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Tabson looked up at the sky and mumbled a complaint that made Myriah raise her eyes heavenward. “Oh dear …”
Clouds had gathered and obscured the moon’s glow, and a low mist had set in and seemed to be getting thicker. They had been on the road for nearly three hours, and Myriah knew their horses would soon need a proper rest.
“We are nearly there, are we not, Tabby?” She pulled a face and added, “This mist is dreadful. I can barely see ten feet in front of m
e.”
“Humph,” agreed her companion.
For the next thirty minutes they continued, the silence punctuated now and then by an unladylike exclamation when Myriah found herself off road and in the thicket. At last a fingerpost loomed up at the crossroad, and she rode up to the narrow white wood.
“Dymchurch three miles—oh, no, Tab,” Myriah exclaimed. “We must have taken the wrong turnoff—we are heading in the wrong direction.”
“Humph. Thought the air a bit too salty. Nothing for it, m’lady. We’ll have to take the coast road. It cuts through the marshlands farther down, and we can follow the river a bit to Northiam.”
“Oh, Tabby, I am so tired. We’ve been traveling for hours—how much longer do you think it’s going to take?”
He scratched his head. “One … maybe two hours if this mist holds up.”
“One or two hours! Why, it must be past two in the morning. Good lord.”
“Best be moving on, m’lady. Dymchurch be no place for lingering at night.”
“Why?” asked Myriah, surprised.
“Because it ain’t!”
She was too weary to press him further and this time allowed him to lead the way.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the mist vanished, and only the dewy grass and moist bushes retained evidence of its earlier visitation. Low, flat, and marshy lands were dark and eerily foreboding in the blackness.
The road was lined by narrow dikes, glistening rills, and shadows that teased Myriah’s imagination. She spurred her horse forward, passing her groom. A chill and strange sensation seized and swept through her. All at once, the eerie feeling made her pull her horse up short, sure that she had heard something …
Tabby halted his horse directly behind her and leaned forward in his saddle. “What be that?”
“Hush,” commanded his mistress, listening intently.
Again the sound came to her ears, and this time she could identify it. A horse—it was the snort of a lone horse. She squinted through the darkness, zeroing in on a clump of evergreens and shaggy bushes. There—she saw it! The animal had shaken its head, and she caught the movement, following the line down the horse’s nose to a dark clump at its hooves.
“Oh no, Tab!” Myriah uttered worriedly, her heart racing.
She couldn’t really see, and yet instinct—a certain ‘feeling’—told her someone lay injured beside the horse. Without another word she closed the distance to the object of her interest, slid off Silkie, and went down on her knees beside a young man.
His face was half-hidden by his arm, and his fair hair was free of the hat that had fallen beside his limp form. She pulled the heavy material of his riding coat away from his chest as she eased him onto his back. Tabby had by this time jumped off his old roan and was leaning over both her and the unconscious stranger. “He is hurt,” she told him.
“I see that, m’lady—must have had a bad fall.”
However, in an attempt to give the man some air by loosening his garments, Myriah’s hand had come in contact with something warm and sticky. Horrified, she pulled her hand away. “Oh … oh, no … Tab … it’s blood …”
Her groom knelt beside the unconscious stranger and examined him. In short order he found the wound through which the man seemed to be losing his life’s blood; it was located in the young man’s upper left arm.
“Tabby, I’ll have to make a tourniquet. Fetch some water from the dike.” She tore off a length of her muslin underskirt and handed it to him. When the groom returned, he placed the cool, wet cloth on the man’s forehead while Myriah tore another strip of cloth, saying fretfully, “Oh, I do hope I can remember the knack of it. When Sir Thomas took a bullet last hunting season a tourniquet saved his life until the doctor was fetched, and I watched how it was done. Do hold his head up, Tabby … that’s it,” she said, slipping the material ’round his biceps above the wound.
“Now, Tabby, we’ll need some of that heathenish brew you call whisky.” She saw that he was about to deny the possession of any such thing and added, “’Tis not the time to tell me round tales. You have not been my dearest Tab all these years without my knowing you. Now do get it, Tab.”
The groom grumbled heartily but a moment later produced a bottle of the questionable libation, which he put to the young man’s pale lips. The fiery liquid proved to be potent indeed, for the lad coughed fitfully, and his eyes fluttered open. His lips parted, but he said nothing as he stared up into Myriah’s face. Again the whisky was sent down his throat; again he coughed and squinted at her.
Myriah watched as he attempted to focus. He whispered hazily, “Flaming beauty …”
