Surrender to Me (The Derrings #4)(3)

Their eyes darted and assessed with rapacious speed, wild animals honing in on their prey. They snatched her reticule from her wrist. She watched in bleak frustration as one of the louts pulled open the strings and dumped the paltry few coins into his grimy palm.

“This all you have?” he barked in a thick burr.

“Yes,” she lied. A few shillings remained, sewn into the hem of her cloak.

She may have agreed to borrow Jane’s carriage and coachman, but she had refused offers of money. Pride insisted she could fund the journey herself. Over the years, she had learned how to economize, selling off everything she possibly could. Anything that wasn’t entailed. Any item of value that Bertram had not taken with him when he fled. She estimated she could journey to Scotland and back on her own resources. Just barely. But not if these ruffians confiscated what she hid in her cloak.

The highwaymen frowned over the meager sum, exchanging questioning looks. Clearly they expected to find more plunder from the occupants of such a fine carriage. They snapped at one another in Gaelic, motioning to her as they did so.

Coral’s fingers dug through Astrid’s cloak and gown, bruising her hips. She reached behind and clasped one of Coral’s tight fists, attempting to ease her clawlike grip.

“A dove like you,” the ringleader snorted, his lips undetectable through a thick reddish beard. “Riding in such a fine carriage…” his voice faded as he stepped closer and pressed his pistol against her cheek. Astrid tried to scoot back, but the clinging maid prevented her.

Cocking his head, he lifted his arm high and dug the cold metal barrel against her cheek, grinding the inside of her mouth against her teeth. The coppery taste of blood flooded her tongue and a whimper of breath escaped through her nose.

Coral made a strangled sound behind her, as if the gun were pressed on her face and not Astrid’s.

“Would be a shame to ruin such a bonny face. Now be a good lass and hand over your valuables before I spill your blood all over this road.”

“The carriage belongs to a friend,” Astrid gritted through clenched teeth. “I haven’t anything else.” She lifted her hands and splayed her fingers wide. “Do you see any jewels?”

“Nay,” he said slowly, his gaze moving from her hands back to her face. “No jewels.”

He scoured her from head to toe then, his eyes hard and considering beneath thick brows. “You have something else, though.”

“What would that be?” she asked breathlessly, the air seizing in her too-tight chest, afraid she already knew his answer.

One side of his ratty mustache twitched in a semblance of a smile. “What women have bartered since time began.”

His free hand lifted, a great paw moving toward her.

She watched that hand with dirt-encrusted nails moving, drifting closer. He grabbed the collar of her cloak and, with no care that it was tied at her throat, yanked brutally, attempting to tear it free.

“Now see here.” The coachman, a grandfatherly sort that had been with the Earl of St. Claire’s family for years, stepped forward in objection.

One of the highwaymen brought his pistol down against his head in a swift arc. Astrid watched in horror as John crumpled to the road. Still. Lifeless. No help to her or himself.

Everything happened quickly then.

One of the men yanked Coral from behind Astrid. The girl screamed, the sound shrill and terrified, echoing through the gully that sheltered them, sending the birds from the treetops in a flap of wings and startled squawks.

Heart hammering fiercely in her chest, Astrid watched their fluttering wings take them far into the gray sky with a strange sort of detachment, wishing she, too, could take to the skies and flee with such ease.

Instead, she felt the ties cutting into the tender flesh of her throat finally give and snap as she was flung down.

Griffin Shaw turned his face to the skies and shivered at the bite of cold in the air. The clouds moved swiftly overhead, patches of dirty wool drifting through the sky. With a curse, he pulled up the collar of his jacket. No wonder his parents had emigrated. The damnable weather was reason enough.

Soon he would be home, he reminded himself, even as he tried not to think too hard on what had brought him halfway across the world—the foolish urge that had seized him following his father’s recent death to investigate the deathbed ramblings of his mother three years past.

His horse blew heavily against the fierce wind, pulling him from thoughts and questions he could never quite answer…a gut need that drew him to Scotland he could not understand.

He scanned the craggy horizon. Unremitting rock, broken up by wild gorse, heather, and leafless trees that shook in the wind like naked gnarled old men, stared back starkly.

Reaching down, he patted his horse’s neck. “Beats the heat back home, Waya,” he offered. Griffin would take a little chill over the sweltering heat of south Texas any day.

Waya blew out harshly through his nose, his breath a frothy cloud on the air, and Griffin wasn’t certain whether to take that as agreement or not from the Appaloosa.

At that moment another sound pierced the graying skies. Shrill. Chilling. The hairs on his arms tingled.

Waya’s ears flattened and he neighed in agitation, dancing sideways at the sound. A woman’s screams strongly resembled the cry of a mountain lion.

Griffin slid his rifle free of his saddle and urged his mount ahead with a squeeze of his thighs and dig of his heels. His parents had instilled a streak of chivalry in him that even good sense could not suppress. If a woman was in jeopardy, he could not stop from investigating, and helping, if need be.