He neared Briarview’s forested acreage, preparing to jump Cordelier over the stream that looped around it. He leaned low over the stallion’s dark mane just as a tangle of rotten, broken boards rushed by on the water. Screams pierced the wind. Colin lurched upright in the saddle, prompting Cordelier to bounce to a stop. Colin pricked his ears, and another desperate cry sent Cordelier rearing up on hind legs, his front hooves thrashing.
Colin’s blood ran cold. The old footbridge. With a tap of his heels he and Cordelier set off at a gallop.
In less than a minute he came upon a half-submerged flurry of dark skirts and white petticoats; a pair of hands groped frantically at the air. Holly’s desperate face appeared briefly in the foaming waters. The current closed over her, flipped her around, and thrust her back up. All Colin could see of her now were glistening, streaming ribbons of red hair. His heart rocketed into his throat. Oh, God . . . oh, God.
“Holly!” he shouted, “I’m coming!”
He turned Cordelier again and urged him to a full-out gallop along the bank of the stream. As he went, Colin slid free of the stirrups and slung a leg over the stallion’s neck so that both his feet dangled toward the water. Holding his breath, he waited until he rode up even with Holly, and then passed her by several long paces. In a few more yards the watercourse would narrow slightly—enough, he prayed, for what he intended.
A tightening of the reins slowed Cordelier to a canter. Colin mentally counted to three, then propelled himself from the saddle, hitting the bank with a force that clacked his teeth together. Using the momentum, he slid down into the water. Submerged chest deep, he fought past the chill and battled the current to reach the middle of the stream.
His arms outstretched and his feet braced as solidly as possible against the rocky streambed, he waited as swirling fabric, streaming hair, and Holly’s white, terrified face rushed closer. She hit him with an impact that knocked the breath from his lungs. His feet threatened to slip, his legs to swing out from under him. He closed his arms around her and she went limp against him, her own arms hanging slack, her legs tangling with his. The water clawed at her saturated skirts, almost prying her loose from his arms.
Clutching her tighter, he called on all the strength he possessed to hug her to his chest. He sidestepped toward the far bank, where the overhanging branches of a willow tree skimmed the current. Limbs stiff with cold and muscles aching from the exertion, he fought his way closer to the tree and chanced lifting one arm from around her. Reaching out, he gripped a branch and hauled himself and Holly out of the water and onto the muddy bank.
Her eyes closed, her body wilting against the ground, she showed no signs of consciousness. On his knees beside her, he swept the sodden snarls of hair from her cheeks and cupped her face in his hands. “Holly. Oh, God . . . please . . .”
He rubbed her cheeks, hands, and arms in a desperate attempt to force the blood to flow. Hunching over her, he slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her against him, pressing his lips to her forehead, to her mouth. Then he remembered something vital. As her sister had once done for Simon after an experiment had nearly killed him, he opened her mouth and breathed into her, forcing air in and out of her lungs. All the while he prayed and raged and promised God anything . . . anything. . . .
A sputtering cough sent dizzying relief all through him. Her eyelids fluttered, and a racking cough shook her frame. Over and over she coughed, cringing from the force, her shoulders wrenching.
Twisting away from him, she doubled over, her face hanging low over the ground as she gagged and purged the stream water from her lungs. Helpless to provide relief, Colin thrust an arm across the front of her shoulders to support her while with his other hand he gathered her hair and held it back from her face. Each convulsion echoed through him until the tension flowed from her body.
“What . . . happened?” Her head hanging, her voice came as a tremulous flutter. Wiping shaky fingers across her lips, she gazed feebly up at him. Her image blurred before his eyes, obscured by tears he couldn’t prevent. He felt her cold palm against his cheek. “You saved me.”
Then her hand fell away and she collapsed against him in a dead faint.
