Exile for Dreamers, Page 2

  Phobos and Tromos left off attacking the fallen man and raced to face the three new riders. One of the henchmen was able to steer wide and galloped past them. He ran to the fallen man and dismounted to help, but the injured man shoved him away and pointed in my direction. “Idiot. Leave me. Get her.”

  The new arrival squinted at me from under the brim of his sailor’s cap. “That ’un? Nah. When Herself arrived in England, I heared her clear as day. We was to nab the redhead. That ’un ain’t red.” He swiped an arm across his mouth. “An’ she has a knife.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Georgie. She was still too far away from the house. Still too easily caught. The wolves held the other two riders at bay, but how long would that last?

  “Imbécile! La fille rousse is halfway to the house. La comtesse also promised extra francs if we did in the Marquis from next door. But I don’t see a lord strolling by, do you?”

  His cohort glanced toward Ravencross Manor as if he was actually expected to answer the question. Had they not seen Lord Ravencross galloping in our direction? Perhaps not, since he was riding along the north field beyond the trees. But if they should turn and look behind them … My stomach knotted even tighter. There was no time to consider what might happen if they did. I stepped back, placing myself in a better position to block these scoundrels’ path to Georgie.

  The injured man spit on the ground at his companion’s feet. “Think, you sorry excuse for a dog’s bottom. There’ll be no silver for us, and hell to pay if we come back empty-handed. Are you afraid of a little girl?”

  “Hoi!” the other man objected. “That’s no little girl—not holding a dagger like that, she’s not.”

  I continued edging back, trying to gain some distance.

  The one giving the orders cursed under his breath and limped to his companion’s saddlebag. He drew out a pistol and thrust it at the other man. “Take it. Go! Bring one of those girls back alive. I don’t care which.”

  The lackey advanced on me, a burlap sack tucked in his belt and the pistol waving unsteadily in front of him.

  Tromos yipped as one of the riders lashed at her with his riding crop and shouted to the other rider, who was struggling with his rearing mount. “Cut ’em down.”

  “Leave her be,” I shouted. She was pregnant. My pulse quickened and my free hand fisted in anger. I wanted to protect Tromos, but I couldn’t. My focus snapped back to the man fast approaching me.

  “Y-you…” He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down nervously. “Put down that knife.”

  Perhaps I should’ve called the dogs to help me, but that would have freed the two riders to run down Georgie and all would be lost. I couldn’t let them take her, not knowing how Lady Daneska enjoyed torturing her captives. I had to stop them. I wasn’t precisely certain how I would do it, but I knew from my training that every move I made now would count toward her life or death.

  Time did a peculiar thing. All the clocks in the world must have stopped as I shifted the knife in my palm and changed my hold in preparation to throw.

  The gunman striding toward me seemed to slow down. Birds stopped flapping their wings and hung flightless in the air. The wolves’ deep guttural barks and snarls faded to nothing. Even the horses’ fearful neighing and rearing stopped. Their tails lay stretched out and frozen on the wind. It was as if I possessed all the time in the world to aim and send the blade speeding to its mark.

  I threw. The knife streaked in a blaze of silver through the gray morning air and plunged into the gunman’s chest. I lunged to the left in case his gun went off. It didn’t. He glanced down at his chest, stunned, staring at the hilt of my dagger as if a bee had stung him rather than six inches of steel.

  “Mon Dieu,” he said, dragging out each vowel, and then he dropped the gun. It tumbled slowly from his fingers, struck the grass, bounced, and fired.

  The blast of his pistol awakened the world and set time spinning again. The sun peeked up from the horizon, a crimson fireball trying to burn through the morning haze.

  The wolves turned to see what had happened. The other riders fought with their frightened horses, who shied and kicked in a desperate attempt to retreat to the woods.

  Across the park, Ravencross bent over Zeus’s neck and broke into so swift a gallop it was as if he were racing God himself.

