Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

Three masked men stood the road, flintlocks aimed at the approaching carriage.

“Halt!” commanded the middleman.

The carriage stopped.

“This, sir, is a robbery,” the middleman continued His associates each produced a sack and walked toward the sides of the carriage, “Kindly produce all watches, wallets, jewelry and other valuables and we shall let you pass on your merry way, unharmed.”

A moment of stillness, then, the carriage door opened. Out of the cab like a peacock fanning its feathers in an ostentatious show of opulence, emerged Lady Hilda Winston-Barbier, heiress to the massive Winston Tea Company fortune. She reached a hand out to the nearest highwayman who obliged, offering his assistance as she stepped onto the ground.

She fixed the leader with a demur look, “Jaunty Jack, have you no better carriages to rob than mine?”

Jack grinned behind the black clock covering his face, offering her a flamboyant bow, “No carriage better for robbing in all of England, my lady.”

“Even still” she responded taking a brazen step toward him, “If we continue to meet like this, tongues will wag.”

“Not much to do with the tongues of other people, Madame, beside cut them out.”

Hilda was mere feet away from Jack. She smiled coyly up at him as she removed a mushroom shaped broach from her dress.

“Oh, I could think of a few other things.”

She handed the jewel-encrusted item out to him. Jack reached for the broach, pricking himself on the pin, light enough he hardly noticed.

“Something to remember me by,” she whispered, then turned, “Alright, you heard him, hand it over.”

As the carriage disappeared down the road Jack suddenly felt dizzy. He looked at his finger, which was growing purple near where he was pricked.

That witch, he thought and then collapsed.