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“One of the robbers, my lord,” Bob said.
He held a cloth against his upper right arm, but the pistol in his hand was steady and pointed at their prisoner. Pynch arrived with a lantern, and they all looked down at the robber. He wasn’t much more than a child, a boy not yet twenty, his chest bleeding profusely. Mouse sniffed the boy, then lost interest and urinated on the tree.
“He’s still alive?” Jasper asked.
“Just barely,” Pynch said impassively. It must’ve been his shot that had brought the boy off his horse, but Pynch didn’t show any pity.
Then again, this boy had held a gun on them. He could’ve shot Melisande. A horrible image of Melisande lying where the boy was rose up in Jasper’s mind. Melisande with her chest blown open. Melisande struggling to draw air into shattered lungs.
Jasper turned away. “Leave him.”
“No.”
He looked up and saw Melisande, standing outside the carriage despite his explicit orders to stay inside.
“Madam?”
She didn’t back down, though his tone was chilly. “Have him brought with us, Jasper.”
He stared at her, illuminated by lantern light, looking ethereal and fragile. Too fragile. He said gently, “He could’ve killed you, my heart.”
“But he didn’t.”
She might look fragile, but her core was made of iron.
He nodded, his gaze still fixed on her. “Wrap him in a blanket, Pynch, and take him up on your horse with you.”
Melisande frowned. “The carriage—”
“I won’t have him near you.”
She looked at him and must’ve seen she wasn’t getting her way in this. She nodded.
Jasper glanced at Pynch. “You can bandage his wound when we get to the inn. I don’t like lingering in this spot any longer than we have to.”
“Yes, my lord,” Pynch said.
Then Jasper walked to his lady wife and took her arm, warm and alive beneath his fingers. He bent his head and murmured in her ear, “I do this for you, my heart. Only for you.”
She looked up at him, her face a pale moon in the darkness. “You do it for yourself as well. It’s not right to let him die alone, no matter what he did.”
He didn’t bother arguing. Let her think he worried about such matters if she wished. He led her to their carriage and bundled her inside, closing the door. Even if the highwayman lived a few hours more, he could no longer hurt Melisande, and that was all that mattered in the end.
MELISANDE SIGHED WHEN the door closed to her inn room later that evening. Vale always acquired two rooms at the inns they stayed in, and tonight was no different. Despite the excitement of the near robbery, despite the dying robber—who’d been carried into a back room—despite the fact that the little inn was nearly full, Melisande still found herself in a solitary room.
She wandered to the little fireplace, piled high with coal, thanks to a generous tip to the innkeeper’s wife. The flames danced, but her fingers remained cold. Did the servants talk about their mistress and master taking separate rooms so soon after their marriage? Melisande felt vaguely ashamed, as if she’d failed in some way as a wife. Mouse leapt onto the foot of the bed and turned about three times before lying down. He sighed.
At least Suchlike never mentioned the sleeping arrangements. The little maid dressed and undressed her with unfailing cheerfulness. Although she’d been hard-pressed to smile this evening after their near robbery. She’d still been shaking from the shock, and she’d lost all her merry chatter. Melisande had taken pity on the girl and sent her down early to eat her supper.
Which left Melisande all alone. She hadn’t much appetite for the dinner the round innkeeper’s wife had served. The boiled chicken had looked delicious enough, but it was hard to eat knowing a young boy was dying in the back of the inn. She’d excused herself early and come upstairs instead. Now she wished she’d stayed in the dining room Vale had reserved for them. She shook her head. No use remaining awake. She couldn’t go back down now that she’d undressed, and that was that. Melisande pulled back the bedclothes from the sturdy inn bed, relieved to see they looked clean, and climbed in. She pulled the sheets to her nose and snuffed out the light. Then she watched the firelight flicker on the ceiling until her eyelids grew heavy.
Her thoughts floated and drifted. Vale’s bright eyes and the look in them when he’d savagely pulled the first highwayman into the carriage. Boiled chicken and the dumplings Cook had made when she was a child. How many more days they’d spend traveling rutted roads in the swaying carriage. When they might cross in kmign sto Scotland. Her thoughts scattered, and she began to sink into sleep.
s silent a bit, and Melisande watched the hills turn purple in the fading light.
Vale finally said dreamily, “I remember he had a big trunk, leather-bound with brass. He’d had it specially made. Inside were dozens of compartments, all lined in felt, very clever. He had boxes and glass vials for various specimens, and different-sized presses for preserving leaves and flowers. He took it apart once, and you should’ve seen the hardened soldiers, some who’d been in the army decades and didn’t turn a hair at anything, standing and gawking at his trunk like little boys at the fair.”
“That must’ve been nice,” Melisande said softly.
