He had her heart. She had his. They depended on each other because they had no one else and the rest of the world had forsaken them. Captain said so.
She believed him.
From across the fire, in the flickering orange glow, the young stranger unwound his makeshift bandage. Pink, swollen knuckles. Bloody teeth marks. Merrylad had never hurt anyone in his life until yesterday.
She hadn’t either.
But she wanted to hurt this man. She wanted to say something, do something, that would force him to set her free. How could this happen to her? What would she do? What if Captain never came and she was dragged to this Monbury Manor and—
“I suppose you are quite proud of this.” His voice was not unkind, but the smile curving his lips seemed more sardonic than anything else. He retied the knot on his bandage. “But then again, it is not as if you asked to be kidnapped, I suppose.”
“Why did my father not come?”
“What?”
“If this lord you speak of is truly my father, why has he not come for me himself?”
“He could not find you.”
“Then how have you?”
He pulled off his navy tailcoat, shook off the dust, and walked around the fire’s edge. Then he stood above her. Held her eyes. Outstretched the coat. “The night grows cold. Put it on.”
She told herself to deny the coat. Or anything else he said or offered or touched.
But in the end, she pulled the heavy tailcoat around her shoulders and wished to heaven it could scare away the chill inside her soul. If only she were back at the Lady’s Throne. Or falling back into the pages of a book. Or stirring the steaming kettle at the cottage’s stone hearth, with Merrylad at her feet and the branch outside tapping the window.
She didn’t want to cry. She wouldn’t. Captain wouldn’t want her to. But even though she crammed her eyes shut, tears pushed past her eyelids.
“Goodnight, Miss Gillingham.”
Her chest ached with the hurt and confusion those words inflicted. Because it almost seemed as if she’d heard the words before.
A noise, faint and quiet. One he shouldn’t have noticed—probably wouldn’t have—if the pain in his hand had not kept him in and out of sleep.
Felton sat upright. He must have been out for longer than he realized, because last time he was awake, the fire was still burning and crackling. Now it was only embers.
He couldn’t see a thing.
Again, a rustling sound stabbed the silence. Like footsteps or—
His horse snorted, then the animal broke into a gallop and shot past him in the darkness.
Felton scrambled to his feet. “Stop!” Blast her, the little vixen. He groped for his flintlock pistol and darted after her. “Stop!”
She was too far ahead of him. He’d never catch her, and she’d never hear him.
He aimed upward, fired.
The gunshot boomed across the quiet trees, leaving the scent of gunpowder swirling around his face and watering his eyes.
Another snort, this time louder, followed by the stampede of hooves on ground.
And a scream.
Felton sprinted into the blackness. If anything happened to her, if she’d fallen, there would be no redeeming himself. Or his father. The whispers and speculations would only be worse until—
He spotted movement in the corner of his eye. A hobbling shadow.