  Everything was going to go very wrong in the next few seconds if I didn’t do something quickly. I needed my knife. I rushed to the fallen gunman, kicked the pistol farther away from him, and wrenched my dagger out of his chest. His eyes opened wide when the blade slid free.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. He wouldn’t die, surely not from that one wound. Or so I thought, until blood spurted out of the vacant gash, and when his mouth moved in a wordless plea, thick wine-colored liquid bubbled out.

  I winced, swallowing back the sickness rising in my own throat.

  With shaking hands, I wiped the blade on the grass. There was no time for the paralyzing horror to what I’d done. It was nothing new, I told myself. How many deaths had I lived through in my dreams? Hundreds. And yet this felt different. Vastly different. Always in my dreams, I was the one who died, experiencing deaths yet to come, or deaths that might be. But this man was real. He wasn’t an elusive dream. He lay dying because of me, his blood seeping into the ground because of me. My dagger had cut his life in two.

  I heard hooves pounding the earth, coming in my direction. I heard Phobos and Tromos leap back into action. I even heard the leader’s limping gait as he ran toward me, shouting in French, telling his men to grab me. Even so, I couldn’t stop wiping the death stain from my dagger.

  I began to shake. At least, I think I did. I remember a shudder coursing through me until I heard Gabriel call my name.

  “Tess!” His voice seemed to echo to me from far across the field, as if we were in one of the smugglers’ caves that riddled the coastline beneath Stranje House. “Tess!” It rang so forcefully in my ears that it seemed to reach in and shake my very soul. I glanced up just in time to see Gabriel leap Zeus over one of the hedgerows in the north field.

  He was coming.

  I blinked slowly, letting the sound of him calling my name wash over me. He shouted again, this time with such urgency I realized that if we were to save Georgiana, it was time for me to stand and prepare for another fight.

  The roiling sickness inside me ebbed and I tried to stand. But as I rose, a grain sack descended over my head and shoulders. I struggled, swinging my fist and thrusting my blade out, but struck only air.

  Something hard cracked against my skull. A roar exploded in my ears.

  This was no dream. No vision. No nightmare from which I would suddenly awaken. This time, the bursts of light spinning in my head were real. And the devouring blackness would not wait.

  Two

  ALIVE

  I awoke from that dark oblivion to the unbearable certainty that I’d failed.

  There was little doubt that by now the men on horseback would have run Georgie down and captured her. And Lord Ravencross—

  I swallowed against the dread swelling in my throat. What chance had he stood? One man against three. Three men with weapons. The curs will have killed or wounded him. The tightness in my throat swelled into a dry, prickly knot.

  I was barely able to wheeze air into and out of my lungs. My skull throbbed as if the demons of hell were hammering against it. I’d been slung across the front of a saddle with the gunnysack still cinched over my head, and we were galloping hard. My arms dangled against the side of the horse, and I fought an overwhelming urge to retch.

  My thoughts whirled from despair to rage and circled back again, to stomach-churning anguish. I couldn’t stop picturing Georgie captured by Daneska’s brigands and Lord Ravencross wounded or dead. And I hung there like useless baggage, unable to help either of them. How could I help them now, when I didn’t even know where I was? What could I do?

  Nothing.

  Nothing, except surrender
to Miss Stranje’s training.

  I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to slam my mind shut against the terrifying thoughts of what might be happening to Georgie and Ravencross. If there was even a remote chance left for me to help them, I needed to think clearly. I could almost hear Madame Cho barking at me to regulate my breathing, and Miss Stranje instructing the five of us girls. “In a sticky situation remain calm.” She would clap her hands marking each point. “Order your thoughts. Assess the situation. Once you know the wisest course, take swift and sure action.” She’d repeated that litany to us so many times it had almost become a song in my head.

  There was nothing left to do—except obey. So I made a cold, unfeeling list of my circumstances and weighed the options.

  My first inclination was to yank the stinking burlap sack off my head so I could see more than this reedy view of road and horse. Except that would alert the rider that I was awake, and in so doing I could expect another whack on my head.

  Next, I considered shoving myself off the horse. Although falling from this angle, while galloping this fast, would most likely pull me directly under the horse’s hooves. I might be able to grab my abductor’s leg and yank him out of the saddle with me. Then we would both tumble under the horse, but at least that would injure him, too, and I might get free.

