The Stolen Brides 02 -His Forbidden Touch (22 page)

He crushed her close, shutting his eyes,
burying his face in her hair. And knew it was not duty that filled
him with gratitude and protectiveness and concern. It was Ciara
herself. Not
Princess
Ciara, but simply Ciara.

It was a long moment before he managed to
lift his head, release her long enough to cut them both free of the
ropes that had saved their lives. “You will freeze without your
cloak. I have to get you to—”

A glint of silver at the top of the slope
cut off his sentence and his breath.

For a second, he thought his mind was
playing tricks. But then he saw it again. And this time there was
no mistaking what it was: a shield.

Held in the hand of a mounted warrior who
rode into view at the opening of the pass far above. Joined a
moment later by three others.

They paused there only an instant before all
four began galloping down the hillside.

“Dear God!” Ciara cried. “Who—”

“Rebels.” Royce’s first instinct was to
stand and fight. Rip them apart with his bare hands.

But he had to save Ciara. Pulling her to her
feet, he started toward his destrier.

And remembered only then that Anteros was
lame.

They had no chance of escape.

C
iara stared at the
four horsemen pounding down the slope toward them, her mouth dry
with fear, her head spinning. “But how do you know they are rebels?
Mayhap they mean us no harm. They might merely wish to offer
help—”

“They have already tried to kill us,
milady.” Royce threw down his pickax and the length of rope still
looped over his shoulder. “There is no time to explain.”

He grabbed his pack of supplies from the
ground and his crossbow from the saddle that lay a few paces away,
shoved both into her arms, then snatched up his shield.

“What are you doing?” she asked in
confusion, struggling to balance the bulky pack and the crossbow.
“How can we hope to fend them off—”

“I do not intend to fend them off.” He took
her by the arm, looked back once at Anteros with deep regret, then
turned and ran toward the saplings that edged the cliff.

“I do not understand,” she panted,
breathless as she tried to keep up, his grip giving her no choice.
“And what about Hera?” She could hear the puppy howling. “Where
is—”

“Safely in her basket. She will have to stay
behind.” He raced through the trees, parallel to the cliff, until
they reached a clear area beyond that dipped steeply down the
mountainside, into an enormous valley.

“Royce, we cannot escape on foot!”

“Nay, we cannot.” He threw his shield onto
the snow. “But we can escape another way.”

Realizing his intent, she almost dropped her
armful of goods. “Are you
mad?
”

“Possibly.”

She did not find that the least bit
reassuring.

He grabbed the crossbow from her and slung
it over his back by its leather strap. “But I have done this before
and lived to tell the tale.” Plucking the sack from her hands, he
glanced back at the horsemen galloping toward them, adding under
his breath, “Though I was somewhat smaller then. And I had no
passenger.”

She gaped at him. He ripped open the pack,
seized a pair of knives and a pouch of coins, tossed the rest to
the ground. Shoving the knives into his boots and the pouch into
his ruined tunic, he gestured toward the shield. “Get on, Ciara.
Now!”

She had no chance to protest. Heart
hammering, she jumped on as he took a running start, pushing the
scrap of metal before him like a sled. All she could do was trust
him—and pray they did not break their necks.

After a few steps, he leaped on behind her,
landing so hard he almost knocked them both off the shield. The
speeding bit of metal whirled around in a circle.

And suddenly they went flying down the
hillside, so fast the mountain became a blur around them.

She had to bite her bottom lip to hold in a
scream. Royce’s arms locked about her waist as the scrape of steel
against ice filled her ears. The wind tearing at her hair and face
felt like a thousand tiny needles. She grabbed Royce and hung on
for dear life—or however many minutes might be left of her
life.

They could not hope to guide their makeshift
sled in a particular direction. They could only hold on to each
other, at the mercy of whatever the mountain would do with them.
Her stomach lurched upward as the earth fell away beneath them.
They flew over the snow, picking up speed, falling at a sharper and
sharper angle. Sailing straight toward the bottom of the valley as
fast as an arrow shot from a bow.

