A Wild Justice

by Gail Ranstrom

  A deep fringe of dark lashes lowered in a shyness he had not expected of her. Her fingers trembled and a soft intake of breath portended well for her sensuality. If Lady Annica could ignite from such an innocent kiss, he dared not even dream what she would do in his bed.

  But should he ask her to dance? No. Too soon. He dare not give his game away too early. She needed to anticipate him a little longer. Patience, he admonished himself. He turned to Grace. “Would you, Grace? We have years to catch up on.”

  “I’d be delighted.” She offered Tristan her hand again. Before he could lead her onto the dance floor, she paused and turned back to her friends. “Remember—quarter before twelve outside Parliament. I’ll bring Constance.”

  Annica closed her fan with a sharp slap across her palm and turned away, a haughty set to her aristocratic features.

  Tristan held back a chortle as he led Grace onto the dance floor, pleased at the peeved expression on Lady Annica’s lovely face. Subtlety was not her strong suit.

  “I perceive you are not pleased about this, ’Nica, but do not overset yourself. Half an hour and ’twill be over.” Surprisingly, Sarah was steady and composed. The sweet, haunted face was more relaxed as Grace’s torn coach crossed London Bridge than it had been since the night Annica had found the girl cowering where Farmingdale and the others had discarded her when they were finished with her.

  “Sarah, I am not…” Annica stopped. She was uncomfortable. Men who had nothing to lose were the most dangerous, thus making Farmingdale positively lethal. She tried again. “We have taken risks before.”

  The coach drew up at the berth of the Fair Isles at the Surrey docks. The footman hopped down and opened the door. “’Ere we are, Mrs. Forbush. Looks as if they’re ready to leave.”

  “Thank you, William. Wait here. We shan’t be long,” Grace instructed the man as he gave the five women a hand down.

  The ship’s lanterns illuminated the darkness, casting an eerie glow in the fog. The last of the cargo and supplies were being hoisted in nets on pulleys. One tall, slender man stood apart from the rest, waiting for the order to board.

  Sarah took a deep breath, and her hands tightened into little fists as she went forward alone. Annica and the others followed at a discreet distance, and stopped when she did.

  “Mr. Farmingdale?” Sarah said, her voice muffled by the clang of the ship’s bell.

  The solitary man turned. Surprise registered on his angular face and he took a step forward. “Lady Sarah? Good God—is it you?”

  “Yes. I’ve come to see you off. You see, I have gone to a great deal of trouble to arrange this whole thing, and I wouldn’t want to miss the best part.”

  “You? You arranged…what?”

  “Your fall, Mr. Farmingdale. The ruin of your reputation. The need for you to leave England.”

  “You did it?” His voice raised in outrage.

  “Yes, ’twas me,” Sarah admitted softly.

  “We should have killed you when we were done with you!” he snarled. “Taylor said you’d be too ashamed to tell any—”

  “And where is Mr. Taylor?”

  “In prison. He made a few bad investments and his debts were all called in at once.”

  “Ah, yes. That was rather clever, was it not? I must give ’Nica Sayles the credit, though. ’Twas her idea to buy his debts—and my money that clinched the purchase.”

  “And Harris?” At her nod, he sneered. “’Twould serve you right if I told everyone what we did to you. Who’d have you then, Lady Sarah Hunter? Yes—I will expose you.”

  Sarah’s smile was chilling. “Do so, and your admission will damn you more than me. What do I care if you leave London under a cloud, or hang for rape? Either way, you are removed from polite society.”

  Farmingdale’s face turned dark red and his hands clenched into fists. “What do you want from me?”

  “The name of the last man in your group that night. I never saw his face.”

  Farmingdale sneered again as he moved closer. “You must be insane to think I’d give you his name. But I’ll see that he knows who is behind this odd run of bad luck for us.”

  “I survived what you did, Mr. Farmingdale—courting me, luring me down that path in Vauxhall Gardens to your friends, the attack—and I’m still quite sane. But never mind. We will discover the identity of the other man. He cannot hide forever.

  “In the meantime, I wanted you to know who ruined you. You will carry that knowledge with you for the rest of your life, just as I will carry the memory of what you did to me. Do you begin to understand, sir, the depth of my contempt?”

