St. Raven Read Free Page B

forever, it seemed, but now it settled to a deep, fretful thud as she waited for the worst.
    For moments she heard only her heartbeats, as if she were alone, but with some deep and ancient instinct she knew he was there. It made silence more terrifying than shouting. She turned her head this way and that as if she might detect him.
    Then he said—the highwayman said, “No one’s going to hurt you. Please believe that.”
    Strangely, she did. Her frantic heartbeats slowed.
    “I have things I need to do,” he said, “so I must leave you bound here for a while. I’m sorry for it, but no one will hurt you.” He spoke from closer by. “However, I need to tie you up a bit more.”
    “No.”
    He ignored her, lifted her, wrapped something around her at elbow level, and knotted it. Then he moved away, boots on carpet. She heard the door open and close.
    Now, she was alone.
    She wasn’t sure whether to give thanks or vent rage. The scoundrel had wrenched her from her place and purpose, and now he had abandoned her here, bound and blindfolded. She raised her hands to push off the blindfold and realized why he’d tied her around her arms. She could not raise her hands high enough.
    She wriggled her head on the pillow but couldn’t dislodge the cloth. She stopped. The cloth was tied over the back of her turban, and that was held in place with hairpins that dug and pulled at every movement.
    “Go hang yourself,” she muttered to the absent villain, a useful phrase she’d found in Shakespeare. With any luck, he’d be caught and end up at Tyburn doing the hangman’s jig.
    For some reason, that image did not particularly satisfy her. She supposed that thus far he hadn’t deserved death.
    And he had blindfolded her for a reason. So she wouldn’t see.
    So he wouldn’t have to murder her?
    It was a warm summer’s night, but a chill crept through her, and tears trickled beneath the blindfolding cloth.
    Tris ran downstairs and found Caradoc Lyne waiting for him in the parlor, sipping cognac. Cary was a strapping blond Adonis who generally shared Tris’s carefree attitudes and sense of mischief. Now he disapproved.
    “I couldn’t let her go with Crofton,” Tris said.
    “I’d think not, but why tie her up?”
    Tris grabbed the decanter and poured himself some brandy. Smuggled brandy. A reward of another jape, but one that had gone a great deal more smoothly than this.
    “I should leave her free to wander the house or to run off?”
    “You could explain…” But then Cary pulled a face. “I suppose not.”
    “Quite. She’ll keep, and we still have a coach to hold up.”
    “You said that would do.”
    “On consideration, it won’t. Crofton, damn him, is hardly likely to complain to the nearest magistrate.” Tris drained the glass. “Come on.”
    “Bollocks. If we have to try again, can I hold up the coach?”
    “No. I claim right of rank.”
    “Spoilsport.”
    They left the room, debating the honor, heading for the stables and fresh horses.
    “I could fit into the Crow’s disguise,” Cary argued.
    “And how long would it take to darken your hair and stick on this damn face hair?” Tris touched his beard and realized that one side still hung loose. “Damn that ungrateful harpy.”
    Glue would take too long for his limited patience. While his long-suffering groom was readying fresh horses, he used a bit of sticky emollient to tack the edge back. Then the three of them set out again to play the High Toby.
    Cressida finally realized one reason her prison seemed eerie. There was no clock. She was accustomed to a bedroom clock. Occasionally she heard a distant chiming— two quarters, then one o’clock—but here was only silence and her own anxious breathing. What was going to happen when the man returned?
    She’d set out on this journey prepared for terrible things, but not this. She’d been prepared to give herself to Crofton, but she’d had a plan to avoid that, a plan that now lay in pieces, damn Le