Page 21 of A Stormy Season

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Luke awakened to the swaying, jarring motion of a carriage.

“Jane,” he said, opening his eyes and trying to sit up. Was she hurt? He had to save her.

The pain in his head had dulled to an ache, but when he raised his head and tried to sit up, his vision began to spin.

Jane was sitting upright on the carriage seat. His head was lying in her lap.

Her hands were on his arms as she gently held him down. She said nothing. Then he saw the man with the long pistol pointed at them.

“If you try anything, I will kill you both.” The man’s voice was as sinister as his face, which was illuminated every time they passed a lamppost.

Jane’s feet seemed to be braced against the seat in front of them. That and her hands holding onto him must have been the only things keeping him from falling onto the floor of the carriage.

He wanted to show that he was manly enough to defend her from this ruffian and whoever else had snatched them from the street in front of the assembly rooms. But the pain in his head was sharp. He could feel the stickiness of blood on his scalp and in his hair.

“What do you want with us?” Jane sounded quite matter of fact. Many women would probably have been crying at this point, but she behaved as if holding a bleeding man’s head in her lap was as normal as playing the pianoforte or going for a walk in Hyde Park.

“You will find out soon enough,” the man with the gun said.

Luke waited a few more moments, until he was sure he would not become too dizzy, then he slowly sat up.

The ruffian trained his gun on Luke’s upper body. Luke held his hands out so the man could see them.

“You work for Lenoir, do you not?” Luke stared hard, ignoring the pain and slight nausea.

“No more talking,” the man said.

Where were they taking them? Besides thinking of Jane and the obvious danger she was in, Luke’s mind wandered to Jeffrey. He would be all alone if something happened to Luke, and with the wealth that would be left to him, he’d most likely fall prey to some fortune-seeking distant relative.

In the next moment, as he decided what was most important to him, Luke knew he could not be a coward to save himself. He would save Jane even if it meant he had to give his life to save hers. He could not live with himself otherwise.

But hopefully, if God was merciful, neither of them would have to lose their lives. They both just had to keep their wits about them.God, please be merciful.

He noticed the dark stains all over Jane’s dress. That was his blood all over her ball gown. Most women would have screamed and fainted over so much blood. But Jane didn’t even seem to notice. Instead, she looked cool and collected in the face of a man pointing a gun at her from two feet away.

He would have to rethink all his pre-existing notions about women.

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Jane steeled herself against all emotion. She had to stay calm and focus her thoughts on how to escape. She could not live with herself if she let something happen to little Jeffrey’s only living parent. Jane knew what happened to wealthy, underage orphans with no close relatives, and it was not good.

Luke Watley had lost a lot of blood. It soaked through her skirts to her skin. But she’d applied pressure to it with her handkerchief, which was now completely soaked, and the flow of blood had finally lessened and hopefully stopped. After all, if he lost too much blood, he might be too weak to escape if and when the opportunity presented itself.

Jane was surprised at how angry she felt at being kidnapped. How dare these men take her against her will, force her into a carriage at the point of a gun, and strike Mr. Watley in the head? It was unthinkable. She wanted to personally give each man responsible a stinging slap and a tongue-lashing that would ring in their ears for days.

But she had to keep her wits about her.

Mr. Watley’s hands were tied together at the wrist, but they hadn’t bothered to tie Jane’s hands. They probably thought her, as a woman, incapable of doing anything to escape. Even unconscious and bleeding, they saw Luke Watley as more of a threat than she was. But she would show them.God, give me the strength of Samson and the cunning of Jael.

Jane had always admired Jael for being wily enough to kill a dangerous man and save her people. She was as courageous as any man, and Jane prayed for that same spirit to be inside her now.

She thought of the contents of her tiny purse, which hung from her wrist. There was nothing inside except a few coins and the key to the front door of the town house, even though it was unlikely she would need the key. A servant would be waiting up to let her inside. But she wondered now if she could use that key, which was as long as her hand from her wrist to her fingertip, as a weapon. If Jael could drive a tent peg into a man’s temple, perhaps Jane could drive her key into her captor’s eye, or his throat. And Henry had told her that if she thrust her knee into a man’s groin, he would be incapacitated long enough for her to run away.

She believed she could escape from one captor, and probably even two, but if there were more than two, she wasn’t sure if her key and her knee would be weapons enough.

Luke Watley was sitting up quite straight and tall now. He might be able to help her if his hands weren’t bound. While there was only one man guarding them, she should try to escape now.