Captured By the Werewolf Highwaymen (Den of Thieves #2)

Chapter 1

Loud, frantic pounding woke Clara Ballantine from an already shallow sleep.

She lay in bed for a moment, staring at the faded canopy overhead. What was that blasted sound? Where in pity’s name did it come from? Perhaps she’d dreamt it, which wouldn’t be unusual. Deep sleep often eluded her. The closer it grew to the full moon, the more she became restless and sensitive.

If she wasn’t mistaken, the full moon was tomorrow night. No wonder she had barely been able to manage a few minutes’ rest here and there.

When slumber had come, her dreams had been fraught with the same sneering, jeering faces and cold, stony silences that made her shudder and cower every night.

She was wide awake at the moment, listening carefully.

Whatever that pounding had been, it was gone now.

She could attempt to edge sideways back into sleep, as she usually did each night, sneaking up on slumber as though it were a wild animal that might bolt at the slightest disturbance.

Failing that, she’d make her way down the hall, with its missing portraits and partially empty display cabinets, past unoccupied bedrooms and parlors that hosted no one, then downstairs with its echoing dining room and silent salons, to arrive in the kitchens.

Once there, she’d brew herself a cup of tea, then sit and wait for the sunrise.

She’d done it before, but hopefully, tonight would be different.

There was nowhere quite so lonely as a kitchen built for many, but only fed one person.

Her lids lowered as sleep crept towards her, then her eyes flew open again when the thudding started up once more. Stronger this time.

“Open up! We’ve need of your assistance!” A man’s slightly muffled voice echoed up the stairwell and down the corridor, piercing her solitary bedchamber.

Whoever it was stood outside the manor house’s front door. Judging by the loud thumps against the thick wood, he was impatient—and strong.

She cowered in the center of her mattress, making herself small. Pulling her faded quilt closer, she hoped it would cocoon and shield her.

If she ignored him, he’d go away. No one had trimmed the hedges in recent memory, and there were weeds poking up through the gravel in the driveway. One of the panes of mullioned glass in the front drawing room had been knocked out by a flying branch in last winter’s storm and never been replaced.

Hopefully, her house’s neglected appearance might make him believe the estate was deserted. The visitor would leave, and she could go back to living within the stagnant isolation that had marked her life for the last six years.

The pounding on the door continued, growing even more insistent.

“Have pity!” There was an edge of desperation in his voice. “I’ve an injured man here! He’ll surely die if he isn’t given some attention!”

That, she couldn’t ignore.

She leapt from her bed and grabbed the nightrail draped over the back of a chair.

Stuffing her feet into her slippers, she threw on the robe before lighting a taper.

She held the flickering light as she hurried from her bedchamber.

Her hair was loose around her shoulders as she sped down the hallway.

Braiding your hair was for women who needed to look pretty in the morning. But there was no one to see Clara.

The pounding on the door continued as Clara rushed downstairs, nearly tripping in her haste, but she grabbed the railing to keep herself from crashing down the steps.

After righting herself, she made it safely to the vaulted entryway.

She paused on the other side of the door and drew in a shuddering breath.

Her nightrail was threadbare and provided little coverage of her equally frayed nightgown.

If anyone looked too closely, they’d clearly see the outline of her body beneath the serviceable linen.

Nobody had ever taken much interest in her body, so they surely wouldn’t now.

Candle flame quivering from her trembling, she set her taper down on a small table next to the door. She couldn’t master her hands enough to stop their shaking, but at last she unfastened the locks and pulled the door open.

Immediately, a seething mass of people barreled inside and pushed her against the wall.

She had a vague impression of several men, clad in greatcoats, their tricorn hats pulled low and shadowing their faces.

They slammed and locked the door behind them.

The entryway seemed filled with these men, they were everywhere, their voices gruff and harsh as they spoke to each other.

“—Got to lay him down—”

“—We need a doctor—”

“—No sawbones, we can’t risk it—”

“—Hugh could die—”

Four men milled in the entryway, and they carried another man between them. This man’s head lolled back, and his eyes were closed, but his teeth were bared in a grimace. Like the others, he wore a greatcoat, which was flung open to reveal his writhing torso, and, lower, his bloodstained leg.

“He’s been shot,” Clara murmured.

