The Spy’s Convenient Bride: The Macalisters, Book Five

by Taylor, Erica

  He had understood Quan perfectly. A highway robbery. Five men, armed.

  From between the bench cushion and the wall of the carriage he produced two pistols he had hidden prior to their departure.

  “Can you handle a pistol?” he asked quietly, checking the flintlock.

  Vivian’s eyes grew wide, but she nodded.

  He handed her a pistol. “Tuck it into your skirt pockets. Do exactly as I say, and we should get through this fine. And when it is time, drop to the ground and get under the carriage.”

  “How will I know it’s the right time?”

  “You’ll know.” He felt a hardness settle over his expression. Intense stressful situations happened to him all the time. He could handle himself. He only hoped she would trust him enough to get them through this alive.

  A loud knock came from the door and Vivian jumped.

  “This is a highway robbery. Come out nice and easy and no one will get hurt.”

  Vivian’s disbelieving gaze flew to his and Luke nodded.

  “I’m afraid it’s for real this time,” he said quietly, as he tucked his pistol into the holster under his coat. “Keep calm, and it will be over shortly.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening again.”

  Luke smirked, as surprised as she was. What were the odds they would be stopped twice in the span of a fortnight for a highway robbery?

  “We are coming out,” Luke announced loudly. He flipped the latch on the carriage door and it was pulled open from the outside.

  He descended the carriage steps and took a quick survey of his adversaries before he turned to help Vivian.

  Five men were gathered around the carriage, their horses tethered along the tree line. A swatch of fabric covered their noses and mouths, improvised masks to hide their identities. One held Quan around the throat. Luke knew Quan would not have surrendered that easily. He’d allowed himself to be caught.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” Luke said pleasantly.

  “Shut it,” the first man said. Luke barely glanced at the others, as this one seemed to be in charge.

  Luke raised his hands. “We have no money.”

  The leader glared. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Feel free to search the carriage,” Luke suggested. “You’ll find nothing but trunks of clothing.”

  “And what about on your person?” the man asked, coming close to Luke’s face. The sour smell of pipe tobacco wafted around them. They’d likely smoked while in wait for an unsuspecting carriage to pass by.

  Luke narrowed his eyes a fraction. This patch of road was not ideal for a robbery. There was no vantage point for a lookout and there were a number of bends in the road. One wouldn’t have known when a carriage was on approach. Also, Luke had chosen a less-traveled route for a reason, to avoid anyone who might follow. Or search for them directly.

  Luke glanced around, noting the two other men, five horses, lit with nothing but three lanterns. Not even light from the moon could be seen with such heavy cloud cover.

  Two men searched the carriage, but all they found was the basket of breads and cheese from the Bradstone cook. Had they looked harder, they would have discovered the satchel of bank notes beneath the false seat or the other two weapons beneath the other seat.

  They did not have much experience with traveling coaches. They had either recently turned to highway robbery, or did not make this activity a habit.

  The leader glanced at Vivian and his eyes gleamed with appreciation.

  “I want to see what she has hiding under this great gown of hers,” the highwayman said, shifting his weight to be closer to Vivian. “Fine drapings often hide wanton ways. She might need someone to show her the right of it.”

  “You will not touch my wife.” Luke’s tone heavy with warning.

  The highwayman glanced at him. “What are you to do about it?” The two men tossing the carriage finished, calling that they’d found nothing.

  The highwayman took a step back from Luke and pointed his pistol at Luke’s forehead.

  Luke didn’t flinch. It wasn’t the first time he’d had a gun pointed at his head.

  “Where are the jewels? With this fine a carriage, where is the blunt?”

  “I told you, there is none. May we be on our way?”

  “We were told you’d have jewels.” The robber pressed the butt of the pistol into Luke’s skin. “Give up the gems, gov’.”

  Vivian pulled her wedding ring from her finger and offered it to him. “This is all we have. Please don’t shoot my husband.”

  The tremble in her voice was a nice touch, but the leader was not easily swayed. He snatched the ring from Vivian’s hand and tucked it into his coat pocket. “Where is the rest?”

  “He spoke the truth,” Vivian said. “There is no more. Please, let us leave.”

  “You’re not leaving until this pomp has been bled dry,” the highway man said with a nod to Luke. “He’s what we came for, after all.”

  “Is that so?” Luke asked, a broad a grin spread across his face. “Now we are getting somewhere!”

  * * *

  Vivian had never seen anyone move so swiftly in her life. Before she could register Luke’s movements, he’d disarmed the man before him, and aimed and fired at one of the men who’d tossed the carriage.

  Vivian dropped to the ground just as the shot rang out across the clearing. She crawled out of the way, and scrabbled under the carriage. Quan and Luke moved together, like a carefully coiled spring. They quickly disarmed the robbers nearest them with some intricate hand movements and footwork. The man who’d held the pistol to Luke’s head dropped to the ground as Luke took out his knee from under him. Two of the lanterns shattered in the scuffle; one lone lantern cast varying shadows across the road, giving Vivian only a partial glimpse of what Quan and Luke were capable of. She’d never seen such a violent display of power, elegant and brutal in its delivery. They moved too quickly for her to account for each blow as they twisted around the assailants as each one dropped to the ground. It was like watching demon beasts from hell dismantle their unsuspecting prey that stupidly thought they were a simple, jovial rake and an unsuspecting driver.

