Captain Rakehell Read Online Free Page B

Smythe snatched it away from him and held the slippers close to the lantern. “It’s a matched pair, all right. One could be a cast off, er lost, but the two of ‘em …”
    Slowly, he raised his face to the beech tree. It was too dark to make out his features, and Andrew, who tightened his grip on Amanda as she began to tremble, prayed it was also too dark for Smythe to see them.
    “Jack, lift th’ shade a bit more ‘n shine it up this tree.”
    “Righto,” he said, tugging at the shrouded lantern. “Demmed thing’s stuck!” He grunted, the globe rattling and the beam of light wobbling as he tried to loosen the hood.
    “ Now , Mandy,” Andrew whispered urgently. “Crawl as far as you can out this limb, then jump and run to the house!”
    Shoving her away from him, he dove out of the beech tree. His elbow caught Jack in the chin as he landed, and knocked him topsy-turvy down the slope. The lantern rolled out of his grasp, broke with a splintering crash, and set fire to the pile of dead leaves blown up against the wall. Rolling clear of the small blaze, Jack came to his feet and started slipping his way back up the slope.
    “Andy!” Amanda screamed at her brother, who’d turned toward Smythe with raised fists. “Behind you!”
    As Andrew whirled to meet the charge, Harry dropped the sack and rushed to help Jack. He lost his footing on the wet grass, however, and crashed to the ground taking Jack with him. They rolled back down the hill in a tangle, Jack howling as his left arm was flung into the burning leaves.
    “Andy! Watch out!” Amanda shrieked, as her brother turned once more toward Smythe, and spun squarely into the thief’s doubled right fist.
    The blow snapped his neck and staggered him against the beech tree. Amanda heard the back of his head strike the trunk with a thud, and she shrieked again as he crumpled and slid slowly to the ground. Over Jack’s pitiful mewling and the slap of Harry’s hands beating at his smoldering sleeve, Amanda heard Smythe chuckle as he stepped beneath the tree and glanced up at her. Though she’d leaned as far over the limb as she dared, the low, smoking fire was too far away to show her more than the sheen of perspiration on his face.
    “An’ who might you be, m’lady?”
    “Amanda Gilbertson!” she declared fiercely. “Daughter of the Earl of Hampton!”
    “Take m’word fer it, m’lady,” Smythe replied, gesturing toward Andy. “Spirited ‘lil thing like you c’n do better ‘an a cove what can’t take a punch.”
    “That cove is my brother!”
    “Is ‘e now?” Smythe chuckled, as he bent to retrieve the sack Harry had dropped.
    Furious at his innuendo, determined to avenge Andy, and certain—at least reasonably so—that Smythe wouldn’t dare strike a lady of Quality, Amanda flung back her arms and jumped.
    In that same instant, Lucifer came soaring over the garden wall with Captain Earnshaw standing in his stirrups and leaning over his neck. Jack and Harry, who’d put out the fire on Jack’s sleeve and gotten partway to their feet, flung themselves down again, and thereby missed having their necks broken. As the stallion’s hooves touched ground, his shoulder caught Smythe in the back, knocked the sack from his hands and spun him around—just as Amanda came plummeting earthward and swept Captain Earnshaw out of his saddle.
    They fell in a heap of swirling, rose-pink satin, the horseman crying out as her little ladyship landed on his chest and began pummeling him with her fists. Mistaking the yelp of pain as a call for reinforcements, Smythe quickly hied himself over the wall and into the darkness beyond. Jack and Harry followed, the sack of loot half spilled and forgotten on the ground behind them.
    “Ouch! Damn you! Stop it!”
    Grasping her wrists, Earnshaw arched his back and easily reversed their positions. For a moment, until he shook his head, closed his eyes, and opened them again, he thought the fall had more than stunned