Midnight Raider

by Thacker, Shelly

  As the impact of what he had done sank in, Elizabeth felt her vision swim with tears—but this time, they were tears of pride and love.

  “I felt it was a more fitting tribute to the memory of my gentle mother,” he explained quietly, “and a better legacy for my family name. The bank will oversee the charity and pay the debts of the needy. I’ve allowed them to keep a third of the interest, to encourage them to invest the funds wisely. There’s enough in the account that the Anne Worthington Trust will serve England’s poor for decades.”

  “Oh, Marcus.” She sat there beaming at him. “Oh, my astonishing, gallant, scoundrel lord—”

  “There’s no time for that now,” he said gruffly before she could offer any further compliments. “I need to tell you what we’ve planned for Monday. You have to listen to me, carefully, and do exactly as I say.” He arched one dark brow. “No arguments.”

  “No arguments,” she agreed, meaning it with all her heart.

  “Good.” A flicker of a smile appeared before he turned serious again. “Now, here is what you need to do…”

  Chapter 28

  Elizabeth was allowed to choose the clothes she would wear to her execution. It was one of the few rights the condemned had. She could have demanded to die in the same flamboyant style in which she had carried out her raids, wearing masculine garb.

  Instead, she requested more humble, feminine attire.

  She told the gaoler exactly which outfit she wanted: her black-and-white woolen sacque gown. The loose-fitting dress with its high starched collar would make her look as penitent as a Puritan. She also asked for her pannier, petticoats, corset, garters, plain cotton stockings, and the shoes with high, shaped heels, freshly shined.

  For her last meal, she requested only one thing: a bottle of pale French claret from her own wine cellar. She gave the gaoler directions to the house where her “relatives” were staying, and he dispatched one of his men to fetch the requested items.

  While they waited for him to return, the guards were all talking about the latest news from another prison: Fleet.

  Mr. Charles Montaigne hadn’t lasted a week among the debtors he himself had put there. One of his fellow inmates had stabbed him in the gut with some kind of sharp instrument… and he had bled to death during the night, a slow, unpleasant end.

  Montaigne was dead. He would never hurt anyone again.

  If she left this world today, Elizabeth thought, at least she would find some peace in that.

  As she waited in her cell, sweat trickling down her back, she prayed that Nell and Quinn and Georgiana had had time to prepare everything, and that the turnkey wouldn’t lose any of the requested items. Or decide to keep a souvenir or two for himself. Most of all, she hoped that she could remember every one of Marcus’s instructions.

  By the time the turnkey arrived back at Newgate, arms laden, the bells of St. Sepulchre’s Church were chiming. The hollow, dolorous sound announced that the time of execution was at hand.

  The gaoler searched the clothes thoroughly, hunting through the pockets and linings for a knife or other weapon, while the guards struck off the shackles around Elizabeth’s ankles with a hammer and chisel.

  “Ye have to have yer feet free to dance proper,” one of them said with a cruel laugh.

  “And Tyburn tree is the best dancin’ master in all England,” another added.

  She didn’t respond to their taunts. The gaoler, satisfied with his search, shoved the clothes at her. “Be quick, now,” he ordered as he handed over the bottle of wine and shut her door. “No laggin’, no hopin’ fer a pardon. Yer public is waitin’.”

  As the guards walked away, their voices were lost beneath the sound of the bells, echoing through the clammy stone corridors, muted and eerie.

  Elizabeth started to undress, her stomach churning. She just needed to do exactly as Marcus had said: act repentant, and give the crowds a show that would tug at their heartstrings. He would take care of everything else.

  Her fingers shook as she picked up her corset.

  ~ ~ ~

  Kneeling in the darkness, Elizabeth whispered a brief prayer.

  She poured out her heart, asking forgiveness for her sins, offering thanks for the blessings she had known in her life. For Marcus’s love, for Nell and Georgiana, and Quinn. She asked that God would watch over them and protect them.

  The gaoler and his turnkeys came to collect her. One of the guards picked up the wine. “Time to go.”

