Royce raised his fist again, but Fitz gripped his shoulder. “Enough. Enough. I have no desire to carry this chap all the way back to the house.”
Royce hesitated, then nodded and stood up. He turned, bleeding from cuts on his cheek and lip, a bruise already forming on his cheekbone, and grinned at Mary. “Not much of a show of fisticuffs, I’m afraid, but it got the job done.”
Mary, torn between throwing herself into his arms and breaking into tears, whirled and marched over to Rose. They wrapped their arms around each other and held on tightly for a few moments, letting the tension drain away. Behind them, they could hear Fitz and Royce dragging the attacker to his feet.
The girls turned to see the three men returning to the path, their assailant stumbling along between the other two, and Pirate prancing beside them.
“Is this the same man who attacked you at the summerhouse?” Fitz asked as they approached, and Mary and Rose nodded.#p#分页标题#e#
“Has a bandage on his arm,” Royce commented. “Must be where Camellia winged him.”
“Never should’ve come today,” the man mumbled. “Told ’im it’d end badly.”
“Did you now?” Fitz asked cheerfully. “Seems you were right. Well, you’ll have a chance to tell the earl all about it. You might want to spend the walk back thinking about your best course of action. Is abduction a transportable offense, Royce?”
“I’m sure so—of course, he’ll go to the hulks first while he’s awaiting transportation. Not many leave there alive.”
“Didn’t abduct nobody,” their prisoner muttered, shuffling along between them.
“Well, it is true you failed each time. You might want to consider changing trades. But I don’t think that your failure will weigh much with the judge,” Royce remarked.
The man cast a glance at Fitz with the eye that was not swollen shut, then looked around. Fitz shook his head.
“I wouldn’t run if I were you. My brother here has already proven he can outrun you, and that was before you were in this condition. Besides, I am carrying a pistol, as you’ll note.” He gestured. “And, unfortunately for you, I’m an excellent shot. I’ll just aim for your leg, of course, since we want answers from you. You might want to start thinking about those answers, by the way.”
The man rolled his good eye from Fitz to Royce and over at Mary and Rose, who had picked up an exhausted Pirate and was carrying him in her arms. Pirate was not too tired, however, to curl his lip and growl at the outsider.
“Bloody dog,” the man muttered. “Bloody countryside.” He favored everyone, as well as the surrounding trees, with a black look, then set his eyes on his feet and trudged along.
Ahead of them, there sounded a long, loud, two-note whistle, and a moment later there was a great rustling in a tree down the path. Limbs shook and a booted figure appeared on the lowest branch, bending down and hanging from it before dropping the last two feet to the ground.
It was Camellia, dressed in boys’ clothing, a dark cap covering her bright hair. She wore a rifle slung on a leather strap across her back, and a pistol was stuck through her belt. She grinned broadly at them.
“I see you got him!” she called, and jogged toward them. “I saw you walking over there, Pirate following you. It was all I could do not to laugh.” She cast a look at the attacker and noted with some satisfaction the bandage on his arm. “Hah! I knew I hit you. I pulled a bit to the right, though.”
As they continued along the path, they met Sam trotting toward them. “Heard your whistle,” he said a little breathlessly, his eyes going straight to Rose.
At the sight of him, Rose let out a little cry and ran to him. He wrapped his arms around her, and the rest of the party discreetly passed them by. Before long they ran into Lily as well, emerging from a stand of bushes. She, too, was dressed to blend into her surroundings, though her dark green dress was more conventional attire than Camellia’s.
Their prisoner seemed to sag a little more at each new addition to the group, and by the time they reached the grounds of Willowmere, he looked thoroughly defeated. His demoralization was completed, apparently, by entering the grand front door and taking the long walk through the marble entryway and down the corridor between large portraits of ancestors staring down their aristocrat noses at all who passed by. Fitz and Royce were as much holding him up as holding him prisoner when they brought him into the earl’s office.
Oliver, though he must have heard their arrival, did not even look up when they entered the room. He continued to read his paperwork for a moment before he raised his head, his gaze coolly contemptuous.#p#分页标题#e#