Why isn’t Mara with them?
“He took them!” Momma yells as I vault off my horse and storm up the steps. “He took Mara and Emmaline!”
A ringing buzzes in my ears as my vision turns spotty. Or maybe it’s the raindrops. Someone shakes me.
“…hear me? They’re gone!”
By the time I suck in a huge breath and come back to myself, Jed’s come up and has a careful hand to Dove’s belly. A sharp, aching agony pierces my chest. Where’smywife and child?
“Who?” I rasp, grabbing hold of Momma’s shoulders more to anchor myself than to reassure her. “Who took them?”
“That man! That man with the gloves she’s been worried about!” Momma lifts a shaky wrist to show us marks left by rope burn. “If I’d had the gun closer, I’d have shot his damn head off before he could snatch up Emmaline. He even kicked Patches when he tried to protect us.”
“No!” I bellow, whirling around to look at the long, empty drive where he must have taken off with them. Bile burns the back of my throat when I imagine how terrified she must be. I’d promised her I’d keep them safe. Told her time and again that she didn’t have to worry about him now that she was with me.
Fucking son of a bitch Blackwood, invading the safe home I made for her.
No…I’m the fucking son of a bitch.
I failed her. Both of them.
Pop squeezes my shoulder. “Keep your head straight,son. Dalton’s gonna stay with your mother and Dove until we get them back.” His jawline sets like flint. “And wewillget them back home where they belong.”
He’s right. I close my eyes and push the dread aside, letting cold rage fill me from head to toe. When my eyes open again, Jed’s there holding out my shotgun and another shell. “Pretty sure you’ll only need one, but here’s another just in case. I’ve got the rope.”
With a grim word of thanks, I load it and stare out towards the wet stretch of darkening horizon as another rumble of thunder travels across. “Hold on, Mara. I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER 27
MARA
This is wrong.
Wrong wrong wrong.
Surely my mind is playing tricks and I’m not truly on Montgomery Blackwood’s horse—trying my utmost best not to make contact with the man himself seated in front of me—as he spirits me and Emmaline away from my home.
Away from the women who took me in as their own daughter and sister.
Away from my husband, fighting a fire that was no doubt created to serve as a distraction.
But the swell of tears and the black smoke that tickles my throat tell me I’m wide awake in a living nightmare. I try to pick Warren out of the scurrying specks of people for one last glimpse, but he’s too far away and my eyes are too blurry. He can’t see us either, not this far out. He kissed me for the last time—no, itcan’tbe for the last time—and he doesn’t even know it. Neither of us did. A silent sob bubbles up from the agonizing pain that cinches around my heart like barbed wire. He’s losing us as he’s fighting so hard to save his land. And even if I didn’t have the threatof Montgomery hurting Emmaline if I called out, Warren wouldn’t be able to hear me or get to us in time.
My baby and I are trapped.
Maybe Eleanor or Dove can get loose, and then…I don’t even know what they can do until the fire is under control. Everything happened in such a blur. When the door to the house burst open, Montgomery was the very last person I expected to see. Before any of us understood who he was or why he was in my house, he’d lunged for my baby, kicked a snarling Patches viciously in the side when he’d tried to guard us, and forced me to tie the women’s hands behind them.
There was nothing I could do…not when he held the most precious piece of my heart in one evil hand and a revolver in the other. His cruel smirk told me he knew my hands were bound just as tightly as the women’s as he forced me to call a growling Patches off. If Emmaline had been safely tucked away and it was just me, maybe I could have tried getting close enough to stab him with the knitting needles. But no matter how many times I replay the scene in my head, the outcome is always the same.
My arms ache for my baby, but she’s hidden in Montgomery’s fancy black overcoat. He’d covered her in case we passed anyone, but so far it’s just been us on this lonely stretch of road. Her cries have tapered off into little hiccups of misery that slice my soul, but at least she’s still breathing and not smothered by his coat. I can only hope that she never remembers this when she grows up. “Please…please let me hold her.”
He ignores me, but Emmaline’s cries start up again when she hears me. I fight back more tears upon hearing her distress. Why did I say anything? The man separating us has no heart. Something I know better than most. A tinyfoot pokes out from his coattail, and I wrap my hand around it, hoping she recognizes my touch.Momma’s here, my darling. Everything’s going to be all right.
It has to be.
In less than a year, I’m almost in the same situation I was in when I was pregnant and bouncing around in a wagon with Dove and Abner. Am I so weak that I can’t do anything to save us now? Even Dove—small and soft-spoken as she was—fought to get back to her husband because she was carrying his child.
My husband is there,she’d said.My baby’s here. We need him.Now her words echo inside my head like a hymn’s refrain.
