“Gentlemen, I’m sure this will all make thrilling fodder for the newspapers, but Staffordshire is not my district,” Prescott pointed out, not understanding his friends’ excitement over such a mundane matter. “I really don’t see why you—”
“One of the fugitives was a woman, Hibbert.”
“And we think she might just be someone you know.” Eaton turned to the two marshalmen and summoned them forward. “Come, my good man. Tell Magistrate Hibbert what you told us.”
“Well, Squire,” the fat one began, gingerly holding his arm, “we put up a heroic struggle, we did. Dangerous pair, these two. One’s a footpad by the name of Jasper Norwell, a big hulking bloke, and he turned out to be a tricky sort. Nasty cove. We had him shackled to the lass, but ’twas all fer naught—”
“Yes, yes, enough about him,” Lloyd said impatiently. “Get to the part about the girl. Tell him about the girl.”
“Oh, aye, the girl. She was…well…she was…” He seemed to struggle to find words.
“Extraordinary,” the lad said at last, turning his hat round and round in his hands. “The most perfect beauty, sir. With golden hair, and eyes of gold. I’ve never seen a woman like her. She didn’t look like she belonged in gaol at all. A real lady, she was.”
Eyes of gold. Prescott’s hand tightened around his brandy glass. It couldn’t be. Samantha? Alive?
“Tell him how old she was,” Lloyd urged.
“I would say about twenty-two or twenty-three,” the lad guessed, turning to his companion, who nodded in agreement.
“We thought at once of your long-lost niece, Hibbert,” Eaton said excitedly.
“She disappeared five years ago, wasn’t it?” Lloyd asked.
“Six,” Prescott corrected, his mind racing. “She was sixteen at the time.”
Samantha alive and in Staffordshire? He couldn’t believe it, barely heard the rest of the conversation that continued around him. Despite all the lovelies he enjoyed at his club, he had never quite forgotten his beautiful, troublesome niece. The one female—the only one he’d encountered in his entire life—that he hadn’t been able to bend to his will.
He had tried numerous times. Had actually come quite close on that last occasion…but he had never gotten the opportunity to sample her. She had refused him. She had defied him.
She had tried to kill him.
“…Which would make this girl just the right age,” Eaton was saying.
“Yes,” Prescott choked out. “Yes, but I haven’t seen her since the night she left here. This girl sounds like my Samantha, but there’s no way to be sure.”
It was impossible. A girl like Samantha could not have survived on her own! A gently bred, naive innocent, without a guinea to her name or a practical skill in the world, with no man to protect her?
She had been doomed from the moment she set foot outside his door. He had tried for a year to track her down, even calling upon the resources of the procurers from his club, but she had vanished.
Eaton turned to the marshalmen with a triumphant smile. “Tell him what else you remember about her.”
“Yes, speak up,” Prescott said impatiently. “There’s a reward in it for both of you, if this is indeed my missing niece.”
The portly lawman’s face lit up at the mention of money. “She was arrested for thieving, sir. Stole some silver from a lady’s house during an assembly—and when the lady turned her in, she said the girl’s name was Miss Delafield. Miss Samantha Delafield.”
Prescott almost dropped his glass. It was too good to be true. What had he been thinking earlier tonight? That life couldn’t possibly get any better?
Well it had just improved, beyond even his dreams. After six years, he might finally have a chance to get his hands on Samantha. A chance to pay her back for the trouble she had caused him. To exact revenge for the attempt she had made on his life.
A revenge that would be beyond anything she could possibly imagine.
He realized he was trembling, but it didn’t come from fear. He was even more powerful now than he had been six years ago. Samantha’s untimely demise had left him in full, legal possession of every last farthing of her inheritance. He had been financially comfortable before, but she had made him wealthy.
She posed no threat to him. She knew the truth about his taste for young girls, but that didn’t bother him in the least. Who would believe the mad, desperate ravings of a wanted felon?
