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“It was. It was.” He sounded far away in the gathering darkness.
“Perhaps he will show it to me when we visit.”
“He can’t,” he said from the gloom on the other side of the carriage. “It was destroyed when we were attacked by the Indians. Smashed to bits, all his specimens dragged out and scattered, completely ruined.”
“How awful! Poor man. It must’ve been terrible when he saw what had been done to his collection.”
There was silence from the other side of the carriage.
“Jasper?” She wished she could see his face.
“He never saw.” Vale’s voice came abruptly from the darkness. “His wounds . . . He never made it back to the scene of the massacre. I didn’t either. I only heard what had happened to his trunk months later.”
“I’m sorry.” Melisande gazed blindly out the black window. She wasn’t quite sure what she apologized for—the broken trunk, the lost artifacts, the massacre itself, or the fact that neither man survived entirely the same as before. “What’s he look like, Sir Alistair? Is he young? Old?”
“A bit older than me, perhaps.” Vale hesitated. “You should know—”
But she interrupted him, leaning forward. “Look.” She’d thought she’d seen movement outside the window.
A shot sounded, crashingly loud in the night air. Melisande flinched. Suchlike woke with a little scream, and Mouse jumped to his feet and barked.
A loud, hoarse voice came from without. “Stand and deliver!”
The carriage shuddered to a halt.
“Shit,” Vale said.
JASPER HAD BEEN worried about this very thing since night had begun to fall. They were in prime territory for a highway robbery. He didn’t much mind the loss of his purse, but he was damned if he’d let anyone touch Melisande.
“What—?” she began, but he reached across and laid his hand gently over her mouth. She was a smart woman. She immediately held still. She drew Mouse into her lap and wrapped her hand around his muzzle.
The little lady’s maid had her fist stuffed into her mouth, her eyes wide and round. She didn’t make a sound, but Jasper pressed a finger across his own lips. Although he had no idea if the women could see him adequately in the dark carriage.
Why hadn’t the coachman tried to make a run for it? The answer came to Jasper even as he ran through his options. The coachman had already admitted he didn’t know the terrain well. He’d probably been afraid of overturning the carriage in the dark and killing them all.
“Come out o’ there,” a second man called.
So there were at least two, probably more. He had two footmen and two coachmen, along with two men on horses, one of them Pynch. Six men in all. But how many robbers?
“D’you hear me? Get out o’ there!” the second voice shouted. One would be holding a gun on the coachman to kee koacontp him from moving the carriage. Another would be covering the outriders. A third would be in charge of relieving them of any valuables—that is, if there were only three. If there were more—
“Dammit! Come out or I’m coming in, and I’ll be shooting when I do!”
Melisande’s maid moaned, low and fearful, Mouse struggled, but his dear wife held him firmly and was silent. A smart robber would start killing the servants outside one by one to force them to emerge. But this highwayman might just be stupid enough to—
The carriage door was flung open, and a man holding a pistol leaned into the carriage. Jasper grabbed his gun arm and pulled hard. The gun went off, shattering the opposite carriage window. The maid screamed. The robber half fell into the carriage. Jasper twisted the pistol away from him.
“Don’t look,” he said to Melisande, and slammed the pistol grip down on the man’s temple, shattering the bone. He did it quickly again, three more times, vicious and hard, just to make sure the man was dead, then dropped the pistol. He hated handling guns.
From outside came a shout and then a gunshot.
“Damn. Get down,” he ordered Melisande and the girl. A bullet could blow right through the wood of the carriage. She didn’t protest and lay across her seat with the maid and the dog.
Running footsteps came nearer, and Jasper moved in front of the women, bracing himself.
“My lord!” Pynch’s broad face peered into the carriage door. “Are you safe, my lord? Are the women—?”
“Yes, I think so.” Jasper turned to Melisande, running his hands over her face and hair in the dark. “Are you all right, my dearest love?”
