by Lara Adrian
Isabel shook her head as if to sweep her sinful thoughts away, the same way she must learn to sweep aside her girlish fascination with a man who was little more than pleasant memory to her now.
She was to wed Sebastian of Montborne. She would honor that vow in all ways starting this very moment, she decided as she put away the medallion and shifted in her seat, closing her eyes and settling back against the cushions with a sigh.
She must have nodded off for a while, for she woke with a start when she heard one of her escorts shout an impatient hail to someone ahead on the road.
Felice roused with the sudden bark of command as well. “What is it? Are we finally arrived?” she asked through a groggy yawn.
“We have stopped for some reason,” Isabel answered, peeking out of the curtains.
It was nearly dusk outside, though the encroaching forest made their surroundings seem darker than twilight. The road this far north would be more accurately described as a path, the narrow, ambling trod now deserted save for the ladies and their convoy of attending guards. And a shepherd with his flock, Isabel noted upon closer look. The old man stood about a furlong up the road, directly in the way of the traveling party, his sheep seeming to be hemmed in from the front and back, unwilling or unable to vacate the road.
“Get those beasts out of the road, graybeard, and let us pass,” ordered one of the armed escorts.
The shepherd merely stared, wide-eyed, unspeaking and uncooperative. Isabel wondered if he was deaf, for she could plainly hear the impatience in the knight's voice. She could also hear the jingle of arms and gear; she could sense the nervous anticipation of the horses as their riders waited in wary silence.
Something felt queer about this delay. Something was frightfully wrong here. Isabel tried to lean farther out to get a better look at the situation up ahead.
“Back inside now, my lady,” advised one of the guards in a low, even voice. “There is no cause for concern.”
But there was, Isabel knew it by the schooled calmness in the man's tone. She swallowed hard and sat back as she was told, praying she was only letting her imagination get the best of her. “'Tis nothing, I'm sure,” she told Felice, who was scowling across from her. “A shepherd and his flock have blocked the road. We'll be off as soon as they've gone.”
“I will tell you only once more,” said the leader of the guards to the shepherd. “Clear the road and let us pass.”
“Oh, for pity's sake,” Felice grumbled, loud enough for all to hear. “Trample the imbecile if he won't make way!”
The toe of Isabel's slipper connected sharply with Felice's shin, silencing the woman at the very moment that the true cause of their delay became horrifyingly clear to all. From out of the surrounding trees, an arrow flew. It hit its mark with lethal accuracy, claiming one of the guards and plunging the rest of the traveling party into chaos.
Over the bleating of frightened sheep and the surprised shouts of the guards, Isabel and Felice could only listen in terror as an ambush ensued outside. There was the whoosh of more arrows, the pained cries of the men and horses, and, soon thereafter, the metallic clash of blades. The horses carrying the litter shifted nervously amid the skirmish, making the veiled conveyance sway and lurch frightfully.
“We're being attacked!” Felice wailed, bursting into tears. “Dear God, we're going to die!”
Isabel wanted to calm the woman but there was nothing she could say. Fear robbed her of her own voice. She braced her outflung hands against the framework sides of the shifting litter, struggling to keep a grip on her surroundings as well as her sense of reason. She did not have to see the battle taking place outside to know that unless they took action, all too soon, she and Felice would find themselves thrust into the fray.
“Felice,” she hissed to the screaming young woman. “We can't stay in here and wait for these brigands to find us. We will have to try to escape.”
“Escape?” Felice hiccupped, her eyes wide and filled with tears. “But I'm afraid!”
“So am I. Take my hand and let's jump out the back of the litter.”
Outside on the road, there was a clash of metal on metal, then a man cried out in agony. A horse gave a shrill whinny and sidled into the side of the litter, nearly tipping it.
“Felice,” Isabel whispered fiercely. “We must go now.”
She reached out with one hand, but the sobbing girl would not take it.
“We'll be caught!” she croaked in protest. “We'll never make it!”
“It's our only hope,” Isabel argued, scarcely harnessing the urge to shake Felice out of her mounting hysteria. “We have a good enough chance of escape, but we must go now.”
Felice shook her head and sobbed. “No! I can't go out there, Isabel! Please don't make--”
Stones crunched under heavy boots drawing up beside the litter and cutting short Felice's further whining. Too late to escape their attackers' notice, the sheltering curtain was ripped away like the flimsiest spider's web. It fell to the ground, laying open the litter and revealing the leering, grizzled face of a huge bear of a knight. “Good eve, ladies. Lovely night for a kidnapping, ain't it?”
They both screamed. Holding onto each other and trembling with panic, the two women shrank back as far as they could from the hulking brigand whose grasping, beefy arms reached easily more than halfway inside the narrow conveyance. He swept the small space and caught Felice by the ankle.
“Nooo!” she shrieked, eyes wide with terror as he started to pull her toward him. Felice's dainty hands scrabbled for purchase in the litter, to no avail. “Oh, Isabel, please! Help me!”
Isabel held on to her and tugged with all she had while Felice worked to kick and squirm and twist her way out of the man's clutches. He lost his hold and Felice was suddenly, miraculously, freed. Then, without the slightest warning, she latched onto Isabel's arm and jerked her forward, shoving her at the man.
