Page 5 of The Last Crimes of Peregrine Hind
But he merely shook his head and mounted his horse. Sandy’s rope remained tied to the saddle; he’d have to walk alongside the horse as they went.
“I’ll go slowly,” Peregrine said as he took the reins. “So long as you behave.”
“You’d be the first to make me,” said Sandy, but he flashed a big smile to show that he’d be cooperative. He had no wish to fight the highwayman on this, because he was fairly certain he’d lose.
As Peregrine clucked at the horse and they began moving, Sandy could see every flex and press of the expert rider’s legs as he rode. He could see the highwayman’s strong hands on the reins, casual and powerful all at once.
And with the excellent scenery and the sedate pace, with his hands bound and his body still thrumming with the shaky glee of having just escaped death for a time, Sandy found he didn’t mind the walk to the highwayman’s lair very much at all.
Three
Peregrine
It was only an hour to the priory, but it felt much longer to Peregrine. And that had less to do with his thwarted revenge than it did with the comely captive he had tied to his saddle.
Alexander Dartham’s hair spilled everywhere in shimmering waves as he moved, and the moving continually revealed his breeches’ superlative tailoring as the fabric clung to his thighs and buttocks when he walked. And whenever he would lag behind the horse and whine that he was tired of walking—which was often—Peregrine would turn around and see a lush pout designed to drive any red-blooded person wild.
By the time they’d gone through a scatter of lonely hills to the narrow seam where the priory sat hidden, Peregrine was at his wit’s end. His palms itched to slide over the Dartham heir’s sleek thighs; his fingers twitched to tangle themselves in all that soft hair. The scent he’d noticed in the coach was all around him now, spicy and sweet at the same time.
Peregrine’s entire body was in riot just from being near Alexander Dartham for the length of a ride. How would he bear it when he had Alexander locked away in his hideout for days on end?
But it couldn’t be that he was really attracted to a scion of the family he loathed, Peregrine reassured himself. It had simply been too long, that was all. During the war, there had been plenty of opportunities to satisfy himself, but being an outlaw in rural Devonshire was a different situation, and he hadn’t had the time or luxury to find new lovers. He’d been living more or less like a monk for the last four years—all the more ironic, given his current home.
“I don’t want to submit a complaint so early in my captivity,” Alexander said as they came to a stop in front of the hideout. “But this is a little déclassé for even my deteriorated taste.”
Peregrine looked at the crumbling monastery and imagined how it must look to the brother of a duke. The overgrown entrance was partially blocked by broken beams and piles of roof slates, and wild blackthorn crawled up the walls and bushed out into impenetrable, unkempt thickets. The few windows there were had long been robbed of their glass, and birdshit was everywhere, piled especially high in the doorway. It was as far away from a ducal manor as someone could get.
“I’m planning to kill you, and you’re worried about your accommodations?” Peregrine asked, dismounting the horse. Now at the same level, Peregrine could see that Alexander’s neckcloth had come loose at some point, exposing the long, lovely column of Alexander’s throat. It was the kind of throat a man could spend hours licking, nuzzling.
Biting.
Peregrine had to remind his starved body that Alexander was the brother of his mortal enemy, and also the heir of the family he was determined to ruin. And also his captive.
Alexander tossed a curtain of dark hair over his shoulder and gave Peregrine a little moue of displeasure. “I expected death. I expected torture. But I’m too beautiful and innocent for the indignity of sleeping in a building where the threshold is literally a mound of turds. Your vengeance against my family must know no bounds.”
With the pout and the rumpled clothes, Alexander looked anything but innocent. He looked downright sinful. But Peregrine didn’t bother to say so.
“How do you know I want revenge?” he asked instead, leading the horse—and Alexander, too, by the other end of the rope that bound him—to the low-slung stables at the side of the priory.
“I deduced it,” Alexander said, sounding a little smug. Then he added, “Also, Reginald is an unholy pile of shit, so I’m not surprised someone wants to kill him. If I’m being honest, I thought this would’ve happened sooner.”
Peregrine tied Alexander’s rope to a post and then began tending to his horse, removing the bridle and replacing it with a halter to tether his mount in place. “You’re not upset I plan to kill your brother?”
Alexander tilted his head, his full mouth bunched to the side. “No. I mean, I oppose the use of murder, in general, and I have no wish to be the duke, ever, ever, so I’d rather he not be dead. But as I’ve mentioned previously, he’s about as wonderful as the French pox, and half as merciful.”
Peregrine was used to people loathing the Duke of Jarrell around these parts, but they were all farmers, shepherds . . . thieves. For a lord like Alexander to admit his brother’s despicable nature to someone lowborn like Peregrine was more than a breach of familial loyalty, it was a betrayal of class as well, and that was enough to make Peregrine’s curiosity—and suspicion—flare.
“And,” Alexander added, “you don’t seem the type to do anything for any reason that’s less than entirely serious, which makes me think that whatever the motive is for your revenge, I’ll have some empathy for it.”
Peregrine searched the finely sculpted face in front of him. The honesty he saw in those dark eyes unsettled him. Peregrine didn’t want Alexander to be honest. Or empathetic.
It would . . . complicate things.
He could feel Alexander’s gaze on him as he turned to hang up the saddle and then began grooming the horse, checking his mount’s legs and shoes as he worked.
“I would, you know,” his captive said after a minute. Softly. “Have empathy.”
Peregrine didn’t look up from his work.
