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"Help! Help me! Please, stop," Nadia exclaimed, tears forming at her cheeks. Laughing the laugh only a creature of seething, slimy scum could laugh, one of the bandits pawed at Nadia's breast, trying to tear her from her mount in the lewdest manner he could. She pulled away, kicking at the man and his horse; Shadow whinnied and rammed sideways into the man, though another bandit rode up behind and took his place. They'd surrounded her now, and her chest hurt; her throat grew hoarse as she screamed for anyone to help.
"Oy! Look 'head!" one of the bandits warned his comrades as the others grasped at Nadia, who tried to pull ahead. She couldn't open her eyes; she couldn't dare look at the fate that had befallen her.
"S'time ta have some fun with you, girly!" one of the filthy bandits crooned, moving in close with a sinister laugh on his tongue. Her heart pounding, she gripped Shadow close, listening to the horse's pained cries over the round of horseshoe gallops and sleazy chuckles.
CRACK!
An explosive sound poured across the fields; at first she took it to be thunder, but she heard a loud crash and looked to her side. The awful bandit who had been keeping pace at her flank shouted in pain as the force of something threw him from his horse; the other bandits fanned out, exclaiming in fright. Another crack rang out - and she recognized it as a musket shot, the bullet striking another bandit and knocking him clean off his horse.
Hope suddenly gleaming in her heart, she looked ahead and saw a carriage pulled off to the side of the desolate roadway. She led Shadow close to the carriage, but the bandits drew closer; she saw no one at the vehicle, but when the mass of horses and bandits passed close enough a man like a wild, confused blur of color appeared suddenly from behind the vehicle, a using the lengthy butt of his musket to ambush one of the bandits, knocking him off his horse with a powerful swing that cracked against the malicious rider's jaw. Her breaths ragged, her chest sore and her eyes reddened and muddled with tears, she swung around in a wide circle, traipsing back in a wide, arcing circle, back to the carriage. The bandits chased her, and as she drew close to the vehicle she leapt from Shadow's back, rolling along the rode with a pained grunt, taking cover beneath the carriage. She closed her eyes, covered her head, hoping that whoever this phantom savior had been, that he hadn't yet vanished before finishing the job. She heard the bandits do the same; their horses whinnying, hooves pattering, she soon heard their feet and their greedy, grubby and wanting exclamations fill the air. The sound of steel drawn against scabbards startled her as the bootfalls and growling voices drew closer. Nadia shook, her eyes clasped shut tight, when she heard the voice grow loud.
"Oy, 'ere she is! Get 'er, and whoever helped—" the grungy voice was suddenly and quite violently silenced by a resounding, skull-cracking THUMP. Nadia winced as she heard the noise ring over the rumble of thunder; then, another, and another, as the scuffle grew wilder and faster. She heard a bandit cry out in pain and finally dared to open her eyes, just to catch a glimpse. She saw a single pair of tidied boots amid a dozen scrounging, dirtied feet, squaring off with skillful, quick movements. Another loud CRACK filled the air, sounding so particularly disgusting in what it meant for the recipient of the attack that Lady Havenshire recoiled beneath the carriage in vicarious pain. She saw a bandit drop, his sword clattering to the cobblestones of the road; horses whinnied as they came around for another pass, and she noticed two other groaning bandits, already taken down, crawling helplessly along the roadway, wracked with pain from their encounter with this mysterious savior.
Nadia covered her head as another series of loud thwacks, jerks and spins followed; her eyes closed, she just begged silently for all of it to be done; she wanted just to see Lord Beckham again. A brush with death had perhaps made her realize more than anything that she just wanted to be near him - even if she didn't prove stubborn enough to convince him of her feelings of how they ought to be together, she would give anything to simply see him again before she died; to see the man she had fallen in love with.
Finally, the sound of the violent scuffle subsided, the crack and smack of blunt rifle-butt against bone and flesh replaced by the long, pained groans of battered, beaten outlaws. Horses kicked up dust and dirt, galloping along without their masters upon their backs. When all the chaos seemed to die, Nadia opened her eyes, her breaths quivering, to see if anyone remained standing after the great battle.
She saw only the decimated remains of the melee - men in patchwork armor and weather-beaten cloaks, scarves covering their faces, bruises and welts freshly beaten into each of them as the struggled for consciousness. She didn't see the fresh pair of boots, and feared the worst. Closing her eyes again, she felt tears along her cheeks, murmuring quietly to herself.
"Please. Please. I just want to see him again. Please. Please. I love him. I'll do anything, please, just let me see him again. You can take me, you can kill me, you can do whatever you will, be I just want to see him again, please," she begged, prayed to some silent power, for anything - just a moment of reprieve, just to see him again.
"See who?" she heard boots clasp as the carriage creaked, and her strange savior appeared. She recognized the voice; it filled her heart, brimming with joy.
"You—wh—" Nadia, startled and confused, saw his face come into view as he knelt down to help her out from beneath the carriage.
