They finally found her about twenty minutes in, though Michael had no Apple watch to tell.

  He didn’t want to come upon her right away but rather, watch her and see where she was heading. Liam agreed to help, though Michael hadn’t asked for it. They let her ride forward and tailed her from about a quarter of a mile away.

  “What should I call you?” Liam asked him as they rode. “Constable? Are you the new Governor?”

  “Michael. Michael is fine.”

  Michael was quiet for another thirty feet. Then he asked, “Why did you defy your friend and call out?”

  Liam shrugged his broad shoulders. “It was the right thing to do. I know how dangerous it has become to travel anywhere. People cannot get food in some places. Once they are on the road, they are game for the thieves. No one will step up to help. Everyone is afraid.”

  Hearing this made Michael angry. “Who or what are they afraid of?”

  “No one knows. Anytime someone seeks justice from one of them, the victim turns up dead. His family sometimes dies with him. None of the thieves have been caught or killed. You are the first man to capture one of them.”

  Michael wasn’t afraid. He was challenged to make this right. Get rid of the Horsemen first and then whoever leads the thieves. The prisoner would need to be interrogated then. Michael knew how to do this, too. For now, though, he kept his gaze on the long, dark locks bouncing down Miss Whimsey’s back as she rode away.

  Madly, he wanted to smile or smirk at her attempts to escape him. She kept him on his toes, his mind alert and focused. He liked it. He thought less about other things like Clements and Kelly and his brother…and a sixteen-year-old kid.

  She turned a bend in the road and Michael and Liam couldn’t see her. Michael sped up his horse and didn’t see the two riders coming at them from the right.

  Chapter Seven

  Michael had to leap from his saddle to avoid being cut in half by a swinging blade. He was going to have to learn how to fight with a sword! The rider came around again. Michael was ready and waiting for him. He leaped at the assailant before the man had time to position his sword for a strike. He grabbed at his ankle and calf and dragged the man off the horse. Next, rid him of his weapon. After a right hook to his nose that left it broken and bleeding, Michael kicked the hilt of the sword out of the man’s useless hand, but the assailant had another, smaller knife. He came at Michael with it. Michael retrieved the sword and drove it deep into his opponent’s belly. He turned quickly to see how Liam was doing.

  The young man had managed to avoid getting killed and fought off his assailant with double-fisted punches to the face and chest. Ah, a brawler. Michael wanted to smile.

  His opponent went down, throwing himself down on a knife he held in his hand.

  Liam turned to offer Michael a bloody smile.

  “What now?” Liam asked, swiping his sleeve across his mouth.

  “We get them back to the mill.”

  “We should leave them here,” Liam told him. “Someone will come for them. ’Tis what the Horsemen do with thieves and killers. You go and get Miss Whimsey. We will meet up later.”

  Michael took one of the thieves’ pistols. It had one bullet in it. Liam took the other. Michael thought it odd that he liked two people in one day. But it was good because he was going to need help at this, and Liam and Colin seemed to be perfect.

  He didn’t want to think about the future plans he was making here. His life was in the twentieth-first century. This was all temporary until he found a way back.

  At the next bend, he sped up his horse and came upon her.

  At the same time another man did.

  *

  Oh, thank goodness! Preston! She knew he’d be here in the area. Whenever they had squabbled in the past, they would meet here the next day. He’d come. He did care. She was about to call out to him when she saw him. Investigator Pendridge. Her watchdog. He’d tracked her down. No. No, she hadn’t left a trail. How did he know which direction to take from the mill? Someone must have told him! When he saw Preston, he rode toward him slowly, like a dark wolf on the prowl. He looked at her and cocked his brow ever so slightly.

  What was that supposed to mean? Was he judging Preston on his stature? His appearance? She wasn’t sure, for an instant later his expression went blank and detached.

  Preston pulled his pistol from his belt and pointed it at Pendridge. “Whoever you are, if you want to see another sunset, you better kick that horse and get running.”