  Her head bowed, eyes closed, Elizabeth begged that, if something went wrong today, the others would escape with their lives, even if she must lose hers.

  “Amen,” she whispered, rising to face her jailors.

  The guards escorted her through the prison and outside to the high-walled courtyard known as the press yard, where prisoners were literally pressed for confessions with lead weights. One of the turnkeys grabbed her wrists, jerked them forward, and bound them with a cord. “Ye won’t be so high-and-mighty fer long, me lady.”

  Next came the moment Elizabeth had dreaded: one of the other turnkeys fetched the noose and looped it over her neck, leaving the rope to trail down her back. Sweat broke out on her forehead and she shivered, despite the August heat and her determination to play this calm and cool.

  It isn’t real, she told herself. You’re not going to die. Everything will go exactly as Marcus planned. Don’t panic.

  Shoving her ahead of them, the turnkeys walked through a short tunnel and into the main yard, where the City Marshal of London and about fifteen of his men awaited. In the center of the group sat the cart that would carry her to Tyburn Hill. A chaplain stood inside it.

  Elizabeth’s gaze locked on the long pine box beside him. She couldn’t suppress a shudder.

  The marshal and his men mounted their horses. The turnkeys pushed her up into the cart. Three of them accepted blunderbusses and pistols from the marshalmen, then climbed in beside her. The cleric started to mutter a prayer.

  Elizabeth sat on the wooden box and reached toward the man who still held her wine. “M-my claret,” she said. “I wish to drink a farewell toast to the people as we go.”

  The man tossed it to her and she barely managed to catch it in her bound hands. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

  Uncorking the bottle, she ignored the chaplain’s disapproving glance and took a long swallow as the cart began to move.

  ~ ~ ~

  As soon as the procession passed through the gates and into the street, a noisy mob of Londoners closed around them, some demanding that Elizabeth be pardoned, others shouting for blood. Boys darted through the crowd, waving sheaves of broadsheets for sale, each printed with an ink sketch of the lady highwayman.

  The marshal and his men stayed close to the cart, brandishing their weapons. Any attempt at escape or rescue would be pure suicide.

  Elizabeth tried to keep a serene look on her face as the cart jounced along the road. Her heart beat a frantic accompaniment to the chaplain’s monotone chanting. She raised her bottle time and again to people who shouted, “Be brave, Lady Bess!” and “God be wit’ ye!” and “Thank ye fer what ye done!”

  She didn’t see Nell or Georgiana or Quinn. She knew she wasn’t supposed to, not until it was all over, but she felt a desperate longing for the comfort and reassurance of a familiar face. She had to console herself with the fact that Marcus would be waiting at Tyburn.

  All along the route, more and more spectators joined the procession. Elizabeth couldn’t see anything but people all around. The turnkeys were growing nervous.

  She kept nodding to the crowd and kept drinking until she was so woozy she could barely lift the bottle.

  Her rapid pulse only seemed to intensify the intoxicating effect. The liquid spread through her, warm and soothing, dulling her every nerve ending.

  By the time they topped Tyburn Hill more than an hour after leaving Newgate, she felt drunk as a lord and then some. There were more spectators waiting, in grandstands and at food and dri
nk stalls. Those who could pay for a better view stood on ladders set up by the city lamplighters.

  The people who had followed the cart flowed into the waiting crowd. The cheers and boos and whistles rose to an ear-numbing roar. Some in the mob were still calling out, “Freedom fer Lady Bess!” and “A pardon! A pardon!”

  Other voices shouted, “Hang ’er! Hang the bitch proper!”

  The cart rolled slowly toward the gallows at the top of the hill—and came to a halt underneath.

  Elizabeth could no longer distinguish what anyone was saying. She could barely hear at all over the buzz in her head. The bottle of claret slipped from her numb fingers and she barely noticed.

  She thought the gallows looked huge from below. It was hard to tell with only a glance, and she was finding it difficult to hold her head up after so much drink. The gaoler had cheerfully explained that the three-sided structure could accommodate twenty-four criminals at once—but today it would be hers alone.

  She tried to look around. Where was Marcus? He was supposed to be here, right at the front. She didn’t see him. Panic seized her. What if something had gone wrong?