A scream rose in her throat. She could not
hold it in any longer. But even the echo of her voice was left
behind as they sped toward whatever fate awaited them below.

***

‘Twas a scent that awakened her. A piquant,
familiar scent. Sage. Rosemary. Sweet basil. Dried herbs, some part
of her mind supplied.

Ciara lifted her lashes, groaning softly at
the soreness that wracked her muscles. As she opened her eyes, she
found herself surrounded by darkness, lying on her back in rushes
that had been sprinkled with fragrant herbs. She was stretched out
on a floor. In a chamber of some sort.

She blinked in confusion and her vision
slowly adjusted, allowing her to make out interlaced ropes and a
mattress just beyond the tip of her nose. She was lying under a
bed. And she could hear the crackle of a fire not far away.

Where in the world was she?

And what was she doing under the bed?

Shivering, she tried to remember what had
happened after her and Royce’s wild ride had come to an abrupt end
on the valley floor. Their landing had been cushioned by deep
snowdrifts rather than trees or rocks. She recalled being grateful
for that.

And she remembered thinking that she might
have
preferred
a quick death to what had come next: they had
been forced to trudge through the snow with no cloaks to protect
them from the weather. They had walked for hours, up one hillside
and down the next, struggling through drifts, climbing over
boulders, even sloshing through an icy stream for a great distance
to conceal their tracks.

Royce had insisted on changing direction
several times, intent on confusing the rebels pursuing them. And
she had followed him without a word of complaint—even after the sun
had set and night made the air dangerously, numbingly frigid—until
she had literally dropped, unable to take another step.

The last thing she remembered was Royce
picking her up and carrying her, murmuring words of concern in a
voice that had sounded deep, soft. She must have fallen asleep in
his arms.

And now she was here.

But where, exactly, was here?

And where was Royce?

Teeth chattering, she reached out and
cautiously lifted the sheet that hung all the way to the floor,
peering out at her surroundings.

It was a small, neat chamber, no more than
ten paces wide and ten paces long, dark but for a low fire that
burned in a rough-hewn stone hearth, a few feet away. She could
also make out a table, a stool.

But she was clearly alone. Worry gnawed at
her.

Until she glanced the other way and saw
Royce’s crossbow and shield, propped in a corner—the metal dented
and scratched from their harrowing flight down the hillside.

Exhaling slowly in relief, she pushed out
from under the bed, biting back a moan. Every inch of her body
ached, and the icy cold had penetrated to her very bones. Scooting
away from the bed, she sat up, winced, and quickly lifted her hands
from the rushes. Even her palms hurt, scraped raw by the rope she
had had to climb.

Trembling at the memory, she stared down at
her reddened hands, overwhelmed by emotions she had been battling
to suppress all afternoon. Terror. Disbelief. Shock. A chaos of
feelings that made beads of perspiration break out on her
forehead.

She had come close to dying today.

More than once.

And she was not yet safe. The men they had
left behind on the mountainside would be searching for them.

For her.

So they could try again to kill her.

She glanced at the door, wishing more than
ever that Royce were here with her. But for some reason, for now,
he had had to leave her alone. A reckless impulse made her want to
go out and look for him, but she knew he would not want her to take
such a risk.

She would have to wait for him here. And she
did not wish to have him find her like this when he came back: a
shaking, petrified heap on the floor. As she rose, she glanced
down, realizing she was barefoot. Royce had taken off her sodden
boots and hose. She noticed them drying in front of the fire.

Which seemed like an excellent idea. Moving
to the small hearth, she crouched down. The heat barely seemed to
penetrate her chilled skin. She started to rub her hands up and
down her arms but instantly stopped, her stinging palms making her
inhale a sharp breath.

Desperate, she turned to look back at the
bed, wondering if it might offer even a threadbare blanket.

And she almost groaned in relief: the bed
was not only piled with thick blankets, but with a
fur
.