Holly’s lungs ached. Her head throbbed, and the voices that reached her ears sounded muffled and waterlogged. What were they saying? She wanted to ask, but her tongue adhered thick and heavy to the roof of her mouth. Her throat rasped for a drink . . . yet somehow the very idea sent a bolt of terror through her, as if at the mere parting of her lips, water would gush in and drown her.
Panic nipping at her consciousness, she tried to open her eyes. They felt weighted . . . as heavy as lead. . . . The world tipped, and she slid once more into blackness.
“You’ve been here for hours,” a woman’s voice murmured, but how many minutes or hours later, Holly didn’t know. “Stretch your legs. I’ll stay with her.”
Through a swarm of images, Holly swam back toward consciousness. The voice, a feminine whisper close to her ear, peeled back the layers of panic that had engulfed her for an unknown length of time. Though not entirely familiar, she had the strongest sense she had heard the voice before, that it signified safety, acceptance. She struggled to remember where . . . when she had heard it. . . .
“I can’t leave her until I know she’s well, Grandmother.”
That voice she knew. Colin. Her heart turned over, setting off a cascade of memories. She was in Devonshire, at his family’s estate of Briarview. She went out on the moor, saw him riding. . . .
The din of the ponies’ hooves echoed inside her, a near physical beat thrumming through her limbs, her ribs. She had seen Colin racing among the ancient breed, his fierce resolve interwoven with their feral instincts to form a single purpose, an audacious challenge to the power of the moor.
Then the angry faces of the villagers swamped all thoughts of him. They had chased her, forcing her to run . . . run to the swollen banks of the stream. Her only refuge had been the footbridge, old and rickety. The creaking of the boards reverberated in her mind, then the splintering, the snapping . . . and she was falling, falling. . . .
Her eyes flew open and she sprang upright, only to have her momentum checked by a solid wall in front of her. No, not quite solid. A pair of arms closed around her and her cheek met a ripple of muscle covered by the smooth sheen of a silken waistcoat.
Her breath clawed at her dry throat; she coughed and coughed, unable to quell the urge until a pair of aged hands held a cup to her lips. “Little sips,” the woman’s voice crooned. “There, there. Not too much at once. That’s right. There’s a good girl.”
Cool water trickled sweetly into her mouth, vanquishing the torturous urge to cough. Still half-dazed, she relaxed her cheek against Colin’s shoulder.
“Easy now, Holly. It’s all right. You’re all right.” Colin’s voice sifted gently through her hair. Though a thousand questions prodded, she leaned against him, grateful. . . .
To be alive. Good heavens. She would have been dead—drowned—if not for him.
She lifted her chin, her gaze meeting the reassuring stubble that lined his angular jaw. “Thank you . . .” Her voice sputtered and died in her throat.
“Shhh.” He rubbed her back gently.
“Here, try some of this, dear.” The soft, wrinkled hands reappeared in her vision, this time holding a snifter filled with liquid fire. The strong aroma of brandy stung her nose, but she took a small sip.
The liquor immediately spread its restorative heat through her veins. Little by little she assessed her condition. Someone—the duchess’s lady’s maid, Holly presumed—had stripped away her sodden clothing and replaced it with a warm flannel chemise. Her hair, though dry now, streamed in tangles down her back.
A hand stroked lightly down those tangles. Holly half turned to discover the dowager duchess perched on the other side of the bed from Colin, the snifter balanced on her thigh. Her clear blue eyes, so like Colin’s, twinkled with myriad sentiments: relief, gladness
, affection . . . and something . . . a secret to which only the woman was privy, but which Holly suspected amused her no end.
“Well, now,” Maria Ashworth said, “didn’t I say the lass would soon be right as rain? She’s got pluck. I saw it the first time I laid eyes on her.” The creases across her brow deepened. “Though perhaps rain is not the proper reference in this instance. One would not suppose our Miss Sutherland would wish to think of rain or water for quite some time to come.”
“Grandmother . . .” Colin said in an admonishing tone.
