A blur of movement caught her attention, and she all but pressed her nose against the glass. Fiend seize it—as Pierce would say—the highwayman was attacking! The Sheriff wasn’t Wilson, after all. Eliza deftly lifted her pistol from her reticule, lowered the window, and heard the man shout, “Stand and deliver!” To accent his words, he fired a shot in the air.
The horses shied, and the carriage veered to the right, sending the groom tumbling into a ditch without, it seemed, his blunderbuss. The driver finally managed to take control again. By that time, the highwayman had primed his pistol again, making him dangerous.
Ignoring the rocking coach, the screams of her fellow passengers, and the shouts of the highwayman, Eliza leaned out of the open window and aimed her pistol. She didn’t want to kill the criminal, but she wanted to wound him so he would no longer be a threat. She aimed and cocked the hammer just as the coach slammed to a stop. The jolt moved her arm, and her shot went wild, the pistol ball hitting the snow a few feet to the right of the Sheriff.
She’d attracted his attention, and he turned his gaze and then his pistol on her. “Down!” she yelled to her fellow passengers. She tried to duck herself, but she had to pull her arms in from the window. The highwayman aimed, and Eliza yanked one arm inside. He cocked the hammer, and if his aim was true, she was in trouble. She couldn’t possibly pull her arm in and duck in time. She should have felt some sense of horror, but instead she felt completely detached, as if it was someone else being fired upon.
A familiar figure rushed at the Sheriff, and all sense of detachment fled. “No!” she screamed, but it was too late. The Sheriff’s pistol fired, and Pierce blocked the shot with his body.
“No!” Eliza screamed again as Pierce crumpled to the ground.
Nothing and no one moved for a long, long time. No more than a second or two had passed, but in that brief period, she went over every moment she and Pierce had spent together. She recalled every sweet word, every tender look, every time he had made her smile.
Eliza reached for the door and all but fell out of the coach. She could prime a weapon in her sleep, and she readied her pistol while kneeling on the ground by the coach. Raising it, she saw the Sheriff had not moved to prepare his weapon. He was staring at Pierce’s body with open-mouthed shock.
Eliza raised her pistol, and with what she considered admirable restraint, moved the barrel slightly to the left, then fired. She hit the Sheriff in the thigh, and he went to his knees with a yelp. Ignoring him, she ran to Pierce and knelt by his side.
The cold, wet snow immediately seeped through her pelisse and her dress, but she didn’t care. Pierce was lying on his side, his back to her, and she reached for his shoulder. Her gloved hand hovered in the air above him. What would she do if he was dead? What would become of her? How would she live without him?
She loved him.
All the rest didn’t matter. Where they lived, whether he told her in so many words he loved her, whether she ever designed another weapon. Pierce was her life. Hand trembling, she clutched his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. The scarlet stain on the snow where Pierce had lain caught her eye. “No,” she whispered, her gaze flicking to his face. His eyes were closed, his complexion pale and lifeless. “No,” she sobbed, lowering her head to his chest. She needed to listen for his heartbeat, but she was sobbing too much to hear. God was cruel to allow her to hold him, feel his warmth, this last time before he grew cold as the snow she knelt upon.
“Pierce!” she cried. “No. You can’t die. I forbid it. Fight, damn you!” She sat and shook him, eliciting no response from him. “Please fight. You have to live. I-I love you. You know that, don’t you? I love you, foolish man. I’ll go to Switzerland with you. I-I’ll go anywhere with you—even somewhere awful like India or the United States. Please live. Please.”
Her head fell into her hands, and grief overwhelmed her.
Seven
Pierce didn’t know what that awful sound was, but he pushed through the blackness to make it stop. He waved his hand, brushing against something solid but pliable. With his gloves on, and his fingers so numb they were probably frostbitten, he couldn’t feel a thing. He pried his eyes open and stared at Eliza’s bent head. She was on her knees beside him, her shoulders shaking as though she wept.
He waved his arm again, brushing it over her arm. Her head snapped up, and she stared at him as though she were seeing a ghost. “Pierce!” she screamed. “You’re alive.”
Ah. That explained the crying. But there had been more. She’d been talking. Telling him...she loved him? “You love me?” he said, his voice raspy.
She gathered him into her arms, causing a slice of pain in his shoulder. “Of course I love you. I’ve always loved you. How dare you jump in front of that highwayman? You might have been killed!”
“I couldn’t let him shoot you.” And that was when he realized he loved her too. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t always known it, but perhaps that was why he hadn’t known. It was so much a part of him. He’d sacrificed himself for her because it was second nature to do so. And he’d been wounded by the pistol ball for his pains.
He remembered the blood. His head began to spin, and he forced his thoughts away. This was no time to faint at the sight of blood. Eliza needed him. They had a mission to complete.
“The Sheriff?” he asked, sitting. The world tilted, but he tried to pretend
