Dangerous to Hold (26 page)

She patted Charon’s neck. “Let that be a lesson to me,” she said. “It’s never wise to let your horse have its head, especially if that horse is a jumper.”

Charon’s ears twitched as if he were trying to make sense of what Catherine was telling him. Suddenly tossing his head, he whinnied and looked toward the river. A pair of deer came leaping out at them, then veered away toward the castle. There was no time to enjoy the spectacle for hard on the heels of the deer came the crashing sounds of what had startled them. Then the darkness seemed to part and three riders emerged. Catherine’s response was reflex. She curled her hand around the butt of her pistol and withdrew it from the inside pocket of her mantle.

“Who goes there?” A man’s voice.

Not a man’s voice—Marcus’s voice.
There was a moment of stark disbelief, then Catherine pulled on the reins to turn Charon’s head.

Everything seemed to happen at once. A pistol shot rang out, and stones and turf kicked up at Charon’s hooves. The gelding reared up, almost unseating Catherine, then leapt forward when she touched her heels to his flanks. One of the riders tried to intercept them, and Catherine fired a warning shot over his head.

“Kenyon, Harley, spread out,” yelled Marcus.

Instinct took over. Catherine knew that Marcus would win in a straight race. She had to go for the high ground where there were obstacles to get around.

She had to get back to the castle before Marcus recognized her. If she failed, he would know that she was Catalina. Catherine would never have taken the Andalusian out.

She couldn’t reveal her identity, not yet, not until Major Carruthers gave her permission. At the back of her mind, the old doubts began to take shape, electrifying her, and her whole being was possessed with the absolute need to escape from her pursuers.

As Charon hurtled toward the trees, Catherine traced
in her mind the route she had to take. On the north side of the castle, there were cliffs that fell away to a sheer drop. To get round those cliffs, she would pass through woodlands and marsh and steep hills with little cover except for a few stunted trees and patches of broom and berry bushes. Close to the castle, there was a stream with a wooden footbridge across it. Once she crossed that footbridge, she would be safe.

They vaulted a dry stone wall, and in a few leaping bounds gained the cover of the trees. At this point, it wasn’t much of an advantage, for the trees were thin and leafless. The going was rougher here and Catherine was forced to slow Charon’s tearing pace.

They plunged down banks and leapt over ditches and hedges, and ever at her back, Catherine was aware of the thundering clamor of pursuit. It was a wild, reckless ride and at the same time it was intoxicating. Excitement seemed to surge through her bloodstream, heightening all her senses.

A long time later, when she came to the edge of the trees, she reined in. By her reckoning, they had circled the base of the cliffs and were on the other side of the castle. From here, the way wound up through marsh and undergrowth. She took a moment to think out her next move. Before she could urge her mount forward, the night air was severed by the snarl of a predator and the petrified screams of its prey. Catherine cried out. Charon plunged and stamped and bellowed in terror.

“Halt!” Marcus’s voice came from their right. Then, “I have you now.”

The threat of discovery drove Catherine on. They burst from the shelter of the trees like an arrow shot from a bow. Behind them, men cursed and Marcus bellowed out orders. Catherine crouched low in the saddle and clung like a burr. The night and all its shadows hurtled toward them in a confusion of shapes.

A shot from one of their pursuers whizzed over their heads as Charon was vaulting a ditch. He foundered, sending Catherine spinning. She hit the ground with a thud, attempted to rise then fell back in a daze. Charon quickly recovered and took off like a hare. Moments
later, Marcus and his companions went thundering by in a fury of flashing hooves.

She was battered and bruised but otherwise unhurt. Sucking air into her lungs, she rolled to her knees. She didn’t have the strength to pull herself to her feet, so she stayed bowed over, trying to get her breath back.

Night sounds began to filter through the fog in her brain. An owl screeched, a twig snapped, some small creature passed within a few feet of her. After a few minutes she sat back on her heels and tried to get her bearings. She was in a clearing, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet. The inadvertent pun brought a shivery, humorless laugh. Oh God, this wasn’t the moment to give in to hysteria. Besides, as a partisan in Spain, she’d been in worse fixes than this. Partisans didn’t panic. They picked themselves up and went on.

El Grande
had taught her that a soldier always looked first to his weapons. She felt for her pistol, stumbled to her feet, and went limping into the nearest stand of trees. Once there, she sank down in a thicket of juniper and propped her back against a fallen log. Now that she had started to think like a partisan, she felt a little better.

From the inside pocket of her cloak, she removed an oilskin pouch containing steel balls and powder horn. Though her father had shown her how to use a pistol when she’d first arrived in Portugal, it was
El Grande
who had taught her how to reload and fire off three shots a minute. It was a useful skill when facing Napoleon’s crack units. The motions had become second nature to her so that she could reload blindfolded.

She held the pistol and ball in her left hand and poured powder from the horn into the barrel with her right. After inserting the ball, she quickly disengaged the steel rod from under the barrel, rammed the ball home, once, twice, then replaced the ramrod before pulling the cock back with her left thumb. A little powder in the pan was all that was necessary to prime the piece.

She transferred the pistol to her right hand, then stared at it for several long moments. She wasn’t going to
use it on Marcus, of course. It was a defense, a threat to be used as a last resort if they cornered her.

A shiver ran over her, then another. In the desperate run for freedom, it hadn’t occurred to her to wonder why Marcus was out riding so late at night. As she thought about it now each answer that came to mind was more sinister than the last. She tried to force herself to think rationally. He couldn’t have been setting a trap for her because he couldn’t have known she’d go out riding. Besides, he hadn’t known who she was, and he never would if only she could get back to the castle before he did and discovered her missing.

