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The carriage had picked up speed again, quickly disappearing down the road.
A quick glance around. No one. Empty road in all directions.
Tossing her out of the carriage was about getting rid of her, nothing more.
They were stealing Eva. Not her.
She spit out the thickening mixture of dirt and blood on her tongue. Again and again and again.
Then collapsed back onto the ground and rolled onto her back. Cold grey sky above her.
So untouchable, even highwaymen rejected her.
{ Chapter 5 }
Well…shit.
She looked…not right.
Was it just his angle from atop his horse?
No.
Her back to him, Lady Victoria walked a distance in front of him on the road, off to the opposite side like she was ready to dive into the adjoining field if a rogue wagon skirted too close. The back of her deep blue carriage skirt and spencer was dirty beyond belief, splattered and smeared with road dirt that had been ground into the fabric. Her hair half scattered from her chignon. Her arms were wrapped around her torso as she trudged along.
No hat. No cloak or pelisse.
This had been the perfect stretch of road for what needed to happen. Barren, empty with only sparse fields in every direction. No help at the ready.
He’d passed the driver and the footmen five miles back. The lot of them trying to make their way toward the nearest village.
He’d cataloged their injuries, assessed their threat.
The driver looked like he had a broken leg to go with his seeping head wound. He was leaning against one of the footmen that had swathes of linen tied around both his thigh and his bicep, wide stains of blood marring the white cloth. A blade had gotten him.
Trailing them, his steps woozy and not in a straight line, another one of the footmen held his left arm to his side. The bottom half of the arm was turned out in an unnatural direction. Broken arm. The fourth man bringing up the rear fared the worst, as far as his face was concerned. Blood and dirt and an actively bleeding nose, he looked like he’d been dragged by the carriage on his face for some distance.
They’d been left alive, as he’d ordered. Interesting, for he didn’t think the hired brutes would have listened to his orders—more likely taking them as a suggestion.
Rafe pretended not to see their broken bodies making their way along the road. Or more precisely, he didn’t acknowledge them.
An arse of a peer didn’t need to. And there was nowhere in the world that his ignoring of people in need was deemed as acceptable as it was than in England. Peers didn’t lower themselves to help those injured or sick. The lack of compassion was expected and accepted.
And useful for his current mission.
He drew closer to the back of Lady Victoria’s form. Her feet slightly dragging with every step, half of her dark chestnut hair straggled down her back, whipping about in the wind. Several haphazard locks remained pinned up onto the crown of her head.
She wasn’t to be harmed at all.Thathe had been very specific about in the plan.
Bloody thugs. His own men would have followed his orders to the letter. Probably would have set her gently down into the road and brushed the dirt off her boots before leaving her.
She didn’t turn around at the sound of his horse’s hooves clomping along the hard, cold ground. Not particularly vigilant of her.
By his count, she would have only been walking for fifteen minutes now.
Closer still, he could see that she held her body oddly tight on one side, her uneven gait compensating for pain somewhere.
Not right.