  He advanced, his hands out to grasp her, and an ugly smirk curling his lips. “You’ll pay for this, you little—”

  A fierce protectiveness seized Annica, and she stepped forward to flank Sarah. She opened her reticule and reached inside. “Not another inch, Mr. Farmingdale.”

  “I’d listen to ’Nica,” Charity warned, appearing out of the fog on Sarah’s left. “She just acquired a new pocket pistol, and she is eager to try it out.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Farmingdale scoffed. “You’d never get away with it.”

  “With what, Mr. Farmingdale?” Constance smiled sweetly when she and Grace completed the semicircle at Sarah’s back. “Why, we just came to see a friend off. How could we possibly suspect a madman would attack us, and that Annica would be forced to defend us? Unfortunate, but there it is.”

  “There are five witnesses to that fact,” Grace explained in a bored tone. “Do you care to go against us? Would you like to explain in a court of law about your business practices should you survive? That is your only other choice, sir.”

  Farmingdale’s jaw clenched, and he ran his fingers through his sandy hair. “You are the devil’s whelp,” he cursed. “All of you! You have ruined me—forced me to leave the country!”

  “Yes, we have,” Sarah agreed happily.

  The ship’s bell rang the final call for passengers to board. Richard Farmingdale glanced over his shoulder to the gang-way, then back to the small group of women. His eyes had an angry glitter and he looked for a moment as if he would do something foolish. Pulleys squeaked and the anchor chain rattled as the slack was taken up.

  “Damn you!” he shouted above the sudden din. “I will even this score, Lady Sarah. Do not doubt it.” He turned abruptly and ran for the gangway, which a sailor was ready to hoist away from the dock.

  The women moved closer together, forming a tight group as they watched the Fair Isles being towed from her moorings into the river current.

  Annica shivered and turned in a slow circle, searching the fog-shrouded shadows. Foreboding raised the fine hairs on her arms and neck. She could feel the weight of watching eyes.

  “’Nica?” Charity whispered.

  “’Tis nothing,” she murmured. Just the same, someone was out there—someone dangerous.

  Annica tossed and turned in her bed later that night, her skin clammy and her stomach burning with anxiety. On some level, she knew it was just the old dream, the memory, back to haunt her, but she could not stop it from coming, nor could she reason away the panic.

  “Goddamn her, Eunice! The chit took the silver! Annie! Where are you?” Her father’s slurred, drunken voice echoed through the house. “Where can she be at midnight? I’ll break all her thievin’ fingers when I lay han’s on her.”

  “She’s but twelve. You cannot—” her mother began.

  Little Annica glanced over her shoulder as she pushed the pillowslip filled with odd pieces of silver toward the maid her father had just dismissed. She winced as the candelabra clanked against a teapot. “Hurry, Judith! Run! Papa’s coming!”

  The maid paused with her hand on the latch of the kitchen door. “He’ll send after me for thieving!”

  “He will not.” She fought to keep her voice steady. “He’d look a fool, Judith. He will stand the loss before he will report it. Besides, Mama said it will all be mine one day. And you’ll need it
when the baby comes.”

  “God bless ye.” Judith backed out the kitchen door.

  “Where is the wicked chit?” Papa’s voice came again.

  Panicked, Annica threw the bolt on the outside door, whirled toward the servants’ stairs and ran. She had to escape!

  The kitchen door flew open and candlelight reached as far as the fourth step to the second floor, where she had stopped, frozen. Her father staggered toward her, hellfire in his eyes.

  “C’mon, Annie. Come to Papa.”

  Oh, he was deep in his cups tonight! She backed slowly up the stairs, fearing sudden movement might provoke a lunge.

  His slur changed to a ridiculous wheedle. “Annie? Papa just wants to ask a question. C’mon, now. Don’t run away.”

  This was bad…very bad. Worse than she had feared.

  “Please, Edward. She’s only a child,” her mother begged.

  “I warned ye! ’Tis no wonder no one loves you or the chit! Ye’re both contentious bitches!” Edward snarled, and turned on her mother. He struck her with a backhanded blow, and when she began to cry, Annica’s eyes filled with tears, too.

