The Admiral's Heart by Danelle Harmon Page A

and
echoed against the hedgerows that bracketed the road. Gareth
glanced over his shoulder, saw nothing but a long empty stretch of
road behind him, and shouted with glee. Another race won — Perry,
Chilcot, and the rest of the Den of Debauchery would never catch
him now!
    Laughing, he patted Crusader's neck as the
hunter pounded through the night. “Well done, good fellow! Well
done—”
    And pulled him up sharply at he passed
Wether Down.
    It took him only a moment to assess the
situation.
    Highwaymen. And by the looks of it,
they were helping themselves to the pickings—and passengers—of the
Flying White from Southampton.
    The Flying White? The young gentleman
reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out his watch, squinting
to see its face in the darkness. Damned late for the Flying White .
. .
    He dropped the timepiece back into his
pocket, steadied Crusader, and considered what to do. No gentlemen
of the road, this lot, but a trio of desperate, hardened killers.
The driver and guard lay on the ground beside the coach, both
presumably dead. Somewhere a child was crying, and now one of the
bandits, with a face that made a hatchet look kind, smashed in the
windows of the coach with the butt end of his gun. Gareth reached
for his pistol. The thought of quietly turning around and going
back the way he'd come never occurred to him. The thought of
waiting for his friends, probably a mile behind thanks to
Crusader's blistering speed, didn't occur to him, either.
Especially when he saw one of the bandits yank open the door of the
coach and haul out a struggling young woman.
    He had just the briefest glimpse of her
face—scared, pale, beautiful—before one of the highwaymen shot out
the lanterns of the coach and darkness fell over the entire scene.
Someone screamed. Another shot rang out, silencing the frightened
cry abruptly.
    His face grim, the young gentleman knotted
his horse's reins and removed his gloves, pulling each one
carefully off by the fingertips. With a watchful eye on the
highwaymen, he slipped his feet from the irons and vaulted lightly
down from the thoroughbred's tall back, his glossy top boots of
Spanish leather landing in chalk mud up to his ankles. The horse
never moved. He doffed his fine new surtout and laid it over the
saddle along with his tricorn and gloves. He tucked the lace at his
wrist safely inside his sleeve to protect it from any soot or
sparks his pistol might emit. Then he crept through the knee-high
weeds and nettles that grew thick at the side of the road, priming
and loading the pistol as he moved stealthily toward the stricken
coach. He would have time to squeeze off only one shot before they
were upon him, and that one shot had to count.
    ~~~~
    “Everybo'y out. Now! ”
    Holding Charlotte tightly against her,
Juliet managed to remain calm as the robber snared her wrist and
jerked her violently from the vehicle. She landed awkwardly in the
sticky white mud and would have gone down if not for the huge,
bearlike hand that yanked her to her feet. Perhaps, she thought
numbly, it was the very fact that it was bearlike that she
was able to keep her head—and her wits—about her, for Juliet had
been born and raised in the woods of Maine, and she was no stranger
to bears, Indians, and a host of other threats that made these
English highwaymen look benign by comparison.
    But they were certainly not benign. The
slain driver lay face-down in the mud. The bodies of one of the
guards and a passenger were sprawled in the weeds nearby. A shudder
went through her. She was glad of the darkness. Glad that the poor
little children still inside the coach were spared the horrors that
daylight would have revealed.
    Cuddling Charlotte, she stood beside the
other passengers as the robbers yanked people down from the roof
and lined them up in front of the coach. A woman was sobbing. A
girl clung pitifully to the old man, perhaps her grandfather. One
fellow, finely dressed and obviously a gentleman,