arrows dying in it. Staring her in the face, wasn’t it, what she felt for him? And it was all right. Time to live again. He clasped the sides of her face.
“Listen to me.”
“I’m trying to but not when it’s things I don’t want to hear. Not when there's something I need to tell you."
“Go home. Go home, Destiny, right now, because whatever it is, there’s no other way.”
He bent his head. The kiss was fierce, sweet; the kiss was everything to cling to. She could not be left with nothing here. She could not be left. What went through her despite everything, the blood trickling between her fingers, the gun pointed at her breast, the wind tearing at her hair, the water lapping at her feet, even the sweat that inched down her cold skin in the moonlight, was life. And not just that, it was everything she craved now, forever and so simple. How could she choose anything else?
“Divers … I’m not letting you go. Not with him. Last night? Last night you saved me. Saved me when you could have let me go. When I was ready to go. Before I realized, me and Ennis, these were golden clouds you spoke of."
“Step aside, Miss Rhodes. When you’re told, now. You are allying yourself with a man who is a traitor to the uniform he wears. A breaker of the law he swore to uphold. And, when it comes to mathematics, a thief. A man headed for the gallows.”
“Destiny, old girl …”
“Destiny, do what they say.” Divers O’Roarke’s fingertips traced her cheeks. His eyes were lit by stars in the moonlight as they met hers, the smile the sweetest she’d ever seen and one she wished she never had, as she tried to speak. She had never felt his fingertips quite like this on her face either. “I swear it. I’ll be all right. Do you hear me? Listen. Listen. I swear I'll be all right."
“You’re absolutely right, in more ways than one, man.” In that second Gil Wryson spoke. “Drop the gun,” he said to Lyon.
Destiny swallowed the gulp.
“I mean it,” Gil went on. “I have two guns here, one pointed at the back of your head, Mr. Lyon, sir, and another at you, Mr. Rhodes. Make no mistake, I will use them too. So if you, either of you, think you can outfox me, you’re mistaken. Nice and slowly. I don’t want to hear argument or dissent. Do it now. Then put your hands behind your backs.”
“Ah, the weevil crawls out from the biscuit, Mr. Wryson. I was wondering how long it would take for you speak.”
“About half as long as it will take for me to blow your brains out and splatter them all over that rock there if you don’t shut up and do what I say.”
“Gil …” Divers O’Roarke murmured.
“I mean it. Do you think it’s anything to me to see this bastard in hell? The hold he’s always had on you? Don’t kid yourself you’re the only one, because that’s how people like him operate. That’s what they do. He got away with Eirwin. He’s not getting away with this. Do it.” He tightened his grip on the pistol that was jammed against Lyon’s left temple. “Now. Or so help me God, I won’t care what gibbet I swing from. As for you Mr. Rhodes, make one move and you’re dead.”
Destiny snagged another frosted breath. My God, was it possible they were getting out of here? Well, Divers O’Roarke and Gil Wryson were. Herself now? Gil Wryson had never liked her. In fact he so little liked her, some might say the wonder was he didn’t have a pistol trained on her head, ready to add her brains to Lyon’s if Lyon didn’t put down the gun, and there was nothing to say he would. This was the man who had blown Eirwin to bits. There was nothing to say he wasn’t about to win the prize for best shot in the Penvellyn Fair competition, by adding to his tally. Certainly not the breath tearing in her throat, the pincers ripping at her side.
“Very well.” Lyon edged down. His eyes gleamed as if it either killed him, or he was looking for the way to take this back. “I am at your disposal.”
“Divers, get the guns, both of them.”
“Gil … "
“Whatever else you do, man, get them.”
She grabbed what breath she could from the moonlit air as he reached forward. The shingle would not be a good resting place, after all. But she had this, surely? Even if she felt as if death had invaded her veins. One thing she was sure of through her blurring vision? Gil Wryson would never allow her on that boat.
“Easy.” Divers O’Roarke clutched her closer. “I’ve got them. But I can’t get in that boat. I can’t do it.”
“Divers … I … You … You have to,” she murmured.
“Are you both crazy? How the hell am I meant to go? What? And leave you here to his tender mercies?”
“Take her with us then.” Gil tossed the hair out of his eyes. “The hell, I’m not going to argue so long as we get the hell out of here in one piece, so long as you keep the gun on him while I tie his hands. You know she's the one for you."
