Chapter 54
The Gamble
… here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone.
Jane Austen, Persuasion
As Rosalind had guessed, Elizabeth came to check on her shortly after dawn. Rosalind watched from her place behind the door as Elizabeth paused on the stillroom’s threshold, surprised by the broken glass scattered on the flagstones. Did she see the blood as well? Rosalind wondered.
It does not matter.
Rosalind slammed the door shut.
Elizabeth jumped and spun. Now she saw Rosalind between her and the door, and saw the neck of the broken bottle that Rosalind clutched in one bloodied hand.
“Sit down, Elizabeth.” Rosalind raised the jagged bottle neck as if it were a knife. “With your back against the wall, if you please.”
Elizabeth had kindly thought to bring a basket that Rosalind presumed contained something for breakfast. She had not, however, thought to bring a weapon of any sort.
Had not expected Rosalind to now be standing between her and the stillroom’s only readily accessible exit.
“You won’t—” Elizabeth began.
“Do not doubt for a moment that I will.”
Rosalind watched impassively while Elizabeth gauged the distance between them, and then looked for a long moment at Rosalind’s eyes.
It was entirely possible that Elizabeth’s experience with horses had taught her how to understand when she was confronted by a being who was truly dangerous. Because she took a deep breath, and did as she was told.
Once Elizabeth was seated, Rosalind backed out the door, and closed it.
Her arms shook as she lifted the bar and set it in place.
That would not buy her as much time as she would like.
It would not take Elizabeth long to scrabble up onto the stove and break open the grating.
Perhaps that window was too small for her to wriggle through, but perhaps it was not.
Rosalind needed to find Adam at once and—
That was when she heard a man scream.
By the time he heard someone coming down the stairs, Adam’s feet were numb and his hands ached. The sound that reached him was the heavy clomp of boots, so this was most likely Spence, come to check on him, fetch him out, or kill him.
He steeled himself, willed his cold, stiff frame to do as he required.
Rosalind is expecting you, he reminded himself.
He’d found the leather pouch that had caught in his mind.
It was on the second shelf that he’d carefully run his bound hands over.
The minute his fingertips reached inside it, he understood why memory had held onto it for him, and why he’d thought of the window upstairs.
It was a workman’s pouch. It had lain beside a small, light hammer, and it was filled with nails.
Unfortunately, the hammer’s shaft was broken, so it was of little use as a weapon. But the nails had given him an idea.
Now, the cellar door opened. Adam held his breath.
Spence raised his lantern, and his knife. He looked at the cellar floor, and saw Adam was not there.
Adam did not give him time to see anything else. He flung himself forward. The weight of his body knocked Spence to the floor, and onto the heap of nails Adam had poured out there.
Spence screamed and rolled and scrabbled, thrown into a panic by the sudden pain as nails bit into his hands and arms. Adam rolled to the side and up onto his knees. He raised his fists, one of which held the head from the broken hammer, and slammed them down on Spence’s skull.
The blow landed. Spence fell still.
The light from the open door showed Adam where the knife had fallen. As quickly as he could, Adam inched his way forward and grabbed it up in his bound hands. He let himself fall back onto his buttocks and flipped the blade around.
He had just set the edge of the blade against the rope binding his ankles when the cellar door flew open. A silhouette in skirts charged down the stairs.
It was Rosalind. It was Rosalind wielding a broken bottle like a doxy in a tavern brawl, her hair streaming down around her shoulders.
He had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life.
“Adam!” She bent over him.
“Careful!” He waved toward the scattered nails, and the fallen man.
Rosalind stared at Spence’s unconscious form, and then at Adam. Adam shrugged, and held the knife out to her. They’d swap stories later.
Rosalind tossed her broken bottle away and took the knife from his hands. She sliced the cords that bound his hands and feet. Adam gave a great, gusting sigh mixed with relief and pain as the hot blood rushed back into his fingers and toes.
Rosalind handed the knife toward him. He reached for it, and froze.
“You’re hurt,” he said thickly, looking at her bloodied fingers.
“We’ll worry about it later,” Rosalind informed him. “We need to get out of here. If Elizabeth hasn’t already escaped the stillroom, she will soon.” She looked down at Spence, who had not moved at all since she’d come flying down the cellar steps.
“Is he—”
Adam rolled Spence over and put his hand against the man’s mouth.
“No,” he said as he straightened up. “But he’s going to be in a foul mood when he wakes up. I’ll go to the stables and deal with the horses. You go inside the house and see if you can find the guns.”
They barred the cellar door and stumbled up the stairs into the gray dawn.
Adam staggered toward the stables. Rosalind did her best to prod her reluctant feet into something approaching a run to the cottage’s kitchen door.
There, as she hoped, she found the two guns—not to mention a powder horn, ramrod, and ammunition pouch lying on the kitchen’s plank table.
Evidently, Mr. Spence had been cleaning and priming the weapons last night.
She slung the pouch and horn over her shoulder and grabbed up the long arm and the pistol. She pushed the door open and stumbled across the yard. But as she reached the stables, she saw the stone horse trough, filled to overflowing from last night’s rain.
An idea occurred to her.
“Where are the guns?” asked Adam as Rosalind ducked empty-handed through the stable door.
“In the horse trough,” Rosalind told him. “Along with the powder horn and ammunition pouch.”
Adam raised his brows.
“I didn’t think we’d have time to shoot anyone while we were escaping,” she said.
“Reasonable,” he replied. “The truth is, it would have been difficult to carry them. We will be on horseback, I’m afraid, and there’s only one horse.”
