Just the cottage. Cold air. Damp stone. The scent of must and soot and something vaguely like sheep. Rough wool beneath his cheek. The thin, uneven padding of a cot beneath his back.
“Darcy, I swear if you do not wake up, I will steal your pistols and fire a warning shot myself!”
Well,thatwas certainly no dream.
He opened his eyes—and she was leaning over him, her face drawn tight with worry.
“E… Elizabeth?”
Her fingers gripped his arm, her voice barely above breath. “I heard something.”
He blinked. “What—?”
“Outside.” She looked over her shoulder. “It was sharp. Like a snap. A branch, I think. Someone is out there.”
Now fully awake, Darcy shoved upright. His limbs screamed in protest, stiff from too little rest and too much tension. But the fog was gone. The sharp chill of the stone walls. The scent of damp earth. The tremor in Elizabeth’s voice. All of it sharpened his focus.
His eyes swept the room, quick and precise. “Where were you when you heard it?” he whispered, already reaching for his coat and the pistol buried inside.
“By the hearth. I was watching.” Her eyes shone with fear, but her voice was not panicked. She was perfectly rational. “It was nothing at first. Just rustling. But then—it was sharp. Close. I had to crawl halfway across the room to wake you without making noise.”
He was already moving. He grabbed his second pistol from the saddlebag and checked the load. Then he turned to her, his voice low and urgent. “Those two floor boards there are loose. Pull them up and climb under them. Get out of sight and stay there until I come back.”
She bristled. “I amnothiding. What’s the point if they kill you first? They will just come for me, anyway.”
He stared at her.
“I can be useful!” she hissed fiercely.
A muscle in his jaw jumped—but he did not argue. He simply glanced around the room, spotted the iron poker by the hearth, and nodded toward it.
She followed his gaze, caught the meaning, and retrieved the poker silently. It looked absurd in her hand, but her grip was solid.
Darcy gave her one last look—steady, silent, full of the words he did not have time to say—and slipped out the door.
The air was still. The woods thick with early summer green.
He moved in a crouch, eyes scanning the thicket. Each breath was tightly wrapped in control. Every sound sharpened. No wind. No movement. He rounded the edge of the cottage, pistol raised—
—and stopped.
A shape shifted beside the woodpile.
For one breathless moment, he thought it a man. Large, slow-moving, head bowed.
Then it turned, slowly, and stared at him.
It was a sheep.
A bedraggled, matted old ram, wool overgrown and wild as moss. The creature stared back at him with blank, mildly curious eyes, then nosed the ground and returned to its grazing.
Darcy stared. Then let out a breath that nearly unbuckled his knees.
He watched the animal wander off into the trees, shaking its overgrown fleece with a stupid sort of majesty. Then he turned back toward the cottage.
Elizabeth met him at the door, poker still raised.
He holstered the pistol with a sigh. “A sheep,” he said flatly. “Possibly the dumbest one in England.”
