The Dark Lady by Máire Claremont Read Free Book Online Page A

walled yard. In the distance, the arched gateway onto the moors beckoned, open. Snow swirled fiercely, blurring the air.
    His carriage sat not twenty feet away, his coachman shivering in the blistering wind. “Make ready!” Ian shouted.
    The coachman shook himself, his movements slow before he realized what was happening. He yanked up the reins, his whip coming to attention.
    When they were mere inches from the carriage door, a pistol shot cracked through the air.
    Ian stopped and looked back to their pursuers. As he turned to face Palmer’s men, he pushed the two girls behind him and slowly inched backward, the door to his coach so close they could reach out and touch it.
    Four keepers stood at the ready. Their big bodies were a shapeless mass of mindless aggression. In their hamlike hands they held ropes and cudgels.
    Mary leaned forward, her teeth bared. “Come on, then, bastards. I’ll eat your damn hearts out!”
    Ian’s innards shook at the promise in her rough voice. What a powerful young woman she was. He couldn’t help hating the audacity of men for locking her up.
    Indeed, her words seemed to shake the keepers. They shifted on their mud-caked boots, glancing at one another.
    One of them, russet haired with a pinkish scar running down his cheek, stepped forward. “Step away, mylord. You cannot escape and we must put them back in their cell until this matter can be sorted.”
    Ian willed Mary and Eva to slowly move to the coach door as he stared the piece of filth down. The keeper, sensing the head of a pack challenging his weak authority, retreated slightly. Ian stood stock-still, his eyes narrowing as he said very quietly, his voice as hard as iron, “You touch either of them, and you’ll be no more than a wet spot on the snow. I’m taking them. Both.”
    “No, you are not.” Mrs. Palmer pushed her way through her keepers. The full length of her wine red skirts, dark as blood amid the pristine snow, swished as she tucked them around her to avoid the trousers of her men. In the dark night, she stood powerfully, unafraid and livid.
    “I will take them both,” Ian repeated, praying that his sheer presence and a strong bluff would get them out of this.
    Mrs. Palmer snapped up a finger and pointed it at Mary, her gaze piercing through the night. “She is mine and she is a murderess.”
    “She belongs to no one.” Ian locked gazes with the woman, quickly trying to calculate a plan of escape. Mrs. Palmer had her brute squad ready to charge and he had two small women to protect. It was an impossible position. “It was self-defense.”
    Unflinching as a battle-hardened general, Mrs. Palmer countered, “She has no self to defend. Quite simply, she is owned by others.”
    A small growl came from Eva. Ian reached out, curling his fingers around hers. “Well, I own this one, do I not?” His guts twisted. Negotiating for human life was all too familiar. Then he nodded to Mary. “I will give you another hundred guineas from your bank on the morrow for this one. Something for something, yes?”
    Mrs. Palmer lifted her brows and a muscle twitched in her smooth cheek as strands of hair flickered about her face. “A tempting offer, my lord, but I must refuse. She is a secret far too valuable to part with. She stays. But don’t concern yourself. Murderess though she may be, she won’t be harmed. She’s the daughter of someone far too important for that, no matter how mad she is, no matter if she happened to slay one of my fellows.” Mrs. Palmer slipped a pistol easily from her skirts, triumphant. “You see, I am a woman prepared. Now, no matter what you say or do, I swear Mary stays.”
    “Fine,” he said flatly, swiftly plotting how to get Mary out without them all being shot. “We’ll go. And quietly.”
    “Mary?” Eva questioned, her eyes luminous and large as twin stars in her pale face.
    Ian tore his gaze from Eva’s. But Mary’s was worse. With her pale skin and short black hair, she might have