The Iron Earl

by K. J. Jackson

  “No, Evalyn—I force them away and they just come back. They’re nothing but a pestilence upon the land. So I burn them out.”

  “No.” The word flew from her mouth, determined, not at all cowed.

  “The people will only burn if they get in my way, lass.” He chuckled. “But they have a chance.”

  “A chance to stay?”

  “Yes.”

  A chill snaked about her spine. “How?”

  “I’m not a stupid man, Evalyn, no matter how you like to look at me. Like I’m not fine enough to be the dung under your boot. That’s about to change. I never thought you were to do as I bid without some encouragement and you’ve always had a soft spot for the weak. So I have a proposal for you.”

  Her shoulders started to tingle, the loss of feeling running down her arms. She was losing her body. Swaying. “What is it?”

  Mr. Molson pointed to the group. “Simple. I can leave them where they be. Or I can tell my men to light a torch.”

  “And what do you want of me?” Her voice cut into the air, brittle, wooden, not her own.

  “You ran away once, Evalyn. Now you run away with me. You don’t fight it.”

  “No.” Bile ran up her throat. “I can’t. I can’t leave Lachlan.”

  “You can’t or you won’t?”

  “He’s my husband.”

  “And your father has already petitioned for an annulment, claiming you were taken against your will. Between that and the divorce the marquess has put forth, your marriage should be dissolved within a fortnight. You made the mistake of marrying across the border.”

  “No…no.” Her head shook, dizziness setting in. “No, he…they cannot.”

  “They did. And I’m giving you a chance.” He grabbed her face between his meaty thumb and forefinger and forced it to the left in the direction of the tenants. “Look at them, look at the faces of those children. So scared. So very, very scared.” A chortle escaped his throat, almost gleeful at their fear. “The choice is simple. The village burns, and whoever is in it with it. Or you leave with me and marry me.”

  “No—no you cannot kill them.”

  His words hissed in her ear, his fingers digging into her face. “I can do whatever I damn well please. This land is mine. And they’re not leaving, so I have every right in the world.”

  “What kind of a monster are you?” She spit the words out through her cheeks mangled by his grip.

  He leaned down to her ear, his voice low. “A monster with plans for you.” His hand dropped from her face and he motioned to one of his men holding a sword. “The paper, Lewey.”

  The man stuck his sword into the ground and walked to Molson’s horse, pulling free paper on a small board and a pencil from his coat pocket. He held it up in the air to Evalyn.

  “Write a note, Evalyn. Write to your husband, tell him you want the divorce. Tell him you arrived at a pleasant village where you can work as a seamstress and that you want to disappear. That you never want to see him again.”

  “You heard that?”

  “I heard everything, mousey. And I couldn’t have planned it better. You accommodated me quite well in stealing you away from Vinehill, just as I planned it with your stepfather.”

  “But, no—no.”

  Shifting behind her, Mr. Molson pulled out his dagger. “No?” He pointed the tip of it at one of the little girls. Three at the most, her huge brown eyes, terrified, peeked past her mother’s thick woolen skirts. “Are ye thinkin’ of the children, Evalyn? Consider well what you do next. Save yourself or save the children. It’s your choice.”

  She stared at the girl for a long moment, the girl’s fear absorbing into her own.

  Her hand shaking, Evalyn took the paper and pencil from the brute’s hand. “I’ll go.”

  With a snort, Mr. Molson grabbed her arm, the blade flipping and slicing through the rope binding her hands together.

  She set pencil to paper.

  { Chapter 21 }

  He tied her wrists back up.

  She’d said she would go with him, but it was clear he wasn’t going to trust her more than three steps away from him. That, or the lecherous monster just liked to see her wrists bound.

  Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as she’d always thought him.

  But he was definitely more evil than she’d ever given him credit for.

  He’d sent one man with the note back to Vinehill and left two of his men in the area of the tenants. A constant threat, ready to burn out the families—kill them if she decided she wanted to run.

