DARE THE WILD WIND (25 page)

"She has the look of a Scot to me."  This came from a burly, ill
shaven brute.  His close  set black eyes shifted to Brenna's face.  "And you have the sound of one."

It was useless to disguise her speech. 

"As well I should," she said with a frosty shrug.  "I went barefoot in that benighted place, until I had the good fortune to catch the eye of a gentleman and an officer of the Crown."

The expression of her hulking accuser wavered between belief and doubt.  Then a huzzah erupted from the front of the crowd, and he swiveled with the rest to see.  Seizing their chance, Brenna plunged between the stout toothless woman and her nearest neighbor, dragging Fenella with her.

Ignoring glares and indignant obscenities, they pushed through the close
packed, gaping rabble, away from the handful of spectators witness to her words with the gloating woman.  With luck, and enough of the mob between them, they would be forgotten.

They worked their way up the choked thoroughfare toward the corridor clearing in the street for the vanguard of soldiers leading the chained prisoners.  Struggling to reach a vantage point, they fought to catch a glimpse of the condemned men.  They gained the fore of the gawking onlookers just as the first of the Highlanders stumbled abreast of t
he curbstone where they stood.

Brenna's heart constricted.  Scarlet
clad British regulars prodded a score of dirty, ill fed men ahead of them at the points of their bayonets.  She searched each face again, dizzied by sudden guilty relief.  Cam and Iain weren't among them.

They were still safe
, and alive. 
If these were the first men sentenced to hang. 
With an effort of will, Brenna stilled the voice of fear inside her.  But what she saw told her they had to find Cam and Iain, and quickly.

And then an angry male shout cut across the heads of the crowd.  "There they are.  Scottish whores."

Brenna whirled.  Yards away, the mobcapped woman's fleshy arm stabbed the air, pointing directly at her. 

"Catch the redheaded slut."    

Brenna and Fenella turned to run.  But the bodies around them suddenly formed an unyielding wall that entrapped them.  There was nowhere to go but into the path cleared by the soldiers, exposed in the center of the street. 

Fenella's wrist tore loose from Brenna's grasp.  Lifting her wide tilting skirts, Brenna darted between the startled ranks of the soldiers.  With a swift glance over her shoulder, she saw Fenella hesitate a second, then dive after her through the line of march.  Swearing, the soldiers raised their bayonets to stem a new break in their ranks by the band giving chase.

Brenna pelted up the opposite side of the cobbled street, trailed by the curses of the soldiers and the enraged screeches and bellows of the riffraff bent on pursuit.  Heart hammering, stays cutting into her, Brenna plunged ahead.  She raced as she had since girlhood across the moors, heedless of the flimsy slippers on her feet, of everything bu
t escape.

Miraculously, the unceasing rattle of the drums distorted and all but drowned the mingled outcry on the opposite side of the street.  As she sped by, no arm shot out to hinder her.  The onlookers only stared, as if this was some mummery performed for their entertainment.

Fenella called out a warning.  Risking a look back, Brenna saw the mob after them had broken through the soldiers.  Their pack of pursuers was in full cry behind them, and Fenella was slowing.  Brenna no longer had breath to spare to urge her on
, she could only force her own legs forward, lungs aching in her chest, a stitch knifing into her side.

Then, suddenly, a towheaded child toddled from his mother's grasp, darting directly in front of her.  Brenna tried to dodge, to stop.  But her momentum carried her on.  The boy tangled in her skirts, arms wrapping around her legs, and Brenna pitched forward to sprawl in the street.

Chapter 16

Drake could scarcely credit what he saw.  A girl in claret satin bolted in the opposite direction of the funereal march, fiery hair torn loose and streaming after her.  A motley rabble pursued her like the hounds of hell, screaming threats and imprecations.  Instantly, even as she fell, he knew her
, as he would anywhere, on a cold Scottish moor or in a dark and winding alley in Marrakech.

Throwing his shoulder into the crowd, he fought his way toward her.  She had landed in an awkward twist, trying to avoid the child who tripped her.  Over the heads between them, he saw a slatternly woman scoop the unhurt child up in her arms. 

She rolled to all fours with a glance at the
riffraff pounding toward her, pushing back to her feet in desperation.  Drake saw the shock of pain in her face as she took her first step.  Loosing oaths and savage threats, Drake battered a path to her, drawing his sword.  Quickly, he thrust her behind him, his rapier at the ready.

"At your peril."  The first of the hooligans halted so sudden
ly he barely avoided toppling onto Drake's sword.  Then he lost some of his fear as he saw Drake stood alone.

"Stand aside, your lordship," he said in a tone that made a mockery of the title.  "The chit belongs to us."

"I think you need a lesson in manners." 

With a flick of the rapier's tip, Drake drew a line of we
lling blood across the hulking man's dirt creased neck.  It was only a nick, but he jumped backward with a yelp of pain, hands clutching at his throat as if Drake had slit it.

"Would you like the same?" Drake asked the rest with a tight cold smile.  He saw the bleeding man's confederates teeter on the point of rushing him, then think the better of it.

"No need for such as that, Guv'ner," a smaller man said in a wheedl
ing, placating voice.  "She's a Scot, a traitor's strumpet.  Only loose her, and let us deal with her."

"You speak of a lady of rank," Drake snapped, a dangerous edge to his words.  "Have you forgotten the penalty for touching
a woman of noble birth?  Count yourself lucky if I skewer you now."

The wiry
man's face went gray under its layer of grime, and the others began to fall back from Drake and Brenna.  From the corner of his eye, Drake saw the tightening circle of the crowd around them do the same.

"Get from
my sight before I have the lot of you dragged away to prison."