“Divers … "
Oh, God, how awful to have to make what might be the biggest decision in her life largely because she seeped blood and could do wit
h a seat--task one. But was it so crazy—task two—to look at him in the moonlight and see reflected there all the things she wanted? Why else had she come all this way? Everything and nothing was what stood before her. The fall she must take in the hope he would break it. Let him go and what would she have? A load of old plates and some pine cone garlands? It was hardly going to win first prize in the living life competition. Imagine getting to be a hundred and that was what she had to show for it? All because the idea of ever falling again filled her with terror? Wasn’t it terror not to be able to breathe if she wasn’t with him? She had risked everything after alll and he’d saved her.
“Destiny.” His breath tore. “I can’t. You come with me, girl and nothing is what you’ll ever have, I have nothing to give you.”
Everything? Nothing? Everything? Nothing? How true it was. In that second did she need to sit down to make that decision? The wind tearing at her hair, at his, the sea washing round their feet, the midnight gulls screaming overhead? Were these things going to make it for her?
“That’s still enough for me. Divers, I’m not letting you go. Nothing is what I’ll have staying here because there’s nothing I want. Nothing. It’s you, or it’s nothing. And perhaps it always was. I just couldn’t see it. Because I can trample on what can be trampled on. And I'm not sure I'm good at what it all does to me. But I’m not choosing nothing. I’m choosing everything. I’m coming with you, because you see the clouds? Well sometimes clouds are silver. Now, help me in the boat.”
"Destiny ... Old girl , are you mad?”
Orwell’s eyes, raked her, like skeletal ships passing into another world, one she was done with. “You can’t go with him I’ve secured Doom Bar Hall. Our home, I … I told you …”
“Your home, Orwell. And one I wish you luck of, joy, everything you could want in it. Divers, the boat. I think I sodding love you, just so as you know and I think you better sodding love me back because I really can’t stand here all sodding night, nigh unto and slowly bleeding to sodding death. I need to sit down. Mr. Wryson, you can tie Mr. Lyon’s hands once I’m seated.”
“With pleas—"
“Oh, it’s not quite nothing you’re going to, Miss Rhodes, as I’m sure Mr. Wryson here will tell you, although it is nothing much.” Lyon’s voice was dry. "Yes. True love, eh? Why you’d run off with a man who has broken the law and will be hunted in every corner of this kingdom.”
She drew herself up. “Well, so long as it’s not every corner of the earth, it’s none of your business.”
“Perhaps? If that is the fool you want to make of yourself, so be it.” He shrugged.
“I don’t see what’s funny.”
“Me neither, Miss Rhodes. There is no need to tie my hands, Mr. Wryson. It’s an indignity I can do without.”
“Oh, I’ll be the judge of—"
“Whatever you think, I’m not the villain you all believe.”
“Oh, you’re a villain all right.” Gil jerked Lyon’s hands behind his back.
“On the contrary. I am an admirer of love’s sheer folly. Of a woman choosing a traitor and thief, despite everything and the fact my men will be here any minute, so you can tie my hands and those of Mr. Rhodes to your heart’s content. That is why I’m going to give you half an hour.”
“Half an hour?” Divers O’Roarke narrowed his eyes. “We’ll have a damned sight more than half an—"
“Hour’s head start. Then, believe me, I will come after you and I will hunt you down like the dogs you are. Whatever else you think of me, Mr. O’Roarke, I am a great believer in fair play.”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
I think I sodding love you, just so as you know.
With the water’s edge lapping at his boots and the wind tearing at his hair, he turned and grasped her, looked down into her face, silvered by starlight. Yes, they had half an hour but it was worth taking this crazy minute to knock it down to twenty nine.
“So, Destiny, do you mean what you said?”
“What? About the fact I know places here? Don’t worry about that or him,” she murmured. “He wouldn’t even know which haystack to start looking for that particular needle in. We’ll get away. I promise."
“Not that. What you said about me?”
“Oh that? You’re asking me that here? Now?”
“Do you love me, Destiny?”
If he stared at her with bemused eyes in the moonlight he didn’t care.
“What do you think?” Maybe her throat tightened but her pale lips managed a smile. "I mean I don't attest to the rest of you but your confidence is not half bad for starters. I mean ... I don’t think you have any idea how hard it is sleeping with someone for the sole purpose of keeping them safe. Talking of which, don't take my advice or anything, you never do, but if I were you I’d tie his nibs up with my brother and leave them both in Raven’s Passage. They’ll get out eventually and it will give us more time. Thirty minutes? Thirty minutes isn’t long, especially if you’re going to waste five of it on this sodding nonsense."