A laugh bubbled to Holly’s lips. Hilarity rose up inside her, unstoppable, the laughter pouring out until her belly shook and her eyes teared and her throat ran dry again. The duchess’s softer laughter blended with hers. From the corner of her eyes, Holly saw Colin looking on uncertainly until a smile tugged at his lips. His deep bellows rang out, until anyone passing by the doorway would have thought surely three lunatics had escaped their asylum.
When she could laugh no more for the stitch in her side, Holly pressed a hand to her belly and gasped for air. “I haven’t the slightest notion how any of this could be funny.” She met the duchess’s eye and found herself chuckling again.
The woman reached out a hand to Holly’s cheek. “Better to laugh than to cry, yes?”
Holly couldn’t argue with that. “How long did I sleep?” she asked.
Colin glanced at the little pendulum clock ticking on the dresser. “About three hours.”
His grandmother leaned to whisper in her ear, “He never left your side. Not once.”
“Grandmama . . .”
“He was terribly worried,” the older woman went on, “but all is well now. You seem little the worse for wear.”
“All is not well, Grandmama. Far from it.”
Colin’s return to gravity reminded Holly of the many troubles still facing them. The colt was missing. They’d been shot at. And now an incensed band of villagers wanted retribution for misfortunes they blamed on Colin’s family. Her eyes went wide. He still didn’t know about that.
“What happened,” she said, “there was a reason . . .”
“I should have warned you about that bridge.” Colin’s eyes darkened with an emotion approaching anger, though whether at her or himself she couldn’t say.
She shook her head. “Mr. Hockley warned me about the stream. I knew better than to cross onto the moor.”
“Then why on earth would you do such a dangerous thing in weather such as this?” His expression turned so severe she drew back against the pillows. “Why would you cross that broken old bridge?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, if you’d only calm yourself and listen.”
“She is right, Colin. You should calm yourself.”
His eyebrows knotting, he glanced from Holly to his grandmother and back again. “I am perfectly calm.” The white lines of tension on either side of his nose belied that claim, a fact not missed by the duchess, who winked at Holly. Colin reached for her hand. “Tell me what happened.”
He absently stroked his fingertips across her palm, and for a moment she could focus on nothing else. Another memory flashed, that of his lips pressed to hers, not tenderly in a kiss but desperately, distractedly. She remembered a shrieking pain in her lungs, an inability to draw even the smallest breath . . . sinking closer and closer to death.
He had breathed life back into her. There on the bank of the stream, he had brought her back to the world. Dragged her back when she might almost willingly have succumbed to the waters . . . he had claimed her, as a warrior claims what is his. . . .
Tears of gratitude and sheer awe burned the backs of her eyes, and her throat tightened around a powerful ache. She swallowed and returned the pressure of his hand. “I’d been out walking on the moor and . . . I saw you out there . . . riding with the ponies. I’d strayed too far and lost sight of the house. As I tried to make my way back I came upon a group of villagers. They were ragged . . . and angry. They talked of pounding on your door and demanding answers about the colt. When they saw me, they remembered me from yesterday when we passed through the village. They began to chase me—”
She broke off as a ghost of panic chilled her and left her shaking. Colin rubbed her hands between his own. His grandmother patted her shoulder.
“Damn them.” His features hardened. “They won’t get away with this. How did you manage to outrun them?”
“I didn’t. Someone else . . . appeared. A gentleman, judging by his clothing.”
Colin’s grip on her hands tightened. “What do you mean, he appeared?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see where he came from and I’d never seen him before. At least I don’t think I have. He ordered the villagers to abandon their pursuit.”
“This man, did he speak to you?” The duchess frowned. “Did he identify himself?”
She shook her head. “I hardly lingered long enough to give him the chance. Something about him . . .”
“Yes?” Colin placed his fingertips beneath her chin, and steady courage flowed into her.
“He frightened me,” she said evenly, calmly. “Those shots on the road the other day—”
“Shots?” The duchess turned an alarmed expression on her grandson. “Colin, you didn’t mention this.”
