Chapter 35 #3
Heavy boots splashed down into the mire outside. Then came the grueling sound of dragging timber, muffled grunts, and Cillian muttering venomous curses about the sorry quality of hired muscle.
Pressing her cheek to the weeping glass, Emma peered into the dark. Through the dim glare of the carriage lamp, the two hulking shapes of the drivers wrestled with a fallen birch.
Two hours. It had to be nearly two hours since James managed to escape. Had he found a hackney? Would he even know where to look?
If he somehow even reached Vincent now—this very second—it would still be too late. By the time horses were saddled, she would be halfway to the salt air of the coast, completely out of reach…
A strangled grunt suddenly cut through the wind.
Then came a heavy, wet crunch, and the larger of the two lackeys dropped out of the lantern flame like a grain sack going off a cart. The second man wheeled round, his hand flying to his belt—“Oi, what’s—”—but he got no further.
He pitched face-first into the mud as well and did not get back up.
Beyond the fallen men, a tall shadow stood in the downpour, chest heaving, one hand braced to his thigh. Rain sheeted off the heavy, sweeping folds of his greatcoat.
V-Vincent?
The thought barely formed in her mind before Cillian erupted.
Seizing the coarse rope binding her, he hauled her brutally across the squabs. To Emma, he hissed, “Don’t move!”
The carriage door flung open, letting in a blast of freezing rain. He dragged her down into the mire, his forearm locking around her throat like an iron vise as the wicked edge of his blade bit cold against her throat.
“Not another step, Highminster, or I’ll open her up right here in the dirt!” Cillian warned.
Taking her chance, Emma wriggled herself free of his grip before dashing forward, “Don’t listen to him—” but Cillian snatched her back by her hair, hard enough to send pain jolting down her scalp, and Vincent froze six feet away.
Keeping his firearm locked, Vincent raised his off-hand, palm open. “Cillian. Look at me, man. Your hirelings are broken. You have nowhere to run and nothing left to gain. Drop the knife, and I give you my solemn oath you will walk away from this night in one piece.”
Cillian let out a dry, unhinged cackle as he dragged Emma backward toward the tree line.
“Your oath?” The blade dug deeper. A sharp, searing line opened on her skin.
Hot blood began to trickle down her collarbone, but she swallowed the sob whole.
“The grand duke’s golden word! Throw it in the muck.
Toss the pistol down, now, or I’ll show you what the inside of her throat looks like. ”
For one long, sickening breath, Vincent did not move.
Then he crouched and laid the flintlock flat in the mire, and rose again with both palms turned empty to the sky.
No, no, no…
“A sensible choice,” Cillian hissed against her ear, his lips twisting into a vile smirk. “Now, get on your knees—”
A thick hedgerow exploded from her blind side.
James lunged out of the undergrowth, ramming the absolute entirety of his weight square into Cillian’s ribs. The impact sent the three of them crashing sideways into the dirt, the blade jerking clear of Emma’s throat at last.
Off-balance and desperate, Cillian wrenched his knife arm free and lashed out with the blade in a deadly arc. James scrabbled back a half-second too slow, and the tip caught him; a jagged red tear ripped open across his forearm as he cried out in pain.
It was the opening Vincent needed.
He was across the muddy gap in seconds before Emma could gasp, and snatched Cillian’s wrist, wrenching it up and back, forcing it far past the breaking point. A sharp crack—like a dry branch snapping in two—echoed through the lane, and her cousin’s shriek split the night.
A scramble, a knee, a fist landing somewhere with a meaty thud, and then Vincent had the brass-haired rogue mashed face-first into the muck with the ruined arm cranked up his spine, and every drop of silk had drained out of him. He was only weeping now. Cursing hysterically into the dirt.
“James—” Emma half-crawled to her brother on her tied hands, grabbing for his bleeding arm, “You’re cut—let me see—”
“It’s nothing, Emmy.” Shivering from head to foot, James hauled her against his chest in a fierce, clumsy embrace. “I found him. I found His Grace, like you said I should—I did it…”
And for one trembling, blessed second, the nightmare felt over.
Then Cillian’s free hand was clawing blindly toward the top of his riding boot.
The boot.
“Vincent—the gun!”
