The nearer guard started to move, but Gabriel moved first. The butt of his pistol caught the man across the temple clean, silent, and final. The other froze, his eyes wide in disbelief.
“Letty,” Gabriel said.
Her name in his voice unmade something tight in her chest. She pushed forward, skirts tangling, vision blurring as her eyes adjusted. He reached in and caught her at the waist. His grip was firm and sure. He lifted. The ground came up wet and uneven. He held her until both her feet found it.
He looked her over. Face. Hands. The set of her shoulders. He did not touch the rope yet. He did not look away.
“Where is Erica?” he asked.
“She left us at Dunmere Cross,” Leticia said.
His jaw set. “Alone.”
“I had no choice. I knew what I was doing,” she said quietly. “That does not mean it was not frightening.”
Across the coach, the other door flung open. Barrington’s voice carried low and sharp. “Out you come.”
Two men inside jerked toward the sound of Gabriel’s door and lost the beat on Barrington’s side. That was enough. Gabriel’s hand flashed. He caught the nearer man by the coat and dragged him hard over the step. The man’s boots scraped and skidded. He swung a fist that hit air. Barrington’s men were already there. Two bodies closed. Arms wrenched back. A knee took the fight out of the man. He folded with a choked curse.
On the far side, Barrington hauled the second man bodily to the ground. They went down in a tangle. A third guard drove his shoulder into the captive’s spine and pinned him. The rope bit home. The man spat and went still when Barrington lifted the barrel of a pistol a hand’s width from his eye.
The driver raised the whip to bring it down blind and hard. Gabriel did not look. He reached and caught the leather with his left hand, twisted once, stripped it free, and tossed it into the standing water at the hollow’s edge. The driver stared at his empty fist. He tried to climb down. Barrington’s younger man met him at the step and pressed him against the wheel with his forearm until the driver’s breath left him in a rush.
“Hands,” the young man said.
The driver offered them without pride.
Leticia stood still and listened to the end of it. The hollow held sound like a bowl. It caught the last scuffle and the last hiss and the lastclink of buckles. The only noises were the team’s breath and the slow drip from the hedge.
Gabriel turned to her. The tightness in him had not gone anywhere. It had only changed shape. He reached for her wrists. The small knife he kept hidden under the edge of his gauntlet flashed and was gone. The rope fell. Blood sprang in a thin line where the cord had rubbed her skin raw. He closed his hand over the mark and pressed to slow the sting.
“Can you stand?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice steadied. “I heard them say Bracken Hollow.”
“We are there,” he said. “And done with it.”
He lifted her hands and looked again. His breath came measured. His eyes did not.
Barrington strode around the rear of the coach and stopped a few paces away. “Yours are secured,” he said. “Mine are thinking about their choices.” His mouth marked a wry line that did not touch his eyes. “We will make them talk in a better place.”
Gabriel nodded without looking away from Leticia. “Search the coach. Look for anything they carried that is not theirs.”
Barrington signaled his men. One went to the box under the driver’s seat. Another checked the floorboards. A third used the butt of a knife to tap the lower paneling in a slow rhythm, listening for a hollow sound.
“I meant to draw them out.”
The tightness beneath Leticia’s ribs eased all at once, and she drew breath as if her lungs had been unlocked. Air rushed in like the morning tide.
Gabriel’s hands lifted to her face before she could find any words. His thumbs brushed the chill along her cheekbones. He breathed in as if her nearness could fill his lungs.
His voice was rougher than he meant it to be. “You are here,” he said.
“I am here,” she whispered, the words catching halfway between disbelief and relief.
It was all either of them needed. His mouth took hers. No careful distance. His mouth took hers, and restraint shattered. She rose into him. Her fingers caught at his coat and pulled him closer. His arm closed across her back. Everything else fell away. The wet road. The captured men. The whisper of leaves. There was only the press and answer, the hard line of his chest, the taste of wind and fear and relief turned sweet.
He pulled back only to breathe. His forehead rested against hers. The world returned in fragments. A horse stamped. Barrington spoke quietly to a man. Water dripped from a fern into a shallow pool.
