Page 52 of Outrageous

“Keep your mouth shut,” Godric murmured beside her.

Eva swallowed as she saw one of the robbers—a man wearing a battered top hat with a large emerald pin fastened to the crown—staring at her. He was grinning, exposing a mixture of brown and black teeth along with several empty sockets.

“Now what manner o’ gun is this?” the head robber said musingly as he turned the gun this way and that.

“It’s an arquebus. One of the oldest on record, dated—” Robber One paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Er, it is possible it once belonged to Donatello Visconti, a Viennese lord.”

The robber’s eyes opened comically wide, and he turned to his crew, who were all grinning broadly at him. Except the man with the hat, who was staring at Eva.

“Is that so,” the main robber said. “Now ’oo would ’e be when ’e’s out and about—this Donatello Vis—Vis—”

“Er, Visconti, sir. Well, um, he’s actually, that is, he wouldn’t be out and about. He’s dead, you see.”

“Ah,” the robber said after a long, uncomfortable pause, his gaze moving from the boy in the dress to Godric and Eva. He squinted and then frowned. Eva couldn’t blame him; what a trio they must make. He appeared to have been rendered temporarily speechless. And then he turned to his men, scowling. “’Ere then, what are you lot doing lazing around when there’s work to be done? Get that carriage hooked up!”

The men surged toward the tipped carriage like a single organism, the two riding the leaders—not their postilions—joining the others.

“Where are the postilions?” Godric asked.

“Don’tchu worry, lad, we don’t ’arm honest working men,” the leader said, his grin back in place. “We trussed ’em up, but the boys’ll check on ’em later and cut ’em loose.”

Eva glanced up at Godric, to see if he believed the other man, but he didn’t meet her gaze.

While they’d been talking, the other thieves had surrounded the carriage and now began to set it upright, the action involving lots of grunting and cursing as the men slipped in the mud and lost their footing.

It was better than a pantomime.

The carriage had just slid back into the ditch for a third time when the most decrepit wagon Eva had ever seen rumbled toward them. The man in the driver’s seat wore a soldier’s coat and pulled the wagon to a halt not far from the carriage before leaning awkwardly on the side of the wagon and then hopping down on one leg.

“Why, he’s a—”

“Shhh,” Godric whispered.

The one-legged man studied the post chaise for a long moment before slipping a cane from beneath the board he used as a seat and limping to the back of the wagon, which she saw was heaped with all manner of rubbish.

Meanwhile, the men had pushed the post chaise upright. One of their number, the smallest, crawled beneath and shoved something—a block of wood that appeared to have come from nowhere—beneath the axle of the broken wheel. When the men released their hold, the carriage shuddered but stayed in place.

The one-legged man limped toward the coach with a carriage wheel slung over one shoulder and a wooden toolbox hanging from the hand not employing the cane.

They all appeared oblivious to the pounding rain.

The leader of the band of thieves ambled toward them. “That’s Donny,” he said in a confiding tone. “’E’s forgotten more about carriages than most men will ever know.”

Indeed, Donny did seem to be quite handy and set about attaching the new wheel—slightly smaller and wider than the original—in a matter of moments.

While they’d been watching Donny, the two men riding the leaders had hooked the horses to the carriage.

Donny stood and then limped a few feet away before calling out, “She’s good.”

The chaise began to roll. The too-small wheel gave it a rather drunken gait as it rumbled down the narrow, rutted road, but it didn’t seem to slow it down too much and soon the chaise had disappeared around the bend.

“So, that’s that,” the leader said with a huge grin, coming close enough that Eva could see he wore something that might have once been a soldier’s coat.

“Now, let’s have what’s in your pockets without any fuss, eh?” He looked from Godric to Eva. “You too, girlie.”

Eva scowled up at him as she detached her watch and chain and handed it to him. “That’s all I have.”

The man with the hat, who had been hovering in the corner of her eye, came closer at her words.