The icy command in Drake's voice left no doubt he possessed the power to do precisely that.  Two of Drake's footmen arrived at his side, the badges of his rank on their livery and cudgels in their hands.  Abrupt ill
concealed fright in the hooligans' faces reflected the magnitude of their mistake.  They retreated, bowing and scraping and begging their pardon, aware how dark and forgotten the cell could be for any man who dared to gainsay an earl.

Drake turned to Brenna.  Her gaze focused somewhere behind him, as if she searched for someone.  He saw a flicker of relief in her face before she spoke.

"It seems I owe you a debt, my lord."

Humble words from Brenna Dalmoral?  They caught him up short for a second, but a flood of anger eclipsed his reaction.

"It's hardly the first," he snapped.  Grasping her firmly by a slender wrist, he dragged her after him toward his coach and four.  Briefly, she resisted, and then, with a glance at the hostile faces around them, struggled to keep pace with him as he hauled her along.

The two footmen trailed them, still brandishing their cudgels.  Despite his show of bravado, Drake didn't relish lingering.  Intim
idating a handful of men was one matter.  Not even the power of his title could restore sanity to a crowd thirsting for blood, and the rabble all around them had the scent of it.  They had come to cheer as condemned men passed, to dog their footsteps to the gallows in Kennington Common.  Drake meant to give them no easier target here.

His coach sat in a cross street, halted by the crowd clogging the main thoroughfare.  Impatient at the stop, Drake had swung down and around the corner to see the cause.  Now he thanked God he had.  Were there no limits to Brenna Dalmoral's folly?

The driver gathered the lines tighter in his gloved hands as Drake and his men reappeared, as eager to escape the mob.  Most of the spectators began to surge after the procession.  In another moment, there would be room to turn the horses.  One of the footmen opened the door of the coach, and abruptly his charge balked.  Pulling back, she tried to shake off Drake's hand.    

"I'm grateful for your gallantry, my lord, but I can make my own way from here."

Drake didn't waste words in argument.  He half
lifted, half boosted her inside, ignoring her squirming burst of protest and dodging a kick that threatened to unman him.  As soon as the equipage rocked with his weight, the wheels rolled forward and the pair of footmen leapt to their places on the back.

Inside he faced a disheveled and fuming virago.  "What do you mean by kidnapping me?" she demanded in fury.

"What in the name of God are you doing alone in
London?"

Her mouth set in its familiar stubborn line, and she drew her shredded dignity around her.  "I'm not alone," she said shortly.

Leaning forward, she peered anxiously out the window of the coach.  Plainly she was looking for someone, and Drake remembered how she had scanned the street.  He jerked her back from sight.

"Don't show your face to any more of this rabble."  He pulled the curtai
n.  Whoever had been with her, he wasn't worth tuppence to desert her to this mob. 

"Does the fool dangling after you lose his courage in crowds?"

"I'm with a...with  my maid," she said in a cool insulted voice.

He let out an explosive, disbelieving sound.  "Strolling these streets unescorted?" 

The coach tipped as the driver sawed the reins and wheeled the horses.  The tantalizing softness of her body slid into him, and she sprang away into the far corner as if she had been burned.   He caught her back to him by the arm, his face close to hers. 

"Has your brother completely taken leave of his senses?" he asked.  "Is he so eager for preferment from the Crown he's abandoned his estate in
Scotland and you to the London streets?"

"Of course, not," she spat back, matching anger in her slanting eyes.  "I can deal well enough on my own."

Suddenly Drake knew the truth.  "You gave ample proof of that just now.  Shall I hazard a guess?  Lord Dalmoral isn't in
London at all.  And you've finally succeeded in kicking your last trace of sanity aside."

For an instant, her defensive mask slipped, and her eyes acknowledged the danger she had faced on the street. 

"I've done what I had to do. 
Whatever the cost."

Some unplumbed part of him went still.  "And what exactly is that?" he asked, his own voice low and tight.

"I've come to
London to find Cam.  To help him, whatever I have to do."

"And, pray, what will that be?" he said, unreasoning anger rising inside him.  "What have you sold for your passage to
England?  And what will you bargain with for your lover's freedom?"

His fingers had tightened cruelly on her arm, and he saw a quick stab of reaction in her eyes.  Conscious he was inflicting pain, he loosened his grip.  She wrested her arm from his grasp.

"I've bartered nothing that wasn't mine."  Pulling away from him, she put a safe distance between them on the coach's seat.  "If my mother lived, she'd give her blessing to what I've done."

Her words silenced Drake for a second.  "She'd be an uncommon trollop to do that," he said with a cold effort at control.

He heard her sharp intake of breath.  "No one calls my mother a trollop," she blazed.  She looked tempted to
strike him in the face.  "And how dare you say anything of the sort about  me?  Her jewelry was mine by right.  I've taken nothing of Malcolm's.”

Drake leaned back against the velvet seat of the coach.  What did it matter to him if she'd sold her body a dozen times over?  And what perverse attack of morality made him so relieved she hadn't?

"Do you plan to bribe Lord MacCavan's jailors with a few jewels and a smile?"

Her glare challenged him.  Then her expression changed.  "Once I find out where he's held," she said flatly.  Ignoring his advice, she parted the curtain again to glance out the window of the coach.

"The crowds have thinned.  Order your driver to pull up."

He fought the urge to shake her.  "Don't you have enough bruises for one day?" Drake asked.  "Or do you require more exercise outdistancing a mob?"

Determination had taken the place of defiance when she turned back to face him.  "I can't spare the time to quarrel with you now.  You have my thanks for coming to my defense."  The admission clearly galled her.  "I told you that before you dragged me inside this coach.  But I have to find where
Cam's been taken."

Stamped by strain and worry, her face told Drake too clearly that her anger at him had given way to her fear for Cameron MacCavan. 

"You expect me to let you out into the street again?"