“Good idea, Destiny. One of your better ones if you don’t mind me saying.”
“Thank you, Divers. I think, all things considered we make a not too shabby team. We might even win a prize some day."
"Then let's do it."
So he did what she suggested, while she clambered aboard the bobbing boat.
Love? The rock beneath the crumbling stone. The frailty and strength of human nature, human passion, because if somebody like her could see beneath the cracks, to love somebody like him, if he could love her through these same fissures for that matter, see her strength and her endurance, even in the chasms she’d fallen into, could set to the side everything she’d done, then there was that other great thing, the hope that beat in his heart like a bird’s wings, that this could work. So long as they didn’t drown on their own folly here.
He stepped into the stern of the boat, the cold biting so hard now, even through the wool of his coat it ate him raw, nose, fingers, breath. As for her? He glanced down at the sooty line of her eyelashes and settled down beside her. As for her, he hadn’t the least idea apart from the fact her teeth were chattering. But dare he forget, he’d been ready to hand himself over to Lyon to see her go free?
Love? What he was in apparently. And it was all right. Hell, it was more all right than anything he'd ever felt in his life before. Scary? Scary as hell. And yet, so damned right, it was almost a moment for celebration. She could have chosen Doom Bar Hall. With, or without Lyon in it. She hadn’t. She could have chosen the past. Him too. Dare he forget that either?
She’d said she liked his confidence. It was time to be that man again. Sort of anyway.
“Let’s go. By the stars,” he murmured to Gil.
Start as he meant to go on, now? With a confidence he had not felt in weeks. It was time. Somehow they would find a way out of this. Prove Lyon wrong. The sole reason he’d let them go.
“Did I tell you, how very romantic this is? No. Truly.” As he gazed down at her, she smiled at him faintly, then whispered, “By the stars and down the coast, there’s places there we can at least stop safely. Clouds of silver now."
As muddy dawn fingered the horizon and Gil eased the boat another creaking foot through the frothing waves, the words circled like gulls in Divers’ head, bleak except for one thing—the feel of Destiny Rhodes’ faintly shivering body against his and her eyes, the stars he’d now guide himself by. His Destiny.
Where they were headed, he didn’t know. But one thing he did.
“I love you, girl. And you better believe I’ll do it till these same stars we’re heading for, go out.”
THE END
Splendor by Shehanne Moore
He hates to lose. Especially to a man who’s not.
One move to win ten thousand guineas in a chess competition. One move to marry her fiancé. Another to face the most merciless man in London across a pair of duelling pistols. For Splendor, former skivvy to the London’s premiere jewe
l thieves, it’s all in a day’s work. But when one wrong move leads to another, can she win and keep her heart intact against the one man in London with the potential to bring her down? Especially in a chess game where the new wager is ten thousand guineas against one night with her.
The Endgame to end all Endgames
One move to pay back his ex-mistress. One move to show the world he doesn’t give a damn he’s been beaten in every way. The ton’s most ruthless heartbreaker, bitter, divorcee, Kendall Winterborne, Earl of Stillmore’s, pet hates are kitchen maids, marriage and losing. Knowing Splendor has entered a male chess competition under false pretences, he’s in the perfect position to extort her help, regardless of the fact she’s engaged to someone else. He just doesn’t bank on having to face up to his pet hates. Certainly not over the kind of skivvy who ruined his father and set him on this course.
As one move leads to another, one thing's for certain though. His next move better be fast if he wants to keep the Cinderella he’s fallen for. But the clock is ticking. When it strikes twelve, which man will she choose?
London Jewel Thieves.
Available from Amazon
Loving Lady Lazuli by Shehanne Moore
A woman not even the ghost of Sapphire can haunt. A man who knows exactly who she is.
Only one man in England can identify her. Unfortunately he’s living next door.
Ten years ago sixteen year old Sapphire, the greatest jewel thief England has ever known, ruined Lord Devorlane Hawley’s life by planting a stolen necklace on him. Now she’s dead and buried, all Cassidy Armstrong wants is the chance to prove she was never that girl.
But her new neighbor is hell-bent on revenge and his word can bring her down. So when he asks her to be his mistress, or leave the county with a price on her head, Sapphire, who hates being owned, must decide...
What’s left for a woman with nowhere else to go, but to stay exactly where she is?
And hope, that when it comes to neighbors Devorlane Hawley won’t prove to be the one from hell.
O'Roarke's Destiny (Cornish Rogues Book 1) Page 26
