Another man crawled out from underneath the wagon. “In there, and put this over you,” he said, pulling a ragged blanket off the bed of it. In French, but in a voice so familiar it resonated in Darcy’s very bones.
Darcy froze in place, peering at the man’s face. It could not be. It was impossible. Utterly, utterly impossible.
But it was. The cleft chin, the sculpted cheekbones, the scar on his brow from a childhood tree-climbing expedition gone wrong, and above all, the lithe body that moved like a hunting tiger. A few more lines on that face he knew as well as his own, but that was all.
Darcy took two clumsy steps forward, barely able to trust his feet. “Jack?” he asked hoarsely. That damned blow to the head! Now he was seeing things that were not there. But it was worth it to catch a glimpse of his brother, even if he was not real.
An incredulous expression Darcy would have recognized anywhere spread over Jack’s face. “Good God, Will, is that you under all those bruises? Damn, but they might have told me! What are you doing here?” He pulled Darcy into a hard embrace.
It was like a knife in Darcy’s half-healed rib, but he did not care. “I know you are dead, but I am glad to see you, anyway. Or am I dead now, too?” Perhaps this was just a dream, and he was actually still in the cell. If only it could be real!
Jack’s brow furrowed, and he reached up to snap his fingers in front of Darcy’s face. “What did they do to you, Will? Wake up! I am alive and so are you.”
He could feel Jack’s arm around him, steadying him. That arm was definitely not his imagination. It was one thing to hear voices or even to see phantoms, but to feel them? “Are you certain?”
Jack released him, shaking his head in disbelief. “They will pay for doing this to you, I swear it.”
“No time for this!” the other man snapped. “Get under that blanket if you value your life. And no English, you fools!”
“Right.” Jack was suddenly all business. “In there, Will. We can speak later.”
Darcy hesitated. “A hand, if you please. My right arm is weak.” He could not possibly swing himself into the high wagon bed without it.
“Damn bastards!” But Jack did not hesitate. He bent down and made his hands into a stirrup for Darcy to step into, and then lifted him in.
“Lie back,” said the other man urgently.
Jack tossed the blanket over him, and then something else landed on top of it – some hay, by the scent and the dust that made him want to sneeze. A moment later the cart creaked into motion.
Darcy lay there, half stunned. If this was a dream, why could he feel the bumps in the road shaking him, his half-healed rib throbbing with each jarring movement?
How could Jack possibly be alive? He had been in the midst of the battle at Salamanca, everyone agreed on that, and the few survivors had been on the very outskirts. And Jack’s ring, his half-melted signet, found on an unrecognizably burned body.
It made no sense. If Jack had indeed survived, why had he never been in touch? It was difficult to get word to England with the blockade, true, but he could have sent a letter to the British consul in Prussia. And what was he doing in the wilds of Alsace?
The coincidence was too great, too preposterous. It must be a trick. Napoleon had successfully impersonated a human all these years. Could a dragon have taken on Jack’s appearance?
No. He knew Jack’s voice, the way his brother threw back his shoulders. It was truly him.
The cart lurched, making him stifle a cry of pain. But Jack was alive, and the wildest, most impossible good fortune had brought them back together.
He had a brother again.
Or had this been just an astonishingly lucky chance? According to Elizabeth, Cerridwen had insisted on traveling to France, and later that they must come to this Nest instead of trying to sneak across the Channel. Cerridwen, with her gift of foresight. Could she have known Jack was here?
He racked his brain for everything he had been told about Cerridwen’s abilities. That she could foresee a disastrous outcome and she made decisions based on whether a particular action would lead toward or away from that end. Nothing about finding missing brothers.
Unless finding Jack was somehow important to preventing the disaster.
They turned onto a different, even bumpier surface. A track of some sort, perhaps? He was bursting with questions for his brother. If they both managed to live through this escape.
They finally rolled to a stop, but he remained motionless. Had they reached safety, or were the soldiers hunting for him? The blanket was yanked away, loose hay floating around him.
Jack’s face grinned down at him. “Come along; we ride from here. You can still ride, I hope?”
“I can manage.” He had never ridden with both reins in one hand, but he would make do. His rib would be a worse problem.
“Good. Let us go; no telling how long that Artifact will keep the soldiers asleep.”
