Authors: Alexa Egan
One more layer complete. One less chance for him to see the trembling in her knees or notice the flush of her skin. He’d think it was on his account and he was vain enough already. “Have you arranged for the coach—”
“No coach. Ordering the horses harnessed would give us away. They’re not fools. It’s shank’s mare for now.”
“We can’t walk to Scotland.”
“Not if you keep chattering on, we can’t.” He swung back around as she struggled with her gown. Crossed the room in three ground-eating strides to take the collar of her dress in his hands.
“You said you were a gentleman,” she gasped.
“This isn’t a ravishment, Miss Hawthorne. I’m fastening your buttons.”
“Oh,” she muttered, her face growing as hot as the rest of her body.
“Unless . . .” He drew out the word, leaning forward. He was so close she could smell the scent of him and feel the tension smoldering just under his skin.
She jumped and spun, nearly knocking him in the face with the top of her head. “What of Corey’s henchmen?”
“They can get their own women.”
“You’re mad.”
He grinned, the gleam of it positively fiendish. “You’re only now realizing that?” He shrugged. “Perhaps when the dogs aren’t howling at the door and we can take our time.”
Her gaze swept up to his face, but he’d already turned to swing his saddlebag over his shoulder, his face lost in shadow, and she couldn’t read his expression nor tell from his tone whether he was joking.
The passage was dark, save for a shuttered lamp at the top of the stairs, though every second the light increased. Soon it would be dawn and impossible to slip away unnoticed. She hoisted her satchel more firmly on her shoulder and started for the stairs, but David restrained her. “Not that way. We use the kitchen stairs and the gate leading into the alley. Once we reach the road, we’ll cut into the wood and travel east and south a bit. That should throw them off.”
The wood. The road south. It was a risk, but an acceptable risk. “We’re not walking to Scotland.”
“So it would seem. You do realize we’re in a bit of a hurry.”
“No, I mean we don’t need to walk anywhere. We can hide from Branston
and
travel to Scotland at the same time.”
He cocked a head, his eyes sharp and bright as knives. “Do tell.”
She took his hand. It was warm and felt far too perfect fitted against her own. That scared her and she would have pulled away, but he tightened his grip, trapping her beside him.
She swallowed down the flutters in her chest, gave a deep breath, and said, “Follow me.”
* * *
Sam Oakham was enormous. He towered over David, muscles bulging, fists like hammers. He scowled out from behind a thick, wiry beard and lowered bushy brows and stood with legs wide and shoulders braced in a pose meant to intimidate. No doubt, most people cowered before this shambling mountain. David stood his ground, stepping closer to Callista and spreading his fingers to touch the small of her back, as if marking her as his own.
The man’s eyes narrowed in understanding, and his scowl deepened. “Why should I? What’s in it for me?”
David felt a shiver race up Callista’s spine before she stiffened, her sharp chin lifting. “I can pay my way. You don’t have a fortune-teller, do you?”
Oakham tugged at his beard. “We had Old Polly and her crystals, but she died winter before last.”
“Then I’ll take her place. Any coins I collect are yours in exchange for our bed and board.”
“I don’t know . . .” Oakham hedged, though David saw an avaricious gleam light his expression. From the ramshackle look of the wagons and the scrawniness of the mules, Oakham could use any moneymaking leg up he could acquire.
The sun hung tangled within the eastern woods, throwing long morning shadows across the churned field of drying mud and crushed grass. Three days ago the wide meadow and the fields surrounding would have been clogged with stalls and booths. Now all that was left of the army of peddlers, drovers, farmers, musicians, acrobats, puppetmasters, quacks, and freaks
who’d collected for the sheep fair were four gaudy wagons, each blazoned with
Oakham’s Follies
in particularly repellent shades of crimson and green.
“Please. I need your help.” Callista paused. “We were friends once, Sam, you and I.”
Oakham turned his head and spit. “We were never friends, Cally girl. I wanted you for my wife.”
A failed suitor? This was Callista’s idea of salvation? David wished she’d made mention of the situation before he’d introduced themselves as lovers fleeing north for a hasty illicit marriage. Not that she’d liked the idea very much, but it was the first story that had popped into his head.
“You knew Branston would never agree,” she explained.