  “Is this how you greet everyone you come across on the road?” the detective asked calmly, but she knew Preston’s freedom depended on his answer.

  “Old friend,” Charlotte interrupted and smiled at Preston before he opened his mouth. “This is Investigator Pendridge. He is from York and is here under my father’s order.”

  Preston’s tirade came to a halt. He cast her an angry glare instead. “Why have you led him here?”

  “He followed me,” she defended, tired of having to do so.

  He rolled his eyes and sighed toward heaven as if she were the biggest fool ever to be born.

  “What do you want?” Preston turned back to the investigator.

  “Her.”

  Charlotte didn’t know why his claim, spoken somewhere on a deep murmur and a throaty command, went straight through to her bones, her veins, her blood. But she wanted to obey. She almost went to him.

  “Well, you cannot have her,” Preston defended, pointing his pistol, “and if you put your hands to her, I will—”

  A shot rang out. It came from a pistol the investigator held, produced from someplace behind his back. He shot Preston! Preston! She leaped from her saddle and ran to him. He was alive. Shot in the leg!

  “Why did you shoot him?” she demanded, reaching Preston.

  “I don’t like being threatened, especially when there’s a gun being waved in my face.”

  “He shot me, Charlotte!” Preston looked down at his bloody leg and appeared a bit queasy. He looked up and glared at Pendridge. “I’m going to have your head for this, you peasant!”

  “Do you really want to threaten me again?” the investigator asked, riding up to Preston’s horse and snatching Preston’s pistol from his hand. “Next time I shoot, it won’t be your leg.”

  “Come, Preston, let me take you home.” Charlotte hurried back to her horse, but the investigator’s fingers closing around her wrist stopped her.

  “You’re coming with me, Miss Whimsey.”

  “Get your hand off me!” She tried to yank her wrist away, to no avail. “You have no right!”

  “I have every right. Your father paid me.”

  When she cursed her father, he wanted to let her go. He wasn’t sure he wanted to work for a guy who paid a stranger, a potentially crazy stranger to watch his daughter. A guy whose daughter hated him enough to curse him.

  He expected her to slap him or claw at his eyes. But she did neither. “Detective, I have to help Preston. You must let me go.”

  “He can ride by himself.”

  She shook her head. “I will not leave him.”

  “Charlotte, do not let him talk you out of staying by my side,” Preston cried from his horse. “I feel faint!”

  “I must care for him. Tell my father you never found me. Please.”

  She wasn’t trying to sway him with tear-filled eyes. She didn’t think there was any way of getting away from him other than perhaps appealing to his kinder, gentler side. If he had one.

  “I’ll escort you to—”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head.

  “He can’t protect you and I’m not leaving you out here basically alone to fend off some arrow-shooting asswipe.”

  She narrowed her eyes on him and gave him a confused look. “Sometimes I can barely understand your speech. But I can take care of myself.”

  She watched his gaze cool on her like frost on sapphires. “That’s good to know,” he said. “But if I don’t escort you, you’ll be coming home with me.”

  “Fine!” she said through clenched teeth. The man was insufferable. “You may escort us.” She stepped around him and mounted her horse. “Come, Preston, Investigator Pendridge will escort us to your home. There is no use in arguing. You can direct your formal complaints to my father when you are well. Now, say no more lest he shoot you again.”

  She had to shut Preston up. Who knew what he would say! Between him and the detective, she was up to her thighs in mud. She had to keep them from killing each other. Why should she care if Preston killed the investigator? He always seemed either melancholy or detached. Dark and dangerous, or barely giving his attention. She’d stopped Preston from shooting him, only to have him shoot Preston.

  She came to the horrifying conclusion that it was her fault Preston had been shot!

  “Wait!” the investigator called out. “Where are we heading?”

  “Sutton,” Charlotte told him, not missing Preston’s angry stare.

  “I can’t go.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Pity,” Preston drawled out.

  “Someone is waiting for me to return.”