“Take her, you stinking beast, not me!” she cried, slipping behind a stunned Isabel to make her escape out the other side of the conveyance. Felice tumbled out onto the ground and ran off screaming into the woods.
“Felice!” Isabel cried in horror and stark disbelief. Abandoned and terrified, she struggled against her attacker. Thrust into his arms by Felice's betrayal, Isabel now found herself seized about the shoulders, unable to put up much of a fight as the man began to pull her forward.
“Behave now,” he told her. “We mean ye no harm.”
He dragged her out of the litter and set her feet on the ground, retaining his iron grip on her arms. Isabel stood there and took in the calamity of her traveling party with one quick glance. Her stomach threatened to revolt. Four of the guards and two of their horses were dead, lying where they had fallen in the road, bodies gashed from combat, arrows protruding from blood-soaked points of impact. The remaining two escorts must have taken to the woods, either in pursuit of their attackers or, as Felice had done, out of fear for their lives. Isabel could only guess, and at the moment she did not much care.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the rest of their attackers, armed with swords and crossbows, stepping out onto the road. Some yards away, Isabel spied a hooded figure on horseback dressed all in black. He came out of the woods and paused in the road, staring at the carnage.
Isabel's captor saw him, too. He turned his head and chuckled, hailing the man with a jerk of his chin. “Look here what I found!” he called jovially.
It was all the opportunity Isabel needed.
She stepped forward and brought her knee up as swiftly and as hard as she could. It was a useful tactic she had learned in Lamere's bailey and had all but forgotten in her eight years at the abbey. If her skill was rusty, she was relieved to find that it had lost none of its effect. Her assailant immediately released his grasp on her, clutching instead a part of his own wounded anatomy and dropped to his knees with a curse and a strangled groan.
The leader of the band of rogues, the grim knight in black, sa
w what happened--indeed, he had attempted to warn his man but Isabel's knee had proven faster. Now he gave his horse his spurs, barreling toward her and his sputtering accomplice. “Don't let her get away!” he shouted to the others, his deep voice booming against the silence of the forest.
Heart fluttering with panic, Isabel ducked down and scrambled under the horses and the litter they carried, making her escape in the same direction Felice had fled. She hitched up her skirts and tore off into the woods, panting and breathless with terror, her legs fueled by sheer determination to survive.
Behind her, she could hear the brigands give chase, crashing into the thicket. She could hear their curses and the metallic jangle of their armor, knew they were now equally determined to find her. It was nearly dark. If she could find a hiding place deep enough within the woods, perhaps she could wait them out. Perhaps they would tire of pursuing her and give up.
Or perhaps they would find Felice first and take her instead, she thought with a decidedly un-Christian brand of hope.
Skidding down into a leaf-strewn ravine, Isabel ran along the bottom of the deep gully, searching for anything--a cave, a large rock, a hollow old tree--anything that might serve to conceal her for a while. When nothing availed itself, she simply kept running, plunging deeper and deeper into the ever-darkening forest.
At least she no longer heard evidence that she was being pursued. In fact, the woods had grown quite still with the rising of the moon. Isabel slowed her pace as the ground began to slope upward. She was tired and thirsty; a stitch in her side made it hard to draw more than shallow breaths. She had to rest, she decided, leaning her back against the black trunk of an ancient gnarled oak.
How wise was her plan to flee into the woods? She wondered now. She had no food, no water, no blanket to ward off the night's chill. And if she escaped capture by the men who attacked her on the road, how long could she expect to remain safe from the outlaws and vagabonds who peopled England's dense forests? Would she survive at all? How could she look after little Maura's welfare if she never made it to Montborne?
It was that thought more than any other that spurred Isabel on when exhaustion sought to consume her. Squaring her shoulders with renewed resolve, she pushed away from the tree, prepared to crawl to Montborne if she had to. She took a determined step forward then paused, shocked to find that another large tree now blocked her way.
Except it was not a tree, a fact she realized too late.
It was a man. The leader of her attackers, the knight she had seen in the road, garbed from head to toe in black. Gloved hands fisted on his hips, legs spread shoulder-width apart, he stared down at her from within the deep hood of his mantle. Isabel had to tip her head all the way back just to find his face; all she could make out of his features was the hint of sandy colored hair falling in a wild mane about his shoulders, and his smile, a cruel slash of white in the darkness.
He was a menacing presence, unmoving and grinning like the devil himself.
“Going somewhere, my lady?”
Chapter 3
Griffin had followed the young woman personally from the road, tracking her progress into the wood with the same stealth and patience that a wolf would employ to stalk a hare. Now as she blinked up at him, panting and effectively ensnared, he watched as first fright, then flight, registered in her flashing eyes. Barely a scant heartbeat passed before she freed herself of his gaze to pivot on her heel, intent to bolt in the opposite direction. Griff seized the woman around the waist before she could take the first step.
“Unhand me!” she gasped, the breath whooshing out of her as Griff easily lifted her off her feet.