It was as though her words made the men realize that they weren’t alone. Their heads whipped toward her, their eyes piercing through the flickering shadows of the entryway.

She pressed herself against the wall, as if she could seep into the wood and disappear entirely.

“Bedroom,” one of the men snapped. Hard to tell in the dimness, but his hair appeared to be sandy, several shades darker than her own pallid blond tresses. He had sharp features, pale skin, and an uncompromising air.

“Please,” another man added, in a slightly more mollifying tone that carried the accent of Yorkshire.

Even in the flickering illumination, the vivid blue of the Yorkshireman’s eyes shone brightly. Yet it wasn’t easy to see anyone’s faces clearly by the light of a single guttering candle. She had only the impression of a deep-set brow, a goodly proportioned nose, and hard jaw shaded by stubble.

The man they carried—Hugh, one of them had called him—moaned. Blood from his injury dropped onto the worn wooden floorboards. The sounds of a man in pain and his dripping wound cut through her fear, and she grabbed her candle.

“This way.” She led them up the stairs.

Their much larger, heavier forms made the seldom-used staircase groan.

Even when the house had been at capacity, staffed by four housemaids and two good-sized footmen, the stairs hadn’t needed to bear such weight.

These men were large, all of them towering over her admittedly undersized form, and they radiated a feral strength that made her grip her candle tightly.

The flame flickered, and its dancing light and twisting shadows turned her ordinary house into a scene from one of her unsettling dreams, the kind where she woke up with a pounding heart and sweat coating her limbs.

At the landing, the hallway branched into two directions. She guided them down the corridor that didn’t contain her bedchamber. They continued to carry their wounded friend.

“It wasn’t necessary, Cyrus,” the blue-eyed Yorkshireman growled. Color was high in his fair cheeks, angry red staining his face.

“The fucking outrider had a gun pointed at me,” the blond one snapped.

“They always have guns pointed at us when we stop a carriage.” This came from another man, the candlelight gleaming on his deep sepia-brown skin and in the even darker shade of his eyes.

He wore his curly black hair shorn close to his head.

His accent carried tones of East London. “Hazard of the profession.”

Clara’s steps stuttered. Oh, God. They were highwaymen.

She’d heard stories that coaches and carriages traveling between Cheltenham and London were sometimes stopped by armed thieves.

The few broadsheets she’d read had extolled highwaymen as either dashing or vicious, or both.

At the moment, Clara hoped fervently for the former, but dreaded that what she had in her home, instead, was the latter.

Her hand paused on the doorknob to the Blue Bedroom.

They were four very hale men, and one injured one, whereas she was but one rather short woman. Granted, tending to her home almost entirely on her own had given her a slight degree more strength than the average gentlewoman. She chopped her own wood.

It would hardly serve her against a quartet of hardened criminals.

Glancing over her shoulder, she caught the flash of metal and wood. Each of the thieves carried at least two pistols. Some were slipped into belts, and others were tucked into baldrics slung around the highwaymen’s chests. They had knives, too, sheathed at their waists.

Clara fought against the urge to squeeze her eyes shut. She’d shut them out and they’d disappear.

Moving forward was the only option.

“Hurry up!” barked the blond one. Cyrus, she remembered him being called.

“Apologies.” She turned the doorknob and, before she could enter, was pushed aside by the highwaymen.

They carried their wounded comrade to the bed and laid him down atop the blankets. Crimson immediately soaked into the blue toile quilt covering the mattress. At this distance, though, she couldn’t determine the exact nature or severity of the wound.

The four thieves collected around the bed, staring down with tense expressions at the man writhing in pained misery.

“The hell are we supposed to do now?” This came from a man with a shaved head. Either he wore a wig and had lost it in the chaos, or he eschewed the fashion altogether and simply walked around bald. “He won’t last until tomorrow night.”

“Letting Hugh bleed to death isn’t an option.” The blue-eyed highwayman whipped off the stock from his neck and hastily wrapped it around the wounded man’s injury.

“If you—” Clara began.

“We don’t need complications or witnesses.” Cyrus flicked his gaze toward her, then at the blue-eyed thief. “Kill her.”

“That’s not—” the blue-eyed man began.

Before he could say more, Clara turned and ran.