The Last crimes of Peregrine Hind
A sizzling novella from the Rake Iād Like to Fā¦ Anthology, coming everywhere November 30!
Sneak peek!
by Sierra Simone
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 couldnāt imagine the number of candles it took to light the Dartham family seat, but he also wasnāt surprised by the sheer waste of it all. The Darthams were like thatācareless 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, accumulated under the constant traffic of coaches 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.
āWell?ā 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. āAnything yet?ā
āNo.ā Peregrine looked up at the moon through the trees. āThe innkeeper did say it would be late.ā
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 givenāand 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 diedāand really, when stealing a mere twelve pence could get a thief taken to Tyburn, a highwayman was already a dead man walking. At thirty-four, Peregrine was already older than most in his profession ever lived to be, but the thought rarely bothered him. Heād 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 heād live this long, had assumed from the moment he signed his name to the rolls of the Queenās army that he wouldnāt make it to twenty-five, much less the age he was now. Heād joined the army anyway in order to send his much-needed wages to his mother and siblings, but when heād returned, heād found his family and their farm in ruins. Anyone heād ever lovedāany purpose heād ever had after his career as a soldierāwas 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.
āI hope sheās with him,ā Lyd said, her voice shaking a little. āI want to see her face.ā Lyd had her own reasons for hating the Darthamsāand the duchess in particular.
āThe innkeeper said she would be with him,ā 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 didnāt hurt horsesāor peopleāif 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 couldnāt even shake the nightmares from the war heād 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 strangerās crown? A dead family and a farm that had been enclosed for the Duke of Jarrellās sheep.
Which was why tonight, heād make an exception to his usual rule about hurting or killing; why tonight, heād 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 Peregrineās pregnant sister had died as sheād waited outside of Far Hopeās doors for help. Help that never came.
A distant creak and clack announced an approaching coach. The rest of the bandāthree thieves plus Lydāgot to their feet.
āLast chance to leave,ā Peregrine told them. They were brave, but the murder of a duke and the robbery of a duchess was a Rubicon. Theyād 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 heād 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 heād 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. Peregrineās friends would take care of the footmen; his role would be to stop the coachās 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.
āStand and deliver!ā Peregrine cried.
All hell broke loose.
The Dartham horses shiedāthe driver lurched as if to reach for a gunāthe coach came to an ungainly stop as the footmen raced to the door, almost certainly to arm themselves with a gun stashed inside. The thieves slipped out from their hiding places, and Lyd dissuaded the coachman from any heroics with a pistol aimed steadily at his heart.
Peregrine was already off his horse, and as his thieves subdued the two footmen, he flung open the door to the carriage and lunged inside, knowing that brashness and speed would be his only defense if the duke was armed.
It was dark inside the cabin, and before he saw the single occupant scrambling for the opposite door, he detected an oddly lovely scent.
Like cloves and orange peels, maybe. Like Christmas.
Then he saw the duke, and all other observations left his mind. He seized the murderer of his family by his coat and hauled him bodily out of the coach, sending him sprawling onto the damp dirt of the road.
Peregrine hopped easily to the ground and took two long strides over to the duke. āHe was alone,ā he told Lyd, and she swore in response.
Lyd had wanted the duchess. Badly.
The duke was just pushing himself to his hands and knees when Peregrine pressed a boot to his shoulder and shoved the duke back onto his rump. Peregrine then raised his pistol, already loaded and primed.
He was grateful for the bright moon tonight. He hoped the duke would see enough of Peregrineās sister in Peregrineās features to feel thoroughly haunted by his sins as he died. But then the man on the road lifted his terrified face, and Peregrine froze.
Yes, those were the extravagant clothes a Dartham would wear; yes, there was the skin that seemed to shimmer the palest gold. Yes, there were those dark eyes, which Peregrine knew would be a deep sapphire if he peered closely enough. But this was not the duke.
This was not the duke.
Peregrine swore to himself as he studied the manās face, but there could be no doubt. Reginald Dartham had narrow eyes set closely together, a thin mouth, and a scattering of pockmarks across his jaw. But this man had an entirely different look to him: wide eyes fringed with long lashes, a full mouth, and a jaw carved in a fine, unblemished line. And while Reginald was well known for his elaborate periwigs, even while traveling, it was this manās real hair which tumbled darkly around his shoulders as he scrambled to his knees.
It gleamed like silk in the moonlight.
āStop,ā Peregrine ordered coldly, his pistol still raised.
The man stopped, his face tilted toward Peregrine. There was no doubt now that Peregrine had gotten a better look. While the duke was in his forties, this man couldnāt be more than twenty-five.
āPlease,ā the man breathed. āPlease. I have moneyāthereās money in thereāā
āWeāll be taking that as it is,ā Peregrine interrupted. āWho are you, and why are you in the Darthamās coach?ā
āIām S-SandyāAlexander. Alexander Dartham.ā The young man swallowed, and then breathed again, āPlease. Please.ā
An unpleasant stab of empathy followed the manās pleas. How often had Peregrine heard those words on a battlefield? Or after the smoke had settled, when all they could do for the wounded was hold them down and hope the surgeon could amputate quickly?
But then Peregrine remembered his sister and the little niece or nephew he never got to meet. He remembered the cold graves of his mother and brother.
Likely they had pleaded too.
Heart once again hardened, he stared down at Alexander Dartham. Heād heard of the dukeās younger brotherāa notorious rakehell who gambled and swived his way through London. They said no man or woman was safe from his charms, and Peregrine reluctantly admitted to himself that he could see why. Alexander was very beautiful, and on his knees like this . . . also dangerously stirring.
āWhere is the duke?ā Peregrine demanded, tamping down the flare of heat he felt looking at the brother of his enemy. āHeās supposed to be passing through here.ā
āHe took a horse and rode to Far Hope,ā Alexander said. āThis morning. He was worried about being any later than he already was to receive his guests. Please. Donāt. I can give you anything you want. Anything.ā
āNo, you cannot,ā Peregrine informed him.
No one could bring back the dead.
One of the thieves relieved Lyd on coachman duty. She climbed down and came to stand next to Peregrine. āYou should kill him,ā she said bluntly. āHasnāt it been your design to destroy them all anyway?ā
It had beenāalthough he hadnāt intended to kill anyone aside from Reginald. After the dukeās death, the plan went, he would rob the dukeās widow and the new duke of everything that could be carried off, and then he would burn Far Hope to the ground.
And then what, he didnāt know. All his careful preparations ended with Far Hope in embers. Maybe heād retire.
Maybe heād keep roaming the roads until he was inevitably caught and even more inevitably hanged.
But this was an unexpected difficulty. If he let this younger Dartham live, then Alexander would tell Reginald that he was being sought by a highwayman, not for money, but for murder. Peregrineās opportunities for revenge would shrink furtherānot to mention that Reginald would no doubt make sure Peregrine was hunted by the law more than he already was.
Which would beā¦inconvenient.
Peregrine looked back at the young lord, his pistol steady in front of the manās face. He hadnāt killed anyone since the war, and even then, the battles had been volleys of smoke and mud and screams, utter chaos, impossible to tell who heād killed or if his musket had struck anything at all.
Never had he killed someone like thisāin stillness and in quiet, with them unarmed and helpless in front of him.
But his sister had died in stillness and in quiet too, she and her unborn child, and Peregrine didnāt know what else to live for if it wasnāt avenging her death, along with the deaths of his mother and brother. Why not start here?
Why not make Reginald Dartham feel part of what Peregrine had felt when heād lost his entire family?
He curled his finger around the trigger.