Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel)

chapter 7




He had fainted. Sam tossed the metal fragment aside with a shudder and dropped the knife into the leaves. His entire body had gone slack when she finally got the bullet out.

“Thank God,” she whispered. How could anyone endure what he had just endured? She had tried to be as quick as possible, and the bullet hadn’t been as deep as she’d feared at first, but it had still taken her an agonizingly long time.

Her head swam dizzily, her empty stomach heaved, and she felt as if she might faint herself. She had managed to brazen her way through the frightful task, but now that it was over, all the strength and resolve flowed out of her, leaving her trembling like one of the branches that swayed overhead.

She felt around for the scrap of her petticoat she had used to clean the knife, snatched it up, and wiped her hands on it. She bit her tongue to distract herself from the rush of nausea. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

His voice was so soft she barely heard it. She went still, stunned that he was still conscious. Then she had to think for a moment, not sure what she had said.

“Sorry for hurting you,” she managed at last.

His battered left eye flickered open and a weak version of his cynical grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You’re not the... first female to... lay into me with a blade, angel,” he whispered.

Closing his eyes again, he lay very still.

She set the scrap of fabric aside, still trembling, unsure what to make of his comment. Or his condition. He must be in terrible pain. Despite the way he had remained stoic and unflinching throughout the ordeal, his muscles taut, he had groaned once or twice—and toward the end, he had snapped the slender branch between his teeth. Cleanly in two.

But from the marks on his back, it was obvious he had indeed encountered other blades in his life. And perhaps bullets as well. Looking down at his prone form in the late afternoon sunlight, she could see many scars, pale against the deep bronze of his skin.

Including row after row of long, thin marks straight across his back. Perhaps she was mistaken, but it looked as if those had been caused by a lash. They lay beneath some of the others, stretched into uneven squiggles, faint, faded... as if they had happened when he was very young.

Who was this man?

She hadn’t dared ask before, but now the question hammered at her temples like a headache. Her gaze shifted to the unbreakable chain that bound them together, and she had to press her palms against the cool, damp earth to steady herself.

Who was this man with the cold eyes and unsettling strength and scars that bespoke years of pain? She knew he wasn’t the footpad that the marshalmen had believed him to be. But she didn’t know anything more about him.

Except that he had been willing to risk his life to escape from the law. His life, and hers.

She couldn’t blot from her mind the image of him beating Swinton with his bare hands. The way he had killed so brutally. Mindlessly.

Yet those same hands had shaken when he held the pistol. And his aim at poor Tucker had been miles off the mark. As if he’d never held a gun before in his life.

Who the devil was he?

Abruptly she turned away and busied herself tearing another strip from her petticoat for a fresh bandage.

Because some instinct warned her that she didn’t really want an answer to that question.

“Are you going to be all right?” She fought to keep her voice even.

“Aye.”

That single strained word didn’t sound very convincing. And he was bleeding, much worse than before. “I... I think I should try to close the wound somehow.”

“Give her a knife and she thinks she’s a doctor,” he muttered weakly.

She ignored him, thinking, looking around at the meager resources available—leaves, sticks, puddled water. Nothing. Less than nothing. “I could... what is the word? Cauterize it. With the flat of the knife. If I build a fire—”

“No,” he said sharply, lifting his head. “Don’t be a fool. The smoke would... lead them straight to us.”

“But if I can’t stop the bleeding, you won’t be able to keep going. And then where will you—I mean where will we be?”

“I’ll be fine.” He struggled to push himself up, talking through clenched teeth. “I’ll just have to—”

“I could stitch it.”

That shut him up for a second. Balanced on one elbow, he blinked at her.

Then the mocking glimmer that she was learning to hate flared in his eyes. “Yet another brilliant idea, your ladyship. And what are you going to use?” he asked between ragged breaths. “A twig and a blade of grass?”

She stared back at him with regally cool silence. Then she turned her back, not bothering to explain, and reached into her bodice.

