The Bargain Bride (37 page)

Sungod was everything West could have wished: huge, broad-chested, well muscled, his cream coat gleaming with good health, and an intelligent expression in his one eye. West didn't have time to put the stallion through his paces, to let them get used to each other, but he shouted, and the huge horse sensed his urgency and sprang to life. Without the least urging from West, he leaped right over the mounds of luggage left next to the Littleton coach, and they were off, flying past Penny's grandfather, who shouted at him to give the bastard hell.

“No, I intend to send him there!”

They came up on Cottsworth and the chestnut gelding a few streets away.

“Spectacular, what?”

“Incredible,” West yelled, feeling as if he had one of the new steam engines between his legs. As long as West kept a firm hand on the reins, Sungod never hesitated, trusting his rider to compensate for the blind eye. West patted his proud neck and waved to Cottsworth as they rushed past, on their way out of the city.

They passed Sir Gaspar, who leaned out his window to yell that Nigel had indeed been seen going in this direction, fast. Nicky said the same a few minutes later, waving him on past the curricle.

“It's just you and me now,” West told the horse, leaning over. “You can do it, I know you can. And if we find my wife before that maggot hurts her, or frightens her, or, heaven forbid, gets her on that damned boat, you'll have all the mares you can enjoy, for the rest of your life.”

Sungod pricked his ears up and lengthened his stride. West would have relished the speed, the power, except for the purpose of this neck-or-nothing ride. “Penny, I am coming,” he shouted into the wind. “I'll find you. Or die trying.”

 

“You seem mighty cool for a woman in your circumstances,” Nigel told Penny as she sat silently across from him. Now that they had reached a post road, the carriage was not swaying as much, but she still held on to the strap above the door, weighing her options.

“West will come,” was all the answer she deigned to give her abductor.

“Hah. Why should he? He already has your dowry, and now he's got the rest of your fortune, you fool. And you aren't that tempting a morsel, my dear sister. Not compared to Lady Greenlea.”

“Parker mentioned she left for her family's home in Ireland. Your evil ally won't be any more help.”

Nigel ignored her. “Westfield might be delighted to be rid of you, so he can find another wealthy bride. One with a more pleasing manner and a better figure.”

“West loves me, just the way I am.”

“Feh, he loves your gold.”

Penny sniffled and let go of the strap. She started to untie the strings of her reticule at her side.

“What are you doing?” Nigel demanded.

“I . . . I need a handkerchief,” she whimpered.

He looked away, disappointed at her sniveling. A proud woman was one he could threaten and intimidate. A watering pot like his sister Amelia was no fun at all.

Penny sniffled and blew her nose. Then she returned the handkerchief to her purse, at her side, the one farthest from the corner where Nigel was leaning.

When they stopped to change horses, Penny would have made a dash for freedom, but Nigel took a knife out of his boot, a long, thin blade that he used to clean his fingernails, for effect. “I would not try any foolish attempts,” he said, “for if I do not kill you, my men will run you down. I do not think your husband will want you back after they have had their little fun with you.”

One of the men, the one who had brought the message and opened the carriage door for her—damn his soul—brought a hamper of food back to the coach, along with a bottle of wine. He would not look Penny in the eye, just handed the basket to his employer and rejoined the driver.

Nigel settled back in his corner with the bottle. “You might as well eat, my dear. We have quite a ways more to go.”

She would no more share a meal with Nigel than she would with a snake. “I am not hungry,” she said, her hand inside the opened reticule.

 

The horse was starting to flag. Even Sungod's great heart could not keep up the pace all the way to Dover. They had to find Nigel soon.

West brought the stallion to a walk for a time, conserving what was left of his energy. At the next coaching stop the hostler reported that Nigel's coach was a scant ten minutes ahead. West thought of changing horses, but the innkeeper's nags would not match Sungod's strength and ability, even lathered as he was. Who knew what they might face? A guard sat up with the driver, and West assumed Nigel was inside with Penny, but no one could say whether there were others with him.

