Chapter 14
Wolfgang ignored the surge of blood through his veins and the sharpening of his senses.
He refused to acknowledge with even the smallest sliver of his brain that his first reaction to hearing the gunshot was glee, like a child presented with a generously frosted wedge of cake.
After the unique torture of being cooped up in a carriage with Charlotte while she went over her long list of suitors—all rich, titled, and annoyingly strong-jawed—he yearned for a bullet or two to deal with, or at least a thick skull to bash.
Belozersky’s not rich, his conscience piped up, focused on all the wrong things. And Winborne has only his excellent character to recommend him.
Oh, shut up. There’s a highwayman on the loose, Wolfgang snapped back. It’s no time to suffer over Charlotte.
Wolfgang had only clambered into the carriage because he hadn’t liked the look of the terrain, the rolling fields dipping down into a glen and giving way to thick woodland. His soldier’s instincts had sparked and flared—it was the perfect spot for an ambush.
He hadn’t liked the look of the landlord at the Nag’s Head in Rochester, either, a greasy fellow with dull eyes that went sly when he heard the dowager’s outrider was burning with fever and couldn’t go on.
Wolfgang had caught the quick look the landlord exchanged with a slight figure at the bar and had wondered what mischief was brewing.
What the landlord and the highwayman couldn’t have known was that Wolfgang was silently cheering them on.
He’d spent far too many days sitting behind his brother’s desk, pushing papers around.
The bailiff told him the work was vitally important, and yet Wolfgang struggled to find a reason to care about the farms, the factories, the drainage ditches that needed to be dug.
All it ever seemed to amount to was dull, purposeless days of counting the vast Warrick fortune to make sure no coins escaped.
The worst part was that every ledger was full of figures entered in John’s neat, measured hand. As Wolfgang checked and rechecked the columns, he had to run his fingers over his brother’s fading ink and try not to notice that these few scratches were all that was left of him.
Snap out of it, man! There’s a game afoot.
The coachman was an old retainer of the dowager’s, his whiskers gone completely gray.
Wolfgang hadn’t wanted to alarm him with vague suspicions, but he’d warned the man, reminding him that his only duty was to keep his head down and the horses steady.
There was no need for the coachman to be a hero, not with Wolfgang in the carriage with a pistol, ready to give the highwayman a nasty surprise.
“Courage now!” he instructed Charlotte and the dowager, with his attention on the door. So far they hadn’t shrieked or broken into hysterics, but—
“Gran, quick with your pearls!” called Charlotte.
The dowager tossed over her heavy necklace and Charlotte yanked open a hidden compartment beneath her seat and dropped it in.
Much to Wolfgang’s surprise, she reached down and drew out her own small pistol, pointing it competently up at the ceiling as she kicked the compartment closed again.
Her head swiveled toward him and her eyes went wide. “Oh! You have a pistol, too!”
His forehead creased with astonishment. “Of course I have a bloody pistol! Damn it, Charlotte, put yours down before—”
But it was too late. The highwayman wrenched the door open and Charlotte and Wolfgang both leveled their weapons at him. The man gave a startled cry and stepped back, his gun wobbling between them dangerously.
“Point your gun at me,” Wolfgang commanded.
The dowager let out an annoyed tsk. “Point it at me, young fellow. I’m the oldest!”
“You’d best point it at me,” said Charlotte, with what sounded almost like sympathy. “I’m by far the most erratic.”
The highwayman wilted with indecision, so Wolfgang used his military voice. “Point your gun at me now.” The highwayman swallowed, but the shaft of his gun bobbled toward Wolfgang. “There. Much better.”
“Men!” Charlotte made a noise of disgust. “Do you see what I mean, Gran? They’re all in it together.”
If Wolfgang were prepared to take his eyes off the highwayman, he might have stared at her incredulously. “Would you care to take over the proceedings, my lady?”
“Yes, of course.” She leaned toward the highwayman, her gun steady as a rock. “Sir, we have three pistols among us. Do we agree it would be best if none of them went off?”
The highwayman nodded. He was younger than Wolfgang had realized, with barely a trace of a beard showing on the small slivers of skin not covered by the muffler he’d coiled around his face. Would his youth make him easier to handle or more volatile?
“I’m afraid I must start with an awkward question.” Only someone who’d studied Charlotte as closely as Wolfgang would notice the slight wobble in her voice. “Have you harmed our coachman?”
The highwayman was quick to shake his head.
Her shoulders relaxed slightly, but her grip on the pistol didn’t. “In that case, we can come to an agreement.”
The highwayman’s eyes darted to Wolfgang and back to Charlotte, and it was clear he wasn’t sure who scared him more.
“Here’s the conundrum,” Charlotte continued. “I hate to send you off with nothing to show for a day’s work, and yet you’re trying to rob us. How about this—I give you something valuable and you back away, get on your horse, and ride off as fast as you can. Agreed?”
“I… I…” stammered the man, and when it became clear he wouldn’t get anything else out, he simply nodded.
“All right. Then here, take my pearls.” Charlotte reached up with her free hand and removed her gold and pearl earbobs. “Ready? One, two, three… catch!”
The earbobs arced neatly through the air, and the young robber snatched them up and hopped away like a startled rabbit. Wolfgang climbed out of the carriage, keeping his pistol trained on the man until he was well out of range and the sound of his horse’s hoofbeats faded to nothing.
Something crackled and blazed in Wolfgang’s chest, something he could only call pride.
God, Charlotte was magnificent.
But when he turned back to the carriage to tell her so, he found her white-faced and shaking.
“Dear me, I’m afraid I’m being stupid.” She put her fists to her cheeks and rubbed hard, trying to force the blood back into her face. “I believe I require fresh air.”
Wolfgang’s heart clenched and he reached out a hand to her, but she ignored it, shoving the pistol into her reticule, jumping down onto the grass, and racing off into the trees.
Wolfgang stared after her until the dowager poked her head out of the carriage.
“Well, my boy, don’t you know what to do? Check on our coachman and then go after her!”