Seconds later, the whoops turned to curses, then screams as the driver was forced to rein sharply back and throw his full weight on the brake. The smaller, slimmer carriage vaulted through the arch, the axel caps scraping both sides of stone and sending a shower of sparks into the darkness. There was no heavenly way Ramsey’s coach could squeeze through without slicing off all four wheels and likely one side of the conveyance. They pulled to a rolling stop instead and at the occupant’s screamed orders, the soldiers discharged their muskets at the rapidly disappearing carriage, several of the shots finding their mark and chipping holes in the wooden frame.
Emory was not lulled into thinking his pursuers would be deterred for long. He suspected the moment the soldiers were back on board, the wheels would be chewing into the earth again and they would circle the park, hoping to pick them up again where the path emerged from the trees.
They had to get rid of the carriage. He did not like their chances on foot, but the horse was unaccustomed to such mad dashes and was starting to blow like a bellows. One of the wheels was grinding on the axel as well and would not bear much more strain over uneven cobbles.
“When we break through these trees,” he said, leaning back to help Anna onto the seat again, “we are going to abandon ship. Be ready for it; we will only have one chance to jump clear.”
“Jump?” she gasped weakly. “We are going to jump?”
Emory saw the edge of the trees and drew back on the reins. The carriage scraped through a second arched gate and rolled onto the square of another well maintained park. Ahead were the winding terraced streets populated by the more respectable hotels and cafes, and higher still, the elegant villas owned by the wealthiest residents of Torquay. An image came into Althorpe’s mind and this time he did not try to shake it away. He tried to concentrate on it instead, to focus on landmarks that seemed vaguely familiar.
“Hold on!”
Anna was beginning to dread the sound of those two little words, but she ground her teeth and did as she was told. The wheels bounced once, twice, over a graduated stone gabion, lifting her clear off the seat by a foot or more before crashing down on the cobbled road again. The carriage landed with a loud, bone-shaking crack that sent leaves and broken branches spraying in every direction. The wheels held, however, at least long enough for the horse to drag them another twenty yards or so before the lost nuts and bolts became a genuine threat.
Emory looped the reins around the brake stick and turned, grabbing the haversack with one hand and Anna with the other. He tossed the sack over board and caught Anna around the waist, jumping with her cradled against his body. He landed first, cushioning her fall with his body, then rolled with her into the soft grass by the side of the road. The last glimpse they had of the carriage, it was wobbling off down the slope of the street, the wheels teetering in and out, screeching in protest.
“Are you hurt?”
“I...don’t think so,” Anna said.
Emory ran his hands along her legs, testing her knees, her calves, her ankles for any signs of injury she might be too numbed or shocked to feel. She was fine. Remarkably fine for a woman of delicate sensibilities who had been made love to, chased, shot at, and forced to accompany a madman on a wild dash through a dark forest. He refrained from laughing and kissing her, but only just.
“What do we do now?” she asked, looking around.
He tipped his chin to indicate the lighted facade of a hotel further up the hill. “If my mind is not still playing silly buggers, that should be the Mannington House. They will have coaches out front for hire.”
“A marvellously civilized notion,” she agreed dryly, letting him help her to her feet. “But where shall we hire it to take us?”
“Somewhere we will be safe, I promise. Can you manage to walk a little ways further?”
She straightened her skirts and brushed the bits of grass off her sleeves and smiled at him as if he had asked her to take a walk along Bond Street. Her cheeks were flushed from the excitement, her eyes were shining as she looked up at him, and despite his best efforts, he could not stop himself from cupping her face between his hands.
“I think I can say with confidence that I have never known anyone as brave and beautiful as you, Annaleah Fairchilde, and I swear when this is over--” he kissed her with equal amounts of pride and fierce determination-- “I will make it up to you somehow.”
“I intend to hold you to that promise, sir. See if I do not.”
He offered her the support of his arm if she needed it, but she shrugged it aside. After a few limping footsteps she even paused to discard her remaining shoe, finding it more of a hindrance now than a help. Her hair was a flown disaster, but she combed it as best she could with her fingers then did the same for Emory’s dark, shaggy waves.
Five minutes later, at the Mannington House, they hired a closed coach and, after Emory gave the driver directions, they settled inside, dousing the small candles that burned in their brass sconces. This time of the evening, the traffic was building nicely with carriages taking passengers to dinner or to parties. There were also signs of a commotion building further down the street, for some of those coaches were starting to back up and the drivers were sending postillions ahead to see what was causing the stoppage.
They were not safe yet, nor could Emory afford to let his guard down until they had left the streets of Torquay far behind. But for the moment, with his arm around Anna’s shoulder and her head resting in the crook of his neck, it was enough to just to let his muscles unwind and his heartbeat return to something verging on normal.
