The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,34

the words weren’t so threatening.

The second man turned back from the carriage door. “The bitch tells the truth. No gents, just a maid.”

Ellie expected the demands to start — money, jewels, perhaps even the horses. But she didn’t expect the man to close the door to the carriage, leaving Lucia inside.

“What now, sir? He ain’t here.”

“Perhaps we can find a use for her,” the leader mused, staring at Ellie.

Ellie pulled herself to her feet, ignoring the implication, pretending that she didn’t feel something ugly twist within her belly at his words. “I’ve five pounds and a set of gold eardrops. Take them and flee, before someone comes along.”

She sounded brave, braver than she felt. She braced herself as the rougher man strode toward her. She knew what the gleam in his eyes promised. This couldn’t possibly end well.

Another gunshot sounded, close enough to deafen her. The man stumbled, then fell sideways to the ground.

Her horses bolted. The carriage lurched down the road, picking up speed as the animals panicked. The driver shouted, indistinct under the ringing in her ears. She turned toward the mounted highwayman just as he raised his gun. There was nowhere to run, nothing to protect herself with. She instinctively lifted her arm, shielding her eyes.

Another shot. Something splattered across her skirts. She thought he’d missed. But when she took a step back, she saw the gore.

He’d shot his partner in the face.

She stumbled backward before she could think. Her throat burned, but she didn’t register the nausea until she was already retching in the sparse, brittle winter grass. This had nothing to do with how her father had died, but for a moment she saw him lying in the ditch instead, his face mangled and broken.

The man slid off his horse at his colleague’s feet. “Turn away,” he ordered Ellie, not waiting to see if she obeyed.

She couldn’t look away — could prey ever look away from a predator? He flipped the body over with his foot, as though his partner was a bit of rubbish in his way. The body was limp. One of the eyes was gone and the cheek below it was destroyed. The other eye stared sightlessly into the sky.

Then the living highwayman lifted his booted foot and stomped down hard, crushing the skull like it was a softened gourd.

She vomited again.

“My apologies,” the highwayman said. She looked up to see him wiping his boot on the grass before mounting his horse. He didn’t spare a glance for the body between them. “I will take care not to trouble you again.”

His voice was utterly without emotion — surely that wasn’t normal? She shuddered, thinking suddenly that all the visions she’d ever had of evil were wrong.

The man veered off into the trees. The hoofbeats faded into the winter silence. She wiped her mouth with her hand and forced herself to breathe. Turning nearly a full circle to her right to avoid seeing the dead man again, she took stock of the road. Her carriage was gone. The dead man’s horse grazed, uncaring, in the ditch.

Ellie’s breath rasped in her throat. She’d seen death before. She didn’t particularly regret this one. But the violence of it, and the way the man’s partner had desecrated him, then abandoned him…

She couldn’t stay there. She took off at a fast walk, almost a run, cursing her skirts as she hiked them up with one hand. She would have stolen the horse, but she couldn’t mount unassisted, and she hadn’t ridden a man’s saddle since she was in her teens.

So she walked, hoping her carriage would come back for her before any other travelers found her — hoping the carriage had stayed upright and that the horses didn’t kill Lucia or the driver in their panic.

It was nearly five minutes before her carriage returned. “My lady, are you hurt?” the driver cried as he set the brake and leapt from the box.

She shook her head. “Lucia? The horses?”

Lucia opened the carriage door and leapt down without waiting. Her skin was a ghastly shade and her eyes had turned to glass. “Alive, albeit bruised. I shall never ride in a carriage again.”

Ellie exhaled. She felt sick again, with her heart pounding furiously and the bile threatening to rise. Her head pounded. She touched her hairline and found a bruise spreading vicious streaks of pain across her scalp. She took a deep breath, then another. But she kept her eyes open, unable to confront the visions painting themselves over