No, he was trembling with excitement. With anticipation.
“Hibbert? Hibbert, are you all right?”
Prescott nodded, realizing that his friends were staring at him. “Yes, yes. Forgive me, gentlemen, I’m…I’m overcome.” He sat back in his chair, fanning himself. “To learn that my niece is alive after all these years…” He took a drink, felt the brandy burning through him, almost as hot as the blood lust sizzling through his veins. “It’s quite a surprise.”
“We knew you’d want to know right away,” Lloyd said. “So that proper precautions can be taken.”
“Precautions?” Prescott echoed.
“She may be a danger to you, Hibbert,” Eaton pointed out. “She’s an outlaw. And two marshalmen have been killed.”
“The fugitives are being hunted down even as we speak.” Lloyd looked concerned. “But if she somehow manages to make her way here to London…”
“Yes, I see what you mean.” Prescott rose from his desk, pacing over to the window, looking out at the moonlit city. She wouldn’t come to London. She wouldn’t dare. “Indeed, precautions must be taken, but not the kind of precautions you mean.”
He doubted the lawmen of Staffordshire would be lenient with her. And it would be a cruel twist of fate to have his revenge snatched away just when it was so close at hand.
He turned to look at his friends. “She must not be harmed, gentlemen.”
“That’s very Christian of you, Hibbert,” Eaton said with an expression of disbelief, “considering she tried to kill you.”
“You seem to have forgotten that she’s quite mad.” Prescott thought it best to start reminding everyone of his version of events, lest anyone take her seriously when she started spouting her version. “My two nieces never recovered from their parents’ tragic death,” he explained sadly, glancing at the marshalmen. “Despite all we did for them, the younger girl, Jessica, took ill the first winter and died. After that, the older girl, Samantha, went quite mad. She tried to kill me one night with a knife. And she escaped before I could have her committed.”
“She did fight like a madwoman when we tried to lock her up in gaol,” the portly marshalman said. “Kicked and bit and swore at us like a she-devil.”
“There, you see?” Prescott nodded. “She belongs in an asylum, where she can’t harm anyone. Where she can be properly cared for.” He turned toward the window again, looking at his own reflection. “Somewhere private. Discreet.” A slow smile crept across his mouth. “I know just the place.”
“So how shall we proceed?” Lloyd asked.
“We thought you’d want to keep this a quiet, family matter,” Eaton said. “Wouldn’t want any embarrassment. No one outside this room need even know she’s your relation.”
“No.” Prescott shook his head, turning to address them using his best courtroom voice. “On the contrary. Gentlemen, it is my sworn duty to protect the people of England. If this Delafield girl is indeed my niece, we must bring her in and quickly. In fact, I shall go to Staffordshire at once to join the search personally.” He looked at the two marshalmen. “If your men kill the male fugitive, so be it, but I want the girl alive. Do you understand me?” His fingers tightened around the fragile stem of his glass. “I want her taken alive and brought to me.”
Flames. Burning. He had always known it would end like this. In hell. He was in hell. He opened his mouth and could not cry out, opened his eyes and saw only darkness. A cavern of darkness with dancing flames all around, a blur of fire and agony. He shut his eyes against the truth he did not want t
o see. He was burning alive, could feel the devil’s touch searing him through, body, bones, soul all ablaze. Pain without end.
Deeper and deeper he slid into the abyss, unable to fight his own inescapable, eternal damnation. He was falling falling falling into a corrosive pit that swallowed him whole. Pain heat fire. And he knew that the torment would never end never end never never never…
“Nicholas!”
And he was ten and he turned in the daylight, the bright, piercing daylight of Execution Dock, and saw his father on the scaffold, saw his tall, proud father standing there helpless with his hands behind his back and the rope around his neck.
“Father!” he shouted in horror, struggling against the hands that held him, against the men in their blue-and-white uniforms who had taken him from his father’s ship and brought him here. He fought with all his strength but they would not let him go.
