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She threw her hands around Marcus' waist. Marcus, biting his lip as a queer shiver ran through him, tried his best to treat the sudden closeness as something within the normal order of things. Abigail's hands on his cloak was one thing, but this was something else entirely.
'Excuse me.' Abigail's voice was now considerably more subdued. Blossom, proceeding at exactly the speed she wished to, gave a consoling whinny. ‘That was—was somewhat sudden.’
‘Yes.’
‘Unexpected.’
‘Well, as I said, I’m a dangerous man.’ A man whose heart was now beating very rapidly indeed thanks to the feel of Abigail’s arms around him, but no-one needed to know that. ‘Expect the unexpected.’
Abigail didn’t answer. She stayed quiet, so quiet that Marcus half worried she had swooned—but her arms were still tight around his waist, very tight, and Marcus didn’t want to do or say anything that would turn such an unlikely scenario into something still more unmanageable.
The journey, despite being no different from the route he’d taken a hundred times before, felt much longer than usual. Still, after half an hour’s ride through dark fields with hares watching them from the hedges and the occasional ghostly silhouette of a barn owl startling Blossom, they eventually came to the cluster of hills that always gave Marcus relief. Past the first and largest hill, then a ride through a thorn thicket with a path so narrow that he could feel Abigail hold her breath—and there was the faint glow of the cave mouth, his dwelling whenever he decided to spend three days as a highwayman rather than dealing with the duties of his title.
He drew Blossom to a stop, then jumped off. Marcus stood for a moment, wondering if highwaymen traditionally helped their kidnap victims off of horses or not, but Abigail’s frightened eyes and rigid posture made sure gentility won out.
He held out his hand. Abigail hesitated, then eventually put her hand in his. There was a slight tremble, a moment of sheer awkwardness—and then suddenly Abigail was gripping his hand tightly, very tightly, and Marcus swallowed as he helped her alight.
‘Well.’ Abigail stood on the swept earth in front of the cave mouth. She let go of Marcus’ hand and folded her arms; Marcus tried not to look at the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed out in a slow sigh. ‘Thank you.’
‘I couldn’t exactly leave you on the horse all night.’
‘I meant for the journey.’ Abigail blinked. ‘For agreeing to do it.’
Of course she had meant that. For England’s most dashing highwayman, Marcus was increasingly aware that he was making rather a hash of this particular job. He eventually nodded, not knowing what else to do, and roughly gestured to the cave mouth. ‘Go in. Before someone sees you.’
Abigail nodded back. Wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, her back visibly straightening as if she were about to undergo some faintly distressing social event, she walked into the cave.
Marcus had never thought about how the cave would look to someone else. Especially someone like Abigail Weeks, who carried her gentility with her like a suit of armour. Marcus walked behind Abigail as she made her way into the cave, trying not to notice how slim her ankles were as she took tentative footsteps into the mouth of the shadowed cavern, and tried to fight a most unwelcome, nagging voice that told him he should have swept the floor before having guests.
He'd chosen the cave because of its location: near enough to the main coach roads but tucked away into the hills. No team of men or magistrate’s militia had ever succeeded in finding it; it had clearly been used by generations of highwaymen, from what Marcus had found when he’d taken possession of it. He’d cleared away dozens of empty gin bottles, the occasional newspaper—he was a criminal, or at least a gentleman pretending to be one, but he was a tidy one.
At least I left some rush-lights lit. He watched the golden light fall on Abigail’s face. There were shadows beneath her eyes, a tightness to her jaw that showed exhaustion rather than fear. She won’t have to stumble around in the dark.
Not that the woman’s comfort mattered in the slightest. She had wanted to be kidnapped; well, he’d kidnapped her. Any other hospitality was by no means necessary.
'Well.' Abigail looked around the cave. Her sharp gaze took in every nook and cranny of the walls, the floor: the pot over the remains of a fire, the neatly folded piles of clothes and considerably messier pile of books by the hay mattress covered in woollen blankets. Marcus fought the feeling of somehow being under inspection. 'It's...'
'Menacing? Gloomy? A clear and compelling representation of the dark character of the man who dwells within?'
'It's... not as gloomy as I expected.'
'Beg pardon?'
'In fact, it's quite pleasant. As a place to live, I mean.' Abigail delicately sat on a jutting ridge of rock that Marcus usually used to put his treasures on. 'I imagine you have quite a nice time here.'
Oh, for Christ's sake. Marcus hadn't exactly wanted screams of fear and desperate pleas to live anywhere else, but he hadn't expected his first kidnap victim to make his lair seem like a second-rate tea house. 'I—I don't have nice times.'
'What do you mean?'
'I don't spend time here being nice. I don't—I don't enjoy myself here. I plot, I scheme, I count my loot.' And I listen to the song-thrushes that have nests nearby, and sometimes I sketch the clouds, but you don't need to know about that. 'That's what highwaymen do.'
'It seems like something of a waste.'
'Your opinion is noted.'
'It doesn't sound as if you noted it. You said that with a good deal of sarcasm.'
'I—highwaymen are sarcastic!'