  He knew she wouldn’t set destruction upon them. And no matter how she worked it in her mind, he was right. She wouldn’t choose herself. Wouldn’t try and escape as long as those families were in very real danger from Molson.

  She would suffer anything if it meant those children were safe.

  She knew it. Molson knew it.

  She was trapped.

  For as often as his hands paused at her breasts whenever possible as they traveled on the horse, he’d kept his paws off her the past two nights. He’d said if he couldn’t enjoy her exactly as he wanted to—then he wouldn’t at all. They’d stopped at a coaching inn both nights with his three men that accompanied them—with one of them always on guard at the door of the windowless rooms he stuck her in.

  The landscape changed as they moved south—less stark hills and rocky terrain, but Evalyn had no idea as to their destination. Molson offered no information, and she refused to ask.

  On the second day, she realized Lachlan would have already received her hastily scribbled note. The thought of the rage that would rip through him sent tears stinging her eyes and tore out her already shattered heart.

  Or maybe he was already done with her. Maybe she’d pushed him too far in the stable and that was it. He was done with her. Maybe her note was a welcome reprieve for him.

  Either way, the divorce would be finalized soon and Molson would force her to marry him.

  She had to come to terms with that.

  She also had to figure out a way to survive what was next. A way to remove herself so fully from her body, from physical pain, that what little was left of her wouldn’t break.

  She’d been good at that once. She could be again.

  It would have to start with forgetting all she’d seen and done and experienced with Lachlan. Forgetting that she’d once had hope. Hope that wasn’t misguided. Hope that was rewarded.

  And she had to stop thinking about escaping. Escape would mean death to those children. Molson had sworn it.

  It was on the third day when they were on the empty road alongside a river that the hairs on the back of her neck spiked. Her hands still bound together, they’d been walking in a grey, cold mist for hours, giving the horses a break from the muddied roads that sucked hooves deep into the muck.

  Her look instantly swung up to Molson beside her. He continued to walk forward, his bushy eyebrows drawn together in a wicked line across his forehead. Aside from his wide nose, the man wasn’t ugly, slightly attractive, even, to some misguided souls. But she didn’t spare a thought on his outward appearance, for she knew the monster that salivated underneath his skin.

  Her tongue curled up to the roof of her mouth and she immediately admonished herself. She was doing a dreadful job at accepting that his would be the face she would have to live with.

  The face that would laugh when he cut her for sport.

  The face above her in bed.

  Her eyes closed, her stomach convulsing as bile ran up her throat.

  She tripped, not seeing a thick root half stuck out of the mud in front of her. It sent her sprawling and unable to catch herself with her bound hands and she landed on her side in the mud.

  “For fuck’s sake, Evalyn.” Molson dropped the reins of his horse and grabbed her arm, yanking her to her feet. “I swear if you trip over your damn feet one more time I’m going to tie you to the rump of the horse and it can drag you.”

  Evalyn kept her eyes downcast but lif
ted her bound wrists. Mud dripped off the side of her hand. “It’s the rope. I cannot keep my balance when my feet are pulling from the mud.”

  Molson let loose an exaggerated sigh. “The horse to drag you would be a better option, but as I want your limbs working under me, that’s not to happen.”

  “Working under you?”

  A sneer carved his face. “When we reach the border and the divorce is delivered, we’ll marry before we head back into England.” He paused, pulling his dagger from under his coat. He lifted the blade to the side of her face and dragged it down along her cheek until the tip pressed into the flesh below her jaw. He pushed the blade upward, forcing her eyes to lift to him. “And I want you fighting me, bucking me when I stick you. I’ve been planning it out for a long while.”

  Her head went light, the blood leaving her face.

  He dropped the knife from her jaw, grabbing her hand and sawing through the rough rope that had bound her wrists for three days. “We’re far enough removed now that you can run, but we’ll find you before anyone else does.” The blade snapped the last of the rope and his eyes lifted, his look half threatening, half goading. “And I don’t think you’ll run, for you know what will happen if you do.” He paused, a sickening sneer on his thin lips. “Then again, that may be more fun for both of us. Did I tell you I have a new whip? I think in the instance of you running, due punishment would be a lash for every step.”

