“What now?” I asked. “They cannot come in, but we also cannot go out.”

  She jerked her head behind where the innkeeper had disappeared. “Kitchen. We’ll see if there’s a backdoor.”

  I scurried after her as she launched herself across the room and into the adjoining room. The kitchen was a mess of strewn food debris and unwashed plates, but the place was deserted. The rest of the staff seemed to have fled with the innkeeper.

  They knew. This was a trap and we walked right into it.

  Bea must’ve had the same realization. She slammed her fist against the solid wood of the door at the back of the kitchen and swore more viciously than I had ever heard a person curse before.

  “Locked,” she snarled, again slamming her fist into it. “Help me barricade this one too.”

  “Why barricade it if it is already locked?”

  “Locked from the outside. We don’t want them coming in when they want to. Come on, quickly!”

  I rushed to help drag assorted bits and pieces to bar the door while Bea checked the ammunition for her pistol with trembling fingers.

  “Can you shoot?”

  I shook my head in despair.

  After a quick glance around, I pulled a poker from the stand beside the fireplace and hefted it in my hands. The tip was pointed, and it had a decent weight to it.

  This will serve me better than a knife.

  “There we go,” I said, puffing at a strand of hair that had fallen in my face. “I cannot shoot, but I can still do some damage if they come for us.”

  Bea blinked at me. Her face was flushed and her eyes wide, but she gave herself a shake and tucked her pistol back in its holster.

  “Bea? Are you alright?”

  “Of course,” she snapped. “I just walked us right into an ambush so of course I’m perfectly alright.”

  “We can still get out of this,” I insisted.

  She pushed past me to get a better look through the lacy curtains without being seen. “They’re waiting us out. Doesn’t matter if it’s Fang or the sheriff. Wouldn’t put it past either of them not to set the whole damn place on fire with us in it.”

  Oh no.

  Dread and fear reared up inside me like a panicked stallion. I had come so close to burning alive in Bea’s cabin I never thought to be in a similar situation ever again.

  That simply cannot be a possibility. It simply cannot. I refuse even the notion of it.

  “Can we get out?” I demanded.

  “Not without getting shot.” Bea ran her hand through her hair then slammed her fist into the wall, bellowing another stream of curses. “This is all my fault!”

  “There has to be something!” The poker in my hand had given me a kind of wild confidence. I almost wished for the opportunity to swing it at someone. “We have to be able to do something.”

  Bea paused, her fist still pressed against the wall and her back to me. I could see the thoughts forming in her head as her shoulders slumped.

  “I could surrender,” she said quietly. For a second, I thought I must have misheard her but there was no mistaking the defeat in her stance. “It’d give you a chance.”

  I used my non poker-wielding hand to grab her arm and spin her around to face me. She kept her eyes on the floor. Her whole body seemed to have shrunk in the last few minutes. Collapsing in on herself until what was in front of me was not a highwayman, a robber, or a villain but a scared and desperate young woman.

  “You better not have said what I think you just did.”

  “Victoria, listen, I could give myself up and give you time to run.”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “But you could get away!”

  “And you would not, so do not even entertain that thought for one second,” I hissed.

  “But—”

  “Not another word!”

  “Listen—”

  Enough of this!

  CRACK

  The sound of my palm smacking across her shocked face echoed in the empty kitchen.

  “No, you listen! And pull yourself together!” I snarled. “We are getting out of here together, so stop with your self-sacrificing nonsense and help me come up with an actual plan before we run out of time!”

  She stood, blinking at me, as her cheek reddened from the impact. Her mouth opened and closed a few times with no sound coming out.

  “Do not just stand there! Think!” I yelled at her.

  “I…Upstairs. There could be a window.” Bea still had that dazed expression, but at least now she was thinking clearly and not about to throw herself to the wolves outside.

  “Right. Well, that is more like it.” I huffed. “Make haste then!”

  She still shot me bewildered glances as we hurried up the wooden staircase to the rooms above where we had intended to spend the night.

  Every door we tried refused to give in to our efforts, but the frustration seemed to drag Bea the rest of the way back to her senses.

  “For goodness’ sake,” she muttered as the last door remained closed, pulling out her pistol.

  I clamped my hands over my ears just in time. A single shot straight through the handle had the door swinging open at her touch. Bea kicked open the door and strode into the blessedly empty bedroom.

  She tucked the now useless weapon back into its holster, glancing over her shoulder. Reloading it would take time—a luxury we did not have. Outside, they would have heard the shot as clear as day.

  “Quick! The window!” Bea jerked her head at me while she kept lookout, the hunting knife she had stolen gripped tightly in her fist.

  I scurried across the room to the peeling wooden shutters, muttering a hushed thanks to our one stroke of luck that the windows were not locked. The cool evening air rushed in as I shoved them open, mussing my hair and chilling my skin until gooseflesh erupted along my arms.

  “This is madness,” I whispered.

  “It’s our only way out.”

  “Will this hold our weight?” I asked out the side of my mouth as I leaned out to get a look at what awaited us, gripping onto the ledge for dear life.

  “We’ll find out,” Bea said, nudging me out of the way. “If I crash through the roof to my inevitable death, then don’t follow me.”