  The horse.

  I should’ve thought of that sooner.

  “Arhosiadau,” I whispered, which meant “halt” in the old language. She tensed, lurched, and took a quick misstep before regaining her gait. Skittish. This was another rented horse, uneasy and fearful. I thought of a way to spook her, except at that very moment I heard a shout accompanied by the steadily increasing rhythm of another horse galloping not far behind us.

  “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

  That voice froze me in place. Ravencross?

  No. It couldn’t be him.

  He shouted again. It was him. Giving chase. Like the skittish mare, my pulse pitched forward and took several missteps before regaining her gait. How? How had Gabriel escaped the other men?

  My kidnapper did not stop. Instead, he whipped our horse into an even faster run. I doubted Lord Ravencross would shoot. I wished to heaven he would, but he wouldn’t. Not at this bruising pace. He’d figure the bullet might stray and hit me, or the horse. Even if he shot my captor, he’d assume, and rightly so, that the riderless horse would bolt with me slung over the saddle.

  Time to act.

  My hand dangled near the sensitive area where the horse’s neck met her chest. I dug in my fingernails, moving them like tiny claws. The horse, thinking it was a rat or some other vermin that might bite her, shied and nearly threw us. I slipped my other hand under the girth strap and held tight, thrusting my nails into her neck again.

  A gunshot startled me and the horse. Ravencross must have fired after all. The terrified mare reared, stood on her hind legs, and pawed the air. I prayed to God she wouldn’t fall backward.

  With me draped across the front on the saddle, the rider had no pommel to grab, nothing to hold. I felt him scrabbling and clutching at my back, except I soared up with him. But I had flung both arms around the horse’s neck and hung on for dear life, kicking my feet back. The saddle jerked as the rider flew off. My legs airborne, I scissored them so that when we crashed back to earth I landed straddling the saddle. My frightened steed took off in a frantic gallop. I clung to her neck, the bag still over my head.

  The poor animal smelled of fear—sugary sweat and urine. “Tawelu,” I called to her in the ancient Welsh tongue. I wrapped my arms around her neck and spoke calming words to silence her fear. “Gwroldeb. Areulder.” She still ran, but not quite as fast.

  I heard Ravencross and Zeus gaining on us. Blind inside the sack, no stirrups, barely able to stay astride, I remained hunched over the pommel, holding on to her neck. The reins whipped useless in the wind. All I had were words. Melodic old words of peace. Tangnefedd. Ancient word songs about brave horses. She slowed to a jarring trot and snorted in answer.

  “Good girl,” I crooned. “Boddhaus. I’m proud of you.” She tossed her head and allowed Zeus to come alongside.

  An arm encircled my waist. I didn’t need eyes to know his touch, to recognize his gentle strength. Ravencross. I let go, trusted him to swoop me away. As soon as he pulled me onto his saddle, I yanked that stinking hood off my head. We circled away from the runaway horse and slowed to a stop. He lowered me to the ground and dismounted.

  “Tess,” he murmured, his hands scouring my head and shoulders as if he couldn’t believe I was in one piece. “Tess,” he said again, this time with a sigh, as if saying it relieved some great strain. Then he frowned. “You’ve a lump the size of London on your head. You could’ve been killed.”

  “What of you, my lord? You’re bleeding.” The fabric just below his collarbone had been sliced clean through, and a gaping wound was staining his white shirt a rich scarlet.

  He kept staring at me. “It’s nothing.”

  Nothing?

  I shuddered, remembering the pain of that wound, having felt it earlier that morning. Nothing? It had been as if someone shoved a red-hot torch into my chest. That’s what the dreams often do, they make me live through another’s pain for a short time. For what reason or to what purpose I cannot fathom. I know only that the firstborn women in my family must bear this curse. Perhaps we are being punished.

  I clutched his sleeve, in sudden terror of what else may have come to pass in that waking dream. “Georgie? Did they capture her?”