And unpinned the small gold needle case from the place she always kept it, over her heart.

It was the only bit of her past she still owned. The only remembrance she possessed of her home, her family... her mother. She wore it every day to keep it safe from prying eyes and greedy hands. Untying the ribbon knotted around it, she unraveled the necklace and slipped the fine gold chain over her head.

The cone-shaped pendant slid down between her breasts, the richly engraved surface, burnished by generations of wear, gleaming in the sunlight. She opened the exquisitely fine clasp at the top with one fingernail, and took out a needle. One of her mother’s silver lace-making needles.

Turning around, she held it up triumphantly.

He didn’t even have the decency to look surprised, much less apologetic. “What sort of locket is that?” he asked, staring.

“It’s not a locket, it’s a needle case. Haven’t you ever seen a lady’s needle case before?”

His eyes met hers. “Haven’t spent much time among the quality.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a moment. “I see.”

The lame reply made her feel foolish, and in truth she didn’t see at all. Most ladies of gentle birth—even those of the lesser aristocracy, like herself—wore a needle case at one time or other. What kind of life had he led, what kind of world did he come from, that he could be unfamiliar with so common an item?

A life and a world, apparently, far different from the one she had been born into.

His gaze slid back down to the dangling bit of gold, the expression in those green depths not admiring or curious but simply covetous. That was the only word for it. Sam had to subdue an urge to reach up and cover her pendant.

Not to mention her décolletage. She could feel his regard as surely as if he touched her with his callused fingertips.

That strange, tingly sensation coursed through her again, unnerving her so badly she almost dropped the needle held between her thumb and forefinger.

“Now then,” she said briskly, trying to distract both him and herself. “All I need is some good strong thread.”

He looked up at her with a dubiously raised brow. “Don’t tell me—you’re an expert seamstress as well as a thief, forger, and attempted murderess?”

She shrugged. “Something like that.”

If he could be mysterious, so could she. She wasn’t about to tell him the truth.

Besides, even if he believed her, he would only laugh at her again. And she had had quite enough of that.

Concentrating on the task at hand, she cast a critical eye over his clothes—the discarded shirt and waistcoat, his snug black breeches. Plain, homespun fabrics, which would have been sewn with plain, homespun cotton thread.

She glanced down at her own garments with a disgruntled frown, realizing she was going to have to decimate either her ruined gown or petticoats a bit more. Made entirely of silk and fine lawn, edged with lace she had made herself, all had been sewn with the best silk thread, which would be stronger and more suitable for this particular purpose.

The gown was already beyond repair, spattered with mud and torn in a dozen places, her beloved lace ripped and drooping. She told herself a little more damage wouldn’t matter.

Sighing mournfully, she lifted her needle and began to unpick a seam in her sleeve, using a light touch, carefully removing the thread stitch by stitch. In a matter of minutes, she had an ample supply of pale silk spooled around her thumb.

Feeding one end through the needle, she glanced at her patient. “I’m ready. I’m afraid this is—”

“Going to hurt.” He lowered himself back down into the leaves. “What a surprise.”

Sam bit back a reply as she positioned herself beside him again. She was doing her best to help him—and her only reward was a constant stream of sarcastic comments. He had to be the most irksome man she’d ever met.

Perhaps he was entitled to be unpleasant because he was in pain. Perhaps. She held her tongue and her temper, took a deep, steadying breath, and went to work.

The stitching progressed fairly easily, since the wound was relatively small. She just couldn’t believe she was using one of her mother’s heirloom lacemaking needles to close a bullet hole.

The thought brought a sudden rush of memories, of a life so sweet it seemed to belong to someone else. Of a drawing room, a fire on the hearth, three women gathered around it in overstuffed wing chairs, silver needles flashing, voices filling the room with laughter, a man seated nearby smoking a pipe and smiling indulgently, content merely to watch them...