The smart thing would be to wait for reinforcements, Nicky and Cottsworth, even Sir Gaspar, but Nigel could take a back road, or be heading toward a hedge tavern only he knew about, to wait for a ransom note to be delivered and the payment received. Or he could change carriages at the next town, making him harder to follow. The thought of losing Nigel's trail, of scouring the unfamiliar countryside, of leaving his Penny in the hands of criminals and cutthroats, made West urge his horse onward, after telling the innkeeper to send an officer of the law ahead. He had two loaded pistols, the element of surprise, and a berserker's rage in his heart. That evened the odds, he figured.

They reached a high spot, with the road continuing down, then turning sharply to the right. He could see a carriage past the turn, moving faster than usual. Such speed was unwise on this rutted road, unless the occupants had a tide to catch, a husband to outrun.

“We've got them now, my friend,” West told the horse as he nudged him into a jump over the roadside ditch and onto a field of sheep, which scattered when they saw the massive horse thundering down the hill. West guided Sungod on a diagonal, to come back to the road ahead of the carriage.

Gun drawn, he wheeled his horse sideways, blind eye to the oncoming coach, and shouted, “Stop or I'll shoot.”

The driver whipped his horses onward. The guard raised his own musket. Nigel tore the shade off the window on his side, so Penny did the same on hers.

She could see West, on the horse she'd bought him, looking like an avenging angel, her angel. “I told you he'd come.”

“Shoot him,” Nigel yelled.

“No!”
Penny yelled.

“Get out of the way,” the driver yelled.

The guard took aim.

But West and his horse stayed across the road, so the driver pulled back on the ribbons with all his might. After all, West's pistol was aimed at him, not Nigel. The driver figured he had no cause to die for his employer, who'd likely try to cheat him out of his share of the ransom money anyway, and the nob did not look like he could miss. On the other hand, Joe beside him had his musket out.

In Joe's mind, he was already going to hang for abducting a lady if they were stopped, so he might as well swing for killing a swell. He sighted along the gun's barrel. Meanwhile, the carriage horses bucked and snorted, terrified of running into another animal, but they stopped, bouncing the carriage just as Joe fired. The shot went high and wide, but Joe started to reload in a hurry.

“Dammit,” Nigel shouted.

“Criminy,” the driver shouted.

“West!” Penny shouted.

West aimed at the guard now, while the driver had his hands full steadying the frightened horses.

There was one problem: Sungod had been shot once by his first owner. He was not about to be shot again. No one had told that detail to West, so he was concentrating more on the two men on the driver's seat than on his own seat.

Sungod reared up in a leap that would have made a circus horse proud. It made West slide right off the stallion's back and onto the road. Joe's second shot was perfectly aimed—at where West would have been. It missed. West's shot did not, hitting the guard in the shoulder, so he dropped the musket. Cursing in the dirt, West tossed aside his spent pistol and reached for the other one, in his waistband. Sungod trotted out of range.

“Drop your weapon,” West ordered.

“Drop yours,” the driver ordered, his blunderbuss in his hand now, the reins at his feet. “One of us ought to. Not me.”

“Shoot him,” the guard ordered, clutching his shoulder.

West walked toward the carriage horses, his pistol aimed between the driver's eyes.

Nigel stuck his head out the window. “This is no standoff, Westfield. You might have one shot left, but there are three of us. My man has his weapon. More important, I have a knife—at my dear Persephone's throat.”

“Are you all right, my love?” West called.

Nigel pressed the blade closer, so Penny could feel the edge, and ordered, “Tell him to put down his weapon.”

“I am fine, darling. Nigel says you must put down your pistol. Please. He only wants money. That is not worth dying for.”

“That's right, Westfield. Drop it.”

So West did, knowing he had no choice with Penny in danger. Besides, help would be arriving soon, if he could delay Nigel long enough. “Very well.” He bent to put his pistol down carefully. The thing was loaded and liable to go off if he threw it, shooting him or the blasted horse that was watching from a goodly distance.