  And then it was over. Gravel from the roadway dug into her palms as she listened to the newfound quiet, the dramatic shadows cast across the roadway silhouetted against one lone form.

  And then Luke was crouched beside the carriage, his eyes illuminated in the dark by the sheer power still radiating through them.

  “Are you injured?”

  She should have been terrified of him. She should have run screaming from the brutality she’d just witnessed. How had Luke and Quan done that? Disarm five men, in the dark, with nothing but a pistol, which Luke hadn’t even pulled from his coat.

  Vivian should have demanded he return her to Herefordshire and end this adventure. Instead she almost never wanted it to end.

  “I am unhurt.” She accepted his hand as she crawled from under the carriage. She glanced about the road, and could barely make out the forms of the men in the road, the one lantern dying where it lay on its side.

  Luke did not meet her eye. “How much could you see?”

  Vivian scanned the aftermath. “Enough.”

  “I apologize if I frightened you—”

  “Luke, I was not afraid.” Her arms ached to take him up in an embrace and hold him tightly. That sort of display, the darkness and rage that had poured out of him…

  He sent her a flippant smile, complete with a wink, and moved away from her. Quan was bent beside one of the men, rummaging through his pockets. The highwaymen were all unconscious, which Vivian supposed was fortunate. Dead men were probably not as easy to interrogate as unconscious ones.

  Luke bent to one of the men and searched through his coat. He pulled out a folded paper. He rose and moved to the long lantern to read.

  She moved towards him and peered over his arm. She read through the three lines of description, three lines detailing herself and Lu
ke’s appearance, their carriage and even Quan.

  She shivered despite not feeling cold. “This wasn’t random.”

  Luke shook his head and handed the paper to Quan, who had moved beside them. Quan read the words, refolded the paper and tucked it into his coat pocket.

  “Poppins?” Vivian asked, looking between the two men.

  Luke didn’t respond as he searched the others. It was dark still, the surviving lantern providing little light, but Luke seemed to know what he was looking for.

  “How would he know we were here?”

  “He likely put out a bounty,” Luke said. “Anyone with a slanted moral compass and a weapon could be looking for us, anywhere in Kent.”

  “Anywhere in south eastern England,” Quan amended.

  Vivian’s mind spun with the information, and what that meant for them. Were they to be fugitives? Did they need to go into hiding?

  “We need to leave here,” Vivian decided. “We should not be here when these men begin to wake.”

  Luke nodded. “I’ll have—”

  But Vivian didn’t hear the rest of what he said, doused in fear as a dark shadow rose up behind Luke. The lantern light caught the barrel of a pistol.

  Vivian didn’t even think, simply reacted. She grasped the pistol from inside her skirts, aiming as she fired. The loud shot rang out in the silence of the clearing.

  Luke’s entire body flinched in reaction to the sound of the gunshot, his eyes wide in astonishment. For a moment she thought she’d shot him by accident, or she hadn’t fired quickly enough, and he’d been shot after all. Luke quickly turned away from her, as he realized what she had done.

  The highwayman had fallen to the ground, slumped in his death at an unearthly angle.

  Blood pumped painfully through her limbs, her heart racing, the sound agonizing as it filled her ears. She couldn’t breathe, she was going to suffocate from the panic sweeping over her.

  “Vivian,” Luke was saying to her, his voice muted by the rush of panic that echoed through her ears. He took the pistol from her, but she didn’t see what he did with it. Her attention was focused on the man dead in the road, the man she had killed.

  “Vivian, look at me,” Luke pressed his hands on either side of her face and tilted her head up to meet his gaze. His touch was calming, centering, and his face was something else to focus on.

  “You are okay.” He pushed her hair from her brow. “Darling, focus on me, on my voice.”

  Just as she thought panic would overtake her, it all fell away and her mind was remarkably clear. She took in a lungful of air, the cool evening breeze gentle against her face.

  “I am all right,” she said, her mouth and jaw finally working again.

  Luke watched her carefully, not convinced.

  “Honestly,” she tried again, forcing evenness into her tone.

  “Vivian, you just shot someone.” His hands moved to her shoulders; his gaze searched her.

  Vivian nodded. “He would have hurt you, or worse. Would you rather me melt into a watering pool of despair?”

  “I would rather you inform me if something is wrong.”

  Vivian looked past him to the dark lumps of men still in the road.

  “Maybe later I will process through all of this, but for now I am all right.” Returning her gaze to his, she refused to be the girl who couldn’t manage her head in a difficult situation.

  She brought her hand to rest against his cheek, and smoothed her leather-gloved thumb across his cheek. “There are moments that are convoluted, too jumbled to be understood when they are lived. They are only felt later when time is allowed to process. But in this moment, Luke, I am fine.”