  Charlotte actually felt her hackles rise. A woman? Did he just remember someone he loved waiting at his home for him? Did he meet someone since yesterday morning? What was he like to this girl? How did he—

  “Oh?” she asked as lightly as she could. Why was she even entertaining thoughts of him with someone else, and why did those thoughts hurt a little? No.

  “You will have to bid him farewell,” he said, his eyes simmering beyond a veil of indifference.

  “I cannot,” she insisted softly. “Will you truly shame and humiliate me by dragging me back to my father?”

  He looked as if she had just kicked him in the guts. He even ran his hand over his flat belly and groaned a little.

  “Please,” she pleaded. “Just tell my father you lost me.”

  He was quiet for a moment, looking as if a hundred different things were going through his head. Finally, he nodded. “Okay. Go then.”

  Go? She wanted to kiss him! No. No. She laughed at herself. She didn’t truly want to kiss him. Did she?

  Why was he letting her go? Did he not think her as important as this other woman he had to get back to?

  “Come on then, Charlotte,” Preston urged, pulling her along.

  “Thank you,” she said with an appreciative nod to Michael, then followed Preston toward Sutton.

  The moment they were alone, Preston turned on her. “You were drooling over a man who shot me, Charlotte!”

  “I was not drooling, Preston. Do I not always tell you that the best way to catch flies is with honey?”

  “He is no fly. He is not like the others who swarm about you.”

  Aye, she had noticed it also.

  “He will be nothing but an ant when I’m finished with him,” Preston wore on. “An ant I will smash with the heel of my boot.”

  Charlotte shook her head. Why did Detective Pendridge have to shoot him? Did he wish to start a war with Preston? It was unwise. Preston knew too many people. The detective would lose.

  He’d left her. He’d voluntarily left her. She looked back over her shoulder. He wasn’t there.

  “Charlotte!” Preston barked. “What has come over you?”

  “Nothing. I am surprised he did not shoot you in the heart. I think he could have.”

  “Do you?” Preston sneered.

  Charlotte marveled that someone so handsome could look so ugly. He wasn’t always so ruthless. Before his involvement in the Tory/Whig wars a few years back, he was more of a romantic rebel, at least, that was how she had seen him. He’d had noble ideals of stopping the Whigs from taking over Parliament and taking back from the men in power. Helping the poor and finding ways, legal or not, to feed them. She was all in—with about thirty others. But as the Whigs grew more powerful, his hatred of them grew with it, and he changed. He fell in with a band of thieves who robbed for the pleasures of being rich. They were mostly highwaymen who mercilessly robbed carriages belonging to rich, old duchesses. They worked in packs, like wolves strategically positioning themselves in the most beneficial places. Even after noblemen…and women began traveling with guardsmen, Preston’s associates took them down in the dark, from the left and the right, in front and behind. They were terrifying. Everyone knew of them. The Horsemen.

  They’d become so notorious that Preston had to purchase a second house, Hayward House, just to meet with them. He did not want to be associated with nefarious Horsemen, for it would damage his image when he ran for the office of Mayor of Sutton next autumn.

  Her belly sank. What if the investigator found out? What if he found out that she was one of forty-five petty thieves who worked for him?

  “Who is he anyway?” Preston pushed. “Where did your father find him?”

  Did she dare tell him that it was the man who had taken the ruby ring she had meant to give to him? That he was the one who caused her trouble yesterday morning, that he hopped onto her carriage and followed her home? She thought of the rest and her heart pounded.

  “He was beaten and left for dead in Beddington.”

  “Where you were yesterday morning. Did you bring him home, Charlotte?”

  “No! Of course not! If he followed me, I was unaware!”

  “I have no doubt about that,” he jeered, then shook his head. “All that beauty wasted on a simpleton.”

  She closed her eyes and prayed silently for patience with him. She wanted to admonish him, but he was correct. She was going to get him into trouble by being so careless. First a constable. Now an investigator. “Preston, there is no need to be so abrasive. I—”

  He closed his eyes and grasped his bloody leg. “Ah! I am in pain!”