  A wave of terror swept through her, wiping away her courage and resolve. The turnkeys grabbed her arms and brought her to the very edge of the cart.

  The hangman stepped forward and knelt on the ground before her. “Yer fergiveness, madam.”

  Elizabeth was still searching the scores of faces around the cart. Another man came out of the crowd—but it wasn’t Marcus. It was the physician who would verify that she was dead.

  Where was Marcus?

  “Madam?” the hangman prompted.

  Elizabeth looked down at him and tried to speak, but her tongue didn’t seem able to obey. She nodded her forgiveness, her head lolling to one side.

  “She’s drunk as a piper,” one of the turnkeys growled. “Get on with it.”

  The executioner insisted on following tradition. “Has the condemned anything she wishes to say to the people?”

  Elizabeth scrambled to collect her besotted thoughts. Wasn’t she supposed to say something? She couldn’t remember. She felt so very odd. Raising her head, she tried to speak but it only came out as wordless babble.

  “She ain’t goin’ to be makin’ no speeches,” another of the turnkeys said, looking nervously at the increasingly restless spectators. “Get on with it!”

  The hangman climbed up into the cart. The guards jumped to the ground.

  “I’m sorry, Lady Bess,” the executioner whispered in her ear. “I’ll make this as painless as I can, I promise.”

  Elizabeth felt him adjusting her noose, fastening it close around her neck, but not too tight. Then she couldn’t feel anything at all. Her whole body seemed to be going numb.

  No, there was something else she was supposed to do! What was the last thing she was supposed to do?

  The spectators were going mad, jumping and shaking their fists and opening their mouths wide with cries she could no longer hear. Earth and crowd and sky began to whirl dizzily. She saw the hangman throw the free end of the rope up and over the crossbar of the gallows. The cart jerked when he leaped to the ground.

  She watched him pick up the length of rope, wrapping it twice around his burly arm. He drew it snug. She couldn’t feel it. She felt consciousness slipping away.

  Where was Marcus?

  One of the marshalmen pulled the horses forward.

  And suddenly there was nothing but air beneath Elizabeth’s feet.

  Chapter 29

  Georgiana couldn’t stop screaming.

  “Georgi,” Nell admonished over the roar of the crowd, looking down to where Georgiana had fallen to her knees in the dirt. “That’s good, but it ain’t time yet.”

  “I am not playacting!” Looking up toward the tall gallows, Georgiana saw that Elizabeth’s slender form had finally been lowered to the ground. “She’s dead, Nell! How could she not be after that?” Georgiana could hardly speak past her tears. “She’s dead!”

  Nell bent down and pulled Georgiana to her feet. “No, but she will be, if we don’t get to her before they cart her off to the cemetery. Now let’s go.”

  She led the way through the jostling mob. When they pushed toward the front of the spectators, Georgiana saw the hangman bending over to cut the noose from Elizabeth’s neck and the bindings from her wrists. The physician leaned over her. He held a mirror up to her mouth, then placed his ear to her chest.

  After an agonizingly long moment, he stood and nodded to the City Marshal. “The prisoner is dead.”

  Georgiana had to cover her mouth to hold back another horrified scream. The marshal addressed the gathered people. “Has the deceased any family present?”

  Nell grabbed Georgiana’s arm and yanked her forward. Both of them were in tears now. “We are her aunts, sir,” Georgiana blubbered.

  “And have you made suitable arrangements?” the marshal asked coldly. “Or shall the Crown be required to pay for the burial?”

  “We have an undertaker comin’,” Nell replied tearfully.

  “Excellent.” The marshal gestured for his men to unload the pine coffin from the cart. Georgiana truly thought she would collapse as the turnkeys placed Elizabeth’s limp form inside. When they put the lid on top and started nailing it shut, only a pinch from Nell kept her from fainting.

  The onlookers had already started to disperse to the food and drink stalls. Georgiana hoped no one would notice the tall, dark-haired man slipping a fat purse into the hangman’s pocket.

