Midnight Capers Read online

  Pheony was so annoyed, with herself as well as him, she didn’t even bother to glare up at him, even though she wanted to. Instead, she placed one hand over the other while swinging her body until she managed to edge toward the large oak barrel that she had left her bag behind last night.

  “Need a hand?”

  Pheony didn’t answer him. When she felt his fingers circle her wrist, she yanked her hand out of the way and gasped in fear when she found herself staring at the ground with wide, terrified eyes. Swapping hands, she looked down at the barrel again. There was nowhere she could put her feet, and no trellis she could climb down to lower herself carefully onto it, and the drop beneath her was about fifteen feet. She had to jump and take the risk that she wouldn’t fall off the barrel and hurt herself.

  “Pheony. Let me help you.” Dean began to panic when he realised what she intended to do.

  “You said you won’t help me,” Pheony cried glaring up at him accusingly.

  “Just let me help you back to the room. We can talk,” Dean reasoned, edging closer. He hadn’t realised just how desperate she was to leave. Now, he felt like an utter cad. “Look, this is likely to attract more attention than you want and that is going to hinder your escape.”

  He folded his arms and leaned on the window ledge because he knew she had no way of getting out of the mess she was in other than relying on him to haul her back into the room. He had to wait until her arms got tired and she asked him to get her back into the room. Despite his relaxed demeanour, Dean was ready to lunge for her if she was forced to release the window ledge and fell. Her predicament warned him that her desire to leave was nothing to do with a somewhat childish tantrum, or a moment of rebellion against a stringently over-protective guardian. There was something wrong, seriously wrong, and it went far deeper than just an overly loud, disruptive hag and her three daughters.

  “Who are they?” he asked quietly.

  Pheony couldn’t believe that he was trying to draw her into conversation while she was hanging from her fingertips from a window ledge. She didn’t even bother to glance up at him to answer. Her arm ached, and she was terrified.

  “Shit,” Dean spat, lunging forward until his hips dug painfully into the window frame, when she lifted her fingers off the ledge. He watched her fall onto the barrel but knew from the way she landed on the edge of it that she had hurt herself. With another muttered curse, he charged across the room, ran across the bed, yanked open the door, and pelted down the stairs only to slam into his Star Elite colleagues on the landing.

  “Jesus, Dean, what in the Hell-” Peregrine gasped when he saw Dean positively fly down the stairs, vault across the end of the bannister, and land with a heavy thump behind Roger in the hallway. He didn’t even bother to look at his colleagues and friends to explain himself. Dean raced toward the back door of the tavern, and out into the yard.

  He forgot that he hadn’t tied the laces on his shirt, that the top button of his breeches hadn’t been fastened yet either and that he didn’t even have his boots on. Dean ran around the side of the building but when he reached the now upturned oak barrel, the bag he had seen tucked behind it, and Pheony, had both vanished.

  “She has gone,” Dean growled when Hamish appeared beside him with Peregrine and Daniel. “Damn it. She has gone.”

  Dean raced around the stable yard, slamming into stables and storerooms in case she was hiding, but the men who were searching for her had already looked there. They were still milling around in the centre of the stable yard, discussing where they were going to search next. The second that Dean appeared in the yard they all turned to stare at him. Dean knew that they would have done the same if Pheony had appeared, and so immediately retreated to the space beneath the window. Gazing up at the open window, Dean cursed fluidly again and tried to control his fear.

  “Care to tell us what in the Hell is going on?” Hamish growled.

  “We have to find her,” Dean hissed, more shaken that he thought possible. “I have to find her. Something is wrong, Hamish. Pheony just didn’t tell me what it was because I didn’t agree to help her. I can’t believe she did that. I can’t believe that she just jumped out of the sodding window to get away from them. From me.”

  Dean cursed when he saw something dark on the ground beside the upturned barrel. Stepping closer, he swooped down and stuck a finger into the dark patch of moisture. He was cursing fluidly when he saw it was blood and not ale from the barrel.