  She held his look, not reacting. Not a recoil, not a frown, not a smile. He would have her body to do with what he wanted. But he would never have her. Not one emotion from her.

  That, she’d decided. Quiet resistance. She knew well how to do it and that was how she wouldn’t break.

  A sneer pursed his lips and he turned, picking up his reins and starting forth again.

  Evalyn rubbed her wrists, wincing at the raw bloody skin from the rub of the rope. At least she could move her arms freely again. As hard as it was to pick up her feet, she lifted her right leg, her thigh straining at the effort it took to suck her boot out of the mud. Her free arms almost gave her a sliver of hope, but with one of Molson’s men in the lead with his horse, the other two trailing behind her, and the ground a mess of mud, she wouldn’t get far. Probably not even to the side of the road.

  A hundred more paces, and they started down the center of a wide planked bridge over the river.

  Her eyes downcast, she was halfway across the bridge when Molson skidded to a stop in front of her. She bumped into his backside.

  Garbled sounds behind her. Feet scuffling, boots pounding on the bridge. Grunts.

  Evalyn spun around. One of Molson’s men was flat on the ground just before the bridge, prone, his neck contorted unnaturally. Behind his body, two of the horses were free, hopping from one spot to the next, spooked by the scuffle. They bolted toward the nearby tree line.

  A tortured wail pierced the air as Molson’s other man struggled against a man in a black cloak with the hood pulled over his head, obscuring his face. He didn’t see the second hooded man come behind him, a dagger flashing. The blade lifted, efficiently slitting his throat. Molson’s man slumped to the ground, blood gurgling from his neck.

  Highwaymen.

  Panic filled Evalyn’s chest, her breath gasping.

  But then it struck her. Highwaymen were her way out.

  If they killed Molson and his men, they might just leave her alive. Either way, those tenant families would be safe.

  No matter what happened to her, it wouldn’t be worse than dying a long, painful death under Molson’s blade. His whip. A death that would be years in the making.

  She had to get rid of their horse before Molson could escape on it.

  She turned, her hand flinging out and slapping the rump of Molson’s horse. The creature reared, yanking the reins from Molson, and ran forward, straight at the last of Molson’s men at the far end of the bridge.

  The brute jumped out of the way of the stampeding horse, losing his own reins as his mare joined the fracas.

  The moment the horses thundered off the bridge, she saw two more cloaked figures with hooded heads approaching them from the opposite side of the river.

  Molson’s brute drew his pistol, but was too slow. One of the men rushed him, gutting him before he could even lift the barrel. Molson’s last man fell, his body thunking to the wide planks of the bridge, then slumping off the side, dropping into the river below.

  Her heart thundering in her chest, her initial hope sizzled out. These men were brutal. Callous with their kills.

  And now they flanked her and Molson on both sides of the bridge by only twenty feet.

  Why had she been so stupid as to smack the horse away? She could have mounted it before Molson had a chance and rammed past the highwaymen.

  Mercy. She would have to beg for mercy.

  The two cloaked men in front of her stepped forward, the one on the left casually wiping his bloody blade on the dark cloak that fell down to his knees. The one on the right lifted his head slightly, the grey hood about his face letting light into the shadow of it.

  Or she would have to kiss them. Each and every one of them.

  Lachlan’s eyes locked with hers.

  The blue streaks in his hazel irises were stormy, palpitating with rage. Rage mixed with something even more visceral—relief.

  The air was blasted out of her chest in the next instant as Molson’s arm brutally clamped around her waist and yanked her off her feet.

  He set her to his side, the tip of his blade pressing into the hollow above her collarbone, trapping her in place.

  “Don’t you dare move, Evalyn,” he hissed as his look skittered back and forth from one end of the bridge to the other.

