Escape with A Rogue by Sharon Page Page A

laugh too.
    “Down there!” shouted one of the men.
    Was it the guards’ imaginations, or had they seen the man Lady M. had shot at? Either way, a chase would keep both the guards and their assailant busy.
    “Good,” Lady M. said, soft but brisk. “My carriage is beyond the tollhouse. We must hurry.”
    Her breast brushed his arm. Warm, abundant curves. So easy just to lift his hand, palm up, and cup all that feminine warmth, after years of celibacy. He’d been celibate for more than the two he’d been in prison. No. “Yes, we had better well hurry,” he groaned.
    She frowned. “Are you hurt?”
    “Not in the way you’re thinking, Lady M.”
    “Do you think there might be dogs in pursuit, too?”
    “No. They don’t keep dogs at the prison. They have to borrow or hire bloodhounds from the locals.”
    “They seem to be woefully unprepared for an escape.”
    Lady M. to the core. She would not approve of a poorly run prison any more than she would tolerate disorder in her own house. “That’s a good thing for us. Remember we are on the wrong side of the law right now.”
    She stilled against him. He’d spent his life on the wrong side of the law. But apparently, the thought of it now froze Lady Madeline in her tracks.
    She was a strong woman of impeccable reputation, the sort for whom revealing an ankle was scandalous behavior. She was risking everything for him. Her reputation. Her freedom. Her life.
    She’d almost shot a man for him.
    Based on a pack of lies he’d told her. What was Lady M. going to do—how was she going to react—when he told her who he really was?
    At least she’d spent the ball in her pistol, so she couldn’t use it on him.
    “We’ll go to the carriage,” he agreed. “Keep to the side of the road. If I give you a shove, forgive me, but leap over the wall as fast as you can. And hide.”
     
    * * *
     
    It wasn’t possible.
    “The carriage is gone .” Madeline turned in a slow circle. Perhaps it was there, just hidden behind the impenetrable fog. Could the horses be standing in absolute silence, her driver simply too apprehensive to answer her soft call?
    “Oh, do think sense,” she muttered. “You have been duped and dumped.”
    At her side, Jack drawled, with unnecessary perception, “I think your vehicle has been stolen, Lady M.”
    The trace of wry amusement in his voice irritated her. “Thank you, Jack.” Fisting her right hand, Madeline ground her knuckles against her forehead. They had left the road, crept behind the tollhouse that sat at the boundary of Princetown, and crossed a fog-laden field to get to this spot. Her shin ached from a collision with a granite boulder.
    “This is madness!” she cried, as fervently as one could when trying to shout in a whisper. “How could he abandon us this way?
    The answer was obvious, but at least Jack did not supply it. No one could be trusted, of course.
    “I paid that man well enough not to betray me. And no—” Jack had given a soft groan, so she swung on him with a glare. “I gave him only three pounds to begin, with the promise of thirty if he helped me. Once he saw you, I intended to bribe him with one hundred pounds—enough to ensure he wasn’t tempted to betray us for the five pounds he’d get for turning you in.”
    “You did your research well.”
    To what end? Her beautiful plan had evaporated, whereas the damnable fog had not.
    Everyone claimed that nothing ever disconcerted her. Everyone had admired her fortitude after the murders of her family’s governess and her sister’s bosom bow, Lady Sarah. They had admired the way she had taken her family in hand. How she’d tried to curb her brother’s wild gaming, had tried every method possible to keep her father from drinking himself to death, had dealt with her mother’s failing memory and increasing madness with patience and kindness.
    She knew Jack mustn’t admire her. How could he? The one time it had truly mattered for her to be clever and in