Chapter 6 #2
Culross studied the scene for several moments.
He had been wrong.
This kidnapping would not be difficult.
It would be child’s play.
Without a word, he passed the spyglass to Kerr. His quartermaster accepted it with capable fingers and conducted a swift, practiced sweep.
“Bloody pathetic.”
Kerr’s graveled voice barely disturbed the winter air as he passed the instrument to Culross’s brother.
The moment Alec trained the glass on the Earl of Abington’s Hooper and Company carriage, he stiffened.
“No Aragon.”
Culross didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His breath fogged once in the cold. “No footman.”
“No guards. No escort,” Kerr observed.
“No one at all.”
The McQuoid and Smith’s carelessness ensured the narrow Roman road was guarded by nothing more than snow-covered elms, oaks, and willows.
And that of a single burly driver. Mr. Thomas, a loyal former crewmember of Captain McQuoid, was capable with his fists, but possessed of not enough wit to know better.
“Impossible.”
“On the contrary.”
Alec shook his head in disbelief. Kerr in disgust.
One invaluable truth Culross had learned during his time among the McQuoids was this: where that family was concerned, anything was possible. Including leaving three unmarried ladies unattended just beyond the city’s edge, on the way to Ermine Street.
Aside from Meghan’s dozing maid, there were a full two miles between the ladies and any hope of rescue from their family.
And yet…
A slow satisfaction unfurled in the place where Culross’s heart should have been. Not triumph. Not relief. Something colder. More deliberate.
Only one woman who mattered this day—Meghan. Tremaine’s sister-in-law. McQuoid’s cousin. Hartwell’s bride.
The fiery-tongued minx would go quietly.
Culross accepted the spyglass back from his brother.
If not, she would learn why silence was preferable.
At least outside the bedchambers.
His grip tightened once before he slid the wood viewing glass into the inside pocket of his cloak.
“You’re never going to find me!” Meghan cried jubilantly.
The lady’s bell-clear voice carried through the shallow vale, echoing between the bare-limbed trees—louder than the church bells which had begun to toll.
Alec’s scarred features displayed his disgust.
“Surely she’s not serious.”
Oh, the termagant could be, as Culross discovered firsthand last evening.
“Did you hear me?” Meghan raised her voice even higher this time in challenge. “You’ll never get me.”
Oh, but I will. Culross closed his eyes for a brief, savoring moment. Not yet. But soon. Very soon, ma petite chou.
There came an answering call. “Here I come!”
A smile more glacial than the winter gusts grazed Culross’s lips.
Ah. This would do.
Kerr frowned. “What in hell are they doing?”
The question held no humor. Born to Mad Jack Kerr, the late viscount whose excesses had been legend, his son had dedicated himself to a life of severity. Discipline. Purpose. Everything his father had scorned.
“Hide and snowball fight,” Culross said quietly, barely moving his lips, keeping the words as soundless as possible.
Not that there was any remote chance the three brainless chits could hear him.
Even if they did, it would not matter. They were no match for him alone—let alone with his two ruthless counterparts at hand.
Their fates this day were sealed, and not in the foolishly romantic fashion Meghan believed.
“It is their wintertime version of hide-and-seek.”
“Hide-and-seek?” his quartermaster echoed, his confusion mirroring the bafflement Culross himself had once met the game with upon his entry into the family. Confusion and more than a little disgusted.
In truth, when the McQuoids and Smiths invited him into their fold last year, Culross had not been disgusted. Unmoored was the truer word for his response.
Tinkling laughter rang incessantly across the snow-covered grounds.
“How old are these women we are abducting?” Kerr asked coolly. “We’re certain they’re not actually children?”
For the first time since Culross had come to them with his scheme, his quartermaster voiced a reservation.
“They are women.” Culross cataloged the ages without inflection. “The eldest, I believe, twenty-four. Maybe twenty-five.”
“Twenty-four.” Alec rubbed his gloved hands briskly together. “Are we certain these ladies are right in the head?”
Culross could account for only one of them.
Miss Meghan Smith.
Sharp as a blade. Tongue honed. Spirit unbowed. Wit quick enough to draw blood. They were dangerous qualities, particularly in a woman who did not yet understand how much danger she was in.
Alec’s predatory gaze followed one of the ladies scampering through the snow. “I believe the lack of assurance confirms the ladies are stark raving mad.”