No. Blinking furiously, she fought the tears. She didn’t dare remember. All of that was gone. Forever. The love, the laughter. Gone. It was futile to long for the life she had once lived.

There was only now. Today. Survival.

And this stranger, this maddening rogue, whose life had been tangled up with hers by a trick of fate and a chain of iron.

He didn’t flinch even once, didn’t make a sound as she worked. As if he were made of iron himself.

“All done.” She finished the stitching and tied off the thread, then cleaned the needle, using the scrap of fabric she had torn from her petticoat. She placed it safely back in her needle case. “It looks like this will stop the bleeding.”

She reached for his shirt, intending to make another bandage of the ragged remains.

But his hand shot out and he snatched it away from her. Pushing himself up to a seated position, keeping his back to her, he pulled it on, slowly, being careful of his new stitches.

She sat back on her heels, frowning. “You’re welcome.”

He remained stonily silent.

Fine. So he wasn’t big on gratitude.

She decided to make one last attempt at being civil. “I suppose we have to call one another something,” she ventured. “You may call me Miss Delafield.”

It wasn’t her real name; it was the one she’d chosen after leaving London. She’d taken the name of the first parish she’d come to.

It was the traditional way that orphans were named.

“I’m not of a mind to be sociable,” he muttered.

Irked to the limit of her patience, she stood up and stalked around to stand in front of him, the chain clattering. “Surely you must have a name. You could always make something up. Or would you prefer that I call you something simple like—”

He hadn’t finished buttoning his shirt.

Her eyes locked on a scar in the center of his chest.

“—Beelzebub.”

The word died on her lips, a shocked whisper, as she stared at that mark.

He’d been branded. With the symbol of a pitchfork. A three-pronged pitchfork, burned right into his chest, right over his heart.

Her legs went weak, threatened to crumple beneath her. She recognized that mark. Knew what it meant. Everyone in England had heard the horrible tales. Nannies still used them to frighten children into behaving.

He was a survivor of one of the prison hulks. Derelict navy vessels that had been anchored in the Thames, stuffed with the worst offenders to relieve prison overcrowding. The men aboard had been treated like animals by their Royal Navy overseers.

But that had been... Good Lord... more than two decades ago. Riots in 1720 had ended with most of the hulks at the bottom of the Channel. Scores of prisoners and guards dead. Dozens of the worst offenders on a rampage in London. The experiment had never been tried again.

Depending on how old the rogue was now...

He would’ve been only a boy.

By God’s sweet mercy. She slowly lifted her gaze to his face.

He remained utterly still, his hands frozen over a button in the middle of his shirt, his expression unreadable, his features pale and strained from the surgery.

But the eyes boring into hers blazed, hot with some emotion she could not name.

She blurted the question in a frightened whisper before she could stop herself.

“Who the devil are you?”

His lips thinned to a grim line. She thought he wouldn’t answer her.

But after a heartbeat he did.

“Someone you’re better off not knowing.”

His cool tone sent renewed fear sliding down her spine like a single drop of ice water.

He finished buttoning his shirt with studied casualness and put on his waistcoat.

Sam swallowed a gulp of air past her dry, tight throat. Someone you’re better off not knowing. It was an understatement. It was a warning. She didn’t dare ask any more questions. She already knew far more than she wanted to know about this man who was chained to her by eighteen iron links.

He would kill without conscience. He cared about no one but himself. And he had evidently learned those traits—and God only knew what else—in one of the most vile gaols in the history of England.

And for the moment, her life depended on him.

Her gaze still locked with his, she remembered a lesson she’d learned very early when she’d been forced to turn thief.

Keep their eyes busy, and your hands can get away with anything.

Kneeling, she picked up the scrap of her petticoat she had set aside earlier. “Can’t leave anything behind that might help the lawmen track us,” she said calmly.

Using the same hand, she picked up the knife from where she had dropped it in the leaves, slipping both the blade and the fabric into the deep pocket of her skirt.