  He squinted as if he didn’t understand. “That’s what they were after, then? Her.”

  “Yes. Yes. Is she safe? Did she make it to the house?”

  “Aye. I believe so. I saw her running toward Miss Stranje. Your headmistress came out of the house brandishing a pistol. She managed to shoot one of the blighters and reload. That’s how I came by this.” He glanced down at the now empty gun tucked into his belt.

  “You fought with them, didn’t you? And they stabbed you. How did you get away?” I wanted to lay my hand over the wound and somehow make all the pain he must be feeling disappear. If only I were magic.

  “How did I—” He ignored my question and raked back his dark curls. “You baffle me, Tess. In London, you fought beside me, but not like any girl I’ve ever known. And then, when you leapt onto Captain Grey’s ship, I didn’t know if you would…” Gabriel clamped his lips tight and took a step back.

  “If I would what?”

  He shook his head and looked annoyed. But I could see the hurt beneath it.

  “I had to do it. I had to jump.” I parroted the words Georgie had used to console me earlier. They didn’t seem to comfort him any more than they had me. And that raised my ire. Not that my ire isn’t usually pretty close to the surface. “Aside from that, I had nothing to fear by trying. Had I missed my mark I would’ve simply swum to shore. I am a perfectly able swimmer.”

  “Of course. You would be, wouldn’t you,” he muttered.

  “I’m sorry if that displeases you, my lord.”

  “No, what displeases me is that without a thought for yourself, or a care for what I might fe—” He stopped short and rammed his fingers in his hair as he always does when he is completely flustered.

  I’d hurt him that night. It grieved me to think it, but there was no denying what was plainly written in his face.

  Part of what I liked about Ravencross was that, at least to me, he often seemed more beast than man. Never more so than he did that morning. He reminded me of our huge wolf-dogs, proud, strong, and magnificent. Even his hair was dark and wild like theirs. Yet, despite his powerful build, he remained guarded and cautious and wary as a wolf.

  “It’s highly irregular, that’s what it is.” His boyish confusion vanished, and he flexed his jaw. “And now this.” He gestured at the runaway mare, as if I ought to have done something different. “I don’t know what to think about you.”

  If he were Phobos or Tromos, I would have ruffled his hai
r and challenged him to a race to goad him out of his wariness. Instead, I tilted my head to the side as if accepting a pretty compliment. “It’s enough to know you think of me, my lord.”

  His brows drew together in a frown, but I saw the corners of his eyes soften, hinting that underneath he was pleased that I’d flirted with him. “Vixen,” he said, as if that would humble me. “What I think is that you are the most troublesome female in all of Christendom.”

  “Such flattery, my lord. You’ll turn my head.”

  He paled, and I realized he’d lost too much blood.

  “Gabriel?” I took hold of his arm.

  He looked down at my fingers on his sleeve and his lips curved in the merest suggestion of a smile. Except it wasn’t a smile I liked. It was weary, too weary, and reeked of relief and surrender.

  He looked at me oddly, the way a lover might if he were bidding farewell. “I’m tempted to kiss you and ruin your reputation altogether.”

  He was teasing. The almighty unsmiling Lord Ravencross was teasing.

  A distraction.

  My heart faltered. It tumbled weightless through the air as surely as if I’d been thrown from the horse. Gabriel would tease in such a way only if his wounds were worse than he let on.

  Much worse.

  I tugged him toward his mount. “Get on Zeus. Now.”

  “You first. We can both…” Without another word he gave up arguing and raised his foot into the stirrup, almost too spent to heave himself into the saddle, but he managed. Short of breath, he held out his good arm. “I’ll pull you up.”

  He sounded so weak, so un-Gabriel-like. I fought back the tears that were stupidly trying to water my eyes. There was no time for that. Instead, I took the hand he bravely offered and swung up behind him, clasping his blood-soaked waist. Thick wetness seeped through my fingers. So much blood. Too much. The coppery smell of it stung my nostrils. I regretted every second I’d wasted talking. We needed to hurry. I clucked my tongue and nudged Zeus forward.