She turned to ask Hobson more now that Trelissick was on the other side of the road but pain smarted at her side and she staggered. “Ouch.”
“What is it, lass?” Hobson rushed to her, his hand at her elbow.
When she peeled her new cloak back, her dress was blackened around the edge of a hole in the fabric. With the excitement of the fight now wearing off, it hurt like the devil and burned like hell.
“Your pistol must have touched you when it discharged.”
“It’s nothing, just a scratch.” She waved Hobson away and tried to pull her cloak back but Trelissick had seen the exchange and looked furious as he stomped towards her.
“Why didn’t you mention the fact that you were hurt?”
“It’s just a scratch. I’ll be fine. Anyway, you’re hurt too. You just may be bleeding more than me.”
He raised his hand to his nose and when he pulled it away his fingers were red. “It’s nothing. Lucky punch is all.”
She raised her brows and snorted in disbelief. He was already bruising.
“Ladies should not snort, Daniella.”
“I think I just proved beyond a doubt that I am not a lady; and you are actually hurt.”
“Never mind me, what of you? How deep does the burn go?”
Before she knew what he was about, he had the burned edges of the gown in his hands and was trying to see right past her garments.
“I told you, it’s nothing.” She swatted his hands away.
“Let’s make an exchange. I can inspect your wounds and you can inspect mine.”
“You just said yours were nothing.”
“Doesn’t hurt to have someone take a look though, does it? It wouldn’t help either of our causes if one of us were to develop an infection. Or worse.”
“Not here,” she said, looking around as though more inept thieves lurked in the shadows. “When we stop for the night, you may look at my scratch.”
His brows rose for a moment but then his mouth drew into a tight line as it had so many times in the last few days. He nodded once and then turned away to survey the scene.
Hoof beats sounded and everyone scattered without a word. Trelissick hauled Daniella into the tree line with a hand over her mouth and his arm around her waist pulling her close. Hobson and Willie disappeared to the other side of the road.
Relief poured through her when she saw Patrick rein in with a curse.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked when the men finally had the tree moved out of their path enough to move on. “Should we alert the authorities in the next town?”
Trelissick shook his head at the same time as Hobson did.
“You’re just going to leave them here like this?”
“We don’t have time to stop, lass. The magistrate would ask questions—he would have us stay in town for days.”
“Hobson’s right. Someone else will come along and they can report the bodies. We’ve moved neither them nor the tree far enough for anyone to just barrel past.”
It seemed wrong to Daniella, but then again, a battle at sea saw all those lost go overboard. Holding on to bodies only brought disease. “Very well, let’s be gone from here. It gives me a very bad feeling.” Not because she had killed a man but because there wasn’t one who remained alive to tell the story of why they were there. Her father would never hire such obviously dismal excuses for criminals but she wouldn’t put it past her brother to thoroughly muck it up. If he had a finger on any kind of illegal activities, she would eat her favourite bonnet. He was after all a peer, a man knighted by the king himself. She was about to snort but recalled Trelissick’s words about ladies.
Damn the men in her life. Damn them all to hell.
Chapter Twelve
Why couldn’t it all be simple? Why couldn’t they stick to his plan to get them to Scotland without interference from inconvenient elements? First the bad food, then the highway robbery attempt—and now a storm had blown in and dumped rain and hail the entire afternoon. Even if it did cease, the way would still be too treacherous for the carriage to risk. They could slide off the road, lose a wheel, snap an axle—anything could happen. Even now they should have stopped, but they had yet to find a town and the carriage was too small to shelter them all. To top the dreadful day off, James was beginning to think they were lost.
It seemed they were in the middle of nowhere. The only structure they had passed in the last two hours had been an old barn, apparently abandoned. The map showed a fork in the road leading closer to the coast but they must have passed it already.
His only consolation, if one could label it that, was that if he couldn’t travel due to the weather, then neither could Daniella’s brother, although by now James had his doubts that Germaine pursued at all.
Were it him, he wouldn’t rest for one second until he’d caught up. Indeed he hadn’t rested since he’d discovered his mother and sister gone. Each and every moment of the day had seen him plotting ways to get them back and then drive a knife right into the heart of that damned pirate.
James, or rather the Butcher, would be hailed a hero for eliminating a menace.
“Are you cold?” Daniella asked from the dimness.
He must