  She flashed me a manic grin and was sliding through the window before I could utter a single word of caution.

  “Bea!” I squeaked, but my fear was unfounded. The roof bore her weight.

  “Oh God,” I whispered.

  I really must do this. Oh, I do not think I can.

  I heaved myself up onto the ledge to dangle my legs over the edge, my toes brushing the roof tiles. My arms trembled as I hung on. Bea offered me her hand to pull me out onto the tiles to join her and suppressed a wince when I squeezed her fingers.

  “Stay quiet and keep going. No matter what you hear.”

  The slate creaked ominously under our feet. I kept up a steady whispered prayer as we crept at a crouch over the sloped roof. A lower part of the building would bring us closer to the ground, but it was still a long way down.

  I am going to fall. I am going to slip and fall and break my neck.

  Time stood still as the glow of torches grew stronger, just over the ridge of the roof from us as we inched our way forwards. The banging began almost immediately as our pursuers tried to hammer down the door we had barricaded. It would not keep them out for long.

  “Keep going. Quickly now,” Bea murmured out the side of her mouth as she helped me down onto the lower level. My heart skittered in my chest as the tiles shifted under me, but they held.

  One foot…in front...of the other.

  We were almost there. All that was left was a sharp drop back to the ground.

  Bea jumped first with only a heartbeat’s hesitation, landing hard and falling to her knees on the cobbles below.

  I skittered to a stop at the edge.

  Absolutely not.

  “Jump, Victoria!” Bea hissed, stretching her hand out towards me. “Just trust me and jump!”

  I cannot jump off a building!

  Her eyes were wide with terror as the sounds of our barricade failing reached us. They were inside. It would take them mere minutes to work out where we had gone. Those were precious minutes we could not afford to waste.

  “Victoria.”

  The hand she held out to me did not shake. A highwaywoman was not someone I should trust with my life, but curse me, I did.

  I took a deep breath. Then another.

  I can do this.

  I have to do this.

  I cannot do this.

  “Victoria!”

  Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…

  I jumped.

  As promised by her outstretched hand, Bea did her best to catch me. I collided with her hard, sending her flying until we were a tangle of limbs on the ground.

  “Are you alright?” she grunted through clenched teeth.

  I am alive?

  I did not trust myself to speak so I simply nodded. She stood, rubbing her pained limbs and helped me up. Nothing seemed broken, only scrapes and bruises for us both.

  “We have to get out of here. We need to get to Chip.”

  “Bea, we might have to leave him.”

  “Not going to happen.” Her tone left no room for discussion. In the blink of an eye, she was already skirting around the side of the inn.

  “How on earth are we going to get him then?” I shot back, hurrying after her.

  She peeked out around the corner of the building. “They’re distracted looking for us. We can make it to the stable if we run right now.”

  There is no way I am surviving this without her.

  “You are a lunatic,” I hissed but I accepted her outstretched hand.

  Together, we raced towards the stables.

  I knew Bea was fast, but she almost pulled me off my feet as she towed me along at full speed until we could throw ourselves into the relative safety of the wooden stalls out of sight.

  “Okay, that should be—”

  “Hey! STOP RIGHT THERE!”

  Bea leapt on top of me a split-second before a shot blasted a hole in the stall next to where I had been standing.

  That shot was so close. If Bea had not pushed me out the way, I would be dead. No, not just dead. Obliterated.

  She kept her body over mine, sheltering me as sawdust and splinters rained down on us. I thought at first that my ears were ringing from the shot, but then I realized that every horse in the stable was screaming with fear.

  Bea swore through clenched teeth. “Damn, I hoped they would all be distracted. I think there’s just one of them, though.”

  “Where?” I gasped twisting to see where the gunfire came from, but the walls of the stable pens blocked our assailant from view.

  “I don’t know,” Bea panted. “Stay low.”

  “Come out with your hands up!” The voice called but interrupted itself with a chorus of, “Woah there! Woah, I said!”

  Laying in the sawdust, all I could see was Bea’s face screwed up in concentration as she followed the chaotic bangs and shouts that followed.

  “Come on,” she muttered, moving at a crouch.

  I stayed where I was. My legs refused to obey me. The hole in the wall above me was twice that of my skull. If Bea had not intervened, there would not have been enough left of my face to even identify my corpse. I swallowed hard as my stomach rebelled. My ears were still ringing.

  “Victoria, move!” Bea yelled from out of sight. “The rest will have heard that shot! Move! We don’t have time!”

  I wrestled myself to my feet.

  I can panic later. Right now, I need to survive.

  One stall over, Chip was dancing from hoof to hoof. A single man lay in a seeping puddle of red on the floor, his skull cracked open like an egg. My already fragile stomach flipped, and I caught the gate to steady myself.

  “Well done, Chip, you magnificent beast!” Bea cried, not slowing for an instant as she leapt onto his back. As racing footfalls reached my ears and more shots were fired, the horse reared up on his hind legs with a terrified whinny.

  My heart was in my mouth. Every nerve in my body was on fire, expecting to be caught and be peppered with gunshot or run through with a sword.