His jaw worked once. He sent a silencing glare his brother’s way.
The sharp sting of ice and snow cut through Culross’s hood and mask. He registered it distantly, the cold, the wind, the weight of stillness. Everything else narrowed to timing.
The time was now.
Culross raised two fingers at his face and crooked them inward. Advance. In the deafening roar of battle, sailors adapted or died. This war Culross fought would be his most important one.
After Culross, Alec, and Kerr fell into position in sight of one another, each taking a vantage over the hollow, he held his hand flat and pushed it downward.
Hold.
They would need to strike cleanly. Decisively.
And Culross knew all too well the peril of complacency.
Indecision. The last journey he’d sailed had been with Captain Arran McQuoid and Linnie Smith.
He’d been so singularly focused on spiriting the lady away, and hammering that wedge between their families, he’d failed to heed the threat approaching at sea.
The deafening echo of cannon fire. The clang of blades striking blades. The curdling screams. Those sounds of war had haunted him. At night, he’d welcomed the demons. He’d let them in. He forced himself to confront the memories—to master them, or be mastered.
He chose the former.
It was why, this time, there would be no mistakes. And why McQuoid and Tremaine would remain forever trapped by their own.
Let the driver gain just enough distance to feel secure. Not so much that the careless fool had time to reach the members of the bridal party capable of mounting a meaningful defense.
Through the thickening snowfall, Culross studied the churned footprints dotting the ground. The young chits played like puppies—heedless, laughing, blind to the threat closing around them.
He remained with his palm pushed downwards. His lip peeled in a faint sneer.
Had he been a man of honor, he might have felt a flicker of pity, for Meghan, for her companions—and contempt for the gentlemen who had failed so spectacularly in their duty to protect them.
But he was not.
He would use that failure. Exploit it. Turn it to his advantage.
Snow crunched beneath slippered heels. Laughter pealed again. Too loud, too free.
And then one laugh rang out, bright and unguarded.
Trusting.
His ears sharpened on the guileless mirth.
He knew its owner. He knew her voice.
Her laugh marked her.
She had always laughed as though the world was safe and sunny. It’d been convenient to let her believe the lie.
The pert little menace had attached herself to his side last winter, forever slipping into his orbit while he courted the sister he had been meant to marry. Meghan Smith, smiling, teasing, prattling, inserted herself again and again. Present when she should not have been.
At first, her presence had grated. Later, it had required discipline to ignore when it no longer did.
It hadn’t taken long before he, like all men who hunted by instinct rather than by conscience, noticed her wit. Her mouth. There had been a time or two he’d caught himself watching those lips, the very ones he’d come perilously close to testing last night.
Icy rage slithered through his blackened soul.
In the end, Meghan proved herself a skilled tactician. All along, she had played the harmless observer while quietly aiding Captain Tremaine’s pursuit of Miss Linnie Smith. And Culross found himself neatly cut from a coveted alliance.
His gaze caught a flash of emerald as the owner of that artless mirth danced into view. Culross honed in on the oblivious bride.
Her freckled cheeks were apple-red from the bite of cold and unguarded joy. Even with seven paces between them and the wind whipping snow between their bodies, the sparkle in her eyes burned bright.
All this joy—for Hartwell.
His nostrils flared once. Then he stilled, forcing the reaction down, banking it.
She believed herself chosen. That, more than anything, offended him. The current fixture of his thoughts groaned. “You are too good at this…”
Yes. She did not stand a chance.
His breathing deepened, not with haste, but with certainty.
There was a grim sort of consolation in what awaited the young bride-to-be, the one who had nearly secured herself the title of duchess.
If she were honest, if she abandoned the lie she had clung to at Rutland’s, she would surrender to the truth.
And…she would enjoy every moment spent with Culross. Every lesson. Every taking.
His men’s gazes remained fixed on him, awaiting command. Urging them to patience, Culross lifted his hand, deliberate, measured, the signal poised but not yet given.
Wait.
He had plotted and planned for months.
Wait.
Patiently. Meticulously.
Wait.
Every weakness mapped, every habit exploited.
At last, the moment was here.
Culross gave a sharp, downward cut of his hand and moved, directly and unhesitatingly to claim his enemy’s prized bride.