Emma’s pulse before he’d left her and his fingers had brushed across the gash at her temple. It was deep and his brother and Azziz were completely unconscious. His only help gone.
It was up to him.
Everybody was dependent on him.
Laying his pistol on the grass, he discarded his hat and filled it with damp leaves before jamming it through the sharp point of an oak sapling he’d cut. The shape and form of a head. It was just a little ruse, but it might work.
No. It had to work, he corrected himself as he jammed the stick into the earth and circled to the right. He still had time, for the group were talking to one another and laughing.
Easy prey.
He just had to take them off one by one until there was a manageable number. With four flints in his pocket and another two in the barrel he couldn’t afford to waste ammunition on a miss. Fitting a polished river stone into his hand his eyes focused.
Closer. Closer. Steady. The stone arced across the sky noiselessly and the chosen man fell hard. One down. He could not think about who else lurked in the deeper woods. The horses stopped and the more urgent sound of voices reached him on the wind. He could see that they scanned the valley for movement; turning, he lobbed another stone into the air to land in a rush of noise on the broad leaves of a sturdy bush.
It was enough. The hat from this distance gave an illusion of movement and the remaining men rushed forward. When he sighted them again, it was from slightly behind.
Perfect.
He brought the gun from his pocket and fired. Another man fell. And then another. Reloading, he sat to wait it out. Three more men left, though a scream of anger echoed through the trees, bringing with it the worrying sound of others.
More of the enemy materialised from the forest and he drew his sword, discarding the pistol in favour of blade as he backed up the embankment with careful steps and on to a ledge of thick brush. If they wanted to take him, he wouldn’t make it easy. Here the horses could not follow and with him on foot the odds became more even.
Six men.
He had taken more.
Time slowed and focused. An easy balance and quiet waiting.
‘Come on, come on,’ he whispered and hoped he could kill a good number of them before they got to him.
Emerald saw him from above first, and even through her sheer terror and from this distance she recognised the style of his swordsmanship. My God, she thought as she scrambled down the incline, no wonder he killed my father, no wonder he cut a swathe through the men on the Mariposa like no others before him.
His was not an English style of fighting, but a foreign one. A style learnt not in the polite fencing salons of London, but in the world’s godforsaken places, where fair play shattered in the face of sheer and brutal force.
She could barely look away. Already he had downed two men, but the others were circling closer and one held a gun.
They hadn’t shot him! Hope blossomed. They wanted him alive as a pathway to the treasure. She shouted as a slice of steel creased the folds of the fabric on his jacket and red blood oozed through.
Asher heard the cry from one side and the flash of white petticoats had him turning.
Emma? With a sword in hand and a dirty bandana wrapped around the bright gilt of her curls? Memory turned, and against the dull grey sky he suddenly remembered what she must always have known.
‘You!’ He could barely believe it.
The girl from the Mariposa. Emma Seaton? He blinked twice just to make sure the image was real. And the turquoise eyes that looked back at him were dark in anguish.
A slash of steel to his right centered his focus and he waited to see whether she would raise her sword against him too. God. Could he kill her? For the first time in all his life he was afraid.
‘You’ll be wanting the map no doubt, Emerald.’ The man nearest to him spoke, gesturing to those beside him to cease for the moment.
Emerald? Asher glanced sideways. Emerald? What sort of a name was that? Fragmented shards of memory clicked into place.
Emerald!
Emerald Sandford?
‘The Duke has Beau’s map hidden at Falder, Karl. If you kill him, you’ll lose it.’ Her voice was hard, distant, indifferent, as if the taking of his life was a meagre thing against the possession of what they both sought. In the pale light of a rapidly approaching dusk, the blood at her temple ran dark red, and the pallor of her skin made her look immeasurably older than the twenty-one years he knew her to have.
‘You lie.’ The older man opposite took up his sword and brought it down, fast. Quick reactions saved the blade from eating into her leg as she parried.
‘If I had the map, do you think I’d still be here in England?’
With little effort she pushed his blade back and stood like one without a care in the world.
Like father, like daughter.
How easily they ruined lives. How little they thought of the consequence.
Pure untrammelled rage ripped through Asher.
Melanie. His brother. The aching remains of his right hand and the years they had stolen. Lunging forward, he scattered the circle, another man crumpling under the wicked sharpness of steel and all hell broke loose. In the moment of chaos he felt the small tickling whisper of a voice as Emma edged around behind him.
‘Hate me later. I can help you now.’
With a well-timed quickness she plunged her blade through the closest renegade and turned to meet the next one and she fought as if a sword had been born in her hand. He frowned at the thought. Lord, it probably had been. The quick report of a gun close up made him stiffen, the smell of powder acrid in the air. In one movement he pulled his knife from his boot and hurled it before the man could reload, pleased when the blade easily found its target.
He kept her at his back, their paired position creating a circle of safety, the thrust and counter-thrust of the two men left easily beaten back. He heard the rasping of her breath and the quick noise of steel against steel. And then a lightly worded curse. She was tiring. He could see it in the way she held her blade. Parrying no longer, but defending. Why?
Gritting his teeth, he finished the fight. Quickly.
When silence again filtered through the clearing, Emerald found in her the strength to look up. And wished that she had not. Asher was furious and the clamp of his hand hurt the top of her arm. She swayed and would have fallen had he not steadied her. The sting in her side left her breathless and she didn’t dare to look down to see the damage. Not yet. Not now.
He was sweating and in the last yellow light of the fading day the fury in his eyes glittered. ‘You are the damn pirate’s daughter? Beau Sandford’s daughter? It was you on the ship…?’
‘You have remembered?’
‘Damned right I
