To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)(92)

“Extortion,” Vale said. “Perhaps he hopes to keep you from speaking, Hartley, by holding Rebecca and Emeline hostage.”

Sam closed his eyes at the thought, trying to keep down the voices inside that urged him to move rather than think. “Thornton is smarter than that.”

Vale shrugged. “Even the smartest man can panic.”

A man like Thornton would kill if he panicked.

“How far is it?” Sam asked.

Jasper was staring out the window, too, now. “Wapping? Past the Tower of London.”

Sam sucked in a breath. They were still on the fashionable west side of London. The Tower was a mile or more away, and the carriage wasn’t moving fast.

“I just remembered something,” Jasper muttered.

Sam looked at him.

The other man’s face had drained of color. “When we saw Thornton in your garden, after we went into your house for tea, he boasted to me about a large shipment he was preparing for the British army.”

“Where was it bound?”

Jasper swallowed, then replied, “India.”

Sam felt his heart stop in his chest. If Thornton got Emeline and Rebecca on a ship bound for India...

The carriage slowed and then came to a complete stop. Sam looked out the window. A brewer’s cart was stopped in the middle of the road, one of its great wheels broken from the axle. He didn’t even wait for the inevitable shouting to begin. He opened the carriage door.

“Where are you going?” Vale cried.

“I’m faster on foot,” Sam replied. “You continue in the carriage. Perhaps you’ll beat me there.”

And he swung down and began running.

Chapter Nineteen

At the sight of Iron Heart’s white-hot heart, Princess Solace gave a cry of despair. His agony was too terrible for her to bear. She ran forward and with her own hands threw a bucket of water upon him, intending to ease his pain. But, alas, although the flames were doused, it is well known what happens when metal suddenly cools.

Iron Heart’s heart cracked with a loud SNAP....

—from Iron Heart

The gun was pressed firmly into Rebecca’s rib cage and didn’t move a whit even when the carriage bumped and swung around corners. Emeline bit her lip. To either side of her, two great brutes, Mr. Thornton’s creatures, sat, effectively boxing her in. She and Rebecca had never even seen the men until they were inside the carriage. Not that it would’ve mattered. Mr. Thornton had shoved his nasty gun into Rebecca and ordered them both outside and into his carriage, and Emeline hadn’t liked to call his bluff at the time. The peril of having Rebecca die before her eyes had seemed all too imminent.

Now, after riding with Mr. Thornton and his foul-smelling henchmen, she wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision. He still might kill them both once they reached the wharf. She’d been contemplating making an attempt at leaping from the carriage for the last several minutes. Unfortunately, she’d have to make it past the brutes first, and that was without considering the gun pressed against Rebecca’s side. Emeline had not a smidgen of doubt that Mr. Thornton would pull the trigger out of spite if nothing else. The man was quite, quite mad. How he had hidden his affliction up until this point was a mystery, because he was a bundle of ticcing nerves now. Mr. Thornton grinned and winked every few minutes, the expression becoming more like a grimace each time.

“Almost there, ladies,” he said now, again winking in that horrible way. “Ever been to the East? No? Well, most haven’t, I suppose. What a grand adventure we’ll have!”

The man to Emeline’s right grunted and shifted, the movement releasing a terrible odor from his scarlet coat. The carriage was rattling into the east end of London, the way lined with warehouses. Overhead, the sky outside was becoming progressively darker.

Emeline clutched her hands together in her lap and tried to make her voice even. “You may let us out here, Mr. Thornton. There really is no need to take us any farther.”

“Oh, but I enjoy your company so much,” the nasty little man cackled.

Emeline inhaled slowly, then spoke quietly. “Our presence only serves as a reason for Jasper and Samuel to continue pursuing you. Let us go and you may escape.”

“How kind of you to consider my welfare, my lady,” he replied. “But I think that your fiancé and Samuel Hartley will pursue me whether or not I let you go. Mr. Hartley in particular seems quite obsessed. I’ve had my eye on him”—he nodded to the scarlet-coated thug beside her—“from the moment I heard that he was questioning all of the survivors from our regiment. So, all things being equal, I think I’ll keep your sweet company.”

Emeline met Rebecca’s gaze. The girl hadn’t said a word since they’d been forced into the carriage, but in her eyes, Emeline saw the same despair that threatened to overset her own sensibilities. It made no sense at all for Mr. Thornton to have kidnapped them, and the very senselessness squeezed her chest, making her breath come short.

Outside, the rain started, as sudden as a curtain falling at the end of a play. She needed to think, and the time they had might be short.

She very much feared that Mr. Thornton meant to kill them.

THE SKY OPENED up and rain poured down in a drenching torrent. Sam flinched as the first wave hit him like a slap in the face, but he kept running. The rain actually made things a little easier. Those who could immediately sought shelter, fleeing from the streets as fast as they were able. Unfortunately, that still left quite a few vehicles. The brewer’s cart, for instance, probably still blocked Vale’s carriage. Sam leapt a row of broken cobblestones, turned by the rain into a miniature urban brook, and focused his mind on running. He couldn’t do anything about what lay in back of him or what lay ahead. For now, running was his entire being.