  Evalyn looked to the other side of the bridge. The cloaked figures had dropped their hoods. Rory. Finley. Her look swiveled back to Lachlan. He pushed his hood back, as did the man next to him. Domnall.

  Her heart swelled, her chest expanded, and it sent the tip of Molson’s knife digging into her skin.

  They were here—here for her—but she was trapped.

  “Dunhaven. I should’ve known.” Molson scoffed a chuckle. “The baron said he’d take care of you, but I should’ve known the old man was worthless.”

  “Step away from my wife, Molson.”

  Molson’s feet shuffled, his stance widening as a sneer carved into his face, sparking the air around him.

  He looked at Lachlan. “I underestimated you, Dunhaven. I estimated your brother, right. But not you.”

  “What do you know of my brother?” Lachlan took a step forward with his arms at his sides, though the tip of his dirk flashed under the shadow of his cloak.

  Molson snorted. “That he wanted to be a hero more than anything and I got to watch it be the death of him.”

  Lachlan stilled, his voice sinking to a deadly chill. “You were there?”

  “I gave the order to burn down the buildings.”

  “Bloody devil.”

  “You look like your brother.” A chortle snaked from Molson’s lips. “I watched the fool die. Watched him run into that cottage. He thought he was a hero, but it turned out he was just a buffoon and he died for his idiocy.”

  “Lach—”

  Molson jerked her, cutting her words and shifting her further away from Lachlan.

  Blast it. She closed her eyes, expecting Lachlan to jump, to stupidly charge forth in anger at Molson’s bait.

  Nothing. Silence.

  Silence and she was trapped. Trapped and the only way out was through Molson’s blade. Her breathing went rapid, fear that she couldn’t control flooding her veins.

  Not now. Not now.

  She couldn’t be trapped.

  She opened her eyes to find deadly fury had overtaken Lachlan’s face. But he still stood at a distance.

  He knew she was trapped the same as she did or he already would’ve charged.

  Her breaths morphed into gasps. Gasps for air she couldn’t get into her lungs.


  Evalyn twisted, looking over the edge of the bridge. Every fiber in her being told her to jump. It was the only escape. It was the only direction away from the blade and the only place to go. She had to jump before Lachlan did something stupid—before his rage drove him forward straight into death.

  Her toes moved to the rough wooden edge of the bridge.

  She had to do it now—now before she lost herself to darkness for the air that couldn’t make it to her lungs.

  Her toes slipped to the edge of the bridge, her knees bending slightly, ready to spring. A hard swallow that sent the tip of Molson’s blade deeper into her skin, and she cast one last furtive glance at Lachlan.

  His eyes slightly squinted, the look in them meant to make her freeze. He shook his head slightly and the blue in his hazel eyes changed.

  Shifted from fury to pleading.

  Begging.

  Begging her not to do it.

  But it was the only escape. The only place to go. He could see that.

  Why wouldn’t he want her to jump?

  He knew.

  Knew she made stupid choices when she was trapped and couldn’t escape.

  He wanted her to be smart. To think.

  She tore her look from his eyes and glanced over the edge.

  The water far below foamed with anger. Churning. Frigid.

  It wasn’t escape.

  It was death.

  Lachlan knew that.

  Air shot into her lungs with her next gasp.

  She looked to Lachlan as her foot slid away from the edge.

  His cheek twitched, a miniscule smile pulling back his lips.

  His gaze left her to center on Molson, the fury instantly refilling his eyes. “I told you to step away from my wife, Molson.”

  A cackle left Molson’s lips. “She won’t be such for long. She’ll be mine within a fortnight.”

  “You’re delusional.” Lachlan’s ruthless voice echoed along the river.

  “No. Smart.” With that, Molson released Evalyn, shoving her behind him onto the planks of the bridge.

  On her hands and knees, Evalyn saw Molson pull his pistol from under his coat. Heard the click of the hammer pull back. He pointed it at Lachlan.