He didn’t appear to notice, struggling to get to his feet. He studied the sun, a red streak just visible along the horizon through the trees.

“There’s still daylight left.” He braced one hand against a tree, breathing hard, and glanced down at her. “Might as well put it to good use.”

She still crouched in the leaves, her heart beating so hard she couldn’t speak for a moment. “Yes.”

“Then let’s keep moving.” A shadow of that cynical grin curving his mouth, he extended a hand to help her up. “After you, Miss Delafield.”

~ ~ ~

Like masts in a harbor, trees towered around them, tall and silent. Nicholas guessed that he and his newly quiet companion had been walking for another hour, perhaps more. He couldn’t be sure. He was losing track of time, his senses blunted by loss of blood, exhaustion, pain.

The bullet wound in his left shoulder throbbed and burned. He hoped he wasn’t getting blood poisoning, he thought with a flash of black humor. He didn’t want to die while he had a length of pretty lemon-colored silk stitched into his hide.

That was no way for a notorious ex-pirate to make his grand entrance into hell.

The entire forest seemed quieter as night approached. Or maybe it was just the incessant clanking of the accursed chain that made everything else seem muted by comparison. The dying sun cast lengthening shadows across the forest floor, the low light swathing everything in a smoky haze, including the slender figure walking a pace ahead of him.

Miss Delafield.

Nicholas stared at her back, not sure what bothered him most: the throbbing ache in his left shoulder, the clatter of the shackles as they trudged through the woods, the unwelcome feeling of weakness that made him want to drop to the ground and sleep...

Or the fact that he had let her keep the knife.

He couldn’t puzzle out why he had allowed her to keep it. He had no reason to indulge her. It didn’t make sense. Bad enough that she was impulsive and headstrong and nervous around him as a cat on a storm-tossed brig. Now she was armed as well.

Grimacing, he tried to tell himself there was no harm in it. Let her think she had outwitted him. Let her have some sense of security, however false. It might make her less argumentative, less troublesome, and he was all in favor of that.

He shifted his gaze away from her stiff back and squared shoulders, away from that tangle of flaxen hair that tickled generous, swaying hips.

One thing was clear, even to his muddled senses: this clever, high-born, fiercely independent lady thief was having a strange effect on him. One that no woman had ever had before. One he didn’t like.

It must be some form of physical desire, he decided, intensified by the enforced nearness and the fact that he had been so long without a woman. The mere touch of her hand on his bare skin had been enough to make his blood run hot. And when she had hovered over him, her breath warm against his shoulder, her lacy sleeve tickling his back, the desire that shot through him had tormented him as much as the bullet.

Even now, he couldn’t seem to keep his gaze from straying back to her... his mind from imagining what it would be like to pull her body against his, to feel handfuls of that tawny hair flowing through his fingers like molten gold, to kiss her lush, full lips and...

He blinked to clear the image from his vision, stunned as if one of the towering trees had fallen on him. Where the devil were these thoughts coming from? He couldn’t fathom it.

Even the name she had given earlier kept whispering through his mind in an undeniably alluring way. Miss Delafield. It suited her. Simple, elegant, graceful. And probably false.

So why did he feel glad that she had said Miss? Miss instead of Lady Delafield. Or Duchess Delafield. Or ordinary Mrs. Delafield. She could be lying about her unwedded status, but somehow he didn’t think so. What man would put up with her stubborn ways and sharp tongue long enough to marry her?

He forced his gaze to the ground and his attention back to the problem at hand. Escape. Move forward. One foot in front of the other. Whoever— whatever —she really was, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Not her name, not her tempting golden curves, not the unsettling effect she seemed to have on him.

Because she had seen the brand on his chest. From the look on her face, she had clearly recognized what the mark meant. Even if she couldn’t identify the specific ship, he couldn’t risk that she might mention it to someone. To anyone.

And that meant he might have to kill her.

