It wasn't a lane at all, but a square enclosing several of the statelier London homes. Pont Street led to the heart of London, including Victoria Station. They took the train when her grandmother decided to close the London house and retreat to the country for the warmer months of the summer. Uncle Ceddy's small stately manor house was near the business district and the Houses of Parliament. An elegant day carriage passed, the occupant nodding a stiff acknowledgment, one man's greeting to another.
"Good day, Lord Chesterton." Elyse fixed a somber expression on her face, one that was faintly disdainful, and nodded a greeting to her grandmother's acquaintance. Then she promptly broke into a giggle after he passed by. He'd have a devil of a time trying to decide just who the "young man” coming from Lady Winslow's drive was.
Instead of following the carriage down Pont Street, she cut across the end of the lane, guiding the bay down an embankment, and across a narrow strip of Regent’s Park. Skirting the perimeter, she urged her horse across the footbridge that spanned the Boating Lake. The Woods bordered the park to the north. Crossing the indefinable barrier that separated the two was like stepping into another world. One moment she was traversing meticulously manicured grass, the next she'd slipped into shaded, lush greenery allowed to grow unrestrained. It was almost primitive, dark, and secretive; and she loved it.
She preferred the overgrown, unkempt trails of the Woods. Footpaths crisscrossed several hundred wooded acres, filled with wild game, rippling creeks, streams, and hidden hollows. Rail fences intersected at unpredictable locations, testing a rider's ability to jump them, relegating those incapable of doing so to taking a long circuitous route back to one of the main trails. The Woods was a magnificent overgrown maze. There were rumored to be three paths that led into it and exited on the far side, but Elyse had been able to find only two of them.
In years past, the Woods had been a hunting preserve for members of the royal family. It dated back to King Henry VIII, and according to legend, that robust king liked nothing better than to lead a party of friends into the park, declaring they must find their own way out.
And, of course, there was Jane's Folly, the source of an even more outrageous story that dear old Henry, contemplating a new wife, had deliberately sent young Jane Seymour down a badly marked trail in the Woods. Mistress Seymour was not known to be the brightest of Henry's wives. Needless to say, she failed to find her way out, but good old Henry managed to find her. From then on, Jane's Folly referred to the trysting place of the third queen with old Henry VIII. It was a secluded glen, where the King supposedly first bedded his future wife. Hearing of the episode, the Queen, Anne Boleyn, lost her temper, and within a very few months, her head.
Elyse had found the Folly two years ago. Whenever she rode in the Woods, she dared Quimby to find her. And each time she was forced to double back over the path in search of him. It was on one of those occasions she found him picking himself out of a thicket and cursing a blue streak.
The Woods was secluded and was now frequented only occasionally by more adventurous riders. She knew she was unlikely to see anyone except for Quimby, if he ever managed to catch up with her.
She heard the faint staccato of hoof beats behind her and smiled.
"Very good," she complimented him. "You're getting better." A soft smile turned up her lips. She would be glad for his companionship this morning. As the dream from her childhood occurred with increased frequency, she found herself filled with inexplicable loneliness. She slowed her horse to a walk. Faint smudges of sleeplessness rimmed her eyes, and a restlessness thrummed along her nerve endings. Three times the dream had come to her...
And it was exactly three nights since she'd lost the pendant. Her hand wound more tightly around the reins. It wasn't exactly lost, she thought, her irritation mounting. Stolen was a more accurate description!
"Fool!" she hissed at herself, causing the bay's ears to flicker back and forth. She soothed him by running a calming hand along his well-muscled neck, just how the devil was she to get her necklace back without her grandmother or Jerrold finding out about the incident.
The hoof beats were closer now, a rhythmic pacing. Elyse frowned. Quimby wasn't an accomplished rider. It occurred to her that he was taking the trail much too fast. She pulled the bay to a halt and turned in the saddle, but was unable to see anyone on the overgrown trail behind her.
A flash of black streaked through the distant trees and then disappeared, but the hoof beats continued, drawing closer with each passing moment.