With her hands pinned at her sides, he dragged the lady to him and proceeded to carry her under his arm like a sack of grain. A rather disagreeable sack of grain, for she made every effort to squirm and buck her way loose. She managed to work one arm free and began pummeling his thigh, a bit too aimlessly for his peace of mind.
“Have a care with that flailing hand of yours, my lady, unless you mean to lose it. You may have left my man wheezing in the road, but I warn you, deliver like to me and you'll find that I will recover much faster and my wrath will be severe.”
Evidently she did not think it prudent to test his threat, all but giving up her fight as he brought her to his waiting mount and pushed her up onto the steed's back. Griff followed quickly behind, settling her into the saddle before him. With one arm wrapped around her slim waist, he then guided his mount back out to the road.
Griff's company of men were working with haste to clear the path of bodies and any other evidence of struggle. All that remained of the caravan now was the tattered litter, its delicate canopied frame smashed, torn pale curtains wafting like ghosts on the night breeze.
“Unhitch the wreck and toss it in the ravine,” Griff instructed the knights. “The horses are of fine enough flesh; round them up and we'll take them with us.”
“Ignoble thieves,” hissed Griff's hostage under her breath.
A nearby female shriek punctuated the lady's cool epithet, drawing Griff's attention over his left shoulder. The second of the women, a disheveled blond in a dirt-stained pink silk gown, was being led none too happily out of the woods by one of Droghallow's soldiers. Her hair, which had no doubt enjoyed a rather impressive coif at the start of her day, now hung limply in her face, a jumbled mess of unraveled braids and dripping beads. She swore an oath as the man pushed her into the road, her unladylike curse so vivid it raised even Griff's brows.
“Take your filthy paws off of me, cur!” she railed, struggling against her captor. “Who do you beasts think you are? By my vow, I shall see you hang for this--all of you!”
Griffin had not been expecting to find two women in the caravan from London. Was this spitting viper the Montborne bride, he wondered? She was bedecked as a princess, with the haughty demeanor to match. A sharp contrast to the quiet beauty seated ramrod straight in the saddle before him.
Of the pair, Griff figured that she, and not her foul-tempered companion, would prove the more cunning quarry. Even now he could feel the coiled tenacity in the lady's slender form, the silent contemplation of her situation, the calculating calm. She had felled Odo easily enough, a man three times her size. Griff did not trust for one moment that her apparent lack of resistance meant anything less than a measured wait for an ideal opportunity to gain her freedom from him.
To let her know she would not be getting that chance, Griff tightened his arm around her waist, pulling her toward him until her spine pressed flush against his chest. She gasped at the contact and tried to arch away, an unwitting move that settled her pert breasts quite nicely on his forearm while her fingers dug into his muscled flesh as if to test the strength of her bonds.
Enjoying the squirming warmth of her body a little more than he likely should be, Griff called a curt order over the top of her veiled head. “Mount up, men. We'll ride for a couple of hours, then make camp for the night before continuing on to our destination.”
They were careful not to use each other's names or mention Droghallow specifically, understanding that the less their captives knew of their abductors, the better. If there was any trouble along the way, Dom had made it clear that he wanted there to be no possibility of linking him to the crime.
Riding to the front of his assembling company of soldiers, Griffin paused beside Odo. The big knight was recovered of his galling injury, even if the glare he slanted his petite assailant belied that his pride still sorely pained him.
“Take the other woman with you on your horse,” Griff instructed, marshaling a chuckle when the guard looked less than eager to mount up with the venomous lady. “Bind her if you like, lieutenant, but don't take your eyes off her for a moment. And beware her fangs, lest you feel their bite.”
They set up camp roughly a league away from the scene of the skirmish, in a forest glen about a half day's ride from Droghallow. They could have pressed on and made the rest of the journey that night, but the men
were tired, as were their fatigued horses. And as for their two hostages, the women had been through quite an ordeal; it seemed of little harm to afford them a few hours' rest.
A fire was built out of fallen timber and dried leaves, providing ample warmth from the autumn chill that permeated the night air. Griffin instructed the women to gather close to the flames, he and Odo taking up a seat next to them, well within reach should either lady think to flee. The blonde's mind seemed more fixed on finding blame for her circumstances and imagining what might befall her than it was attuned to thoughts of escape.
“I cannot believe this is happening to me,” she complained, sniffling as she brushed at the dirt that soiled the torn sleeve of her gown. “This was supposed to be a pleasant journey for me--I was on my way to be wed, for pity's sake!”
“'Twill be all right,” soothed her companion in a discreet but firm tone of voice. “Upsetting yourself will do no good and likely will only serve to amuse these men. Try to be calm.”
“Calm?” choked the blonde. “How can I be calm when I am sitting here alone and helpless, certain to be ravished at any moment by this band of common thieves and rapists!” She turned her ire on Griffin. “You won't get away with this, I promise you! I am very well connected, and fully capable of seeing that you and your men pay for this--with every one of your miserable lives!”
“Is that so?” Griff asked in mild challenge, curious what Dom might be getting him involved in with this scheme. “And how do you aim to do that?”
The shrew's friend shook her head as if to silence her from divulging any useful information to would-be ransomers, but the attempted warning went wholly unheeded.