CHAPTER 16
Annaleah stood just inside the heavy iron gate where Emory had left her nearly twenty minutes ago, her back pressed up against a thick spread of juniper bushes, her toes fidgeting nervously in the wet grass. It was so quiet she could hear herself breathing. It was so still she could feel the residual heat of the day rising off the damp earth and curling around the bases of the nearby trees. Overhead, the sky was a vast, endless black expanse of space pricked by a million tiny pinpoints of starlight. Behind and well below her, the harbor was ablaze with lanterns strung on the masts of the ships in port, with the heaviest and brightest concentration clustered around the daylight-bright beacon of the Bellerophon.
She moistened her lips and looked back up at the looming silhouette of the house. It stood on one of the higher levels of the terraced crescent surrounding Torquay, on a street populated by elegant houses set back against the hillside. The nearest neighbour on either side was five hundred yards or more, their lights scattered and broken by the dividing barrier of trees. And it was probably just as well.
Emory had ordered the driver to take the hackney around the back, where there was a small carriage house. When the man had disembarked to open the door, Emory had, with unexpected violence and swiftness, rapped him over the back of the head with the butt of a pistol. He had then bound the unfortunate man hand and foot and stuffed him back into the coach before driving the vehicle into the carriage house and closing the doors behind him.
“What did you do that for?” Anna had gasped.
“As soon as the colonel finds our coach he will have assumed we either stole or hired another one. I would prefer our friend in there not ride back to town with a tale of carrying two bedraggled passengers--one of them shoeless--to an abandoned house on the hill. I have tucked a twenty pound note in his pocket; that should ease some of the pain of the headache he will have when he wakens in the morning.”
He had then ordered her to wait by the junipers and he had gone into the big house alone, where it seemed as though he had been for hours, not minutes.
Anna heard a faint noise--a bang followed by a dry scraping sound--and pressed further back into the junipers. A few seconds later she saw Emory striding out of the shadows, relieved of his greatcoat and haversack and looking quite jaunty as he approached.
“As empty as the Sahara,” he announced. “Everything just as I remember it. And believe me,
I only just remembered it, or I would have brought you here at the outset.”
“You know this place?”
“I do indeed. I own it.”
“You do?” She frowned.
“I believe I won it in a game of billiards. I never actually stayed here for more than a few days at a time--or nights, as the case may be--so I doubt anyone would even think to search it.”
She took the hand he extended, settling her cooler, smaller fingers into his. She followed him up to the house, noting he did not enter by the front door but circled around to a small rear entrance that was half hidden by overgrown bushes. Once inside, he let go of her hand, but only long enough to light a small candle.
“Come,” he said. “We will have to be careful not to let any lights show in the windows.”
Anna rubbed her arm with her free hand, the chill as thick as the mustiness in the air. She followed him through several doors and up a narrow staircase. At the top, a pale reddish glow emanated from one of the open doorways and it was with an honest sigh of relief that she saw he had drawn heavy damask curtains over the windows and started a fire.
She stumbled directly over to the hearth and held her hands out before the flames, turning them and wiggling her fingers in order for some of the ice in her veins to thaw. There were streaks of dirt on her skin and the sleeves of her jacket; she did not even want to look too closely at her skirt, her hair, or god forbid, the shredded, blackened ruin of her stockings. She would, she decided, commit murder for a bath, a long hot soak in bubbled water with the steam so thick it fogged the windows.
"Here," Emory said, sliding a chair in front of the fire. "Sit down. I managed to draw a few inches of water out of the well. Not much, and certainly not very warm, but I have more water boiling on the stove downstairs.”
She looked at him wordlessly.
"I am not completely uncivilized," he said gently. "Now sit. Let me take care of you for a change."
Admittedly more than a little grateful, she obeyed the stern guidance of his hands as he directed her into the chair. A flick of his wrist had her hem folded up over her knees and although she could not see them herself, she saw him shake his head and cluck his tongue over the condition of her torn stockings and blackened soles. One after the other he rolled down her stockings she had donned them so hastily they were not above her knees anyway and tossed them over his shoulder into the fire. The silk caught with a hiss and a sizzle, each gone in a momentary puff of thick black smoke. He reached back and dragged over the washbowl he had set by the hearth, warming the contents further with a hot iron he took from the fire.
"Is all this not taking up valuable time?" she asked, watching him settle onto his haunches in front of her and soak a scrap of towelling. "Earlier, you said that time was an important consideration, that the sooner you reached London, the sooner you might find the answers to some of your questions. I should think that would mean travelling by night as well as day."
He considered his reply for as long as it took him to lift her foot and cradle it in his hand. "I think we have both had enough excitement for one day, would you not agree?"
She felt the water being squeezed gently over her ankle and foot, heard it trickle softly back into the basin. It was barely above ice cold and her toes curled in response, but when he took up a small chip of soap and began lathering it into her skin it was all she could do not to curl her entire body in pleasure.
"Besides which," he carried on, "if the other hacks at the Mannington report that they saw two people matching our description get into a carriage shortly before the commotion on the road, and if our driver cannot subsequently be located, Ramsey will assume we...I...forced him to take us out of town post haste. “I doubt it would ever occur to him that we drove a mere half mile then stopped for the night."
