Chapter 14
The storm thickened until sight itself seemed to freeze.
Joshua rode low over Brutus’s neck, his eyes stinging, his every muscle taut with purpose.
They had been riding for what felt like hours, following faint wheel ruts that wavered and vanished beneath each new drift.
Once, they thought they’d lost the trail entirely until Bruton spotted a fresh gouge in the ditch—a mark of iron rim scraping ice.
That thin sign was enough to drive them harder.
Roxton urged his horse forward, his breath coming in white plumes. “They’re close!” he shouted, though the gale all but stole his voice. Joshua’s heart thudded like a drumbeat of pursuit. Every gust seemed to whisper Merry’s name—every shadow might have hidden her, cold and frightened.
The lamps of the cart showed first—two blurred coins wading through the snow—then the shape of the driver, hunched and black against the whitening hedges.
Joshua raised a hand. Brutus checked at once, hocks under him, his breath appearing like smoke.
Mr. Roxton and Lord Bruton ranged alongside, the three of them a dark line across the road.
“Ho! Coachman!” Roxton called. “Draw aside. We mean no harm.”
The driver, muffled to the eyes, hunched his shoulders as if he might argue with three mounted men. The coach laboured to a halt with a wooden groan, steam rising from the horses.
Joshua swung down and approached the door. His glove slipped on the iron, slick with ice; he caught himself, steadied, and wrenched open the door.
Barnaby Tremaine lay inside in disarray—coat skewed, cravat crushed—blinking at the burst of cold as though his rest had been disturbed.
“Fielding,” he rasped. He looked inebriated and disoriented.
Joshua did not answer. His gaze had already dropped to Tremaine’s boots.
A length of rope—damp, frayed, unmistakable—ran from the door-stanchion around both ankles in a stout figure-of-eight, the knot hauled viciously tight.
A second turn had been jammed under the seat-iron and knotted to bite at every jolt.
The floor showed a smear of half-melted snow where someone had come and gone at speed.
The opposite cushion bore no occupant, only the ghost of another passenger.
He reached in and flicked the rope with a gloved finger; it twanged like a plucked string.
“By all that is holy…she tied you up and escaped?”
Lord Bruton shouldered forward. One look was enough to harden his face to iron. “Where is the young lady?”
Tremaine’s laugh broke on the edges. “She—tied me up!” he panted, colour mottling his cheeks. “Ungrateful—” He jerked a bound foot and hissed as the knot bit.
Joshua grabbed him by the collar. “Would you care to rethink those words?”
“She is out in this weather?” Roxton glanced at the whitening hedges, the wind sharpening the flakes to needles.
Joshua turned a fraction. “Driver—when did you take up this coach?”
“Just nigh two miles back, sir,” the man muttered, his gaze sliding sideways. “Slow goin’ in the storm. Gen’leman said no stoppin’.”
Joshua’s hand went methodically through corners and panels—no ribbon, no glove, no pin. Only the damp rope, the slush-mark, the cold draught along the inside where a window had once been forced an inch and then shoved home again.
“Where is she?” Bruton asked a second time, in a quieter tone, the question as cold as the night around them.
Tremaine’s mouth worked, but hauteur deserted him. “I—did not know—” He shut his eyes as if darkness might hide his sins.
Joshua untied him from the doorpost. Tremaine sagged back and threw an arm across his face. “God help me,” he said thickly into his palm.
“God help you later,” Bruton said. “For now—out.”
Joshua cut the second knot with one clean pull of his knife, and Tremaine yelped as blood woke in his feet. Between them, they hauled him to the verge with firm, unceremonious movements. The team stamped and blew as snow webbed the leather harness, while the wind took the open door and slammed it.
Roxton turned on his heel. “We separate now, I think. I will head back towards Wychwood. Bruton—”
“I will deal with him,” Bruton said grimly. “I will not have him turn another wheel to-night.” He gave the coachman a level look that emptied the man’s lungs. “Back to the last inn. I will ride behind. If the lamps so much as sway oddly, I shall notice, Barnaby.”
Joshua gathered Brutus’ reins. “I will keep to the London road and check every cart, inn, and house. She cannot have gone far.”
“Agreed,” Roxton said. He gripped Joshua’s forearm hard, then Bruton’s. “Send word quickly if you find her, and I shall do the same.”
The wind lifted a handful of snow and flung it across their faces. In that white breath, they parted. Roxton wheeled his hunter, Lord Bruton remounted and waited for the coach to turn about, and Joshua swung into the saddle and rode Brutus away from the others.
