Highwayman: Ironside Read Online Free PDF Page A

wearing a baggy shirt that was almost the colour of the soil at their feet, and she wriggled her bony shoulders once, twice, and the garment was bunched at her waist. "Work on you, if it please ya."
    Lyle had been astonished and repelled at once. "On me? Christ, girl, but you're a child."
    She had winked in a perverse attempt at appearing coquettish. "One what can polish your privy member till it gleams."
    Lyle had found himself on his feet, as though the very notion had put him on edge. "You do this often?"
    "Aye, sir, as oft as I must."
    "Must? Who puts you to such a task? What manner of man?"
    The man in question had appeared then, stalking round the bend in the road with a face ravaged by pox and sharpened by greed. He had grinned obsequiously upon eyeing the exchange, bowed low over his gnarled cane, and explained in more detail the services his girl could offer a fine gentleman with coin and discretion. Lyle had snapped the cane across its owner's skull, leaving him senseless in the long grass, and gathered little Dorothy up into his saddle. They had not parted since. He had insisted she learn her letters, and she had insisted he never address her by her old name again.
    Bella had travelled Europe with him in the intervening years, learning skills with weapons as well as books, yet she still wielded the brazen tongue that had so intrigued him at that first meeting. He watched as she went to fetch the sack into which the chest's contents had been thrust. "Piss-all to your eyes, maybe, but what exactly do they say?"
    She grimaced as she took out a handful of sheets. "It's just a bunch o' letters, Samson."
    Lyle held out a hand. "Let me see."
    "Shouldn't bother," Eustace Grumm muttered as he went to urinate against the barn. "It's too damned dark. You'll bugger your eyes."
    "Aye, I suppose," Lyle relented. "Back at the Lion then. We'll study them by candlelight."
    "Don't know why we didn't just ride there direct," Grumm said as he hoisted up his breeches. "Ale's what a man needs after a take. Gives him a thirst."
    "Gives a woman a thirst too," Bella agreed, nodding enthusiastically. "And we've some pigeon pie left over."
    Grumm grimaced, his tick rampant. "Mightn't be the case, young Bella."
    "You greedy old beggar," the girl said, an accusatory finger stabbed in Grumm's direction.
    "As I've told you before," Lyle cut in quickly, "we do not make for home immediately after a take. If we're tracked, then let them track us here."
    He felt a tremor then. It took a few moments for the sensation to filter up through his boots, but the feeling was so familiar that he knew instantly what it was. The others were staring at him. They had both come a long way since joining him in this new perilous adventure, but neither had stood on a battlefield and let the earth's vibrations whisper to them. Neither had that perception of danger that only experience could give. "To your mounts," he heard himself say.
    "Major?" Grumm asked, his bearded face suddenly tense.
    Bella stepped forward a pace. "Samson, what is it?"
    "To your mounts, damn you!" Lyle snapped suddenly, spinning on his heels to make for the crab-apple tree where Star grazed. "We are hunted!"
     
    Bella and Grumm rode clear of the barn as soon as the horsemen were in sight. It was an oft practised ploy, for Lyle's pursuers seemed to grow in number and tenacity with every robbery he committed, and the only way the three of them could hope to even the odds was by splitting the hunting party. Thus the girl and the smuggler would ride in opposite directions, while Lyle would take a third route, and they would trust their skins to the speed of their mounts and the encroaching darkness, hoping to meet much later at the rendezvous point.
    Lyle cursed his nonchalance as he clambered into the saddle. Felicity Mumford had mocked him for playing at criminal as though it were a game, and, he inwardly admitted, it was a sharper thrust than she knew. He had become good at his new profession,