There were voices outside of the carriage too soft and indistinct to make out with any clarity. At best, she could discern from their tones was that they were frustrated. Wherever it was that they had stopped, they were now forced to wait. The waiting was an agony in itself.
Adam had begun to shiver with fear. It had started to rain, the patter soft against the carriage.
“Are we gonna die, Mama?” he whimpered.
She did not know the answer and hated to lie, but for him, she would. “Not today,” she promised. “We just need to be strong and keep our wits about us. That has served me well in the past, and it will serve us this day.”
In the darkness of the carriage, she saw his little head nod. She pulled him into a hug. At least the villains had not bound them hand and foot.
“I’ll protect you,” he said with a confidence that she admired but wished he did not have to bear.
“No,” she replied with a stern voice. She held his face in her hands and forced him to hear her. “At the first opportunity, you run. Do you hear me? You do not look back, and you do not wait for me. You run with everything you have in you. Do you understand?”
“You’ll run with me?” he cried.
“I will,” she replied, but it was a lie. For the first time, and likely the last, she lied to her son. She would do whatever it took to allow him his escape, even if that meant that she had to be a distraction herself. Even if it meant giving her life for his freedom. “You just run, and you never look back. Not for anything.”
“I’ll run for help.”
“You run,” she repeated, “and don’t look back, no matter what you see or hear. Promise me.”
He nodded uncertainly.
When she was certain he understood, she clasped him to her breast and wished that she had had more time with him. She told him that she loved him and that if he ran hard enough everything would be all right. It had to be so. She would make sure of it with her last breath.
After what felt like an age, the sound of another carriage pulling alongside could be heard.
“Where you been?” the gruff voice of their captor complained. “We been here an hour at least.”
The rain was falling harder now, obscuring the sounds. A response was made, but Peggy could not hear it clearly enough to make sense of it.
“A hundred pounds,” their captor demanded. “You said a hundred if we got both.”
“So I did,” came the reply, closer now, and Peggy’s blood ran cold. She recognized the voice in an instant, and it was one that she had wished to never hear again. The sound of a bag of coin being tossed rang through the silence, and a pleased grunt of satisfaction echoed as her captor pocketed the reward. “Move them over to my carriage and be off. We’re done here.”
The handle of the carriage rattled and then stopped. Peggy and Adam scooted as far away from the door as possible, but it was no use. The door opened and a pair of arms reached inside, wrenching Adam from her arms and then returning to pull Peggy without ceremony from the carriage.
His back was to them as he opened the door to his own carriage, but Peggy recognized him. Lord Sterling Pentworth, the Viscount of Banbury, and the sire of her son.
As she and Adam were held by the firm grips of their captors, some motion in the distance drew their attention.
“I told you to grab them unseen!” Lord Sterling spun on his heel to look out at the distant road, and his shout of anger rent the air.
“No one was about,” came the reply from behind Peggy’s ear. “Besides, you said no one would care about the bit o’ muslin.”
“Blast it, that’s at least twenty riders, you fools!” Lord Sterling was irate and spun on his companions with barely contained rage. “They must have followed the tracks.” He swore and cursed the ever-present English rain along with his criminal companions.
“You were the one who was late,” snapped the leader of the thugs. “You should have been on your way by now.”
Lord Sterling growled his ire, but a moment later, the thugs released their charges and shouted for their driver to make a run for it. They clung to the moving carriage and were off, leaving Peggy behind with Lord Pentworth.
True to his word, in the confusion of the moment, Adam made a break. He was around Lord Pentworth’s carriage before the driver could leap down and snatch him, but Peggy was not so fortunate. Lord Sterling had flung himself at her and grasped her by the hair. She cried out in pain but could not break free.
“Get in the carriage and no one gets hurt,” he hissed in her ear.
“Let me go,” she argued, trying and failing to wrench free.
“You are mine, Margaret, and you always will be,” he snarled. The riders were drawing closer, racing at full speed, but they were still too far away to be of any help to her.
“You did not want me then; why would you want me now? Just leave me be!” she snapped. She threw an elbow behind her, but it missed its mark and glanced off of him. It only resulted in a laugh. He struggled to drag her toward the carriage, but she fought the progress with every step. Years of hard labor had made her strong, and she resisted for all she was worth. She could not best him, but she could delay. Perhaps, the riders would arrive in time.
“I would have had you, but my father would never allow it,” he spat in her ear. “Low stock.” Peggy bristled at the insult but refused to let him bait her. Instead, she tried to angle her head toward the open field to see if Adam had managed to escape. Lord Sterling yanked her head back further until she cried out in pain.
“That bastard doesn’t matter. It’s you I need. I only thought he might keep you compliant.” He chuckled but then fought her with renewed urgency when shouts were heard from a distance. “Not worth the trouble now.”
