Page 45 of The Cornish Bride

Chapter Twenty

Sam had been the first to spot the tiny shape of the gig ahead of them. “There!” he cried, his heart soaring. “Just approaching that woodland. Come on.” He dug his heels into poor Hercules’s sides and urged him into a gallop, as Kit did the same to Abelard. They thundered down the uneven road surface, careless of the many ruts and potholes.

The driver of the gig was proceeding at a steady trot and they were gaining on him fast, when Kit shouted. The head of one of the gig’s passengers peered over the folded down hood. A small white face beneath a bonnet stared back at them.

The driver, who must have seen he had no chance of outrunning them, made no attempt at flight but brought the gig to a halt.

Sam and Kit hauled their sweating horses to a stop to either side of the vehicle, Sam on Ysella’s side, itching to snatch her straight out of it and onto the pommel of his saddle. He controlled this impulse with some difficulty.

Featherstone, holding the reins casually in one hand, sat close beside Ysella, the smug smile on his face turning his good looks sour, his other hand resting on her thigh in the ultimate of possessive gestures.

Ysella, her brown eyes wide with what had to be a mixture of terror and surprise, stared from Sam’s face to Kit’s and then back again. A tear ran down her cheek. Her pale face, and the dark circles beneath her eyes, gave her the appearance of a frightened, half-starved child, not a young woman old enough to elope with her lover. If Sam’s heart hadn’t already been cracked in two, it would have broken for her now.

“Well met,” Featherstone said, a jaunty tone to his voice, as though this were some social event and they were all good friends. “Very fortuitous. Now Ysella and I won’t need to drive all the way to bloody Scotland. We can get married down here.”

“There’s nothing well met about this,” Kit snarled. “Get down from there, Ysella. I’ve come to take you home.”

Ysella’s frightened gaze darted between her brother and her lover. Sam saw the indecision in it, and his heart ached for her, despite knowing what she’d already done. He still cherished the forlorn hope that the landlord’s wife had been mistaken.

“She’s going nowhere,” Featherstone said, his lips curling into a grin as he tightened his hold on Ysella’s thigh. All handsomeness vanished, leaving just cruelty and self-satisfaction on his face.

The man was an evil cad, and Ysella had to be rescued and he’d be the one to do it. Sam slid down from Hercules’s saddle and stepped up to the side of the gig. “Come, Ysella. Get down and rejoin your brother. You don’t want to do this.”

“Oh yes, she does,” Featherstone drawled. “In fact, she was very willing to do it last night. Very willing indeed. It’s too late for you to try locking her away like Sleeping Beauty, Ormonde. She gave herself to me last night and, even now, she might have my child in her belly. How would you explain that away if she’s not married to the father?”

It took immense self-control on Sam’s part not to set his foot on the gig’s step, lean over Ysella and lock his hands around Featherstone’s neck. How he longed to throttle the life out of him. But even though he would like it to be, this was not his fight, but Kit’s.

Kit brought Abelard closer to Featherstone’s side of the gig. “You will find,” he said, his voice hard enough to shatter rocks, “that you have been misinformed on the state of my sister’s inheritance. Something I am certain is the thing you find most attractive about her.”

Sam put out his hand to Ysella. “Come. Get down. This is going to get nasty and you need to be out of the way.”

Her brown eyes, rimmed with pain, met his, and she put her small, icy-cold, gloved hand into his. She made to rise.

“Sit still, Ysella,” Featherstone snarled, the hand on her thigh tightening still further. Sam didn’t release her hand. If this became a tug-o-war, then so be it.

Featherstone hadn’t taken his gaze from Kit’s face. Was that a trace of worry that had elbowed out the smug self-satisfaction?

Kit smiled at him, a smile that didn’t reach his cold eyes. “If my cousin Fitz told you she has a sizeable dowry, then he was right. But what he didn’t know and couldn’t tell you was that I have control of when she gets it, and how much she gets of it, if any, until she turns thirty. If I don’t approve of the man she marries, then she’ll not get a penny for the next eleven years. Think you can live like that? Is she worth waiting that long for? Do you love her enough to live on your captain’s pay for eleven long years? Support a family, pay rent on a house in Town, provide for her all by yourself? And I can tell you, she has expensive tastes and is used to only the best of everything.”

Featherstone’s mouth fell open.

Kit’s smile vanished, and his eyes narrowed. “Not the heiress you thought her, is she?”

Featherstone’s grip on Ysella’s leg slackened and Sam took advantage, pulling her towards him. She half climbed, half fell out of the gig into his arms. Holding her tight against him, he pulled her to where Hercules stood calmly observing the scene. He caught his horse’s reins in one hand, the other arm remaining encircled around Ysella. His whole body thrilled with the feel of her pressed against him, warm and safe as though this were where she was meant to be. All he wanted to do was protect her from harm—from the harm this man had inflicted on her.

Featherstone shook his head. “You’re lying.” But the doubt showed in his eyes.

“Try me,” Kit retorted. “Ask my estate manager. He does all the books. He knows.”

Featherstone looked at Sam.

For a moment Sam held the man’s anxious eyes, seeing what lay within his soul. His greedy, avaricious soul. “It’s true. Ysella gets nothing until she’s thirty if Lord Ormonde doesn’t like her choice of husband. Not a single penny.”

“And that means you,” Kit said. “Because, Featherstone, I don’t like you.”

Featherstone’s mouth worked. “You mean you’d see your sister in penury?”

Kit nodded, his mouth a set line.