She wondered if her brother’s death had been painless. Gaston had died in his sleep, the fools at the Yard said. Natural causes, they said. Made no sense.
Oblivion, sweet and dreamy, threatened to pull her under.
No.
She couldn’t die. Not now. Not when she’d finally come up with a way to salvage her future. She squeezed her thighs, fisted and unfisted her hands, and ordered her blood to flow through her veins.
A pounding sounded in her ears. Rhythmic. Powerful. Her heart, responding to her demands?
Horse hooves. She lifted her head and peered forward. A rider. A rider on a large black beast thundering toward her.
The horseman might be another brigand. She lowered her head. At this point, she didn’t care who he was, so long as he didn’t startle her horse whom she’d finally managed to settle.
The rider reached her, reined in his mount beside hers, and bent his head to search her face.
Their eyes met.
A burst of warmth, swift and fierce, flooded her chest. Lord Sterling Randall, the viscount himself. Though half his face was hidden beneath a mound of cashmere, she’d recognize those obsidian eyes anywhere.
They narrowed on her face in a suspicious glare.
So he recognized her, as well. Probably he’d guessed why she’d come.
She’d laugh in triumph if she could move her lips. Because she’d unearthed Lord Sterling Randall, the Viscount of Stoneford, and the man whom she was almost certain had killed her brother, then fled the city to this horrid place.Holy Island, indeed. More like hell that had frozen over.
In the next instant, a heavy blanket draped over her. Then, without a word, he turned his mount, took her reins from her grasp and started forward.
She didn’t bother to try and wrest them from him. He wanted to take her to his lair? Perfect.
Chapter 2
Lady Annabelle Montrose,here. She’d come in search of him. That much was made abundantly clear by the glittering malice and haughty satisfaction in her blue gaze when it locked briefly with his.
Now, heading for the castle, more by feel than sight, both of their reins gripped in his gloved hands, he wondered how, exactly, she had worked out his location? More to the point, why come at all? And why in bloody hell was she tackling Pilgrim’s Way, alone, at dusk, in the middle of a blizzard?
The leather gloves he wore creaked as his fist tightened on the reins. He slanted a glance toward her to assure himself she hadn’t toppled from the saddle. She hadn’t. Despite her foolhardy move of removing her own protection from the storm in favor of warming her horse, she was clearly an experienced rider. There was something about the control she seemed to have wielded over the animal.
A vicious gust of wind carrying ice and snow slammed them from the east and both horses stumbled. He swallowed a curse.He wanted answers, but he needed to get them to Stoneford Castle, and out of this mess first.
***
The deafening sound of wind receded. A glorious warmth cocooned her. Or rather, a glorious absence of swirling, frigid air.
“Good animal,” she murmured.
Creaking leather, the scent of hay and saddlery, and a slight tinge of horse dung in the air permeated her consciousness. She was in a stable, then. Stoneford’s stable, she supposed. Though everything in her longed to cling to the mare and share her warmth, she forced herself to sit upright in preparation to dismount.
She chirped when two strong hands grasped her by the waist and hoisted her from the saddle in one, seemingly effortless, move.
“See to the horses, Chip. The mare needs tending first.” Lord Randall’s deep timbred voice curled through her as he spoke, primarily because he hadn’t settled her on her feet. Instead he’d scooped her into his arms to hold her high against his chest as he strode.
She might’ve complained, except in another instant, they were outside the stables, crossing a courtyard, she guessed, and she was burying her face into the man’s broad, hard chest.
She jostled in his arms as he climbed—steps, or a ramp of some sort.
And then, thank God, they passed through a doorway into delicious warmth.
And she was once again shivering. Excellent.