His gut twisted in a sickening knot even as he contemplated the idea. Never in all his thirty-eight years, even at his worst, had he ever harmed a woman. Even aboard ship, he had forbidden his men to misuse women captured at sea—a thoroughly unpiratical rule that had earned him his nickname, “Sir Nicholas.” Ruthless enemy of the Royal Navy, plunderer of merchant vessels, chivalrous toward ladies of any rank who fell into his hands.

But this particular lady was different. He couldn’t afford to feel chivalrous or anything else toward her. Not if he wanted to keep his neck out of a noose.

Only a handful of prisoners had survived the riot aboard the Molloch, the Royal Navy prison hulk that had been his home for eight years. And Nicholas Brogan was the most infamous. He was bloody well certain the authorities would know the ship’s name, if ever Miss Delafield had the chance to describe the brand to them.

And he could just picture her doing so. Especially if it would save her own pretty neck. It was a pitchfork, your honorable lordships, burned right over his heart, with three prongs, pointing downward. I’m willing to testify, if you could find it in your mercy to drop the charges against me...

Aye, she would do it. In the wink of one of her lovely eyes. Her instinct for self-preservation was every bit as strong as his. She had proven that last night in gaol, when she had tried to sacrifice him to save herself.

Clenching his jaw, he lifted his gaze to her once more, muttering oaths under his breath. It was bad enough that he had to consider her fate while they were chained together. Now he also had to consider her fate once they managed to get the chain off.

He cursed God for throwing her into his path. For forcing him to make a choice he did not want to make.

For once again placing an innocent at his mercy.

A surge of hot, bitter guilt choked him. He blinked hard, seeing again the image that tormented him so often: of a young boy’s accusing eyes... of that innocent face in the midst of a blazing, sinking pirate ship... of the pistol shot that rang out, echoing through his memory again and again.

After that night, he had vowed to never take another life. He had dared hope that six years as a law-abiding citizen might have changed him.

But that hope had died today with Swinton and Leach, had been left shattered in the clearing with their broken bodies. The beast within him hadn’t been conquered. It had merely been lying dormant. Waiting for a chance to leap forth and kill again.

He couldn’t control his violent nature. Couldn’t trust himself.

And now he was wearing a pistol again. Tucked neatly into his belt at his back. Already, it had become such a natural part of him that he barely even noticed it.

A man like him, he thought with a bitter glance heavenward, shouldn’t be allowed within a hundred miles of anything or anyone innocent.

Miss Delafield came to a sudden halt in front of him, freezing like a startled deer. “Look!” she whispered, pointing into the distance. “What is that?”

Nicholas stopped beside her, trying to right his chaotic thoughts, squinting into the shadows. “I don’t see—”

He saw it before he could finish the sentence. Several yards ahead on the left. A flash of light that winked on and then off.

“Damnation.” He grabbed the girl, yanking her with him as he jumped behind a fat evergreen, the chain clattering.

Had it been a lantern? A torch? Could their pursuers have closed in already? Burrowed deep into the prickly branches, he waited for a shout or a gunshot. He could feel the girl trembling beside him, her shoulder pressed against his.

But he heard nothing. Not so much as a single footfall. After a moment, he chanced a quick look, glancing at the spot where the light had appeared. And he saw it again.

But this time he realized what it was. “It’s nothing.” He heard the relief in his own voice. “Just a ray of sunlight striking some sort of glass.”

“Glass?” she whispered. “What sort of glass could there be out here in the middle of Cannock Chase?”

“I intend to find out. You stay here and I’ll—” He cut himself off, realizing the order he had started to give was impossible.

“Wherever you go, I go, remember?” she asked dryly, moving her foot to rattle the chain.

How could he have forgotten?

Easily, he thought with a rueful grimace. It was damned contrary to his nature—not to mention bloody inconvenient—to be one half of a pair. “Let’s at least try to keep it quiet, your ladyship.” Crouching down, he stepped out of the evergreen.

Then slowly, cautiously, together, they moved in for a closer look.