A Cold Legacy Read Free Page B

into the back of their police carriage and dragged to London to face trial for murder.
    Once more, the image of Dr. Hastings’s scratched-out eyes flashed in my head.
    I took another step backward and the floorboard squeaked. Before the officers could think to look, thebarmaid slammed her rag on the bar and said, “If they passed this way, I haven’t seen ’em.”
    Relief flooded me, but it was short-lived. As she noisily pulled out some tankards, someone seized me from behind and dragged me into the side hallway. My heart shot to my throat as I lurched for the knife stashed in my boot until I recognized Montgomery’s smell—hay and candle wax. My shoulders eased.
    â€œThey’re looking for us,” I whispered.
    â€œI know. I’ve readied the carriage and hidden it behind the barn. Balthazar and I will get Edward. Fetch Lucy and bring our bags to the back as quickly as you can.”
    I dashed up the back stairs with fast, quiet steps. I had scoffed at Montgomery the previous night when he set the horses to pasture and hid the carriage behind the barn. His preparations didn’t seem quite so overly cautious now.
    I woke Lucy, who gasped awake, and helped her struggle into her dress.
    â€œHow did they find us?” she whispered in a fearful hush.
    â€œThey haven’t found us, not yet. They’re checking all the major roads. We’ll have to stick to back roads from now on. It’ll slow us down, but we dare not risk anything else.” Together we loaded our meager belongings into carpetbags and carried them down the back steps silent as mice, with Sharkey tucked under my arm. Day was just breaking over the eastern moors, which were shrouded in a thick silver fog. If we could disappear into that fog while the police were distracted, we would have a chance.
    Behind the inn, the horses stamped at the hardened earth, blowing jets of warm steam into the cold morning air as Montgomery harnessed them. “I’ve put Edward inside the carriage. I don’t need to tell you how fragile his condition is. Balthazar will ride inside with you—his appearance is too distinctive, and we don’t need anyone paying extra attention to us.”
    I opened the door to the carriage, where Edward lay flat on the bench-seat, moaning incomprehensibly. His eyes were closed, the chains still wrapped tight. I climbed in, pulling Lucy with me. Balthazar lumbered in behind her and held Sharkey in his lap. Quietly as he could, Montgomery drove the horses to the road, letting their soft steps get lost in the mist, until we were so swallowed up in the fog that I could no longer see the inn. He cracked the whip, and the horses bolted.
    I grabbed the window for balance. Lucy sat next to Edward, his head in her lap, her fingers trailing through his sweat-soaked hair as she muttered sweet reassurances to him that he would come through the fever and be eating cinnamon cake again in no time. I didn’t have the heart to tell her he likely couldn’t hear her, nor would he remember anything she said. Balthazar soon nodded off. The man was able to sleep through anything.
    I pushed aside the gauzy curtain every few minutes to make certain we weren’t being followed. After an hour, then two, I began to relax. The fog burned off as the morning stretched into midday, but the heather was endless, a sea of rolling red hills and frozen earth, beautiful in itsdesolation, hypnotic in its monotony. Twice we passed small hamlets, nothing more than clusters of stone cottages with smoke rising from mossy chimneys; once a farmer, wizened and bent, riding a donkey down the dirt road.
    Other than that, there was nothing but the moors, the storm clouds building to the north, and the ceaseless pounding of my heart.

THREE
    T HE AFTERNOON TURNED DARK as the storm grew. A sudden clap of thunder shook the carriage, making me jump. The first drops of freezing rain fell against the glass. I thought of