Rosalind felt her throat clamp shut. “But … we came here in a coach-and-four!”
“Which, I expect, has been returned to their rightful owner, whoever that might be. All we have left is Doppelg?nger.” He finished cinching up the stirrups.
“Doppelg?nger?” Rosalind echoed.
“The lookalike for Kinsdale’s Pride.” Adam patted the animal’s side. “Doppelg?nger.”
Rosalind looked at the gray horse. The horse looked back and rolled its eye until the white showed.
Rosalind looked at Adam.
“It’s not a sidesaddle,” he said as he gave the girth one last tug. “You’ll have to be astride.”
“I don’t think that’s the part we need to worry about,” said Rosalind.
“Truthfully, neither do I,” Adam admitted. “But she’s all we’ve got. Take hold of the pommel, put your left foot in the stirrup, and hold your breath.”
Rosalind did as instructed. Adam grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up. Skirts, fear, and inexperience made her clumsy, but after a moment’s exclaiming and scrabbling, Rosalind found herself in the saddle, with Adam behind her.
Doppelg?nger whickered and stamped, clearly displeased with this turn of events. Adam gathered the reins. Had Rosalind had the leisure to admit it, she would have found the press of his arms and his chest against her quite thrilling.
She could have done very well without the horse.
The horse stamped again. She also backed and tried to turn, making it known that she could have done very well without Rosalind.
“Settle, settle,” said Adam to them both. “We are doing this whether you like it or not.”
Rosalind gripped the entirely inadequate nub of the pommel and closed her eyes. Adam leaned forward, bending them both low over the horse’s neck. He kicked. The horse screamed high and hard, and bolted forward, like it meant to leave them behind.
Rosalind had been afraid in her life before, but not like this.
The jolting, thundering ride through the watery dawn, her whole frame shaken beyond endurance, no control over herself, her speed, her balance, her breath.
The horse veered and shifted and Adam cursed and shouted and Rosalind locked in the middle, her mind spinning so she could not even pray.
She kept her eyes screwed shut, but fear would have blinded her anyway.
Did she hear hoofbeats behind them? Shouts? She didn’t know. She couldn’t even make herself open her eyes. She felt Adam bending them both even lower, heard him yelling, felt him slap the reins against the animal’s neck, felt the fresh, outraged burst of speed.
Then, just as suddenly, Adam reined them all back. The horse wickered in its fury, weaved sideways, and finally spun in a tight circle and—finally, blessedly—came to a halt.
There were voices. Rosalind felt she should know them. Adam was gone from behind her, leaving her alone on the trembling, shifting horse.
“Come on, now,” said Adam softly. “You can let go, Rosalind.”
Rosalind was not certain she could, but she did crack her eyelids open.
And in front of her saw Devon on the driver’s box of a light gig, with Clara Kinsdale beside him. In the next moment, she realized they must have been coming up this narrow lane as she and Adam were barreling in the opposite direction.
She also realized they were gaping at her.
Then, she realized there were hoofbeats behind them and shouting. Because there were two more horses coming up the lane from the direction she and Adam had fled. Panic and fury rose up together. She twisted around in the saddle, making the horse dance dangerously.
If they think to take us back …
But in the next moment, she saw that their pursuers were none other than Mr. Tauton and Mr. Goutier.
Relief loosened her grip on the saddle’s pommel, and Adam was obliged to catch her about the waist and swing her down from the saddle before she toppled to the ground.
“What on earth are you all doing here!” she cried as Adam set her onto her feet. At least, she meant to cry. The words came out more as a croak.
“We were coming to rescue you,” said Devon.
“We’d brought a ransom,” added Clara.
“We rather thought you might need some help dealing with your captors,” added Mr. Goutier, bringing his black horse to a halt besides Doppelg?nger.
Mr. Tauton just threw back his head and howled with laughter.
“Should have known!” he bellowed. “God in heaven, we should have known you’d be gone before we could get here!”
Rosalind felt herself smiling. But the relief, on top of all that had happened already, was too much. She felt her knees beginning to buckle.
“I … I think I may need to sit down.”
There followed a somewhat confused period where Clara, Devon, and Adam all surrounded Rosalind and boosted her into the gig.
Clara climbed in beside her, glared at the men, and immediately pulled out a reticule that proved to contain an inordinate number of clean handkerchiefs, and bottles of both violet water and spirits of alcohol.
From somewhere else a flask was produced that proved to contain strong tea laced with brandy.
In that moment, Rosalind found herself liking Clara Kinsdale a great deal.
While Clara cleaned and bound her injured hands, Adam was explaining to Devon where they had been and what had happened.
In return, Devon was telling Adam that they were only a few miles from Bath, while Mr. Goutier and Mr. Harkness explained that they had been watching the cottage from the nearby woods, ready to follow Elizabeth Kinsdale and Nathanial Spence.
“Imagine our surprise when you two come bursting out of the stables like the devil himself is behind you! Almost fell off my horse!” cried Mr. Tauton.
“We need to get back at once,” Adam told them. “Elizabeth Kinsdale and Nathanial Spence are still back there, and if they haven’t …”
“No need,” said Mr. Goutier. “We brought a couple of Bath constables with us. That pair will be in custody by now.”
Clara went as pale as Rosalind felt. Rosalind covered her suddenly cold hand with her bandaged one.
“I’m sorry,” Rosalind said.
Clara pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I’m just glad it’s finally over. It …” She swallowed. “It is over, isn’t it?”
“Almost,” Rosalind told her. “There’s just one more thing that needs doing.”