Spurred by that thought, she dragged herself up and began to make her way through the trees. She tried to hurry, but her limbs were stiff and sore. At one point she stumbled and heard something tear, but she didn’t stop to examine her skirts.

Gradually the trees thinned out and she paused beside a stand of mountain ash. At this point, the track plunged down a steep incline to the wooden footbridge that crossed the stream. The stables and kennels were far below her, but it was too dark to see them. Once she crossed the footbridge, she would be within a stone’s throw of the castle walls. After that, it should be clear sailing.

Something, some feeble sound from the depths of the woods carried to her. She tilted her head, listening. The sound came nearer, and finally she recognized it. It was the sound of the hounds baying. Marcus had set the dogs on her trail.

She couldn’t cross the footbridge now. She had to throw the dogs off her scent and there was only one way to do it.

Picking up her skirts, she slithered down the bank toward the stream. Her teeth were chattering even before she plunged into the icy deluge. Water swirled around her knees. Hiking her skirts to her thighs, gasping, she stumbled over pebbles and climbed over boulders as she made her way downstream toward the bridge. She had not gone far when she heard voices and the tread of horses’
hooves. A lunge took her to the shelter of the bridge. Flattening herself against the center post, she clamped her teeth together to stop their chattering.

“What’s ’e doing then, down there?” said a voice that Catherine recognized as belonging to young Harley, one of Marcus’s grooms.

It was Kenyon, Marcus’s head groom, who answered him. “What His Lordship is doing is fetching some of the hounds to track our poacher.”

“Poacher?” Harley made a derisive sound. “That was no poacher. That was Master Penniston in one of ’is drunken binges.”

“Master Penniston would never shoot at his brother.”

“’E might if ’e was drunk. And that was ’is ’orse we caught, wasn’t it?”

The head groom said frigidly, “Can’t you tell one horse from another yet? Sometimes, I think you’ll never amount to anything. That was Master Tristram’s horse. Besides, they told us at the stables that Master Penniston never left the castle tonight. And it’s not our place to question Lord Wrotham. We’re paid to do as we’re told. So let’s get a move on and flush out that bloody poacher so we can get to our beds. He must be here somewhere.”

After what seemed like an endless interval, the riders passed over the bridge and made for the high ground. Catherine couldn’t wait any longer. The pain in her legs was excruciating. She had to get out of the water. She lunged for the bank and flung herself facedown on the hard turf. Her breathing would have betrayed her if she had not muffled her mouth in the suffocating folds of her mantle.

It wasn’t enough to escape detection.

“Who goes there?” The strident demand came from the head groom. When there was no answer, he said, “Harley, go down and see what’s there.”

There was the creak of leather as the groom dismounted. Instinct made Catherine freeze where she lay, facedown, as though she were part of the landscape. When she heard the tread of booted feet, she stopped breathing altogether. The sheer effort of controlling herself
made her tremble in reaction. She knew she was on the verge of panic, and bit down hard on her lip.

Harley let out a bellow of laughter. “So that’s it,” he said. “Bleedin’ Wrotham deer. Just what our poacher is after.”

“What?”

“Deer,” he yelled. Under his breath, he said, “One o’ these days, m’beauties, I’m going to ’ave m’self a nice saddle o’ venison, see if I don’t.”

Catherine didn’t dare raise her head until she heard horses and riders move off. A quick glance around revealed a group of fallow deer drinking from the stream on the far side of the footbridge. When she moved, they raised their heads to look at her. Suddenly, the silence was torn by the baying of the dogs and the deer started up then darted into the trees.

Catherine gathered herself slowly and got to her feet. Her legs were so numb she could hardly hold herself up. Sheer desperation forced her on.

The ivy and saplings that grew densely along the castle walls seemed to reach out and gather her in. She laid her cheek against that hard, granite bulwark as though she were embracing a long-lost lover. Then, with heart pounding, she picked her way carefully downhill toward the south gateway.

Her entrance into the castle bailey was as easy as her exit had been, easier in fact, for she slipped by the porters just as a coachload of musicians were making a noisy exit. Servants were still clearing up in the Great Hall. Snatching up a candle, she sped up the stairs.

When she entered her own chamber, she locked the door and sagged against it. She wasn’t capable of rational thought, not yet. Now that the danger was over, she felt all the physical discomfort of her sodden garments and her aching limbs.

After setting down the candle, she peeled out of her wet clothes and slipped into a lacy nightgown. Her hair was tumbled around her shoulders in a mass of tangles. Brushing it back off her face, she secured it with pins. It was as she was locking her pistol in the bottom drawer of
her excritoire that she sensed something odd. There was a small sound, the merest whisper of cloth on leather. She stiffened, then slowly turned to face the wing chair by the hearth.

“So it was you, Catalina,” said Marcus softly.

For a moment she simply stared, stunned at seeing him in her chamber. He was out hunting with the dogs. She’d heard them. Then how had he come here?

He had risen to his feet and his powerful physique made her feel all the disadvantages of her femininity. His face looked as if it were carved from a block of ice, and there was self-derision mixed with the fury that blazed from his eyes. Though his words were softly spoken, there was never any doubt in her mind that he was dangerously angry.

“Would you believe I left my grooms in charge of the hunt and came here in person simply to assure myself that you were safely tucked in for the night? I didn’t want to take any chances, not when someone shot at me on the bridle path less than an hour ago. It never occurred to me that it was you.” He paused then went on, “It was you, wasn’t it, Catalina?”

He wanted her to protest her innocence. He wanted her to call him every vile name under the sun. Even now, when he was convinced of her guilt, he was willing to hear her out and accept any reasonable explanation she could offer for the sodden and torn riding habit and the pistol she’d dropped into the drawer of her writing table.