Page 1 of The Last Crimes of Peregrine Hind
One
Peregrine
1710
The road was a ribbon of horseshit over the purple moor.
Peregrine Hind sat atop his horse at the crest of a cragged Devonshire hill, staring at the distant gleam of Far Hope nestled into its valley. He couldn’t imagine the number of candles it took to light the Dartham family seat, but he also wasn’t surprised by the sheer waste of it all. The Darthams were like that—careless and prodigal.
But tonight they would pay for it, and ironically enough, it would be their own extravagance that would undo them. It was the week before the annual Michaelmas ball, which was why the manor house was glowing so merrily into the dark. It was also why the road was covered in horseshit, which had accumulated under the constant traffic of visitors coming from everywhere across the kingdom. In any other circumstance, so many coaches creaking their way through this wild and lonely landscape would be like a river of gold to a highwayman like Peregrine Hind.
But he only cared about one coach tonight.
With a soft cluck, he turned his horse back east to where the road from Exeter dipped into a steep, wooded valley. His friends were waiting at the bottom, their mounts already hidden deep in the trees.
“Well?” Lyd asked as Peregrine came to a stop. She was pacing while the others sat checking their pistols. Her jaw was tight, her normally pale cheeks flushed. “Anything yet?”
“No.” Peregrine looked up at the moon through the trees. “The innkeeper did say it would be late.”
Peregrine paid innkeepers all around Devonshire to give him information when he needed it. Even the keepers of the finer establishments were susceptible to bribery, so long as they were never connected to any crimes that came of the information given—and Peregrine was careful never to let those connections be known. It served his purposes to be thought unnervingly omniscient, his movements and motives shrouded in mystery.
It had given him the reputation of the most infamous highwayman in England, but after four years of terrorizing the roads, Peregrine could conclusively say that the recipe of infamy was much simpler than people seemed to think:
Half preparation.
Half indifference to death.
Peregrine no longer cared very much if he lived or died—and really, when stealing a mere twelve pence could get someone taken to Tyburn, a highwayman was already a dead thief walking. At thirty-four, Peregrine was already older than most in his profession ever lived to be, but the thought rarely bothered him. He’d come from the war, after all, from the bloody, desperate fighting in the Low Countries, where death stalked every man regardless of age or station. He never thought he’d live this long, had assumed from the moment he signed his name to the rolls of the Queen’s army that he wouldn’t make it to twenty-five, much less the age he was now. He’d joined the army anyway in order to send his much-needed wages to his mother and siblings, but when he’d returned, he’d found his family and their farm in ruins. Anyone he’d ever loved—any purpose he’d ever had after his career as a soldier—was gone. Dead and cold in the ground.
Now he only drew breath to destroy the Dartham family, and tonight, at long last, that destruction would begin.
“I hope she’s with him,” Lyd said, her voice shaking a little. “I want to see her face.” Lyd had her own reasons for hating the Darthams—and the duchess in particular.
“The innkeeper said she would be with him,” Peregrine replied, staring at where the road broke through the trees at the top of the hill. They would wait for the coach to work its halting way to the bottom and then begin its ascent up the other side. That way, they could free the horses without worrying about a rolling coach injuring them. Peregrine didn’t hurt horses—or people—if he could help it, and he usually could. While he paid his army of innkeepers to spread stories of his bloody cruelty, he had no interest in dealing pain or death these days.
He couldn’t even shake the nightmares from the war he’d left four years ago.
And what did I get for those nightmares? Peregrine asked himself as he watched a cloud drift over the moon. What did I get for killing all those strangers for some other stranger’s crown? A dead family and a farm that had been enclosed for the Duke of Jarrell’s sheep.
Which was why tonight, he’d make an exception to his usual rule about hurting or killing; why tonight, he’d embrace whatever nightmares may come. Because tonight, he was going to kill the Duke of Jarrell. Peregrine was going to kill him in the chilly, lonesome dark, the same dark in which Peregrine’s pregnant sister had died as she’d waited outside of Far Hope’s doors for help. Help that never came.
A distant creak and clack announced an approaching coach. The rest of the band—three thieves plus Lyd—got to their feet.
“Last chance to leave,” Peregrine told them. They were brave, but the murder of a duke and the robbery of a duchess was a Rubicon. They’d be wanted criminals forever; they would be given a more vicious death than the usual Tyburn jig if they were caught. And while Peregrine and Lyd had revenge on their minds, the other thieves were here for money, plain and simple, and there was no telling how much the duke would have with him. It could be enough to set them up for life, or it might only be enough to buy them a pair of secondhand boots.
But even knowing that, none of them left. With nods at Peregrine, they melted into the trees near the spot where he’d confront the coach, ready to swarm the conveyance and disarm any guards or passengers. Peregrine urged his own horse up and into the trees too, deep enough that he was hidden from moonlight, but only a few seconds away from the road itself.
Then they waited.
As he’d known it would, the coach made its way slowly down the hill, using blocks under the wheels to temper its descent. As it came closer, the moonlight gleamed along its ornate trim and illuminated an image painted on the outside of its door: two stags framing a shield, which was adorned with a sun and moon and topped with a single golden key.
The Dartham family crest.
The coach made it safely to the bottom of the hill, and then the two footmen stowed the blocks and walked alongside the coach as the horses began to pull it up the hill. Peregrine’s friends would take care of the footmen; his role would be to stop the coach’s progress and prevent the driver from arming himself.
Flooded with a grim sort of excitement, he pressed in with his calves and surged forward on his mount, breaking through the trees and charging in front of the coach.
“Stand and deliver!” Peregrine cried.