  “Dean?” Roger’s brows lifted when he saw the blood.

  Dean slid a worried look at the inn keeper. “Keep those women in the private parlour, don’t let them out.”

  “What have they done? Are they responsible for the young woman’s disappearance?” Roger asked, eyeing Dean’s uncharacteristically dishevelled state. “And how long have you had her in your room?”

  Dean didn’t answer. He stared at Roger for a moment, but eventually had to jog around the outside of the tavern, to the main street. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of Pheony on the road either. Before he could return to the yard, Luke joined him.

  “Were you with her all night?”

  “Yes,” Dean spat.

  “What happened?”

  Dean placed his fists on his hips and wished he could call out for her but knew she wouldn’t answer. He wished now that he had taken her seriously when she asked him to help her escape. Now, she was gone, without his help, and was injured.

  “Just like that, she has gone,” Dean whispered. “She left. Pheony asked me for help getting out of the tavern. I told her that I couldn’t, wouldn’t, help her. I refused to help her when she needed me. She jumped. While I was answering the door to the inn keeper, she jumped out of the sodding window.”

  “She is hurt,” Hamish warned. “That has to be a fifteen-foot drop.”

  “She landed on the barrel.” To prove that Hamish wasn’t wrong, Dean lifted his blooded finger. “She wasn’t bleeding when she climbed out of the window. She was hurt when she hit the barrel because I didn’t help her.”

  “We have to search the area. She can’t have gone far,” Roger announced.

  “Nobody should alert those women in the parlour,” Dean warned. “They have to stay inside while we locate Pheony and find out what the hell is going on.”

  “What about getting the search party to help? We have a group of willing helpers already assembled,” Peregrine asked, nodding toward the men gathered in the stable yard.

  “She will be scared,” Roger warned. “She might hide if she realises that a group of men are after her.”

  “She isn’t a criminal,” Dean snarled. “She is innocent. She just wants to get away from them, but I never got the chance to find out why.”

  “Go and get dressed.”

  “What?” Dean glared at Roger, who waved a finger at him from his head down to his toes. “Get some clothes on before you scare more ladies. Then I think you had better tell me everything that went on with her. I want to know everything she told you.”

  “That’s just it, she didn’t. She didn’t tell me anything. Last night, she hinted that she needed help, but I was too drunk to ask her what her problem was. This morning, we were disturbed by the knocking on the doors. I had no idea that the entire bloody inn would be searching for her. She isn’t a sodding criminal.”

  Roger listened carefully to what Dean had inadvertently told them. “She was with you all night.”

  Dean mentally cursed. He knew he had ruined her, and so did his colleagues now, and there wasn’t anything he could say to defend his poor judgement. “It was a bloody mistake.”

  “Joshua is tracking her. She won’t have gotten too far, and he is fast. It won’t be long before we find her,” Luke offered. “For now, you go and get dressed.”

  “I am going after Joshua,” Hamish announced before disappearing around the side of the tavern. One by one, the men from the Star Elite all followed him.

  Eventually, there was just Roger and Dean standing at the
front of the building.

  “It isn’t for me to pass judgement on what you do outside of our investigations, Dean,” Roger reminded him. “You work for the War Office, but they don’t own your life.”

  “I was drunk, and made a stupid mistake,” Dean growled, but what struck him more than anything was that when he thought about what stupid mistake he had made, his thoughts immediately turned to his decision not to haul Pheony back into the room the second he had seen her dangling from the window ledge. He didn’t regret bedding her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Pheony’s knee ached so badly she had to limp, and she was bleeding steadily from a cut in her hand that had been caused by the staves of the oak barrel she had slammed her hand against when she had fallen. But her injuries didn’t bother her as much as the hurt she felt. It was so strong she found it difficult to think. She stopped to look behind her and felt that ache in her chest grow worse when she saw that Dean wasn’t following her.