  Marcus had stood right beside the cart, just behind Elizabeth, the entire time, with a gun in his pocket aimed at the executioner’s heart. He had been ready to shoot, grab Elizabeth and run for it if anything went awry. Luckily, the hangman had decided to earn his enormous bribe, rather than risk dying himself today.

  The executioner had looked quite distraught up until this moment. Now he visibly relaxed as his benefactor melted away into the crowd.

  “Here comes our undertaker now.” Nell pointed to a black-draped wagon pulled by a black horse making slow progress up the hill, hampered by the milling spectators.

  “Clear a way, there,” the marshal ordered. “There’s nothing more to see. Move along.”

  The driver, also all in black, drew the wagon up beside the coffin and jumped to the ground. He and the marshalmen loaded the pine box into the back, and Georgiana and Nell scrambled up behind it, still sobbing, clutching one another’s hands—not with fear, but with hope.

  The driver climbed back into his seat and lifted the reins. He glanced over his shoulder as they pulled away. “Everything will be all right, ladies.”

  Georgiana didn’t find Quinn’s words the least bit reassuring.

  Once they were out of the crowd, he urged the horse into a trot, then a gallop, speeding away as fast as he possibly could. Still, a few morbid gawkers rode after them for almost a mile before leaving them alone.

  When only one was left—a dark-cloaked rider the three of them knew—Quinn pulled off the road into a copse of trees and reined the horse to a halt.

  “Get her out of there!” Georgiana sobbed, tearing at the lid of the coffin with her bare fingers.

  Marcus leaped from the saddle and vaulted into the wagon. He and Quinn grabbed metal tools that had been hidden on the floor, and they attacked the lid.

  “How can she breathe?” Nell demanded as she helped yank out the nails on her side.

  “She doesn’t need much air,” Quinn explained, working methodically. “Not in the state she’s presently in.”

  There were still a few nails to be removed when Marcus cursed in frustration and tore the lid free by brute force.

  “Oh, sweet Lord,” Georgiana cried at the sight of Elizabeth’s pale skin and still form. “She’s… she’s…”

  “No.” Marcus lifted Elizabeth out and cradled her in his arms. “Elizabeth, wake up.” He shook her gently. “You have to be all right. Wake up.”

  “It might be an hour or t
wo yet, sir,” Quinn told him. “The drug affects everyone differently, and there’s no telling how much she actually drank. She was supposed to finish the bottle.”

  Georgiana knelt beside Marcus and unbuttoned the back of Elizabeth’s dress partway to loosen the tight corset underneath. Elizabeth had always hated wearing stays—but this time they had saved her life.

  Nell had sewn strong wires into the garment. All Elizabeth had to do was slip them free when she put it on, working them up into the back of her high collar. The hangman had hooked them onto the noose while he was adjusting it, then tucked them out of sight later while cutting off the rope.

  Everything appeared to have worked perfectly, but Georgiana couldn’t shake an ominous feeling. “I-I thought she was supposed to give a farewell speech to the crowd and finish the claret while she spoke.”

  “She might have been overcome by the drug’s affects too quickly,” Quinn said.

  “Might ’a been?” Nell rounded on him. “Ye mean yer not sure? How do we know yer bloody drug hasn’t killed her?”

  “I measured the dosage personally.” Quinn looked hurt. “And I would never have allowed it to be used on the lady if I hadn’t tested it on myself to be certain of its effects. She is in a deep sleep, but she is not dead.”

  Nell looked abashed but didn’t apologize. Georgiana reached into her pocket for the smelling salts she had brought and waved them under Elizabeth’s nose.

  Elizabeth made no movement, no sound.

  Georgiana placed a hand to her friend’s forehead, and found her unnaturally cold. It looked for all the world as if life had left the slender, beautiful lady in Lord Darkridge’s arms.

  Trying her best not to cry, Georgiana looked helplessly at Marcus.

  He wasn’t paying her any attention. He stared down at Elizabeth, as if silently willing her to awaken. The raw agony etched on his features made Georgiana’s heart ache.

  “Sir, we could wait,” Quinn suggested. “Another few hours—”