  “All right. There now,” she tried to console him with her hand on his arm. “Let us keep riding. We will arrive at Bristol Manor soon, and then you will feel better. ’Tis a good thing you kept your physician on. ’Tis not a serious wound.”

  He slapped her hand away. “Not serious? Is that what you think? ’Tis all right that your friend shot me because ’tis not serious?”

  “He is not my friend, and I did not say that ’twas all right for him—oh, for goodness’ sake, Preston, you are bring impossible!”

  He looked aghast. Horrified that she could say such a thing. “I am being impossible? I have an iron ball in my leg. Put there by a man you became breathless over. Do not deny it. I know you, Charlie.”

  She could have felt sorry for him. But he called her Charlie.

  “After you bring me home,” he continued, “you may hurry back to him.”

  “Will Amanda tend to you, then?” Charlotte asked him with a charming smile, as if nothing were wrong in all the world. She’d perfected the smile, so much so that even Preston didn’t know it was feigned.

  “Now that you mention it, she might.”

  When had he become so cruel?

  “Very well, Preston. I will give you your wish, but I will leave now. Get home on your own.”

  She pulled left on her reins and turned her horse around. She kept riding away as Preston’s voice faded on the wind. She could imagine his look of stunned disbelief and she smiled. It felt good to shock him. It felt even better not to care if she did.

  Investigator Michael Pendridge had nothing to do with it. He had nothing to do with her riding home—or that she was eager to get there. She was angry with Preston. She’d had just about enough of his underhanded dealings. With him, there was no honor among thieves. But more than that, his dealings with Amanda were the last she would take. She wondered if she should ride into the village first and free John deVille from his prison. She was certain poor John had only been trying to protect her from the stranger she was with. She hadn’t told Preston about John because he’d be angry at John for shooting someone so close in proximity to her. His answer would be to “let him rot”. Well, no, she would not let him rot.

  She hoped the investigator hadn’t gone back to the mill. She couldn’t tell Pendridge she knew his attacker. He would ask her too many questions. And whatever he discovered, he would tell her father. She couldn’t risk it, so she had said nothing. John would forgive her…once she let him out of his jail.

  When she reached the village, she wasted no time. She knew he’d been put in the mill. She wanted to get home before the investigator if possible. If he was out entertaining a woman, she likely had time.

  She thought about him as she entered the mill. These men certainly didn’t waste any time when it came to finding women, did they. Why, the investigator—

  “Miss Whimsey?”

  No. Not him. Why was he here? Colin of Ipswich and Liam, the smith’s apprentice, were with him. They both had pistols. Why did he have to ruin everything again?

  She kept her voice light, though she wanted to growl. “Investigator.”

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  She had to think fast. “I was looking for you. I suspected you would be here with your prisoner. I did not want you to face my father without me. He would be very disappointed.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Liam nod his head.

  “Yes,” the detective murmured. “I had considered that.”

  One side of her lips quirked upward. “Did you?” she asked when he nodded.

  “Before I came upon you and your friend,” he said in a low voice.

  Liam moved away and disappeared into one of the small gated rooms.

  Was that where John was?

  What did the investigator just say? Before? Then…he knew the consequences of leaving her with Preston, and he still released her.

  Her smile brightened a bit. She would remember that. And the fact that he was not with a woman.

  But first, she had to free John.

  Chapter Eight

  Charlotte tried to see past the mask of indifference the detective wore. She knew much about masks, for she wore one every day. The more she looked at him, the more she wanted to see him feel something, to express it in his eyes, in the dip or the lift of his chiseled upper lip beneath his scruff. She didn’t usually like a man with a mustache and beard, but his added to the air of darkness that covered him. How would she gain his affection if he wasn’t affected by her? How would she mold him? Did she want to tamper with something so feral, so indifferent? What if beneath the mask there was something far more broken, something volatile and ugly just waiting to come out?