Too late. A small muff-pistol cleared the leather, the stubby barrel drawing a frantic arc through the sheeting rain until it steadied—dead on James.
“The boy...” Cillian panted with lips skinned back from his teeth, half a madman now, “I only ever needed the boy—”
Vincent lunged for James, and the blast drowned Emma’s scream whole.
The lead ball meant for her brother tore into Vincent’s ribs instead, twisting him half around before he folded sideways into the mud.
“No—!”
James reacted before the cry could even leave her. He roared, savage and deep and nothing she had ever heard from him in all his life, and he ripped the pistol out of Cillian’s fingers and drove his fist clean through the man’s jaw. The man dropped boneless like a sack of stones.
Emma was already on her knees in the mire, dragging Vincent’s head into her lap, her tied hands pressing uselessly and frantically against the dark stain blooming across his shirt, “No—no—you fool, you great stubborn fool, why—look at me, keep your eyes open and look at me, Vincent—”
“Couldn’t let the lad take the blow, could I?” A thin trickle of blood escaped his lips, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Imagine how much I’d owe you then.”
“Don’t make jokes!” Emma sobbed, wiping her face against her bare shoulder because her hands were stained dark with his blood. “Help! Is there no one—somebody!”
But the lane stretched black and hollow both ways, the downpour hitting against the mud, and nothing answered her but the drum of it on the dead leaves.
James sank to his knees beside them, his knuckles split and bleeding, face blank with a terrifying shock. He could only stare.
“Ah... don’t do that.” Vincent’s fingers rose from the mud, his thumb tracing her mouth to pry loose her trapped lower lip. “Don’t maul your pretty lip, pet.”
A broken, watery laugh escaped her throat. “Then stay,” she implored, pressing his cold palm flat against her wet cheek. “Stay and scold me for it until we are old. I love you, you arrogant, insufferable man. I never stopped. Not for a single heartbeat.”
“I know,” he breathed, his eyelids slipping as the shadows pulled at him. “I… know. I-I love you too, Emma. You were right about everything... I should have buried that side of me long before a piece of lead forced… my…”
“Vincent. Vincent! Stay with me!” His head lolled back. His pale skin turned a ghostly shade of grey. “Vincent, please…”
For a long while, there was only the drum of the rain and her own muffled sobs into his coat.
Then the faint noise of hooves, hammering, split the dark wide open. A bouncing smear of golden lantern-light swelled by the second in the distance, and a voice rang out over the tempest: “Highminster!”
“Over here!” Emma screamed at once until her throat burned. “We are here! He is shot—hurry!”
Lanterns swarmed the ditch. A young man with a blade-boned face and barrister-eyes leapt from his horse before it had even fully halted, flanked by men wearing the red waistcoats of the Bow Street runners.
And behind them came Dr. Duncan Fraser, spectacles streaked with rain, plunging knee-first into the muck to tear at the sodden wool of Vincent’s coat.
“Mind, shift aside a wee bit, Your Grace,” Dr. Fraser said, his fingers already working the wound. “Press down here—hard as ye can. The ball’s missed the vitals and he’s breathin’ yet. Aye, we can work wit’ this.”
The young man dropped to a crouch at her shoulder, rain streaming off the brim of his hat.
“Keaton Finch, Earl of Blackhill,” he said, not really to her, his eyes fixed hard on Vincent.
“Received the dispatch three hour past—named the road, the cousin, the whole sorry business. We rode like the devil was at our heels to get here.” He let out a ragged laugh in relief.
“T-thank you,” Emma breathed faintly.
Blackhill shook his head at once. “It’s the old butler you’ll thank, not me. Weston sent a rider after him the instant the reckless clod went off alone—elsewise, we’d still be scouring the roads around Bloomsbury.”
Emma only nodded, her fingers frozen fast inside Vincent’s, tears running and running unchecked now.
His eyelids fluttered one final time and found her face through the chaotic dance of lantern light.
And ignoring the runners, the doctor, and her unconscious cousin in the road, she leaned down and kissed him.
A soft, salt-stained embrace. His cold lips parted the barest touch beneath hers.
“Later,” he breathed against her mouth. “I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart. The strawberry ices. The cocoa… I promised, didn’t I?”
“You did,” she sobbed, nodding through her tears as she pressed her forehead to his. “For years and years to come.”