She hurried over to pick it up, wrapping it
around her body. It was a large coverlet made of silver-tipped
white fur, and it felt as soft and warm as she imagined Heaven must
feel on a summer day. Huddled within it, she sighed gratefully and
studied her surroundings more closely. The room boasted not only
comfortable furnishings of polished, light-colored pine but also a
large window with shutters.

Unable to resist, she lifted the wooden bar
that locked the shutters from the inside. Pulling one of them open
just a crack, she peeked out to see where she was.

Moonlight illuminated the streets of a town,
a fairly large town from the look of it. Thatch-roofed shops and
homes crowded winding alleyways, many of their windows aglow with
torchlight. Laughter and the music of a harp and pipes danced on
the cold night air.

The door opened behind her.

She spun, gasping.

It was Royce who stepped inside. Bolting the
door behind him, he set aside the armful of items he carried and
strode forward to meet her even as she rushed toward him.

She melted into his embrace, a sob escaping
her throat, the fur sliding from her shoulders.

“Shh.” He held her close, his hand moving up
and down her back, his voice a scant whisper. “I am sorry I had to
leave you for a moment, Ciara. I chose an empty chamber and hid you
here while I went to pay the innkeeper. I did not want anyone to
see you.” He led her over to the window, reached out to close the
shutter she had opened, and dropped the bar into place to lock it.
“It is better that they think I am traveling alone, in case anyone
should come asking questions.”

She nodded, clinging to his tunic, burying
her face against his shoulder, her heart pounding at the thought of
the danger they were in. “Royce, where are—”

“Shh.” He tilted her head up, touched a
finger to her lips. “We must be careful to keep our voices
low.”

She shifted to a barely audible whisper.
“Where are we?”

“In Gavena. At an inn on the outskirts of
the town marketplace.” Releasing her, he bent down to pick up the
fur and wrap it around her. “Gavena is one of three large towns in
this part of the mountains. We have lost our pursuers for now. And
they will not find us easily.”

Ciara did not think that particularly
reassuring.

She did not want the rebels to find them at
all.

Shivering, clutching the fur with both
hands, she followed him as he turned to walk back to the pile of
goods he had brought in. “But who
were
those men chasing
us?” she whispered. “How can you be sure they were rebels? Could
they not have been”— she searched for an innocent
explanation—”concerned fellow travelers who saw our distress and
were coming to help us?”

“Mayhap, milady.” He crouched over a long
object concealed in a length of homespun cloth and began unwrapping
it. “Mayhap it was merely an early spring thaw that started the
avalanche. And a coincidence that we were right in the middle of
the pass when it started.”

She gulped, noticing that the object he was
unwrapping was a sword. He did not look or sound as if he believed
a word he was saying. “You think those men caused the
avalanche.”

He lifted the sword by the hilt, testing its
edge with his thumb, hesitating. “Aye,” he said at last. “Ciara, I
saw something—some
one
—on the peak above us, just before it
began. When you and I were …”

He paused again, leaving the sentence
unfinished.

Setting the blade aside, he picked up
another of the bundles. “But it could have been a coincidence.
There is no way to be certain.”

“Or it could have been another assassination
attempt.” She sank down on a nearby stool, feeling as if her legs
would no longer support her. “An avalanche would have been a
perfect way to kill me—to kill us both. Without leaving a
trace.”

Over his shoulder, he met her gaze. “Aye,
milady,” he said softly, a muscle tightening in his jaw, the
expression in his dark eyes grim. “And the rebels have proven
before that they are clever. I will not underestimate them again.”
He turned away, adding under his breath, “I have made too many
mistakes already.”

Ciara barely heard him, distracted by the
cold knot of dread that had settled in her stomach. Over the last
few days, she had given little thought to those who meant to harm
her, had been too swept up in the new places and people and
experiences she had encountered on their journey, the new feelings
she had enjoyed.

Only now did she understand the peril of
their situation. They were being hunted by men who were
intelligent, ruthless … and mayhap as knowledgeable of these
mountains as Royce was.