Oakham snorted his disdain. “That simpering brother of yours never scared me. And had you favored my suit, I’d have shown that little pea-wit what for and married you anyway.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Sam. I never meant to.”
He continued to scowl down on them like a pirate eyeing up his next plank walker. This plan had disaster written all over it, but with Corey’s minions watching the main roads, there were few better alternatives. Alone, David would have melted into the countryside like a phantom, leaving them chasing their own tails. And why he hadn’t done just that, he still didn’t know. He’d registered the danger, and his first instinct had been to wake Callista and get the hell out. Upon seeing her in a scanty nightgown, tousled and heavy-lidded with sleep, his second instinct had been to climb in bed beside her and take his chances.
Then he recalled her violent way with a valise and his first instinct won.
“You think
he’s
going to marry you?” Oakham interrupted David’s train of thought with a jerk of his bearded chin and another spit. “More like bed you and bruise you and fill your belly with his brat before he takes his leave. I know his sort. That’s what his kind do.”
It was David’s turn to stiffen. “Watch your step. My kind doesn’t tolerate insult. And my sort is like to prove it by thrashing you to within an inch of your life.”
Callista backed up, her foot coming down hard on his instep in painful warning. “It’s good of you to worry over me, Sam, but there’s no need. David loves . . .” He felt her stumble over the lie, her shoulders tense. “David loves me.”
Oakham’s ham fists flexed as he took a menacing step forward. “You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you, pretty boy? But I know you for what you truly are, a weak-kneed lickspittle that will take Cally’s maidenhead for sport and laugh about it later with your mates round your poncy drawing rooms.”
“Sam! Stop it! It’s not true!” Callista scolded, her face scarlet.
“If you know what I am,” David snarled, “you’ll know I could rip your head off and shove it up your ass with one hand tied behind my back. My mates would find that hilarious.”
“You are not helping, David,” Callista snapped.
No? It was helping him tremendously. For the first time in days, he felt a lessening of the tension eating away at his nerves. As if now that his rage had found a target, it no longer sought to consume him. “Oakham started it,” he said.
“Are you five years old?” she groused. “What kind of excuse is that?”
“One hand, pretty boy?” Oakham jeered. “Let’s see you test that mettle.” His gaze shot sparks, his body quivering with fury.
“Any time, any place, old man.”
Callista grabbed his arm. “We need his help, David.”
He shook her off. “I’m tired of running like a rabbit. Oakham will learn the wolf doesn’t turn his back on a fight.”
“The wolf is trying to get me to Scotland, not kill himself,” she hissed.
“He has to hit me to kill m—”
Oakham’s first blow nearly took off David’s head. Only a split second’s warning kept his teeth in his mouth. Even so, the blow clipped his chin, sending him lurching backward. He recovered his balance, gathered his strength, and plunged forward, landing a vicious crack to Oakham’s jaw, another brutal punch to his stomach. Oakham laughed, blood streaming from his nose down over his beard to drip on his vest. Then he launched himself at David, and the vicious scrum began in earnest.
Back and forth they struggled, matching blow for blow until David’s right eye had swelled shut and Oakham was smiling through a broken front tooth, blood spattering his clothes. Callista’s shouts were drowned out by the drumming of David’s heart. His attention was all for his adversary. On keeping his feet in the mud. On judging where the next blow would come from and on pushing forward when the advantage was his.
By now a small crowd had gathered to watch and shout encouragement. David doubled his efforts, his feet always moving, his body darting and sliding in and out of Oakham’s reach. The giant lunged, his arm reaching out with an enormous swipe that would have knocked a smaller man—or a slower one—into the dust. David used Oakham’s momentum to slide under his guard and land him a sickening fist to his kidneys, knocking the bastard to his knees. He followed it up immediately with a second hit that sent Oakham reeling onto his back.
“What’s going on?” A woman’s voice broke through the ringing in David’s ears. “Samuel Oakham, have you taken leave of your senses?”
David blinked, trying to wipe the sweat and blood from his eyes, his gaze drawn to the furious woman striding toward them. A moment’s lapse, but long enough for someone to toss Oakham a dagger.
The man caught the blade and, with a flip of his wrist, immediately hurled it at David, who intuitively lunged to the left as it passed. Ha! Missed him.