"It's not safe for women to travel these paths, you know," Lord Beckham chided her playfully, taking her hand.
"How..." Nadia asked, utterly dumbfounded. He smirked.
"I may not have spent my time learning to ride, m'lady," he quipped, "but I must've spent that time learning to do something worthwhile... right?" he gripped his musket in his free hand, tugging her out from beneath the carriage with the other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Nadia say at the side of the ride, her gown a mess of dirt and dust, admiring the other skill her love appeared to have spent quite a great deal of time practicing - tying knots. More specifically, incapacitated with rope each of the scoundrels who'd survived the battle, wrists bound tightly together and ankles to follow. Groaning in anguish, three of them lay half-conscious and muttering curses at the dutiful duke as he leashed their comrades; she smiled in quiet awe at him, having shown a side she had never yet seen.
"You'll pay for 'is! The other mates'll be 'ere to finish you and yer little harlot off!" one of the wrapped-up bandits angrily protested; Lord Beckham rolled his eyes, quite confidently and unconcernedly striding back to the carriage, grasping the weapon leaned against it, and bashing the rather angry, odious little man in the cheek with the butt of the gun.
"I'd be delighted to see them - I need the exercise, after all," Lord Beckham quipped, exhaling sharply and tossing the weapon to the ground beside him. "Harlot - what sort of language is that for a proper gentleman?" he scoffed jokingly. He threw a glance to his 'harlot', who grinned brightly, her heart full of warmth - but her mind, and her face, w
racked with confusion.
"Marshall, it's certainly... pleasant, to discover so many secret talents, of yours," she quipped, her breath still quavering, body still wracked with excitement and fear and bafflement at this precarious turn of events. "Though, I must admit the talent of yours that most entices me in just this moment is your rather mystical power of precognition," she added lackadaisically. Shadow stood at Nadia's side, whinnying and clopping her hooves on the roadway in agreement; Nadia gently tugged on her loyal steed's reins to calm the beast, her heart racing nearly as fast as Nadia's was.
"And just what are you implying of me, Lady Havenshire?" he asked playfully, a bandit groaning as the dutiful duke tugged the ropes binding the scoundrel up tight.
"Nothing, m'lord, simply that I find it rather fortuitous for you to happen upon my predicament, having been traveling the same road, at the same time as I," Nadia coyly murmured, her cheeks blossoming a slight tone of rose. She thought to continue her sheepish little line of curious questions, when she heard a bristling from the brush behind her and nearly leapt in a panic. Glancing to her rear she saw a suit-wearing man wrestling with a tangle of thorny brush, emerging from the forested fields dotting the side of the roadway. Though she kept her guard up at first, she sighed a hefty breath of relief when she recognized the man as James, Lord Beckham's loyal butler.
"M'lord, m'lord, I heard gunfire! Gunfire, and shouts, and, I know you told me to stay hidden in the brush, but—" James blinked as he came upon the rather righteous carnage strewn about the roadway, his master tying down the criminals one-by-one. "—Oh," he murmured in shock, gulping. "I didn't know your fighting skills had come such a long way, m'lord. You must've been practicing." He at once took notice of Lady Havenshire and jumped out of his skin at the sight, shock on his face, followed swiftly by pleasant surprise. "Oh- oh! Lady Havenshire, what a fortunate set of circumstances that we happened upon you at so critical a time," he said. A loud thunderclap echoed through the sky and the winds began to whip quicker and wilder. "Oh, blast it, just my luck," the butler grumbled. "Blast the weather on these miserable moors. Not a day can pass peaceful without thunder grousing on about it."
"Yes, a critical time, just the sort of question I had meant to ask your master," Lady Havenshire said.
"Well, I had need of traveling a quick route back to the Emerys estate, and James suggested this side path," Lord Beckham murmured innocently, hoisting a groggy criminal onto his feet, dragging the man to the carriage and throwing him unceremoniously inside. "James spied a group of roustabouts harassing a young lady, rather roughly, and when I saw them carrying dangerous weapons, I felt it necessary to act," the duke recalled, a hint of the precocious gleaming in the little smile working its way through his steely expression. "Fortunately, the bandits around these parts have far more courage when it comes to harassing lone women, than they do skills with those sabres and pistols they carry," Marshall scoffed.
"You bloody ambushed us, you coward!" one of the bandits grumpily groaned, before receiving a swift kick to the sides by Marshall, who hoisted him up next and threw him into the cabin of the carriage along with his lowlife brethren.
"Ambushed, coward," he joked. "Not, of course, that I wanted you to think I thought you incapable of saving yourself, of course, m'lady," Lord Beckham added playfully. "I'm certain if you'd had the same advantages I had in position, you'd have dealt with them quite as handily as I did. I simply wanted to offer some assistance."
"Your assistance is appreciated, though you glossed over a rather important bit in your explanation, m'lord," Nadia said, breathing deep.
