A poor Irish seaman and a beautiful English countess. It was my favorite fairytale.
He always ended the story on their first kiss, but this time, his tone was different. Harder. More determined. “I couldn’t let her get away.”
“You couldn’t?” I leaned back and searched his flinty expression.
“She’s had fourteen years to move on, and she hasn’t.” He lifted me from his lap and stood.
A question wasn’t voiced, but it was there, flickering in his eyes.
“No, she’s not happy.” My heart skipped a beat. “It’s not me that she needs, Father. She needs you.”
“Aye.” He paced along the tree line in his deerskin shoes, each step growing faster and more resolute. “I want you to return to the estate.” His gaze turned to the sea, where the horizon darkened with the approach of dusk. “I’ll come for you tonight. For both of you.”
Exhilaration and confusion tangled through me. “I thought living with a criminal would suck the life out of her?”
“Is she living? Does she smile? I will put life back into her!” He bared his teeth. “By God and the devil, I will spend every last tarnal breath in my body making her happy.”
An overpowering sense of hope welled up in my chest. “I believe you.”
“I love you.” He pulled me against him and lowered his mouth to the top of my head. “I’ve committed a lifetime of crimes and paid dearly for them. Fourteen years without my girls. There is no greater punishment.”
“It ends tonight?”
He released me with a wolfish grin. “Yes, it—”
A deep, threatening growl erupted behind me.
I spun toward the hounds and found them standing, noses pointed toward the shore and hackles up. My father went still, his hand locked tightly around my arm.
The dogs exploded into snapping snarls and took off toward the southern end of the beach. They sprinted around the copse of trees and out of view as their barking rose in volume.
My scalp tingled. I’d never heard such ferocious sounds. “Has Mr. Vane returned?”
“That’s not Charles.” He hauled me toward the horse and lifted me onto the saddle, his voice low and urgent. “Return to the house at once.”
“Father, what is it?”
He untied the reins and removed a sheathed dagger from his belt. “No matter what happens, keep going.” With a grip on my wrist, he wedged the sheath into the sleeve of my gown, concealing it beneath the fabric on my upper arm. “Do not turn back.”
In the distance, the barking grew feral, high-pitched, and terrifying. My belly twisted into knots, and my lungs couldn’t take in enough air beneath the vise of my stays.
“Go!” He slammed a hand onto the horse’s flank, sending me into the woods.
I grabbed the reins and adjusted my balance before twisting to look over my shoulder.
He was gone.
My hands trembled, and a fiery pang stabbed beneath my ribs. I tried to ignore it and focused on controlling the horse.
Until startling, pained cries rent the air.
The cries of a dying dog.
My heart stopped as a second agonized yelp echoed through the forest before fracturing into whimpers. Then silence.
The hounds. Mercy God, what happened to them?
What would happen to my father?
Panic surged, freezing muscles and locking joints. Only my pulse hammered wildly as the horse raced onward, hurdling fallen trees and putting more distance between me and my entire world.
I couldn’t leave him.
No matter what happens, keep going.
I trusted him implicitly and had never disobeyed him. Never.
My jaw clenched. He’d told me once to trust my instinct, and right now it was screaming at me to go back.
I pulled on the reins, and with a savage howl, I turned the horse about.
How many minutes had passed? How many kilometers? Too damned many, and I experienced every one of them in breathless agony as I galloped back to my father.
Nearing the beach, I approached slowly. The sound of the crashing surf reached my ears, bringing with it the din of voices. Stern, commanding voices.
Dozens of them.
My heart thundered toward hysteria as I nudged the horse closer, quietly picking along the brushwood and squinting through the trees.
When the sea came into view, I slapped a hand over my mouth.
Redcoats.
They swarmed the shore, their distinctive regimental facings gleaming white against the darkening sky. Armed with rifles, some mounted horses. Others invaded on foot as they overtook my father with fists and guns and sheer numbers.
There were too many to count, and he went down fighting and spitting blood.
Sticky nausea filled in my belly, clotting with fear and helplessness. My lungs ached to contain the wheeze of my breaths, and my fingers and toes shook uncontrollably. Why the rest of me refused to move, I couldn’t fathom. I was paralyzed.
When his body fell limp beneath their strikes, they grabbed his arms and lugged him toward a waiting cart. His head lolled between his shoulders. The deerskin coverings on his feet dragged through the sand, and something inside me broke.
His jackboots lay just beyond the tree line, and a few paces from there was his cutlass, the blade sharp, lethal, beckoning.
With visions of rescue and bloodshed in my head, I inched the horse toward my father’s weapon.
Until a twig snapped behind me.
“Benedicta.” The familiar masculine voice sent a chill through my veins.
No, no, no! God damn me and the devil, too!
How would I explain my presence here, sitting astride a stolen mount, while planning an attack on the king’s soldiers? I would be arrested alongside my father, unable to save him.
I swallowed, caught up my breath, and schooled my features into that of a well-bred maiden who would have no association or attachment to Edric Sharp.
Then I turned in the saddle and met the ratlike eyes of the Marquess of Grisdale.
“Lord Grisdale.” My pulse thrashed in my ears as I bowed my head in feigned respect.
“Delighted, Benedicta. And perplexed.” He nudged his steed alongside the one I’d stolen. “I sent the king’s men to search for a horse thief and look what I’ve found.”
I followed his gaze to the uniformed men who were shackling my father’s unconscious body in the cart.
Everything inside me burned to shout, scream, leap for the cutlass, and run it through every soldier who put their hands on him. But I pushed down the rage, the bone-deep terror, and relaxed the muscles in my face.
The brigade marched off the beach with my father in tow, leaving me powerless to stop it. But there would be a trial. I had a day, maybe two, to signal Jade. My father’s loyal crew would assist me in his rescue.
“What have you found, my lord?” My gaze clung to the retreating cart.
“Why, that’s the infamous Edric Sharp.” Bony fingers curled around my upper arm. “And this is my stolen horse.”
“You’re quite right.” I watched the last soldier leave the beach and turned my attention to the marquess.
He was a twiggy stick of a man with a face like day-old death hanging loosely from sharp bones. If his beady brown eyes sat any closer together, they would’ve crossed at the bridge.
He tucked his weak chin into the cravat at his neck as if attempting to hide that hideous feature. A cane dangled by a loop from one of the buttons on his justacorps. No traces of lint flecked the red brocade. Not a mote of dirt on the white stockings over his breeches. Not even a smudge on his buckled shoes.