The Accidental Abduction Read Online Free PDF Page A

around them. The woman shouted and she screamed, and she still kept her seat as they threaded the needle between the slower traffic again.
    Harry found his balance, and his wits. He crawled up onto the seat and clung to its back right behind the driver’s box. The carriage banked, going up onto its two wheels again. Again he braced himself. They were going to die. The carriage couldn’t stand this, and the horses certainly couldn’t. One of them would stumble. The carriage would overturn. They’d lose a pin on the wheel or break an axle. He was going to watch this woman thrown to the stones, to break her head and neck. As it was, the strain of holding the reins had bent her nearly double. God, what nerve she must have to even keep a hand on them at all. Probably saved them both doing it. He’d remember to thank her, after he got the carriage stopped.
    Wind whistled past his ears. The traffic had cleared out. Moonlight and lantern light flashed just bright enough for him to make out the empty, macadamized road before them. They’d reached the highway, probably the Great North Road. Harry breathed a prayer of thanks. Not only would it be near empty this time of night, it was also smoother, so there was less chance of a horse breaking a leg or the carriage breaking a wheel than on cobbles.
    Unfortunately, the horses also felt the change in the road under their hooves, and put on a fresh burst of speed.
    Harry gritted his teeth, and didn’t let himself think about what he was doing. With the carriage rocking at breakneck speed, the horses straining against rein, bit, and bridle, he clambered over the carriage seat trying to get to the driver’s box. His hand slipped and his elbow buckled and he was staring at the rushing pavement, but he caught the edge of the box again, and pulled and swung himself around just so, and he was up beside the woman.
    He slapped his hands down over hers; had just enough time to realize she wasn’t wearing gloves and that they were skin to skin, before he pulled back hard.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” she cried.
    â€œLet go!” he shouted. “I’ve got them! They’re slowing!”
    â€œI don’t want them slowed, you idiot!”
    The butt of her whip caught him in the guts. The blow—aided by sheer and complete shock—toppled Harry backward, onto the seat, and then onto the boards.
    â€œGet up! Get up, there!” The woman cracked the whip over the team’s head. The horses charged forward.
    Harry pushed himself to his knees again. Outrage cleared the last of the fog from his eyes. It also let him see the situation. The woman—bent low, lashing the space between her horses’ ears—was not panicked. She was not trying to hold on to runaways. She was driving at the absolute limit of the horses’ speed and the carriage’s endurance.
    â€œStop!” Harry shouted.
    â€œNo!” she shouted back. “Sorry!” she added.
    â€œYou’ll crash us!”
    â€œWatch me!”
    Did he actually hear
pride
in her voice?
    I’m being abducted,
Harry thought as he pushed himself back into a sitting position.
By a madwoman.
    Except she wasn’t a madwoman. She was handling the team like she’d been born on the box. She’d been in control that whole time they’d threaded the streets of London, and Westminster, and taken those daring, near deadly turns. Dear God, what kind of woman was she?
    At this, absurdly, Harry laughed. Maybe it was the remainder of the whiskey burning through his blood, maybe it was just speed and danger addling his wits. But it occurred to him that he’d been wishing he could get out of town. Now he was doing exactly that, and at top speed. Admittedly, he hadn’t considered abduction as a means of gaining distance from Agnes, but here he was, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. Not unless he wanted to risk climbing back onto the