But not as guilt-ridden as he did over allowing Culpepper to get ahold of Tabetha again. If so much as an inch of her was harmed, Stone would pulverize him, duke or not.
He should have known better than to drop his guard like that. Westerley had ordered a search of the inn, but Stone knew it would be useless.
A groomsman had informed him that a carriage drove away from the inn shortly after midnight. The man described it as an ornate but slightly neglected vehicle and that it had driven south toward London.
It had to have been Culpepper’s.
Westerley rode neck in neck with him, while Chase escorted the ladies in various coaches from behind.
“Hold up!” Stone held out a hand. A thick cloud of dust hovered over the road some distance ahead. The disturbance just as easily could have been made by a farmer’s cart, but his instincts told him otherwise.
Poppy drew to a halt, waiting for his next command.
“We could cut across that field and ambush them from the front,” Stone suggested.
“He had four men with him.”
“And two have pistols,” Stone remembered from his previous altercation.
“So…”
“Shall we?”
With a nod, both of them turned their horses onto the rough. It took them less than five minutes to work their way across the meadow and back toward the highway.
When Culpepper’s coach came around the bend, they were waiting for it.
Horses turned sideways, the two of them effectively blocked the road.
“Hand her over and no one gets hurt.” Westerley held a pistol in each hand, one trained on the driver and another on the outriders, while Stone dismounted and approached them on foot.
“Stone!” Tabetha cried out from inside. “I knew you would come.” The relief in her voice, although slightly premature, both emboldened and terrified him.
“Let her go, Culpepper,” he commanded.
Westerley motioned the men down from the coach and the others off their horses. “On the ground, faces down. Now.”
Stone’s attention remained riveted on the carriage, his body coiled.
Tabetha needed him.
“I want her dowry!” The door slowly opened, and Culpepper’s sorry mug peered out. “I need it. Otherwise, I’m finished. And if I’m finished, then so is she. I could have had anyone else. She gave me her word.”
Familiar bare feet slid out first, followed by her calves and the bunched fabric of her dressing gown. Although technically braided, most of her hair curled wildly around her face.
One of her eyes was half-shut and swollen.One of them struck her.
“I’ll kill you, you bastard.” Stone clenched his fists, preparing to unleash the white-hot anger rolling through him.
“He has a pistol!” Tabetha warned. A piece of metal flashed, the tip of the weapon almost hidden by her hair.
“You hurt her, and I’ll kill you with my bare hands.” But he couldn’t rush this, not with a pistol aimed at her head. For the first time in his life, he was truly terrified.
He would not fail her.
“I told you,” Culpepper shouted from behind her, ”I just want the money.”
Westerley kept his pistols trained on the others. “You won’t see a halfpenny if anything happens to her,” he declared, not even blinking as he watched the men on the ground.