The snow thickened to a veil that swallowed the world, and Joshua pressed on, head bent, his breath clouding before him.
Every few yards, he called Merry’s name, the sound swallowed almost at once by the wind.
Brutus’s hooves made dull thuds, muffled under gathering drifts, and the hedgerows loomed like ghosts at the edge of his sight.
He stopped at the first farmstead he came to—a square of yellow light behind shuttered windows. A dog barked, shrill and distrustful, until a man’s voice hushed it. When Joshua called out, the door opened a crack, spilling lamplight and the scent of wood smoke.
“Beg pardon,” Joshua said, his voice rough from the cold. “Have you seen a young lady upon the road? She may be afoot—perhaps seeking help?”
The farmer shook his head, blinking at the snow. “Not a soul all night. You are the first fool I ’ave seen abroad since the storm came up.”
Joshua nodded, tipped his hat in thanks, and rode on.
At the next cottage he learned nothing either. At a wayside inn, the keeper leaned in his doorway, pipe smoke curling blue about his head. “No young lady here,” he said, then quickly closed the door.
Joshua spurred on, his heart thudding and his eyes narrowed against the sting of wind.
Snow filled the tracks faster than horses could make them.
The road became a pale blur, and the thought of Merry out in this dreadful weather kept him going forward.
Now and again, he dismounted to check some mark—broken brambles, a smear where something had fallen—but the wind erased his evidence faster than he could gather it.
“Merry!” he called again, his voice muffled by the snow. Only the echo answered him, soft and useless.
Then, at a bend where the road forked, he saw a pair of wheel ruts diverging into a farm lane.
Not carriage wheels—too narrow, too shallow—but those of a smaller cart, turned recently enough that the edges still glistened dark beneath their new frosting.
Joshua dismounted and walked Brutus down the lane.
The snow here lay deep and soft, muffling sound.
A faint glow shone ahead—a lantern swinging slowly.
He came upon the slow-moving cart. The driver’s head was down, his shoulders broad in a coarse smock. He straightened sharply when Joshua called out.
“Evening,” Joshua said. “Have you seen a lady on the road? She may be lost or hurt.”
The man’s eyes flicked toward the cart behind him. “No lady,” he said quickly. “Only me and the horse, sir.”
Joshua’s gaze followed his. The cart bed was heaped with blankets—more than a man needed for any load. Beneath the top layer, something stirred.
“’Tis a strange night to be hauling an empty cart,” Joshua remarked mildly.
The man scowled. “I be on my way home now.”
Joshua was about to reply when a voice rose from beneath the blankets—thin, trembling, but unmistakable. “Captain Fielding?”
He strode forward, brushing aside the top blanket. Merry’s pale face blinked up at him from a nest of rough sacking and wool. Her lips were blue, her curls damp with melted snow. “Thank God you found me,” she whispered, a small, shaky smile flickering through her exhaustion.
Joshua could not speak for a moment. His throat closed with something sharp and overwhelming—relief, disbelief and gratitude all at once. “You have given us a scare,” he managed finally, his voice low and even.
“So this ain’t the one what took you?” the farmer asked.
“No.” She shook her head viciously. “He is family.”
“I found her in the hedge, poor mite,” he said briskly. “Fell from a carriage, she said, and near froze to death, so I bundled her in with the horse blankets, and was taking her to my wife.”
“You have my thanks,” Joshua said simply.
“The house is just there, up the lane.”
Joshua helped Merry back into the cart and, leading Brutus, he followed it to the house.
The farmer opened the door and told his wife what had happened and then led the horses to a barn.
“Let us warm her by the fire before you take her anywhere,” the woman ordered, already bustling them inside. “Come in, both of you. No one rides far in this weather without wishing for death to come a-calling.”
Inside the low-beamed kitchen, the heat of the fireplace hit like a physical blow.
The flames crackled, soup simmered, and the smell of bread and onions filled the air.
Within a very few minutes, Merry sat close to the hearth, her fingers wrapped around a bowl of soup the farmer’s wife had pressed upon her.
Her face soon thawed to colour again, the blue fading from her lips.
Once assured that Merry would do, Joshua allowed himself to be cossetted by the farmer’s wife.
Cold outer garments were removed, he was wrapped in warm blankets and sat by the fire with soup in hand.
“You are not hurt?” he asked softly.