  “Of course Dean won’t come after me. He made it clear he wants nothing else from me,” Pheony muttered with self-loathing. Deep inside, she had still hoped he would be so moved by what they had shared last night that he would at least be worried about her. “I have to put him out of my mind now and move on too.”

  But as Pheony studied her surroundings she struggled to know what to do for the best. Behind her were the cluster of buildings which made up the village of Sprankley. In the other direction were miles and miles of open countryside, but she had no idea what lay beyond it.

  “It would be easier to hide in the village, wait until everyone was busy and then leave, but there is a bigger chance that someone will see me if I do that. If that search party has already scoured the village, the locals will know I am missing and be looking for me too.”

  Before she set out across the fields, Pheony rummaged around in her bag for something she could wrap around her injured hand. She then climbed a five-bar gate and began to trudge across an open field, but as she went had to focus on nothing more than putting one foot in front of the other so she didn’t change her mind and return to the village.

  “This is what I want, what I have to do,” she muttered aloud as she stomped around the perimeter of the field, her heart as heavy as her tread. “I have to keep going. It isn’t about Augusta. She is going to be a part of my past. I would be more than happy if I never set eyes on her, or her spiteful daughters, ever again. This is about me. My future. What I want.”

  Almost instantly, the mental image of Dean rose in the back of her mind. But when memories of what she had allowed to happen last night came with him, she forced herself to focus on the muddy field, and maintaining her freedom now that she had it.

  Pheony walked for miles, but eventually stopped when she felt that she was far enough away from Sprankley that nobody could see her. Only then did she take stock of her surroundings again. She sniffed miserably because it had started to rain but that wasn’t what concerned her the most. About half an hour ago, a group of riders had appeared on the horizon. She suspected that they were a search party because she had seen them stop and talk to an elderly gentleman who was walking along one of the narrow country lanes. After a quick chat, the riders had resumed their journey but appeared to be looking for someone.

  Yes, me.

  “They are treating me like I have committed a crime by wanting my life back,” she muttered, hating them all.

  Clutching her bag, she turned to look behind her again only for her stomach to fall to her knees when she saw a small group of men riding across the field toward her. At some point while she had been milling about, one of them had spotted her, and they were now cutting across the field and riding her way. Pheony looked for Dean amongst them, but he wasn’t there.

  “Face it, he has probably already left for his meeting and is glad to be rid of me,” Pheony whispered, shivering with the misery of her situation. “The problem is that those men don’t care either. They just want me found so they can return me to Augusta like a lost item of luggage.”

  She suspected that the men who were following her were not the Star Elite but probably worked with the magistrate. If they were Dean’s friends, they were going to be furious that they had been dragged into looking for her because of their colleague.

  Determined to avoid them at all costs, mostly because she knew they would insist upon returning her to Augusta, Pheony redoubled her pace until she was forced to lift her skirt and run. She stuck close to trees and hedgerow as she raced across one field after another. Her knee throbbed. She felt sick from lack of food, and was chilled to the bone, but couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t stop, not even when she reached a wide river that blocked her path and threatened to throw all her carefully made plans into chaos.

  Staring at it, Pheony studied the dark green depths but couldn’t see the bottom therefore had no idea how deep it was. Rather than try to cross it, she walked alongside it for a mile or so, but it didn’t narrow. Instead, it widened. She couldn’t cross it.

  Her only consolation was that nobody had appeared behind her yet.

  “Let’s hope that you have all returned to the village,” she whispered, but then faced the problem of how she was going to cross the raging river if they hadn’t.

  “She has gone this way all right. See how the toes of her boots have been dug a little deeper into the soil?” Joshua pointed to the dainty footprints. “She is running.”

  “Is she still bleeding?” Hamish asked.

  “I haven’t seen any blood for a while,” Joshua replied honestly. He paused and waited for Dean and Roger to join them. They had been back to the tavern to fetch everyone’s horses. Now, thanks to the horses, the Star Elite stood a better chance of catching her up because there was only so far that a wilful yet determined young woman could get on foot while injured.