  Just as I ran for her, Bea charged for me and grasped my forearm, swinging me through the air to land behind her. With no saddle under us, I clung on as she dug her heels in and Chip’s hooves thundered against the cobbles.

  “Can we outrun them?” I shouted over the roaring wind and hoofbeats.

  “We don’t need to!” She yelled back. “We just need to make it to the ferry!”

  I wrapped my arms tighter around her waist and held on for dear life as she let out a “Yah!” and spurred the horse into a fierce gallop. Within minutes, we were hurtling along the riverside.

  “There!” I yelled, pointing to the mass in the slick dark water ahead. “We can make it!”

  The ferry was little more than a floating platform, tethered to a weatherworn pier, that was pulled across the river by thick ropes connected on each side.

  “WOAH!” Bea yelled, bringing the horse to a skidding halt.

  “Get Chip on the ferry!” she shouted over her shoulder. “I’ll get us going!”

  She leapt off the horse before I could say a word to race aside and throw the anchoring rope free.

  I fell forward at the sudden loss of her sturdy body in front and ended up more clinging to Chip’s neck than sitting astride his back. For all my ineptitude, he seemed to know exactly what Bea’s plan was as he made straight for the end of the pier, slowing in time to stop us careening off the edge and into the pitch-black water. He leapt neatly onto the wide ferry.

  The platform shuddered and began moving. The wind and waves had already dragged the ferry to the end of the pier and, now free of its leash, it drifted further out.

  I twisted around frantically to see Bea sprinting for all she was worth as torches appeared at the river’s edge, gaining fast.

  “Come on!” I screamed at her. “Run!”

  The gap between the end of the pier and the ferry was too great to risk slowing for a second. Her pursuers were gaining with each step. I could not steer the ferry back towards her. I could do nothing but watch as she ran out of pier under her feet and leapt into nothing.

  Chapter Thirty Five

  The Highwaywoman

  If, at the start of this whole misadventure, someone would’ve told me that the high-strung countess who despised my guts would throw herself in the path of gunfire to save my life, I would’ve laughed in their face.

  I could hardly believe it myself as I gasped for breath, having slammed into the side of the ferry and only just managed to scrabble enough purchase to stop myself being swept into the inky water completely, but there she was. Instead of taking cover behind the bulkier parts of the ferry or even behind Chip, Victoria was there in front of me in an instant, digging her nails into my arms and trying to pull me aboard.

  I had once compared her to both angel and devil but, in that moment, she was all angel. Silhouetted in the fading glow of the lantern that she had the foresight to toss overboard, she was divine.

  “Bea, get on the damned ferry or I swear I will drown you myself!”

  Ah, there’s my devil.

  My legs were numb from the cold water, and my lungs had been completely emptied when I hit the side but, with Victoria’s help, I managed to claw my way onto the floating platform.

  It was a miracle that none of the bullets that flew after us hit their mark even with Victoria’s clever dousing of the lantern to hide us in the darkness. Soon, even their curses could not reach us.

  I spent the majority of the ride across the river wheezing and checking for broken ribs as my dainty countess took charge of the thick ferry chain and pulled us across inch by inch. She truly was magnificent, and I told her over and over as I kissed her poor blistered palms when we landed on the other side.

  “Never mind that now,” she said, taking her hands back from me with a hint of shyness that made me want to shower her with praise all over again. “Can they follow us?”

  I squinted back across the river. Even the torchlight from our pursuers was no longer visible.

  “There’s a bridge further south, but it’ll take them time to reach it,” I replied, wincing and massaging my sternum. “We’ll burn this ferry so they can’t just wait until morning and come across with the sunrise. We need all the head start we can get.”

  “How injured are you?”

  “Not at all, buttercup. Just a little bruising.” I shot her a smile to disguise my dishonesty. I had peeked under my shirt. My torso was a mess of rapidly purpling contusions. Every breath ached.

  I hid my pain as I doused the ferry in spirits from a bottle I’d found hidden under the watchman’s post. I’d made this trip often enough to know that there would be one somewhere. He claimed it was to warm his old bones while he kept watch but, from the smell of him, he was more pickled than warmed.

  A couple of dry rags and a couple more soaked in the watchman’s tipple and the ferry was ready for its final journey. I lit a flaming torch and held it out to Victoria.

  “Would you like to do the honors?”

  The look on her face when I handed over the torch should have concerned me a little, but all I felt was desire as a truly feral expression set itself on her delicate features.

  Victoria let out a shaky exhale as she held it over the ferry. Time slowed as she let it fall through her fingers. The torch took to the alcohol and dry rags instantly. A wall of heat washed over me as the ferry went up in flame. Victoria jumped back. I wrapped my arms around her from behind. For a moment, we watched the fire dance.

  “Come,” I mumbled into her hair. “We can’t linger. The fire’ll attract attention.”

  The smoke was also starting to bother Chip, who snorted at me. I had to lead him over to a fence that Victoria could use to boost herself up on to his back since I couldn’t lift her in my bruised and battered state. She began to fuss at me once more, suggesting that I should rest, but the time for rest was past now that smoke was coiling high. It may have been before sunrise, but it’d still have been visible for miles.