He’d barely regained his breath and his balance when Oakham bulled into his midsection and knocked David flat into the dirt, the wind driven from his lungs, his ribs grating up into his spine. He fought to breathe, but Oakham gave him no time, his attack coming fast and furious.
A normal human would have begged for mercy or been broken under the unceasing violence.
The wolf did not beg.
Nor did it surrender.
Rage boiled up from the corners of his soul; rage and brutality and a desire to rend his enemy limb from
limb until victory was assured. Muscles tightened, and his blood ran hot and fast through his veins. As his aspect fought to break free, his vision narrowed, time stretching, pain receding, his mind aflame. Oakham became Beskin. And this time David would finish what he started. He would kill the man who’d taken his life from him with fire and sword and left him with nothing but a slow, excruciating death, exiled from his own kind.
With a savage cry ripping up through his throat and a twist and a shift of his weight, David slammed Oakham facedown in the dirt, bending his arm so far behind him that he could feel Oakham’s tendons grinding and bones creaking. “Mother of All, I’m going to enjoy killing you, Beskin, you son of a bastard.”
“There won’t be any killing this morning.” A cold blade touched David just beneath his chin. The prick of it shocked him back into himself, and the wolf fled as if it had never been, leaving him shaky and sick.
“Nan? I’ll not have you interfere,” Oakham gasped.
Oakham, David remembered . . . not Beskin. This was not the enforcer struggling against a quick snap of the neck. David had come close to committing murder, blind to all but his own vengeance. Was this what he’d come to? Is this how far he’d fallen in the years since his sentencing? The wolf was his aspect; he wore its shape and possessed its soul. But it did not control him.
He was not the monster the Other labeled him—yet.
“I’m saving your life, you stupid git,” the woman scoffed.
Oakham spat, but the woman’s blade held firm and David rose slowly to his feet, pulled back from the brink by the veriest hairsbreadth.
Callista tried to lead him away from the crowd, but he stood with his hands on his knees as he sucked in air, hoping to calm his raw nerves. The woman knelt by Oakham, her long black hair caught up in a scarf, her stomach distended in late pregnancy.
“You should thank me, Nan,” Oakham whined as she helped him to his feet. “One less girl will have her heart broken by the likes of pretty boy here.”
“That’s for Cally to decide. It’s her heart.” She focused her ire on David. “And you—I know my brother has the thick skull of a dumb bear, but you? What’s your excuse?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Cally, you can put your things in the wagon there. We’ll share what we have in return for your help, and we can always use another strong back for the heavy lifting.”
David felt blood seeping down his collar where the girl’s blade had broken the skin.
“Thank you, Nan. I can’t tell you how grateful we are,” Callista answered.
Nan’s hand curved unconsciously around her swollen belly, her contemptuous gaze leveled on David. “I told Sam it was your business, but you take care, Cally.” She lifted her knife. “If this fellow hurts you, I just might finish what I started.”
* * *
“Hold still.”
David flinched as Callista dabbed at the cut above his eye. “It hurts, damn it.”
“That’s because you’re not holding still,” she answered impatiently.
Callista had dragged him away from the wagons, following a narrow track down a hill and into the wooded copse. They walked until the only sounds that met the ear were birdsong and the chuckle of a lazy creek. David had allowed himself to be led, but she knew he remained on edge. She felt the coiled tension in his body as he knelt, the hard set of his jaw beneath her fingers as she angled his head and pushed the hair back from his forehead to better attend to the long, ugly gash.
If Nancy Oakham hadn’t interfered, how far would the fight between the men have gone? David had come away with a few cuts and bruises, but Sam, whose mastery of knife and pistol was dwarfed only by his prowess with fists, had stumbled like a drunkard to his wagon, shaking his shaggy head as if unsure how he’d ended in the dirt at a pretty London boy’s mercy.
Callista could have told him.
She had seen the moment when David had become more than a man and less than completely human. She’d stood transfixed as the mask was peeled away to reveal the dangerous Imnada soul beneath the human exterior. Animal bloodlust burned hot and cruel in his steel gaze, his movements too quick for Sam to follow, his strength too great for Sam to withstand.