  She rounded a corner on the first floor and dashed down the hallway, stumbling as her toes caught in the hem of her nightgown. The library! Yes! The huge hollow beneath Papa’s desk made a perfect hiding place. She made straight for it, scrambled beneath the desk and curled herself into a ball, hugging her knees and trying to disappear in a corner of the recess. Cold tendrils of fear crept up from the soles of her bare feet and made her shiver.

  Footsteps on the staircase echoed in her breast, tolling doom. “Edward, put your riding crop away. She is terrified of you. Leave her be.”

  “Terrified? She’s fearless! She’s got a reckless streak to defy me so!” The whoosh and crack of the crop on the reception table outside the library followed this denouncement.

  Little Annica pressed her cheek to the floor, peering beneath the narrow gap at the front of her father’s desk. Muddy boots entered the room and made straight for the liquor cupboard.

  “Ahem,” a voice interrupted. Annica squinted toward the door again to see the worn but highly polished shoes of her father’s valet, Mr. Hodgeson. “Begging your pardon, milord, but will you require the coach again tonight?”

  Horrified, Annica watched the valet’s feet approach in their usual even gait. Papers shuffled and tapped against the surface of the desk, as if he were putting things to rights.

  “Get the hell outta here, Hodgeson. Me and my wife have business to settle.”

  “As you wish, milord.” The polished toe inched forward to push a telltale edge of Annica’s nightdress under the desk. She caught her breath. Hodgeson knew. She heard his soft whisper. “Do not move, milady, for everyone’s sake. You know you cannot help when he is in this mood.”

  “Out, I said!” her father shouted. “An’ shut the door! C’mere, Eunice. Like I said, you an’ I have business.”

  The door closed behind Hodgeson, and her mother’s crying resumed.

  Annica bit her lower lip and swallowed her sobs, reminding herself why she had risked this terror. Because Mama said that’s what made one civilized—that the strong must stand up for the weak, and that those with courage should act. Even if it meant another beating.

  Mama wept and Annica covered her ears. When she tried to make her papa stop hurting her mother, he only yelled louder. Always, when she tried to stop the abuse, it only made things worse. She felt so powerless, so helpless. So angry.

  A scream rent the air, then the ripping of cloth. Nausea gurgled low in Annica’s belly. Her father panted and made an ugly grunting sound that warned her not to look—to cover her ears and squeeze her eyes shut.

  But she learned her lesson. She’d never marry. She’d never submit to such a fate, never become mere chattel subject to a man’s whims and ill temper. Or, like poor, pregnant Judith, now fleeing in the night, a man’s betrayal and indifference.

  Annica held her breath and didn’t even move to wipe her tears on her sleeve. Never. Never. Never.

  “Never! No, never…” Sitting bolt upright in bed, Annica gasped for breath.

  When her head cleared, she raised her knees and lay her cheek against them, just as she’d done as a child hiding beneath that desk. She breathed evenly, waiting for the panic to fade and her heartbeat to slow. A breeze drifted through her open window, ruffling the lace panel curtains and cooling her panic-fevered cheeks. “You’re safe, ’Nica,” she whispered into the night. “You’re safe.”

  Why had the old dream come again? What had happened to reawaken her fears and call forth that memory, that vow? She could not think of any threat to her freedom, nor to the emotionally flat tranquility of her life. Indeed, her only new acquaintance was…Auberville?

  She sighed as Tristan’s devilishly handsome face and clear blue “hunter’s eyes” filled her mind. Since his return to England, he had earned a reputation as a formidable adversary, a shrewd businessman, a desirable lover and a dangerous man to trifle with. If she had any sense at all, she’d finish his infernal illustrations and never see him again.

  The soft night breeze wafted across her cheek again, reminding her of Tristan’s gentle touch. She turned her face to the open window, craving more of that sensation.

  Oh, her papa had been right—she did have a reckless streak!

  Chapter Four

  When, the following afternoon, an unmarked private coach careened around a corner and bore down on Annica’s curricle with complete disregard for danger, she had no prickle of misgiving, no sense of foreboding. As she watched it approach, she was certain that it would stop or veer aside at the last minute.

