Chapter Twenty-Five
“Stop!”
Lachlan turned—his blue eyes flashed wide before they narrowed again.
“You need to go.”
Mal stared at the scene in front of him incredulously. The carriage—an expensive-looking, black-lacquered barouche—had one door hanging open haphazardly. An older man, thin with graying hair, was standing face-first against the carriage, and next to him was a shorter, stockier man—the coachman, Mal guessed, by his box coat and hat.
Lachlan stood directly behind them, out of view.
“I don’t have anything else,” the older man said. His voice was polished, English. But Mal noticed that for as expensive as the equipage must be, this man’s clothes didn’t match. They weren’t threadbare, but they weren’t exactly the height of fashion, either. And Mal had more experience with fine clothes lately, given his proximity to the Townsends.
“I don’t believe you,” Lachlan snarled.
“Look at his clothes,” Mal muttered.
Lachlan looked. “But the carriage—”
“Isn’t mine!” the man wheezed. “Lord Monteith was gracious enough to let me borrow it. I…I’m just a tutor. I don’t have anything else to give you!”
The pit in Mal’s stomach tightened. “Your name?”
“William Rochester!”
Mal saw everything coming apart, like someone had pulled at a thread of a tapestry. The pit in his stomach was turning to lead. “You need to let them go,” Mal told Lachlan.
Rochester squeaked, as if in agreement.
“What were you even thinking?”
“I wasn’t planning it this way,” Lachlan said.
Mal snorted. “I doubt you planned this at all. It’s broad daylight, and they don’t have anything, anyway.”
Lachlan lowered the pistol slightly, as if he’d forgotten about the two men he was currently terrorizing. “I saw Georgina go to you last night.”
Mal winced.
“It’s fine,” Lachlan said. “You should be happy. But I need something for us to live on without you. I was all set to break into Llynmore again, but I couldn’t do it.” He paused. “She’s one of us, even if she’s one of them, too. It didna seem right.”
Incredulous laughter bubbled in Mal’s chest.
She’s one of us, even if she’s one of them, too.
Lachlan, for all his idiocy, had shaped Mal’s confused feelings into a neat little answer. Because it was true. Somehow both things were true.
Mal had spent so much time trying to reconcile it, trying to figure how she could be two things at once, trying to look for the ways she’d tricked him. Because how she could be his wild Highland lass and a half-English aristocrat? But she was both. It was something that couldn’t be reconciled, and maybe it didn’t need to be.
“So you saw a fancy carriage, and you were desperate, and you leaped without thinking.” There was anger in Mal’s voice, but it was directed toward himself as much as it was Lachlan. The other man shouldn’t have been desperate in the first place.
“Something like that.” Lachlan cocked his head. “I could still take the horses. They’d fetch a good price.”
“But we’ll be stranded if you take the horses! We could starve to death,” Rochester cried, face still pressed to the shiny carriage surface. Mal didn’t point out that he was within walking distance of the schoolhouse. “I’d heard rumors of the Highlands being lawless, but this is beyond my reckoning.”
“The Highlands aren’t lawless,” Mal said tiredly. “It’s only us.”
There were no bandits anymore. No cattle thieves. He saw it now with more clarity than he ever had before. They were alone. And this…this was ridiculous. Rochester was scared witless and the coachman was shaking like a leaf, and they didn’t even have any riches to speak of. Mal didn’t feel like an outlaw. He felt like a bully.
The halcyon days, indeed.
Georgina had been right.
When change came, you had to change, too. It was either that or get left behind.
Mal glanced up to the sound of horse hooves. Someone was riding toward them—and they were coming up fast.
The coachman, fueled by adrenaline or some newfound strength of will, lashed out behind him with his fist, connecting with Lachlan’s jaw. Lachlan grunted, dropping the pistol, and the coachman dived for it.
Mal tackled him before he could reach it, but the coachman didn’t accept defeat. He elbowed Mal in the stomach, wriggling out from under him to crawl for the gun. Mal’s hand shot out, closing around the man’s ankle.
“Go!” he shouted to Lachlan.
“But—”
“Now!”
Mal had already failed his men once—he wasn’t going to fail them again.
After a taut moment, he heard the sound of hoofbeats gathering speed, moving away from them. The man kicked out, and this time Mal let him go. He collapsed on the ground, relief making him weak. Lachlan would be all right.
He’d be fine.
There was a click near his ear—the coachman was holding Lachlan’s pistol in shaking hands, and aiming it dangerously close to Mal’s head. Mal felt a curious numbness settle over his skin, and underneath that numbness, he found himself thinking about Georgina.
It would be a goddamn travesty if the last words between them were an argument. He shouldn’t have stormed out like that, the night before. He should have stayed and talked things through. And he sure as hell shouldn’t have given her an ultimatum—him or her family. It wasn’t fair to ask her to choose simply because he didn’t want to be reminded of who she was.
What had he been thinking?
He hadn’t, he realized. He’d let his anger get the best of him. He closed his eyes against a sudden sting, hoping that he’d have a chance to apologize. He knew, better than anyone, how fragile these moments were.
Mal had always assumed he didn’t fear death. Some part of him had practically dared it to come for him. It had taken his comrades, his family—why should he care if it came for him next?
But the cold hand that gripped his heart when he realized he might not get a chance to speak to Georgina again, to make things right, told a very different tale.
His chest caught on a broken breath.
Oh, what a fool he’d been.
Suddenly, a gust of warm, rank breath washed over Mal, and he blinked. A horse nuzzled at his face curiously, as if he thought Mal might be an interesting patch of grass, and when he pushed its head out of the way, he saw the earl of Arden frowning down at him, expression dark.
He knew how bizarre this scene must appear—Rochester was still by the carriage. The coachman, who looked like he’d never held a gun in his life, was currently holding a pistol as far away from his body as humanly possible, practically touching it with just his fingertips. And Mal was lying on his back in the dirt.
“What the devil is going on here?”
“Arden.” He nodded. “Good afternoon.”
Yes, Lachlan would be fine, but Mal wasn’t so sure about himself.