  Hamish eyed the dark shadows beneath Dean’s eyes, the dishevelled hair that he hadn’t straightened, and the rest of the man’s unkempt appearance, and wasn’t sure if he should be appalled or delighted. He had never seen Dean this affected by a woman before. At any other time, it would have been humorous, but he had no idea if Pheony was running from what she had done with Dean last night, or something far more sinister that they didn’t know about yet.

  “What do you want to do when we find her?” Joshua asked of Dean.

  “We need to get her to the safe house and persuade her to tell us why she is running,” Roger announced. “This is not the behaviour of someone who is being a little wilful. The woman is risking a lot to do this and means to leave given how far she has managed to get. Running anywhere in this weather, while carrying her belongings, injured and scared, takes gut-wrenching determination. She is fleeing something dark. Something’s wrong.” Roger nodded to Joshua, silently asking him to return to tracking her.

  Joshua immediately set to work. He didn’t mind staying on foot while the rest of his colleagues rode along steadily behind him because he adored tracking. Eventually, he managed to lead them to Pheony.

  “She can’t cross that,” Roger snorted when he studied the raging flow of the water. “She is on this side of the bank still. Let’s go.”

  Dean nudged his horse into a steady canter and began to ride alongside the river, and promptly left his colleagues far behind. He didn’t stop to think about how important it was that she should be all right when he found her. He didn’t care to think about how much her safety mattered to him, or how much he wished they were back in the tavern bed chamber, discussing her problem and how he was going to help her.

  “Damn,” Roger growled when they followed the bend in the river and saw Pheony about half a mile away. As they watched, she waded into the water while holding her precious bag over her head.

  “Stop,” Dean bellowed, eyeing the churning current of the river. He knew that someone as slight as Pheony wouldn’t be able to fight the swirling water even if she could swim. “Pheony!” he shouted but she was too far away to hear him.

  Hamish hunkered lo
w over his saddle and kicked his horse into a gallop but as he rode toward her, he watched her get swept off her feet. All he could see of her was her head bobbing about in the water before it disappeared completely.

  “The horses can’t cross it,” Roger bellowed. “It’s too deep for them too.”

  The men all set off along the riverbank but were still unable to reach Pheony, who was flailing her arms around, fighting to keep her head above water as it tried to drag her down. Once or twice, the swirling water succeeded in sucking her under and made them all panic.

  Pheony coughed and spluttered and fought her way to the surface. The water deafened her to the world. She thought she heard her name being called but couldn’t stay above the water long enough to see who it was, or if she had just imagined it.

  Dean immediately dismounted and ran down the riverbank as she was carried down the river. He yanked his jacket off and cravat and hopped around while he frantically tugged his boots off too. Without thinking about his own safety, Dean dived into the water. The iciness that engulfed him was breath-taking, but he immediately began to swim. Having ridden horses all his life, he had strong legs and was able to force his way to the surface. But when he did, he became panic stricken because he couldn’t see Pheony anymore.

  “Down there,” Hamish called, pointing to something a little further down river. Dean looked in the direction Hamish was pointing and caught a brief glimpse of the top of Pheony’s head before she disappeared again. With a muttered curse, Dean swam after her. He swam and swam, battling the raging currents, exhaustion, and his own need to breathe, but when he reached the spot where Pheony had been, it was empty.

  “Where?” he demanded of Hamish who lifted his palms upward and shrugged.

  “Down here,” Peregrine called, pointing to a new spot down river.

  Before Dean could resume his swim, Joshua dived into the water further downstream. His long arms ploughed through the water but by the time he reached the place where she had last been seen, the water had pulled her under again. Joshua dove beneath the surface repeatedly until he eventually found her again. He was exhausted by the time he had a long arm around her waist. By the time he reached land, Dean was beside him, helping him haul her limp body ashore.