  Then memories of her last coaching accident rose to her mind—her mother’s screams and her father’s drunken curses—and turned her limbs to ice. Her feet seemed mired in quicksand, unable to respond to the approaching danger. The rattle of the harness and roaring wheels of the oncoming coach drew ominously near, and still it did not alter its course as it bore down on her open carriage with singular purpose.

  Her driver bailed out and landed on the curb, rolling aside as he did. Unable to advance or retreat due to the crowded lanes, the horses neighed and reared. Annica stood, but the jolting of the carriage threw her back on the seat.

  “Lady Annica!” her driver yelled. “Jump!” Standing again, eyes riveted to the oncoming coach, she was only vaguely aware of an iron grip on her arms from behind as she was swung out of the curricle to the ground from behind.

  There followed a crash, the snapping of wood, the jangle of metal fittings and the scream of women in the distance. Annica could hear the offending coach break through the intersection and recede into the distance. It had run her curricle down and kept on going!

  The cacophony died, and she became aware of her own labored breathing. The weight on top of her squeezed the air from her lungs and pressed her to the ground. The solid thumping of another heart beat against her back. The weight was not oppressive, but comforting and protective.

  “M-mumf,” she mumbled—all she could manage with the little air and space afforded her.

  Warm breath tickled her ear. “An interesting position, is it not?”

  She recognized the voice at once, and Tristan’s strong, gentle hands lifted her into a sitting position. Relief flooded her, leaving her weak and trembling.

  “Are you injured, Lady Annica?” he asked.

  “I be-believe I am whole, Auberville.” She was dismayed when her voice broke. “Have you seen my driver?”

  “He was well away from the carriage. I am certain he is around here somewhere. Shall we concentrate on you?”

  She glanced down at herself and noted a rip in her bottle-green gown and a streak of dirt down one sleeve. Her bonnet lay on the cobblestones and her hair fell loose, tangling down her back. She must look dreadful, but was so grateful to be alive that she could not care. “I seem to be all in one piece.”

  A finger crooked under her chin and lifted h
er face upward. “I cannot tell you how relieved I am,” Tristan said, a smile curving the sensuous lips.

  “I…I feel like a witless child,” she murmured. “I could not move.”

  “There was very little time, Lady Annica, and I suspect you would have escaped on your own had the horses not reared and thrown you off balance.”

  She nodded, grateful for an assessment that salvaged her pride. Her gaze fell upon her bonnet, flattened in the lane. She shivered. She could have been crushed on the cobblestones.

  Tristan stood and leaned over to help her to her feet. “Do you think you can stand?”

  She stared up, amazed at how tall he seemed. The scar beneath his left eye was livid in contrast to his white face, and she began to understand that he had actually feared for her.

  When she did not give an immediate reply, he held out his hand. “Allow me to assist you.”

  She placed her hand in his, noting the strength in his simple gesture. A tingle went up her arm, causing a shiver of delight.

  Self-consciously she turned to survey the wreckage of her curricle, overturned in the opposing lane of traffic. The twisted frame and bent wheels were unrecognizable, and the shaft broken at the axle. The horses, still harnessed to the shaft, were uninjured. The driver of another coach was murmuring soothing sounds to them.

  “Lady Annica! Lady Annica!” her driver shouted, pushing through the gathered crowd. “Where are you?”

  “Here, Thompson,” she called.

  “Blimey!” Thompson exclaimed, coming to her side. “What’ll yer uncle say, milady? ’E’ll ’ave me ’ead.”

  “He will not dismiss you, Thompson,” Annica reassured him. “This was not your fault. Had traffic not backed up into the intersection—”

  Tristan cut the man short with a frosty glance. “Thompson, I will see her ladyship home. Can you handle things here?”

  “Aye, sir,” the driver said, never even questioning Tristan’s right to make decisions.

  Annica’s knees buckled, a reaction to the last few minutes. Over her feeble protests, Tristan scooped her into his arms and held her against the hard wall of his chest as he carried her away from the crowd. She was struck with the certain knowledge that nothing bad could possibly happen to her while she was held thus by this man. She fought a twinge of disappointment when he placed her in a black barouche bearing the Auberville crest.