The lather had made his hands slippery where he massaged it into her sole, between her toes, around her ankles and part way up her calf. She watched his lips moving, heard his voice rumbling somewhere in the distance, but for all she cared, he might have been explaining the deductive reasoning behind the Pythagoras theorem. Her every sense was focussed on the movement of his hands. Every smooth, massaging stroke evoked a veritable glut of sensations that had very little to do with logic or reason.
Finished with the one foot, he held it over the basin again and rinsed the lather free, patting it dry with a soft towel before he turned his attention to the other.
Anna's hands gripped the edge of the chair and she closed her eyes, willing herself not to faint or otherwise make a complete fool of herself. Naturally, he had left the dirtiest foot to last and by the time he finished soaping, rubbing, rinsing and soaping again, she was one solid vibration, flushed from the top of her hairline to the tips of her toes.
Oddly enough, for a man who seemed to take nefarious delight in reading every thought she had in her eyes, he appeared not to notice. He meticulously towelled the second set of glowingly pink toes dry then pushed to his feet and took the washbasin away to empty it. Anna collapsed back against the chair, not sure whether to laugh or cry or throw herself out the window in frustration.
He was gone long enough for Anna's nerves to partly settle, for her eyes to even drift closed in the lulling heat of the fire. When he came back, he was carrying a round, shallow footbath and a large metal bucket full of water, both of which he set in front of the hearth. He filled the wooden bath to a depth of several inches, then took up the additional hot irons he had set against the grate and plunged them, hissing, into the water.
"Better," he pronounced, testing it with his hand. "Up you go now."
"Up?"
"Stand up, please. Unless you want to be bathed like Cleopatra, reclining on a couch." His dark eyes narrowed a moment in contemplation. "Not that it would be so terribly unfeasible, come to think of it. Decadent, perhaps, but not unfeasible."
After a full minute when she still had not moved, he reached down and took her hands in his, pulling her to her feet. While she stared haplessly up into his face, he unbuttoned the spencer and peeled it down from her shoulders, undressing her as he would a small child.
"Turn around please," he murmured, again having to steer her gently when she did not immediately respond.
For the second time that night she felt his hands working the laces of her bodice free, and when the silk fell slack and the front of the gown gaped, she was startled enough to raise her hands and cross them over her breasts to keep the dress from slipping down around her ankles.
"I suppose I should do something with this before we do anything else," he murmured, gathering up the thick skeins of her hair, chasing after the loose tendrils and curls that tumbled back about her shoulders.
"What ‘else’ are you planning to do?" she asked in a whisper.
"I would have thought that was fairly obvious. I'm going to bath you unless of course you prefer to continue smelling like what ever it was we ran through in the alley."
"I am quite capable of bathing myself," she said on a shiver.
"I am sure you are. But since it was rather inconsiderate of me not to provide you with a maid, I think it is the least I can do. How do you manage all of this?"
"All of what?"
"This," he said, lifting the handfuls of dark chestnut curls, twisting them this way and that, searching in vain for a way to keep it all up off her neck.
Anna started to reach up, but the moment she moved her hands, her dress slid downward. She was quick to catch it again, but he was even quicker in plucking it free and capturing both wrists, planting one hand, then the other on the corkscrewed mound of hair he piled on her head.
"Hold that," he commanded, "and step into the tub if you will, please."
Anna looked down. She was naked, standing in a puddle of blue silk. Her arms were over her head, her hands clasped around fistfuls of her own hair, and he expected her to simply turn around and step into a footbath, her body fully exposed to the glare of the firelight?
"I could lif
t you," he murmured, his mouth pressed close to her ear.
Not doubting for a moment that he would, Anna transferred her hair into one hand and bent over quickly, pulling the flimsy layer of her chemise back up over her hips and breasts when she straightened. She took a halting step back until her heel bumped against the tub. Another and she stood ankle deep in the water, the hem of the chemise floating wet across the surface.
"An interesting challenge," he mused. "But I accept it. You will, of course, have to forgive the odd splash of water."
She was quivering again, no more so than when he leaned over and soaked a thick sea sponge then lifted it dripping and streaming to her shoulders. He squeezed the excess across her back, letting the water run in silvery rivulets down the curve of her spine and over the gentle flare of her hips. He bent and filled the sponge again, squeezing it around the base of her neck this time so that the wafer thin chemise was soaked back and front, the silk plastered to her skin and rendered completely transparent.
"Sorry," he said, sounding anything but. "Could not be helped."
He took up the sliver of soap again and lathered his hands, then applied the creamy suds to her neck and the smooth white slope of her shoulders. Anna endured the first few soapings and rinsings stoically enough, but when his hands skimmed beneath the hopelessly soaked edges of the chemise and circled around to claim her breasts, her fingers turned numb around the silk and it was an easy matter for him to coax it down around her ankles along with a swirl of shiny soap bubbles. His hands slithered across the flawless ivory of her skin, leaving peaks of foam on her breasts and frothy patterns across her belly. He was excruciatingly gentle when he bathed between her legs, and he seemed to take an inordinate amount of care insuring each crevice and fold of skin was meticulously clean.
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