Sherbrooke Twins (Sherbrooke Brides 8)

“Okay, Augie, the truth is that Corrie would make a horrible pickpocket

. It’s her face, you see. You know exactly what she’s thinking. She’d end up sitting beside you in gaol. Now, you can yell for Ben and Billy to come out of hiding and then the three of you can take yourselves off.”

“Yer a good lad, that’s wot I told me boys, now didn’t I?”

“I don’t know what you said, Augie, since one of your friends hit me over the head.”

“Well now, these things ’appen, these little puddles o’ mud in life.”

“Leave, Augie. Go away. I don’t ever want to see your face again.”

Corrie called out, “How much did this Douglas Sherbrooke pay you, Augie?”

“Little gals shouldn’t concern themselves about men’s business, but it were a good ten pounds to take ye, and another thirty when I gives ye over to this Sherbrooke bloke.”

“I hope you haven’t spent the ten pounds,” Corrie said. “I wonder what this fellow will do to you when he discovers you’ve failed to deliver the goods?”

Augie groaned at that thought, then whistled for Billy and Ben.

Corrie, a lovely sneer on her face, and James, close to laughter, eased back into the woods, and watched the three men stagger back down the road.

“Now what?” Corrie said.

Lightning struck a tree branch. It fell, smoking, not three feet in front of them.

“Oh dear, is that some sort of bad omen, do you think?”

“I think it means that it’s best to get back toward London. Augie and his boys aren’t completely down, and they will lose out on thirty pounds and their reputations if they don’t deliver me. Let’s not take chances. You keep as warm as you can, Corrie. I don’t want you to get ill.”

“This night is surely a misery,” Corrie said, and pressed close to James as they began walking down the road in the opposite direction from the three villains.

She began whistling a ditty she’d learned from one of the Sherbrooke stable lads. James laughed, couldn’t help himself. He prayed she didn’t know the words. Oddly enough, he couldn’t think of another time when he’d laughed quite so much as he had on a night he firmly believed was going to be his last.

They walked along the cliffs, the wind howling louder now, full of both rain and the smell of brine. They could hear the waves crashing against rocks below them.

James suddenly saw the flash of a lantern, then another. The rain was lessening, thank God, and a bit of moon was shining through the bloated black clouds. James saw two boats pulled up onto the beach and at least six men in a line from the boats to the cliff where they stood.

He cursed.

A deep voice came out of the darkness, “Now what have we here, I wonder?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

JAMES TOOK CORRIE’S hand and squeezed it as he pulled her tightly against his side.

“We are here by chance only,” James said toward the dark voice. “We’re merely trying to find a farmhouse or a fishing village to pass the rest of the night.”

“Not much night left.”

“I don’t have a watch. I don’t know.” James had one bullet left, no more.

The rain stopped and more moon shone down.

A man stepped out of the shadows, a gun in his hand and a black mask over his face. He was wrapped in a many-capped greatcoat.

This wasn’t good.

He looked them both up and down, and Corrie could imagine his eyebrow going up behind that mask. “What the devil happened to you, my dear? Did your handsome gallant here promise you marriage then ravish you?”