Page 126 of What a Highlander’s Got to Do

She could return to him. Beg his forgiveness. Confess the love that terrified her.

She could—

The coach took a violent lurch to the right, going up on two wheels. The horses screamed. Isobel slammed into the door and then was slammed again when her companion smashed against her. His weight was suffocating. But then it was gone as the coach went back onto four wheels again with a shuddering thud.

She’d barely caught her breath, barely registered Mr. Breedlebum’s curses, when the coach began to tip again, in the opposite direction. Isobel fell to the left, thankfully onto that soft cushion, as the coach teetered and wobbled and then, finally, turned on its side with an earsplitting crash.

And then, all was silent, still, but for the stamping and snorting of the horses.

Isobel, somewhat stunned, needed a moment. Her head was spinning and there was an ache in her shoulder and a pile of packages on her person.

With great effort, she pushed them off, against the upturned floor of the carriage. Then she turned her attention to Mr. Breedlebum. Though she called to him and shook his shoulder, he didn’t respond. In the dark of the coach, it was impossible to tell if he was dead, or merely knocked out, but it hardly mattered. There was nothing she could do for him in either case.

She crawled up onto the pile of packages, opened the side door, and peered out.

Both the driver and the mail guard had been thrown to the side of the road and were not moving. The horses, frantic and fretful, stamped at the road.

Her first thought was to get to them and calm them, lest they drag the coach.

But then she noticed something . . . strange. It was dark, with only a sliver of a moon, but she could make out the shape of something in front of the coach.

Her heart clenched as she realized what it was.

Someone had felled a tree across the road.

She’d read enough gothic novels to know what this was.

And indeed, at that moment a shadowy figure emerged from the woods and cried, “Stand and deliver.”

Egads.

An actual highwayman.

He spotted her and raised his weapon. A shiver skittered up her spine.

“You. Girl. Come out.”

Her blood went cold as an unfamiliar dread coursed through her. Not for her own well-being—she’d never feared for that—but for the child she might be carrying. Nick’s child.

Suddenly everything was so clear.

Threat of death did that, she supposed.

Nothing mattered but the safety of this child.

Nothing.

“Yes of course,” she called in a frightened voice, then she feigned a fall and oofed loudly as she dropped onto Mr. Breedlebum. “I’m coming,” she said as she felt around in his pocket for Matilda.

As her fingers closed on the small weapon, her heart lifted. It wasn’t a bow, but it was something. And he wouldn’t be expecting a helpless girl to be armed. Hopefully.

Maybe she could take him by surprise.

He wouldn’t be the first armed man she’d faced.

But stakes had never been this high.

“Hurry up, or we’ll come in after you,” a different voice bellowed. Isobel stilled.