  He held her gaze for a moment longer, and then another, before nodding and releasing her. Quan moved about the road. He bound the four unconscious men and moved the fourth off the road. Vivian watched in morbid fascination, and realized this wasn’t the first time Luke and Quan had done this type of work. Death didn’t seem to bother them in the least, or if it did, they did not let on.

  Luke moved to the carriage and pulled various things from the interior and Vivian shook herself alive. It was not time to dwell on any of this. Focus on the now and move forward.

  “Quan, if you take the carriage back to Bradstone Park, hopefully someone will follow, and assume we’ve simply returned to my family.” Luke was saying, and Vivian focused on his words. “We can go to Salisbury on horseback. It’s not ideal, but it’s quicker.”

  The lights from the lanterns had burned out and there was little ambient light from the moon. Moving swiftly and with ease, like a cat in the darkness, Luke gathered the reins from two of the highwaymen’s three horses, careful not to tread on any of the unconscious men on the ground.

  Vivian regarded the horse warily as Luke handed her the reins. “Are we stealing their horses?”

  “They tried to rob us,” Luke reminded her and fussed with the straps on the saddle and bridle. “Stealing their horses is only fair play.”

  “I’m not saying we shouldn’t,” she clarified and watched as he checked over her horse as well, tightening the stirrups. She could have tended to her own horse, but it felt nice for just a moment to have someone else do it for her.

  “We will need to develop a disguise, something that will not attract attention. Can you do an accent? Sound Welsh or something? And we will need to change our clothing.”

  Vivian shook her head, a frown forming as she thought through Luke’s plan. “No.”

  He turned to regard her. “No, you can’t sound Welsh?”

  “Yes, I can manage a Welsh accent, but I mean, no, whatever you think should be done next we should likely do the opposite.”

  “Vivian, I don’t think—”

  “These associates of yours, they are also spies? They've had the same training and practices as you. They think like you do. We need to make moves and decisions they would not expect.”

  Luke opened his mouth to argue, but snapped it shut with a frown. “What do you suggest?”

  “Send the carriage to London, on the main roads. Make sure Quan is remembered as he pays the tolls along the way. Whoever is looking for us will find him, and follow him. We can take the long way around London, through St. Albans and Oxford.”

  “Vivian, that will add days to the trip.”

  Quan interjected. “No, she is correct. Whoever is watching the carriage in Kent, the house in London, Bradstone House, will likely send scouts out once they realize we are not there. By then your trail will be long gone. No one will remember two unsuspecting people on the mail coach. Taking your time is what they least expect.”

  “And they likely have no idea we are heading towards Salisbury.”

  Luke’s expression was thoughtful, though the shadows offered no clues to what he thought of her plan. True, she was no spy or strategist or master at concealing oneself in the dead of night, but she understood logic and reason, and if the people who pursued them were like Luke, then it made sense to not act as they would be expected to.

  “You want us to attempt to out-think a spy?”

  “I think we should under-think them. They will expect you to act a certain way, make specific decisions based on your communal training. I’m sure you and Quan have a pattern, a way you always react to something.” Vivian paused and watched her words wash over his handsome face. “The best thing to do is to be unpredictable.”

  It was a long moment that they stood in the dark roadway, and Vivian was sure he would think her ridiculous. What did she know about escaping assailants? What experience or training did she have that would benefit them?

  He nodded. “Clever of you. They will certainly not be expecting such a thing, and likely wouldn’t even consider your influence.”

  A bright smile broke across Vivian’s face, but she pulled it back before he could see her excitement. It was heartwarming he was willing to take her council on this, that she could contribute to a situation so very out of her experience.

/>   “Thank you.”

  “Though, you should still consider adopting a Welsh accent,” he said and turned back to the straps of the saddle.

  Vivian couldn't stop her gaze as it rolled towards the heavens.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When they arrived at the nearest town, Luke could see the exertion from their mad dash across the countryside had done nothing to calm Vivian’s nerves. She claimed she was unaffected by the night’s events, but Luke could see that was false. With each minute that passed, she grew more and more agitated. Her smile was tight across her lips as she dismounted the stolen horse, and she did not meet his gaze as he took the reins from her.

  Luke found the ostler in the first coaching inn they came to, and handed the horses over for the night. They didn’t plan to come back for them anyway.

  Vivian was quiet as they moved further down the street, in search of a different coaching inn. On Vivian’s suggestion, he chose to take rooms at a coaching inn at the other end of the street, far from where they’d left the horses. Should someone come looking for the horses, they should be as far away as possible.

  His worry over handing her a firearm was laughable, now he knew what she could do with one. Her quick aim when she’d pulled the pistol from the depths of her skirts - he’d never seen anything like it. It was also something she’d likely done before, which only brought forth more questions. Primarily, where had she learned to shoot like that?

  The patrons of the coaching inn had started their drinking early and Vivian stood close to Luke. He was careful not to draw too much attention as he inquired about a room for the evening. It was late, past midnight and he only hoped there was a room available.

  “Lord Haughty!”

  A drunken young man clamped Luke on the shoulder. Luke had never seen the man before but smiled politely as the young man shouted that it was his birthday. He was a few tankards in and slurred most of his words.

  “Happy birthday to you then, mate,” Luke said and disentangled himself from the drunken young man.