Helplessly, he watched as they forced his father up onto a stool—the navy officers he had worked for, the friends he had fought beside in the war against Spain. Why had they betrayed him? Why why why?
One of them tightened the rope around his father’s throat. Nicholas called out to him, his hoarse, small voice lost in the growing roar of the crowd.
His father was calling back to him, something important, but Nicholas couldn’t hear and he began crying and looked away but one of the men who held him grabbed his chin and forced his head up, forced him to watch.
“Remember this, lad. Remember English justice. This is how the admiralty deals with pirates.”
And then all he could hear was screaming, his own voice screaming no no no his father wasn’t a pirate. James Brogan was a privateer, fighting for the king, a good man, an honorable man.
And he was all Nicholas had in the world. All they had was each other.
And then Captain Eldridge, who was his father’s best friend, very best friend, knocked the stool from beneath his feet.
And his father was kicking, struggling.
Dying.
And they forced Nicholas to watch until he stopped moving.
Until James Brogan’s struggles grew weaker and weaker and finally ended.
As the crowd cheered.
Nicholas went limp, sobbing brokenly, collapsing in the navy officers’ grasp, his body wracked by heaving, pitiful sobs that were larger than he was.
And they let go of him and he fell to the cobbles and lay there, weeping.
And he was alone.
Talons of fire clawed at him. Pain that burned and consumed him until he was ash until he was nothing and still he hurt. Oh God let the hurt end let it end he could not bear any more he was nothing but agony and fire and there was no one to hear him no one to help him…
Lieutenant Wakefield stood over him, smiling, brandishing the glowing iron rod in his hand.
“Be grateful, boy.” He spat a mouthful of tobacco onto the deck. “You’re to be spared.”
Nicholas did not reply, did not fight. Not because he was brave, but because he was too terrified to make even a sound. He did not understand what was happening, what ship this was or why they had brought him here. They had stripped him to the waist. One burly sailor held his arms pinned to the deck, another his legs.
And the one named Wakefield towered over him. “Welcome aboard the Molloch.”
He pressed the white-hot metal against Nicholas’s chest, pressed it down hard.
Nicholas screamed, a high-pitched scream like a bo’sun’s whistle. The sky went spinning, turned black as he felt and heard the sizzle, smelled the acrid scent of his own flesh burning, felt the branding iron bite deeply into him.
He begged them to stop, but his cries and his tears made the navy men laugh.
And when they were done they picked him up and threw him into the hold.
Into a place beyond imagining, a place of darkness and ovenlike heat and the stench of too many bodies packed too closely together. And he cried and he hurt and he prayed, prayed for God to help him. For weeks.
Then he stopped.
Because God had abandoned him. The loving God his mother had told him about would not have done this to him. He came to realize that in this world, there were only devils and hell. Devils in blue uniforms, hell without end.
And he would never cry again.
Because he hated them all hated them all hated them all…
He opened his eyes and saw only darkness, saw that the flames had died down but he could still feel them. Pain heat fire stop but God had abandoned him and he was alone and it would not end would never end never end never…
“Seventy-nine…eighty…”
The lash fell rhythmically, slicing into his skin. They had tied him to the Molloch’s mast, stretching his arms tight around it. Splinters pricked the skin of his bare chest, stabbing at the mark they had burned into him five years ago.
“Eighty-one…eighty-two…”
He did not flinch, did not care. The first ten or twenty were always the worst. After that, a hazy numbness blunted the rest. He didn’t feel pain anymore. Or anything at all. He pressed his cheek against the rough wood and stared at Wakefield as the lieutenant counted rhythmically.
“Eighty-three…eighty-four…”
Blood ran down his back, dripped onto the deck. He had killed a fellow prisoner. In self-defense, but that mattered to no one. His keepers needed little excuse to use their cat-o’-nine-tails. They beat him, fed him barely enough to keep him alive, tried to drain every bit of spirit and fight and feeling out of him.
