Page 77 of Some Like It Wild
“Let’s have done with this!” Munroe shouted, flexing his hands on the balcony rail. “My tea is cooling.”
The soldiers retreated to either side of the platform. The hangman rested his hand on the lever. For the first time, Connor saw the familiar tattoo of a serpent writhing on the bulging muscles of his upper arm. Hope surged in his heart, forcing him to bite back a grin.
That grin faded with the first ugly call of “Hang the bastard!”
“Stretch his miserable neck!”
“Hang him! Hang him!” the onlookers began to shout in unison, the virulence of their rising chant making even the soldiers look uneasy.
Connor watched as one of the gawkers reached into his picnic basket and retrieved a shiny red tomato. As it came sailing through the air, he braced himself, helpless to avoid its impact.
But the tomato hit the soldier closest to him square in the face, eliciting a startled yelp. The man was still swiping pulp from his eyes when a fat cabbage flew past Connor, striking the second soldier so hard it knocked him clean off the platform. Suddenly the air was full of flying produce, all of it aimed at the hapless redcoats. Before long, they were all staggering about, half blind and cursing.
That quickly, Connor had the irons unlocked. As the chains clanked to the platform, Brodie jerked off his hangman’s hood and tossed him a pistol, his gold tooth winking in the middle of his familiar grin.
Connor watched in amazement as the crowd took advantage of the chaos they had created. They dropped their parasols and whipped off their hats and bonnets in one smooth motion to reveal that most of them were men. This time when they reached into the picnic baskets, their hands didn’t emerge with produce but with pistols. Pistols they quickly trained on the English soldiers.
Connor swung his own pistol toward the balcony only to find it deserted. Munroe had always been a coward when not backed by a battalion of soldiers. When Connor saw a single horse with a lone red-coated rider go thundering down the road in a cloud of dust, he knew that the colonel had beat a wise and hasty retreat, preferring to run so he could live to fight another day.
As Connor and Brodie descended the steps, the redcoats reluctantly tossed down their weapons, realizing they were both outnumbered and out-armed. After that, it only took a handful of men to round them up and herd them toward the gatehouse, where they could be safely secured before they had time to gather their wits and decide to hang the whole lot of them.
As Connor tucked his pistol in the waistband of his breeches, a woman appeared at the bottom of the hill. Throwing off her cumbersome black cloak, she came sprinting up the hill and into his arms, her face alight with joy.
Connor lifted her clean off the ground, crushing her to his chest while sweeping her in a wide circle. “You wee fool! I always said you had more courage than common sense and now you’ve gone and proved it.”
She beamed up at him as he reluctantly set her on her feet. “We didn’t have any choice. The duke is on his way here with a full pardon from the king, but we knew he wouldn’t arrive in time to save you. We had to do something.”
He glowered at her. “So you decided to just rush in and rescue me all on your own.”
“Well, not exactly…”
She stepped aside, giving him a clear view of the rest of his rescuers for the first time. He spotted Crispin first, surrounded by a dozen or more cocky young bucks, most of them still grinning with delight.
Crispin sauntered forward, jerking a thumb at his friends. “Most of them were bored with the brothels and the gambling tables and wanted a more scintillating challenge than just dunking some hapless stranger in a horse trough.”
“And what about you?” Connor asked. “Were you bored as well?”
Crispin shrugged, keeping his face carefully bland. “I figured it was the least I could do after what my mother did to you.”
“We won’t have to worry about Lady Astrid anymore,” Pamela assured him, shooting Crispin an awkward glance. “When the duke found out what she did, he had her committed to Bedlam. She has private quarters with a private nurse. He believed it would be kinder than Newgate.”
Connor studied the fresh tomato spattered across Crispin’s cheek and down the front of his shirt. “Did you suffer from friendly fire, lad?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it friendly.” Crispin’s eyes narrowed. “I’m afraid some of us don’t have very good aim.”
“On the contrary,” Sophie said, twirling her ruffled parasol as she sashayed forward. “Some of us have perfect aim.”
“Does this make us even then?” Crispin asked her, swiping tomato pulp from his cheek.
“I should say not. You still called me an awful actress.”
“Well, you called me an awful man.”
“Youarean awful man.”
“I’m a better man than you are an actress.”
Biting off a strangled shriek of rage, Sophie spun around and went storming off, with Crispin fast on her heels.
