“You mean a widow?”
Mrs. Leighton barked a mirthless laugh. “I’m no widow. My mother was also a milliner. She worked until her fingers grew crooked and knobby. An overdose of laudanum took her. She was naught but forty. When she died, John and I were cast into the streets. I provided the only way I could.”
John moved to stand in the doorway and look outside.
Mrs. Leighton gripped Victoria’s chin and tilted her face toward the meager light of the fire, forcing Victoria to meet her glittering eyes. “I sold my body to so many men I lost count. Finally, I caught a man of means, and he got me off the streets. He was a good man.”
“What happened to him?”
“Died. I took his name and the money he left me and started the shop.”
“You’re doing well for yourself. Why would you want Lord Berkwith?”
Mrs. Leighton let go of her chin, tugged a glove off, and held up her right hand. It was work roughened and red, the joints swollen. “I inherited the same curse. Some nights, the pain is so bad I can’t sleep without the very medicine that killed my mother. Soon, I won’t be able to work. And then what? My looks won’t last. Randall is a decent sort. A bit dim, perhaps, but he doesn’t hit me. He loves me. He does.”
Despite her current predicament, sympathy welled up in Victoria.
Mrs. Leighton turned to her brother. “Throw her down the ravine. With any luck, they’ll think it was an accident.”
Any pity Victoria was feeling was quashed by the woman’s cold pronouncement. John grabbed her elbow and yanked her out of the hut. She stumbled into him. He lost his balance and released her. For a blink, she didn’t move. Then, like a bird sensing an open cage door, she ran.
She didn’t get far. It wasn’t even John who caught her, but a root hidden under an inch of snow. She pitched forward, unable to catch herself. Cold muck seeped through her dress. She couldn’t get up, nor could she roll over. Her shoulders hurt. Her arms hurt. But mostly, her heart hurt. Was there no escape? Would she never see Thomas again to tell him how she felt?
John hauled her up.
She couldn’t run. She couldn’t fight. She had only one option left. She gathered a lungful of air. Her scream echoed around them and shredded until there was nothing left but silence. Even the birds had quieted. She drew in a gust of air to scream again and John bashed his fist against her temple.
The hit left her dazed and tottering toward a black abyss of unconsciousness.
Chapter 11
The scream scythed through him. An answering visceral pain rose from his own throat. Instead of answering her call, he closed his eyes and concentrated on estimating direction and distance to Victoria. Not far now, but was he already too late?
He ran, leaping over fallen trees and ripping through brambles with no thought to the damage incurred to his clothes or body. His overriding thought was Victoria. If she was dead… His heart lurched, and he shut his fears down. He would be unable to function if he allowed panic to dictate his actions.
Woodsmoke had him raising his nose like a hound, and he slowed. Crouching, he picked his way closer to the clearing. A once-abandoned crofter’s hut was now occupied. Footprints trampled through snow and mud. This was where Victoria was being held.
Garrick had always wondered at the way anger manifested in men. Some let their anger grow hot and burn out of control. Those men entered the fray like a berserker, killing all in their path. That had never been Garrick’s way. For him, fury invaded like a winter storm. It numbed him and encased him in ice.
He stepped into the clearing. A man yelled a warning toward the hut and ran forward. Garrick recognized him from the alley. This time he would offer no mercy. Garrick met the man with a fist. The man’s nose bent in the wrong direction and blood spurted. Garrick pulled a knife from the holster under his jacket and shoved it into the man’s belly. He fell to his knees and over onto his side, curled on the ground.
Garrick strode to the hut and slammed the flimsy door open with such force it swung on one hinge. He narrowed his eyes against the smoke and dimness. Only one woman occupied the hut, and it wasn’t Victoria. She sat in a stiff-backed wooden chair, her face in profile. It took several blinks for Garrick to recognize her. How was a bloody milliner involved?
“What the devil are you about woman? Where is Miss Hawkins?”
“You’re too late.” The woman twisted to look him square in the eye. Desperation was more dangerous than loyalty to a cause. “She will be dead soon enough.”
“Where is she?” When the woman only mashed her lips together, Garrick pulled a second knife from under his jacket, squat on his haunches, and pressed the tip under her chin. “Do not try me, woman. Tell me, and you may yet live to see another day.”
Fear flickered like the firelight over her face, gone before Garrick was sure. Finally, she said, “My brother has taken her to the ravine, but you are too late.”
Garrick didn’t hesitate a moment longer. He ran for the woods in direction of the ravine, picking up the trail of a single man. His habit of reconnoitering new surroundings might prove the difference between Victoria’s life and death.
No smaller set of prints was visible, which meant the man was likely carrying Victoria. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on why. The extra burden would slow their progress, giving Garrick a chance. And a chance was all he needed.
Movement through the trees had him slowing. It was a man carrying a body over his shoulder. Victoria’s glossy black curls bounced with his every step. Her hands were tied behind her back, and she squirmed a little in the man’s hold, a breathy moan carrying through the trees.
Garrick let out a steadying breath. She was alive. That’s all that mattered. He stalked the man as swiftly and silently as a cat. The coarse rope binding her hands was tight, and her movements became more pronounced. The man grunted and did something to her leg that caused her to rear up in pain. She drew in a breath, looking prepared to release it in another scream when their gazes clashed and held.
She held her scream at bay, instead speaking in a hoarse voice, but not to him. “Let me go and tell your sister I’m dead.”
“You’d bring hell down upon us. No. This was my mistake, and I must fix it.”
Garrick bared his teeth and closed the distance by another six feet. Hell was coming for the man whether he chose to do the right thing or not.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked.
“I’ve done plenty, girl. Tossing you over a cliff won’t keep me up at night.” His voice didn’t contain nearly the same confidence of his words. The man might be a bruiser used to navigating Seven Dials, but he wasn’t a killer. Not yet, at any rate.
“My death will not be the end of this, you know.”
The conversation, as bleak as it was, was masking Garrick’s approach. Victoria knew this, and Garrick almost smiled. Her quick wits and bravery had never been in question.
“You don’t understand,” the man said mulishly.
“Then help me understand, John.”
“My sister could have left me to fend for myself. She could have sold me to a sweeper. If she hadn’t had me to care for, she could have found a respectable position in a house. Instead, she— Well, I’ll do anything for her. Anything.”