Chapter 27
It took nearly an hour weaving through the overgrown trails on the fringes of the Marwood Forest before Oliver and Adrian arrived at the cottage. It was exactly as they expected, deserted on the outside but for three horses tethered to a tree in the yard.
Adrian climbed down from his own mount, as did Oliver. Oliver pulled a revolver from his holster, but Adrian had no such weapon on hand. He nodded towards the house.
“There are figures in the room, there,” he murmured, using a screen of trees as protection. “We should draw them out one at a time for the most success.”
Oliver nodded and knelt down, scooping up a smooth stone and hurling it towards the window where two blurry figures walked back and forth in the rear of the cottage.
There was a brief hesitation inside, and then the creak of the back door opening before a hulking, brutish man stepped out into the yard and looked around.
He peered into the woods, and was about to turn inside when Adrian reached over and purposefully snapped a twig in two.
The sound brought the other man back around, and he walked quietly towards where the two were hiding. When he was only a few paces away, Oliver stood calmly up and, with the poise and aim of a long-time soldier, shot at the other man’s leg.
His bullet rang true, and the man fell with a cry of pain and alarm.
“I’ll tie him up,” Oliver said, nodding to the house. “But another will be on his tail after that sound.”
Adrian needed no further urging. He rushed up towards the house, grateful he had not wasted a moment’s time when a second burly man came tumbling out of the back door with a pistol of his own. This man pointed the weapon at Adrian and pulled the trigger.
Adrian ducked, although he was not afraid of the ball and shot. He knew something about a man taken off guard and the unreliability of a revolver—fear and surprise almost always ruined a man’s aim, and just so the bullet flew harmlessly overhead. Not so with Adrian.
He continued his own projectile approach, hurling his body into that of the strange man and taking him to the ground in an instant. They grappled like wrestlers in the dirt and mud, rolling down the hill and exchanging blows as they went.
The other man was stronger and heavier than Adrian, but Adrian was faster and more experienced. After a short scuffle and the aid of a nearby rock, he had the second man on the ground near the first, both bleeding but alive. Panting, he stood and looked at Oliver.
His friend was frozen in place, staring up at the cottage in a way that drew Adrian’s sickened gaze to follow.
In the door was the third man—Drake—and he had a pistol of his own. But his pistol was not aimed at Oliver and Adrian. Instead, it was pointed into the soft golden hair of the woman Adrian loved. Drake was holding her firmly in place.
She looked torn and disheveled, her loose mane hanging around her shoulders and to her waist, but he saw more than fear in her blue eyes—he saw determination, and resolve.
“Well done, gentlemen,” Drake said coldly. “I would applaud your efforts, but as you can see my hands are rather engaged at present. I will say this for you—at least you have managed to keep this job interesting.”
“Unhand her,” Adrian said. He could hear the breaking in his own voice.
Rosalind looked so slim and fragile in the other’s man’s rough grasp.
He knew she was not a fragile woman, she had proven as much during their acquaintance, but even a woman of strength and poise could be snapped in two by a man like Drake.
“I think, good sir, that I will be the one making demands,” Drake drawled slowly.
He must have noticed some little movement from Oliver, because he tightened his grip on Rosalind and said in a higher voice, “Do not move, either of you, or I will end this woman before your very eyes. Her blood will be on your hands.”
“No,” Adrian said coldly, “her blood will be on yours. For if, at once, you pull that trigger and murder a woman in cold blood, you will have no more leverage. My friend and I will overpower you and see you brought to justice. You will hang. Are you ready to hang, sir?”
“Of course not,” Drake said gravely. “But neither are you ready to hold her dying body in your arms. Both of us have something on the line that we do not wish to lose, and I would warrant that my fear does not hold a candle to yours.” He leaned down and whispered something in Rosalind’s ear. She winced and turned away.
Adrian felt a red-hot anger burning in his veins. It felt wholly unjust, that a man like that should have his hands on a woman like Rosalind, that she should be, even for a moment, in his control.
“Why are you doing this?” he said quietly. “Is it money? If it is money, I will see to your needs.”
“It is more than money, my dear sir,” Drake explained.
“For you have threatened me with a noose while I have a much more significant threat hanging over me always—a sword of Damocles, as it were. You see, my employer is not the sort of man who chooses something quick and clean like a noose if I fail him.”
“You need not go on about your employer with such vague terms. The viscount knows about Stanley,” Rosalind said quietly. For how tenuous her situation was, Adrian was struck by how calm her voice echoed over the clearing. “He was the one who brought the man to justice in the first place.”
It was a crack Adrian had not looked to open, but he saw it flicker for a moment in Drake’s eyes. He does not know Stanley is on trial. Adrian seized the opening, handed to him by Rosalind on a silver platter.
“I wonder how capable Gilford E. Stanley will be of punishing you from his deserted beach in Australia,” Adrian said quietly. “For I have heard that deportation is worse than death. Have you not heard the same thing?”
Drake faltered. “What are you speaking of? He would never be convicted in a court of law.”
“He has done numerous things worthy of conviction,” Oliver interjected. “I read the witness reports myself.”
“But he holds the judges too closely in sway,” Drake sneered. “There is no one—”
“It seems he ran out of influence at last,” Adrian countered. “I heard of it just this morning over breakfast. Gilford E. Stanley was convicted of crimes against the King, and shall be deported within the month to the Australian colonies.”
Drake sucked in his breath, and was silent.
“So here is what you must decide for yourself,” Adrian pressed on. “Is it worth going to the hangman’s noose at the bidding of a man who cannot protect you, and ruled over you through blackmail and fear?”
“I have already gone too far,” Drake said, his eyes falling to Rosalind, still tight in his grasp.
“No court in England will hang a man for a bungled kidnapping if he releases the lady unharmed and turns himself in,” Adrian said quietly. “But every court will hang you if you fire.”
Drake snarled, looking around him as though the solution to the quandary in which he had found himself would suddenly step out of the woods and present itself. Finding nothing, he slowly, excruciatingly, lowered his pistol.
“You had best not be playing me, Marwood,” he growled, throwing Rosalind forward and away from him.
Oliver sprang up the few steps to his side, pulling the other man’s hands behind his back and tying them in place with his own cravat, but Adrian no longer cared about the weasel.
His eyes were only for Rosalind. She had stumbled a few steps away from her captor, her arm red from the fierceness of his grip, and Adrian had caught her before she fell to the ground, holding her close to him.
She felt exactly as small and frail as she had looked across the yard, but now she was his to hold and his to protect. He pressed her close to his body, and put a hand to her silky head on his shoulder.
“You are safe, you are safe,” he murmured over and over into the lush tresses. “I am so sorry. You are safe.”
Her shoulders shook slightly, and she was so quiet that it took Adrian a moment to realize she was weeping. She raised her eyes to his and said softly, “I thought I was lost to you. I need to tell you something—”
“We ought to string these lads together and take them with us,” Oliver interrupted, not realizing the moment upon which he was intruding.
Adrian looked down into Rosalind’s eyes, never taking his gaze from her face. “Of course, though, you will have to lead them. I will not separate from Miss Thorne until we are safely inside Thornefield’s walls.”