Tales of Timeless Romance

Chapter Twelve

S he struggled. Mr. Dawson dragged her across the room. She wiggled when he didn’t want her to, she went limp and heavy when he tried to move her, then she flailed and thrashed and she would have screamed if Mr. Thompson hadn’t shoved a gag into her mouth.

They wound her arms around a post at the end of the bed and tied her there. When she still thrashed and kicked, they added ropes around her feet and now she was stuck with nothing free but her head and her useless, painfully throbbing fingers.

She could see out the window. Mr. Thompson stood by it, watching and waiting.

Her anger and something that felt like a sickening sense of hopelessness tingled through her body, clouding her head and probably lessening the pain of the bruises she would feel later. At the moment, she focused on the few things she could do because doing anything was better than admitting defeat.

She wasn’t defeated until she had no hope left and as long as her highwayman was coming, she had hope.

He had to come.

Mr. Thompson tugged on the curtains and cursed.

The only person who would dare to stand up to them was her highwayman.

The realization of what this was slowly crept into her mind. They weren’t here for her. She wasn’t tied up because they wanted anything to do with her right now.

They were using her. They were trying to get to him. For all their selfishness and their faults, they had figured out her plan.

This was a trap.

Mr. Thompson gestured out the window. “Got him.”

She could see out, down the road, his strong form riding. He was coming just as she hoped he would except he didn’t know what he was riding to.

Tlot-tlot. He was riding nearer and the sounds of his approach echoed in her mind like the toll of a bell.

She had to warn him somehow. If Lysander left, she would still live. She wasn’t sure, from the guns both of her captors carried, if they planned on leaving Lysander alive.

She couldn’t scream. If she could, he wouldn’t hear it out the window. She had tried screaming for a while, but it was just a pathetic sound stuck in her throat because of the rag.

She had tried jumping and thumping the bed but that had just earned her a hard smack on the face and not enough noise to alert anybody. The thumping of a bed probably wasn’t an unheard of sound at an inn.

Maybe she could get the men to yell. If they started making a lot of sound, then they would foil their plan. But how? She was stuck, motionless and mute.

Mr. Dawson, pistol in hand, checked out the window, grinning malevolently. He lifted his pistol, flipped the swivel at the top, checked it, and said, “Ready for him.”

He stalked over to her, his long body pressing up against hers. She tried to crane her neck over, tilting her head to the side of the post to hold it away from him. He leaned forward, letting his weight press into her and wrapping a steadying hand around them. “First, you get to watch him die. Then, you come with me and I will get every answer I wish out of you.”

He leaned his head forward and pressed his wet lips against her ear. Something cold pressed against her hands and she realized it was his gun. He held his loaded gun just next to her and the thought of what it could do sent terrifying cramps through her body. She wanted to double over and strain for breath but she couldn’t. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Against her ear, he said, “I don’t know why you are here but I will find it out.”

Her fingers pressed against the gun and she realized he, at the very least, had it pointed away from her, down at the bed. At least he wasn’t going to accidentally shoot her while he slobbered over her face.

Her eyes opened. Mr. Dawson leered down at her, as if he liked the sight of her like this, terrified and tied up. His gaze dropped down to her bosom.

Her fingers tracing the outline of the gun, she had an idea.

She pushed her chest up, arching her back as much as she could, showing him what he wanted to see.

Distracting him.

By now, Lysander had ridden in and had likely already left his horse in the stables. No matter where he was around the inn, no one would miss the sound of a gunshot.

She took a deep breath, her chest swelling with the inhalation and Mr. Dawson’s eyes greedily took in the movement.

The breath wasn’t for him, although the distraction worked in her favor. Her steadying breath was for her. She sent out a silent plea to live through the night and then, her finger finding the trigger, she pulled.

*

It was strange to care about another person as much as he was coming to care about Miss Innsworth. He hadn’t felt this way about someone else since his brother had been alive.

He had been so caught up in his investigation of his brother’s death and then his focus had been on revenge. He had immersed himself in a dark world with bleak outcomes and he had seen his only light as the justice he sought. He had held onto his vengeance like it could save him because if he didn’t hold someone accountable for his brother’s death, then who would?

It had taken him weeks to track down what had happened in London. He had to question his brother’s landlord, his neighbors, and his so-called friends. The more questions Lysander asked, the more he uncovered the truth about the last few days of his brother’s life.

The more he knew, the more his world seemed like a black underworld. It wasn’t just the dark streets, the worn, tall buildings that blocked the sun, the disgusting refuse that piled up in St. Giles. It was the manipulation, the lies, and ultimately, the cowardice.

Dawson and Thompson had brought his brother out gambling. They had run into some bad luck and when things turned sour, they ran away.

Lysander knew his brother. He knew he wouldn’t have run away from a fight. And, from the manipulations he could decipher from the stories about Dawson and Thompson, they had used his brother knowing that something bad would happen.

They sacrificed him for their own games, their own debts.

They had left him in a dark alley, alone, to face an unfair number of thugs.

His brother’s death had been brutal and no one was holding Dawson or Thompson accountable because they had flitted in and out of Derek’s life so quickly. His brother’s murder hadn’t seen the justice it deserved. No authorities could pinpoint the thugs who had murdered him without help from the underground world of St. Giles criminals and that was not a world Lysander could enter.

He had tried and nearly ended up as dead as Derek but he had been that desperate.

The more he uncovered, the clearer the picture of the two gentlemen became. Gamblers, cowards, landowners, flaunting things they didn’t possess, desiring things they didn’t deserve.

Like Elizabeth.

Dawson didn’t deserve Elizabeth.

For so long, Lysander had been driven by his revenge, by an angel of darkness, until he saw her. It was strange to think that one look from her had ingrained itself into his mind as if that one look had bored a ray of light through the swirling black fog inside of him.

She had pierced him in a way that he couldn’t shake and the longer he thought about her, the more she began to replace the darkness driving him with something that felt better.

It was healing to care about another person, to think about her and realize that not only could he save her from the very men who had caused the murder of his brother, but he wanted to save her because she was genuine in a way he had forgotten a person could be. Whatever thoughts she had, she hadn’t hidden them from him. It had been a balm to talk to someone who didn’t feel like they had something to hide.

She did have something to run from and he happened to be around when she needed him. He couldn’t help feeling like their encounter meant something. It was so much of a coincidence, her presence called to him in a way that compelled him to rethink his goals.

He wanted vengeance. But he wouldn’t do it at the cost of leaving Elizabeth behind.

No. He shook his head at his cowardice. It was difficult to admit that someone had touched his life on a deeper level. He might, if he sifted through his true feelings, be falling in love with Elizabeth.

He entered the inn and was immediately approached by the innkeeper. “Is my room ready?” The innkeeper would know what he was asking.

The innkeeper shook his head. “It is ready, in a way, but there has been a complication.”

Had she not arrived? Lysander, stock still and fighting a tingling in his hands, asked, “If I enter my room, will I be alone?”

“You will not be alone, and—”

A bang rang throughout the inn. The innkeeper looked around, blankly, in denial about what the sound was.

But as a soldier, that was the kind of sound that gave Lysander nightmares. He grabbed the innkeeper by the shoulders and shouted, “What is going on?”

The innkeeper looked over at the stairs. “They were going to trap you. You’re a highwayman and they’re…”

Lysander let go of the innkeeper so suddenly and violently, that the man stumbled and fell back. Towering over the fallen man, Lysander demanded, “Is she there, too?”

The innkeeper nodded, his body shaking so badly that Lysander had to take a precious moment to discern the man’s response.

With that vital piece of information twisting down his gullet, he let his rage take over as he barreled up the stairs.