A prickling of uneasiness caused the hair at the back of her neck to prickle. Tightening her grip on the reins, she urged the bay on, keeping watch behind her. The sounds of an approaching rider were closer now. She'd given Quimby ample time to follow, but it wasn't like him to take unnecessary chances with a horse. He simply wasn't that confident astride. And the rider bearing down on her at a steady pace was competent as well as confident.
The subtle pressure of her ankle sent the bay ahead at a faster pace. At the intersection of trails, she took the one to the left. As the hoof beats continued with unrelenting determination, she decided to leave the trail. Only a fool would dare follow her through the densely wooded forest.
Elyse reined the bay hard, sending him down an embankment to the right of the trail. She checked him only once as they crossed a stream and plunged up the far side. Not more than a few paces behind, she heard the faint splashing of another rider crossing the water. Whoever it was, it wasn't Quimby, and he was gaining on her. Flattening herself low over the saddle, Elyse ducked a low-hanging branch. Such a bough would've been Quimby's undoing. Still the rider persisted.
Ahead, the undergrowth broke, revealing a span of crisscross fencing. The jump was not a difficult one, but Elyse knew a hedgerow loomed less than a full stride on the other side. She smiled to herself as the bay nimbly took the jump. Only a rider experienced in the Woods, or a very lucky one, would know he must cut hard left as soon as his mount touched down to avoid careening into the hedgerow.
The bay cleared the fence, his ears immediately pricking forward at the familiar jump. She guided him hard left, negotiating the turn with ease. Here another surprise waited. The trail sloped up sharply. It took a strong, agile mount to recover from the jump and the hard turn, and to possess enough energy to make it up the incline of the softly mounded embankment. They were very near Jane's Folly now. At the top of the embankment, Elyse pulled the bay to a stop and whirled in the saddle.
She smiled victoriously at the lingering rush of distant hooves, waited out the momentary silence as the other horse left the ground, breathlessly expecting a telltale crash into the hedgerow. Instead, the relentless beating resumed.
"Damn!" she said under her breath and whirled the bay hard about. Fear tingled down the length of her spine, and beads of moisture slipped down between her breasts. As her mount lunged down the trail, Elyse glanced back over her shoulder, unable to resist a glance. She hesitated a moment too long, waiting for the rider to appear, then felt the sudden tensing in the taut muscles beneath her thighs. The bay's even tempo had changed abruptly. A moment too late, she checked his pace. She gasped at the sight of the large fallen oak that loomed before them across the entrance to Jane's Folly. A brief thought flashed in her mind—Elyse's Folly. It was too late to do anything except cling to the bay and pray he made the jump.
At one moment the morning sky held the promise of a brilliant golden day, the next it exploded in a burst of blinding light. Elyse felt the bay stumble beneath her. Instinctively, she released the reins and relaxed her body. There was nothing more she could do as the ground in the clearing seemed to reach up for her.
Elyse roused slowly. There was a dreadful buzzing in her head, and she felt as if a great weight were on her chest. She couldn't seem to breathe. She tried to move her head, only to have the pressure at the back of her neck increase, immobilizing her.
"Not yet," a man's voice told her. "Don't try to move. Keep your eyes closed."
She felt the faint pressure of hands moving slowly over her entire body. When the man, whose hands they were, seemed satisfied that nothing was broken, he instructed her again.
"You took a pretty nasty fall. Just relax and breathe deeply."
Elyse couldn't move if she'd wanted too, and the buzzing at her ears made it difficult to hear clearly. Her arms felt as if they were attached to lead weights. And something else prevented movement.
As her vision cleared, the ground seemed to come up at her with amazing swiftness. She closed her eyes again.
"You just had the wind knocked out of you. It'll take a minute to get it back. Breathe slowly," the voice commanded again, and she obeyed, the shadows in her immediate vision disappearing as the world righted itself once more.
She blinked, confused by what she was looking at. Her vision finally cleared. She tried to pull back but felt the firm pressure once more at her neck.
