Stepping out of the dress shop into the late morning sun quickly had Primrose squinting. She stared down at the ground until the sting of the bright sunlight eased a little and then started to look around for Sir Bened. He had said he would wait for her just outside the shop, his reluctance to enter it so visible, she had been amused, but she could not see him anywhere.
After Primrose bought some ribbons, the previously reluctant clerk had suddenly become very talkative. Primrose had gathered a lot of information but was not sure what use she could make of it all. Yet now she knew for certain that her brother had passed through this village. She just wished he had lingered for a while. Instead she was going to have to follow him again and try very hard to catch up to him. She always seemed to end up where Simeon had been not long after he had left the place. If this had been a game, she would have quit playing it long ago.
Keeping a close eye out for Sir Bened, she walked toward the inn where they were staying. She worked hard to convince herself that everything was all right but there was an unease beginning to knot her stomach. It was strange for Sir Bened to wander off with no word to her. He was very set in his determination to save her, protect her. The man would never simply walk away without letting her know where he was headed, she was certain of that. So where was he?
Perhaps some woman had lured him away, she thought, recalling the looks the women had given him from time to time, and then stumbled slightly at the pain that thought caused her. Yet she had no claim on him. He had stuck by her side because he was convinced she needed protection as well as help in finding Simeon. The stab to the heart she had suffered when thinking he had left with a woman told her that some part of her did indeed think of him as hers, that she had some claim on him. Telling herself not to be a fool, that she had only known the man for a day, helped not at all.
Pausing at the front of a pub, she wondered how big a mistake it might be to go inside to look for Bened. Then a noise from within the shadowed alley between the pub and the cooper’s shop caught her full attention. She had seen enough arguments between the men working at Willow Hill to recognize the sounds of fists hitting flesh.
Stepping just inside the alley, Primrose pressed herself up against the stone wall of the pub. Three men were confronting Bened. She winced each time one landed a blow on him although he was holding his own against such poor odds. When one pulled a sword she nearly called out but then Bened drew his own sword. A movement caught her eyes and she watched as one of the men was very slowly inching his way around to get behind Bened. The moment he was past Bened she pulled her pistol and aimed it at him.
The man held a knife in his hand and Primrose braced herself to shoot him before he could use it on Bened. Then he saw her and the smile he gave her was so cold she shivered. He was far enough away from her that she could not see him all that clearly, although his grin was easy enough to spot. A faint light shone through the window of the building behind him making a precise silhouette of his form, and she used that to keep her gaze, and her pistol, fixed on him.
“You mean to shoot me, lass?” He tossed his knife from one hand to the other and back again, displaying his prowess with it. “One chance before I reach you. Head or heart?”
She saw how the light revealed that his legs were braced apart, in a fighting stance, that faint light shining between them. “I do not think I like those choices.”
“Only ones you got, lass.”
She aimed at his head and then drew that aim downward until it rested just above the light shining between his legs. “Not the only one. Might not kill you though you will probably wish it had. You could also bleed to death as you wail about your lost pride.”
Bened stumbled and nearly got himself skewered when he heard Primrose’s voice from behind him. The man facing him with a sword was good, seeing his brief distraction, and quickly taking advantage. Bened suspected all that saved him was that he had a lot more practice and more recently than he suspected this man had. He drew his pistol, needing to hold at bay the two men he was fighting long enough for him to chance a glance behind him.