Page 41 of A Merry Christmas
And somewhere behind her, help would be coming. She need only find safety for now.
She turned her face toward the way home and began to walk.
CHAPTER 14
The storm thickened until sight itself seemed to freeze. Joshua rode low over Brutus’s neck, his eyes stinging, his every muscle taut with purpose. They had been riding for what felt like hours, following faint wheel ruts that wavered and vanished beneath each new drift. Once, they thought they’d lost the trail entirely until Bruton spotted a fresh gouge in the ditch—a mark of iron rim scraping ice. That thin sign was enough to drive them harder.
Roxton urged his horse forward, his breath coming in white plumes. “They’re close!” he shouted, though the gale all but stole his voice. Joshua’s heart thudded like a drumbeat of pursuit. Every gust seemed to whisper Merry’s name—every shadow might have hidden her, cold and frightened.
The lamps of the cart showed first—two blurred coins wading through the snow—then the shape of the driver, hunched and black against the whitening hedges. Joshua raised a hand. Brutus checked at once, hocks under him, his breath appearing like smoke. Mr. Roxton and Lord Bruton ranged alongside, the three of them a dark line across the road.
“Ho! Coachman!” Roxton called. “Draw aside. We mean no harm.”
The driver, muffled to the eyes, hunched his shoulders as if he might argue with three mounted men. The coach laboured to a halt with a wooden groan, steam rising from the horses.
Joshua swung down and approached the door. His glove slipped on the iron, slick with ice; he caught himself, steadied, and wrenched open the door.
Barnaby Tremaine lay inside in disarray—coat skewed, cravat crushed—blinking at the burst of cold as though his rest had been disturbed.
“Fielding,” he rasped. He looked inebriated and disoriented.
Joshua did not answer. His gaze had already dropped to Tremaine’s boots. A length of rope—damp, frayed, unmistakable—ran from the door-stanchion around both ankles in a stout figure-of-eight, the knot hauled viciously tight. A second turn had been jammed under the seat-iron and knotted to bite at every jolt. The floor showed a smear of half-melted snow where someone had come and gone at speed. The opposite cushion bore no occupant, only the ghost of another passenger.
He reached in and flicked the rope with a gloved finger; it twanged like a plucked string.
“By all that is holy…she tied you up and escaped?”
Lord Bruton shouldered forward. One look was enough to harden his face to iron. “Where is the young lady?”
Tremaine’s laugh broke on the edges. “She—tied me up!” he panted, colour mottling his cheeks. “Ungrateful—” He jerked a bound foot and hissed as the knot bit.
Joshua grabbed him by the collar. “Would you care to rethink those words?”
“She is out in this weather?” Roxton glanced at the whitening hedges, the wind sharpening the flakes to needles.
Joshua turned a fraction. “Driver—when did you take up this coach?”
“Just nigh two miles back, sir,” the man muttered, his gaze sliding sideways. “Slow goin’ in the storm. Gen’leman said no stoppin’.”
Joshua’s hand went methodically through corners and panels—noribbon, no glove, no pin. Only the damp rope, the slush-mark, the cold draught along the inside where a window had once been forced an inch and then shoved home again.
“Where is she?” Bruton asked a second time, in a quieter tone, the question as cold as the night around them.
Tremaine’s mouth worked, but hauteur deserted him. “I—did not know—” He shut his eyes as if darkness might hide his sins.
Joshua untied him from the doorpost. Tremaine sagged back and threw an arm across his face. “God help me,” he said thickly into his palm.
“God help you later,” Bruton said. “For now—out.”
Joshua cut the second knot with one clean pull of his knife, and Tremaine yelped as blood woke in his feet. Between them, they hauled him to the verge with firm, unceremonious movements. The team stamped and blew as snow webbed the leather harness, while the wind took the open door and slammed it.
Roxton turned on his heel. “We separate now, I think. I will head back towards Wychwood. Bruton?—”
“I will deal with him,” Bruton said grimly. “I will not have him turn another wheel to-night.” He gave the coachman a level look that emptied the man’s lungs. “Back to the last inn. I will ride behind. If the lamps so much as sway oddly, I shall notice, Barnaby.”
Joshua gathered Brutus’ reins. “I will keep to the London road and check every cart, inn, and house. She cannot have gone far.”
“Agreed,” Roxton said. He gripped Joshua’s forearm hard, then Bruton’s. “Send word quickly if you find her, and I shall do the same.”
