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

Rounding the bend, his eyes surveyed the scene at once: the idle carriage, the man crumpled in the road, the two females fighting off an unsavory-looking pair of men while a third watched, cheering on his cohorts and shouting lewd suggestions.

Highwaymen.

He’d been warned of their prevalence. Especially with Scotland caught in the throes of a famine. Desperate times brought out the worst in men. He knew this firsthand. A grassy blood-soaked plain flashed across his mind as testament to that.

A shrieking, dark-haired woman flailed in the mud as one of the bastards cut open her dress and hacked at her corset with an ugly-looking blade. Intent on their foul business, none took note of his approach.

Griffin lifted the rifle to his shoulder, closed one eye, and fired. He watched in grim satisfaction as the man collapsed atop the dark-haired girl. Her shrieks only increased as she fumbled beneath the dead man’s weight.

Wincing over the racket, he turned his attention to the remaining two men.

A grisly red-bearded Scot whirled off the other female, one as fair as her companion was dark.

In a blur of movement, her attacker flung a blade through the air, sending it whistling on the wind in Griffin’s direction.

He dodged to the side, missing what would have been a clean hit to the heart.

“Shit,” he swore as he righted himself back in his saddle.

Lifting his rifle with one hand, he propped it against his shoulder, and squeezed the trigger. Red-beard fell back into the road, his expression forever locked in shock.

The third Scot grappled for his pistol and raised it the precise moment Griffin swung his rifle in his direction.

Everything slowed then.

The squeeze of his finger on the trigger felt like an eternity. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed movement, a flash of color in the otherwise brown landscape.

It was the girl. The fair-haired one.

She flung herself at the man, shoving him off balance. He went down with a burning oath, struggling in the road for his fallen pistol. But it was enough. All the time Griffin needed.

He squeezed the trigger.

The Scot jerked once. And yet his hand still grappled in the road, foraging for some type of weapon. His fingers closed around a large rock littering the road. Too late, Griffin realized his intent.

Pain exploded in his head. His hands tightened on his reins to keep from sliding off his mount. His vision blurred, and he brought one hand to his forehead, feeling the slipperiness of his own blood on his fingertips.

Blood pouring from the wound in his chest, the Scot fell back in the road, a damn fool grin of triumph on his face as he expired, his life’s blood feeding the earth.

The woman rose to her feet, staring down at the fallen highwayman, her posture stiff and dignified despite her mussed appearance. A long pale strand of hair hung in her face that several swipes of her hand did nothing to remedy.

The sleeve of her dress was torn from elbow to wrist, revealing a strip of creamy flesh, a stark contrast to the dark blue of her gown that covered her from hem to neck.

Blood marked her mouth, vivid and obscene on rose-pink lips. That mouth was the only hint of softness in her rather severe appearance. The blood there seemed wrong, upsetting and offensive somehow. Another face flashed across his mind. Another woman with dark, obsidian eyes, whose blood ran freely. A woman he failed to save. The years could not chase her memory from his head…or rid him of his guilt.

A deep, primitive satisfaction swelled inside Griffin that the men who harmed this woman were dead. That he had managed to save her.

She broke from her trancelike state with a ragged breath. Her gaze lifted from the dead man and caught his.

Pressing a hand to his throbbing skull, he nodded once in acknowledgment. He never would have thought a wisp of a woman, one who looked as though she could use an extra meal or two, could possess the mettle to save his life.

She stared at him with dark brown eyes, an unusual contrast against her fair hair. Her mouth firmed into a hard line, until all softness vanished from those lips. She returned his nod with a brisk one of her own. And instantly he knew she rarely smiled, rarely surrendered to emotion. While the other female wailed on the ground three feet from her, she stood composed, remote as a queen, as if the ugliness that had just occurred failed to touch her.

She wiped the blood from her lip with the back of her hand, and it was as if that motion alone freed her of the day’s events.

God, she was a cool one.

Those dark enigmatic eyes moved to his head. “Are you all right?” she asked, shoving at that strand of hair again.

“Fine,” he replied even as a languid sensation stole over him, like he was perhaps slipping away from himself, drowning, sinking.

She pointed a slim finger to his face just as a slow dribble of blood trickled past his eyebrow into his eye. “You’re bleeding.”

He nodded. The movement added to his lightheadedness, making him feel suddenly, damnably ill.

Waya danced sideways, no doubt scenting his blood.

Griffin swayed in the saddle. One of his hands dove to his pommel for support. A hiss of air escaped him as he fought against an increasing wave of dizziness.

The edges of his vision blurred and he heard himself curse again, but to his ears his voice sounded disembodied, as if it belonged to someone else.

“Sir?” He heard her feminine voice ask, refined, clipped and soft, like rum swirling in his stomach, in his blood. “Sir, are you all right?”