“Eighty-five…eighty-six…”
But his hatred was enough to keep him alive. His hatred and his thirst for vengeance. One had become his food, the other his drink.
They nourished him, helped him grow stronger.
“Eighty-seven…eighty-eight…”
He kept himself alert, always. Never let the other prisoners corner him. Defended and stole every scrap of sustenance he could get his hands on. Trusted no one. Cared about no one but himself.
“Eighty-nine…ninety…”
Many who were older and stronger than him had died aboard this reeking, disease-infested scow. But not him. His wits and his hatred sustained him.
“Ninety-one…ninety-two…”
And at night when the darkness closed in, he dreamed.
“Ninety-three…ninety-four…”
Dreamed of a sea of blood that would slake his thirst for vengeance.
“Ninety-five…”
Lieutenant Wakefield would be the first. Then all the “friends” who had betrayed and killed his father. Especially Captain Eldridge.
“Ninety-six…ninety-seven…”
He dreamed of vengeance and planned the best way to obtain it.
“Ninety-eight…”
And the plan became a vow. He would become the one thing they feared. What they had made him. What they had branded him.
“Ninety-nine…”
A pirate.
The most fearsome pirate that England had ever seen.
“One hundred.”
He swore, lashed out, trying to force the sound away, but it came again.
“You’re not alone.”
He could barely hear it, that whisper, so distant. Knew he must be dreaming. A voice like that did not belong here, with him, in hell. It angered him to hear a voice so sweet speaking words of reassurance, of hope.
Pain he could endure. Hope he could not.
“Shh, I’m right here,” it persisted. “You’re not alone.”
No. No, he was alone and always would be and did not care.
Something touched him, a hand. A cloth. Feather-light against his cheek, his brow. Dampness. Water. So cool, so impossibly good.
A soft touch to match that concerned voice. Gentle water to cool the devil’s fire.
A dream. It must be only a dream. Because he could not change what must be and he was where he belonged and here he would stay.
Thou shalt not kill thou shalt not kill. Bless me, Father, for I hav
e sinned.
No, the goodness could not last. He did not want it did not want to hope for it. He surrendered to the fire. Let it have him let it take him he would not fight anymore there was no point.
This was the end. His inevitable end.
Here he would stay, alone for all eternity.
Darkness closed in with the last, feeble flickers of their last candle, bringing despair that cut through her as sharply as a blade.
Sam hung her head, pressed a hand over her eyes, tried to hold back the tears. But she could no longer deny the truth.
He was dying.
Her shoulders started to shake, then her whole body, as she sat crouched over him in the silent cave that had begun to feel like a tomb. There was nothing more she could do. Her best efforts weren’t good enough. She had failed him, failed them both.
And they would pay with their lives.
All her breath seemed to leave her body in one long sob. She had done everything she could think of, stayed awake hour after hour, tending him until the days and nights had become a sleepless blur. She didn’t even know how long they had been in here—three days, maybe four.
She had tried to cool the fever with water, giving him all that remained in the flask, saving only a few drops for herself. When that was gone, she had started using rags to capture the scant trickle of moisture that dripped down the cave wall, painstakingly soaking the cloth as full as she could and then wringing it out over his lips.
She had used the blade of the knife to cauterize his wounded shoulder, hoping it would stop the bleeding better than her stitching. Then she had stripped off the tattered remains of his shirt and bathed him, again and again, cooling his body as much as she could.
But nothing helped. For a time, he had seemed to improve, only to take a turn for the worse.
And now his breathing had become a labored rasp, so faint she could barely hear it. His body lay utterly still, ravaged by the fever that burned out of control. He no longer called out or groaned or made any sound at all—nothing but that low, fragile whisper of breath.
Escape with a Scoundrel (Escape with a Scoundrel Series Book 1) Page 15