“Not now, Grandmother. What else, Holly?”
“You remember the night of the ball.”
“The man who accosted you in the corridor.”
“Good gracious!”
Holly clasped the woman’s hand. “It’s quite all right, Your Grace. Nothing untoward happened then, either. But now I’m wondering . . .” She turned back to Colin, meeting his gaze with her own deadly serious one. “Could this stranger be the same, and is there a connection between these incidents?”
Colin rode Cordelier at a sedate walk to the end of the driveway. He might just as easily have walked the short distance from the house, but he desired the air of authority that sitting atop his stallion would lend him.
Given the situation, he needed every advantage he could muster.
A group of representatives from the village, some twelve or so strong, milled outside the gates. They had gathered nearly an hour ago, but he’d put off the confrontation long enough to assure himself Holly had suffered no lasting injuries from her accident.
Before he’d gone halfway down the drive, their petulant voices reached him. He eyed each man sharply, wondering if any of them had been part of the gang that had chased Holly. If he discovered any of them had been . . .
He forced himself to remain calm, at least to put up the appearance of composure. That the delegation of village men waited peaceably at the base of the drive, rather than storming past to threaten those within the house, was something to be grateful for. But he didn’t know how much longer his good fortune would continue.
Or whether one of them might brandish a weapon and take aim. Would they stop to consider that the person most worthy of their enmity was at this moment on his way to some sunny island halfway across the world?
Damn you, and damn you again, Father.
The morning’s drizzle had abated, but the leaden skies and moist breezes promised more rain to come. Colin prayed for inclement weather to chase the villagers back to their homes and keep them there. For now, however, he’d enjoy no such luck. He collected his thoughts as Cordelier brought him inevitably to the end of the drive.
“Where is it?” Ed Harper, the greengrocer, flourished a formidable-looking fist. He’d been among the first yesterday to throw up his clenched hand and shout. Regarding his bulldog face and massive shoulders, Colin narrowed his eyes. Holly had described just such a man among the rapscallions this morning.
He tightened his own fist around the reins. “The colt will be returned to Briarview,” he said, raising his voice against a gust of wind. “You have my word on it.”
“That’s no answer.” Harper strode forward, and Cordelier lurched.
“I’ve had another lamb d
ie, two days ago.” A sallow-skinned man hovered slightly behind Harper and spoke with considerably less force. Colin recognized him as Jon Darby, a tenant farmer. The man held his cap between his hands and met Colin’s gaze only briefly before ducking his head in a show of customary if reluctant deference. “That makes three this month.”
Colin raised his chin. “I’ll come out and see to your sheep. Most likely there’s some blight in your feed that’s affecting the ewes’ milk.”
“And where’d the blight come from? I wonder.” Harper shoved his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and dug in his heels.
“From the curse,” murmured another among them. Ken Fanning, who ran the smithy, glanced around at the others for encouragement. “My boy was nearly blinded last week when the coal door of the forge burst open with a spray o’ embers.”
At those words, sparks showered behind Colin’s eyes and a scream burst from his memories. There had been another forge once, but what happened there had not been an accident. Bryce had eluded his Latin tutor yet again and was happily assisting Masterfield Park’s smithy when their father had found him. Bryce had always preferred physical pursuits to academic, but that day Thaddeus had decided to teach his son a lesson. To deter him from ever shirking his schoolroom duties again, he’d gripped the seven-year-old child’s hands, twisted them around, and held them over the heat of the smithy’s fire until the skin had begun to scorch . . . until Bryce would bear scars for the rest of his life and his hands would be so weakened that he’d never be able to handle a high-spirited Thoroughbred again.
Shutting his eyes, Colin forced the memory away and focused on the matter confronting him now. “An accident,” he said to Ken Fanning. “Had anyone checked the latch?” He raised his gaze to encompass all of them. “Such things happen in every village across England.”
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