Runaway (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 4)

Seconds ticked by.

Molly waited.

Her heart raced.

She mentally began to pray as she slid along the seat until she was wedged tightly in the middle of the thin bench by the other passengers. Still, she refused to look up. A small bead of sweat trickled slowly down her neck, partly driven by the fear that pummelled her, partly because she was so darned hot in the claustrophobic confines of the carriage while pressed against other people wearing a thick cloak.

Suddenly, with a heavy jerk and a loud toot of the coachman’s horn, the carriage sprang into life. Startled, Molly looked up, her eyes wide in the darkness. Her heart hammered as she watched the coaching yard disappear. There was little she, or Denzel could do now. She was on her way to London, and that was that.

CHAPTER TWO

A few weeks later

Jasper yawned widely and fought an acute sense of boredom as he lounged negligently against a soot laden wall beside a darkened alley. He glanced over his shoulder when he got the distinct sense that he was no longer alone but took no refuge in the emptiness of the space in the claustrophobic confines of the narrow passage. He tried to remain as relaxed as possible, but when the urge to move grew stronger he couldn’t resist.

When he tried to take a step, Jasper suddenly found a sharp object jabbed into his side.

“What do you want?” Jasper growled as he stared fixatedly at a spot on the street before him and forced himself to remain perfectly still.

“Give me your money,” a guttural voice hissed into his ear.

Jasper’s brows lifted, not least because the voice didn’t sound like a backstreet urchin, or an uncouth element of little education. The tone was roundly cultured with overtones of aristocratic demand that rankled Jasper. Whoever this thief was, Jasper doubted he really wanted his money.

“I don’t have any,” Jasper replied calmly but firmly.

“I know the cut of that clothing of yours. You have money all right. Give it to me.” To reinforce the threat to Jasper’s welfare, the thief jabbed the sharp tip of his knife into the fine material of Jasper’s shirt.

Jasper winced and edged away from the pain.

“Stand still,” the thief ordered. “Try running and I will cut your throat before you take more than a step.”

Jasper snorted. “I should like to see you try.”

He shook his head in consternation. It would be laughed about for months, even years to come if his colleagues got wind that he had been mugged while on a mission.

“What do you really want?” Jasper sighed. “You might have all night, but I don’t.”

As he spoke, he was only partly paying attention to the fiend in the passage behind him. He couldn’t drag his attention from the sight of his quarry, a questionable young fop who had just left the brilliantly lit confines of the large warehouse a little down the street to the right. Rather than join the pedestrians, the fop raced across the narrow road and jumped onto a waiting carriage, which immediately jolted into motion.

“Damn,” Jasper sighed as he watched it rumble past.

He frowned when he shifted his weight again and realised that his would-be mugger was still jabbing the knife into his side.

“Look, damn it, just what in the Hell do you want?” Impatience was rife in his voice, but Jasper didn’t care.

When he received no response, Jasper stepped out of the alley and to one side in a smooth motion that put him out of sight of the mugger behind him. As soon as he disappeared, the thief swore, but with those cultured tones didn’t generate anything more than another heavy sigh from Jasper, who was annoyed at the audacity of the young thug and his own abject failure to follow his quarry.

Adept at disarming his enemy, Jasper waited for his thief to appear in the alley’s entrance. To his disbelief, as soon as he disappeared he heard the rapid clip of footsteps fade into the distance. Jasper stepped into the alley’s entrance again, just in time to watch a dark figure vault agilely over a high wall several feet away with a speed that was shocking. What Jasper also noticed in the faint glow of the street light was that his half-hearted assailant was not much older than his target: a little known aristocratic gentleman called Ernest Smidgley. Addit

ionally, the hair and build were similar.

“I wonder if you are related?” Jasper mused, suspecting he had just been purposely distracted.

With a heavy sigh, Jasper set off after the knifeman. He raced down the alley, vaulted over the wall and jumped down on the other side only to then realise his colossal error. There, right before him, was not only the dark carriage atop of which the young fop, his target, was seated, but beside it was four thugs, ably abetted by four more who disembarked from the carriage the moment Jasper’s boots hit the floor.

Jasper looked over his shoulder at the height of the wall behind him and knew it would be impossible to climb from the bottom. To get over it he would have to take a run at it, like he had in the alley. He had no choice but to stay and fight. The odds were stacked against him. His chances of survival were not good given he was outnumbered ten to one.

“This is a little much for just the contents of my pockets, isn’t it?” Jasper called with an amiable air he really didn’t feel at all.