He rose and walked slowly to the restive carriage horses' heads, to calm them.

“Come on out, Nigel, so we can talk. I have enough of the ready on me to buy you passage out of the country. Leave Penny and go on your way.”

“You cannot have enough. Not compared to what her father will pay.”

West stroked the horses, holding them steady so Nigel's knife did not slip.

“Shoot him, damn you,” Nigel ordered, his head out the window now.

“He ain't armed nor mounted,” the driver complained, while Joe complained that he was bleeding to death. The driver took out his filthy kerchief to help stanch the blood, holding the blunderbuss loosely in his other hand.

Nigel was furious. “I don't care. Shoot him!”

Penny was more than a little angry, too. “If you do, your employer is a dead man,” she said, from inside the carriage. “I have a pistol on him.”

Joe took the opportunity to jump down, bloody shoulder and all. He raced away from the standoff, picking up his empty musket and running for an escape, on the horse that was standing quietly. Sungod turned so his good eye was on the man, and on the rifle. He charged. Now Joe had three broken ribs, besides a wounded shoulder.

Nigel ignored the neighs and the noise, looking at the small ivory-handled pistol Penny had taken from her reticule. Then he curled his lip. “You won't shoot.”

“Are you willing to chance it? I already gave you a black eye for kissing me.” She ignored West's growl of outrage. “Think what I might do for an abduction. And if you let my husband get hurt . . .” She lowered the pistol toward his lap.

Nigel licked his lip nervously. “That, ah, does change things, doesn't it?” He pulled his stiletto away from her throat.

“Throw it out the window.”

He did, but to Penny's surprise, West did not come get it, staying between the carriage horses. Of course. The driver still had him in his sights. “Tell your man to put down his weapon.”

“I think not. The odds are not as good, but they are still even. If you shoot me, my driver shoots him.”

Penny bit her lip. So did the driver, who'd been listening intently. If Entwhistle died, he wouldn't get anything but a hemp necklace. If the other man died, maybe he'd get a share of the brass the toff said he had. And they still had the gentry mort. He started to raise the heavy blunderbuss. “Sorry, bucko. We've got a boat to catch.”

“But no way to get there.” West led the lead horses out of their cut traces; then he threw the knife he'd used. The driver clutched his arm, dropping the gun.

“Stalemate over, Nigel. You lose.”

—By Arrangement,
a chronicle of arranged marriages, by G. E. Felber

 

 

 

“
M
ay I shoot him anyway?” “No, my love,” West said, pulling open the door and pulling Nigel out by his collar. “He is unarmed, not that the scum deserves any concessions to honor. But did he really kiss you?”

“Yes, and it was dreadful.”

So West blackened Nigel's other eye, knocking him unconscious in the process. The last might have been by Nigel's choice, rather than get pummeled into the ground.

West was disappointed. “The craven turned lily livered, now that he does not have his henchmen or a knife or a woman to terrify.”

Penny kept her pistol trained on Nigel, half-hoping he'd awaken and try to escape, while West tied up the injured driver and guard and scooped up all the fallen weapons, placing them in the coach. Then he went to retrieve the horse that had saved his life, and helped save the woman West would have died for. “Do not let the beast see the gun,” he warned, leading Sungod back toward the carriage and tying him to one of the wheels.

“He was shot.”

“So I gathered.” And then he gathered Penny into his arms. “Oh God, I will never let you go again,” he said, kissing her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, her lips.

She lowered the gun. Sungod protested with a loud whinny, so they separated, by an inch, and looked at the stallion, stomping his foreleg. West took the pistol and tucked it behind his waist, under his coat.

“Did you like my gift?”

“He brought me to you when no other horse could. But you are the finest present I have ever held. Oh, Penny, the thought of someone hurting you, carrying you away from me, frightening you—”