“Need?” she grunted as she kicked back at him landing a blow to his shin. It only infuriated him further. “You have no need of me. You have a wife.”
“I have a useless empty sack,” he snarled, shoving her forward but only succeeding in flinging her to the ground where she landed upon all fours in the mud. She attempted to stay down to prevent him from dragging her further. “Five times she’s failed to hold a babe,” he said with disgust. “A useless twit.”
“I can’t solve that,” she argued, landing sprawled out in the mud as he tried to wrangle her flailing limbs.
“You are fertile and produce sons,” he snapped. “She is nothing but a wet blanket. A barren wet blanket. I’ve never been satisfied since I’ve been denied your pleasures.”
“Perhaps it’s because she loathes you,” Peggy hissed. “As do I.”
“Lies. You love me.”
“I once thought that I loved you,” she hissed. “I was wrong. Now I know you to be nothing more than a hateful scoundrel.”
“You love me, and I love you,” he continued with full belief in his own words. He was delusional. “I should have never let you go, and I will have you again, so help me…”
“I will never,” she spat. By this point, he had dragged her back to her feet, and she realized that she was beginning to tire. Even with all of her strength, he was bigger and stronger than she could ever hope to best.
“Blast you, Margaret, stop fighting me. You’ll bear my heir. You should be happy.”
“You are married!” she repeated, as if he could be made to see reason.
“Yes, and I have suffered for it long enough. You will provide my heir and Mary will present it as her own,” he declared. “I will take care of the children that you provide, and you will love me for it. Father is dead now, and I will have you both. I love you. I have always loved you.” Something was broken inside of this man, she realized. Perhaps something always had been, and she had never noticed. He was unhinged, but help was on its way.
“This is not love. This is obsession,” she cried, trying to keep him distracted. She could hear the horses now. She only needed to postpone their departure a little longer.
“There is no difference,” he snarled. “You ought never to have left me.”
“You told me I was nothing.” She bit down on the hand that had crossed her front and come too near her mouth.
He swore and called her an obscene name.
She spat blood.
“I said, I could not marry you,” he said in denial of her claim. “Father would have never allowed it. I had every intention of keeping you on as a mistress, but you disappeared.”
“A fact that I shall never regret,” she murmured.
He shoved her nearer to the carriage, and his driver came around the back shaking his head, and his hands gloriously empty. Adam had escaped. She exhaled with relief, exhaustion suddenly rolling over her.
“How did you find me?” she asked as she kicked out at the driver who had moved in to help his master force her into the carriage.
“I looked for you for years,” he revealed with a manic quivering to his voice. “It was not until your father suspected his Wilhelm Charm had resurfaced that I was able to track you to that ridiculous little village. If it can even be called that. I did not find you. Your father did.”
Peggy’s heart sank. So, her own father had given her up to this villain.
“How did he know?” she pressed. The driver had entrapped one of her feet in his arms, and she swung the second leg up to collide with his temple. Somehow, the blow landed true, and he dropped like a stone. Still, Peggy was not free.
“You were daft to contact all the best merchants in the south. Only he or his daughter would know all of their names and locations.” Lord Sterling shouted at her to quit fighting, but she would not. So, he continued speaking instead, her ploy to take advantage of his need to boast working in her favor. “Then, there was the matter of recognizing your writing, though the signature and seal were not your own. Some baron you had duped into the deal. Did you bed him too?”
Peggy screamed in frustration at both the implication and the nearness of the carriage door. She was running out of time. Once she was locked inside the carriage, driver or no, Lord Sterling would be off.
“He wants you back too,” the Viscount revealed with a relish, “your father. Business never has been quite as profitable since you left. I offered to loan you out when you weren’t cloistered with child.”
“I hate you!” Peggy screamed as she gave a push against the wall of the carriage in the hopes of putting some distance between herself and the door, but it only resulted in throwing her off balance and giving Lord Sterling the momentum that he needed to shove her closer.
Just as he was about to thrust her inside the carriage, Lord Sterling released a terrifying cry of agony, and Peggy fell to the ground free of his grip. What had happened?
She looked up in time to see Adam draw back, a blade in his hand dripping with blood and a gruesome looking wound on her attacker’s thigh. Adam made to scramble away, but Lord Sterling’s hand snaked out and grabbed his ankle before the boy could be free. The knife clattered to the ground out of reach.
No, no, no! thought Peggy. Her boy was supposed to run. He was supposed to be out of reach, out of danger, but he was not. Lord Sterling could reach him.
“No!” Peggy screamed. “Leave him be!”
Lord Sterling, with more control against a child than he had been able to muster against an adult, pulled a pistol from his belt and held it to Adam’s chest.