“Storm!” Skye said sweetly. “Wonderful. Reggie, fetch him for me, please, he sounds perfect for what I have in mind!”
Her smile convinced him. Reggie quickly returned with the animal in question. He was gray, and huge, prancing with his every movement and watching her with deep, dark wide-set eyes. He was one of the most handsome horses she had ever seen.
Except for the white, she thought. The great white animal she had seen upon Bone Cay. The Hawk’s horse.
She bit her lip, unwilling to think further. She glanced nervously to the house, hoping that Lord Cameron’s correspondence was holding his attention. She smiled a dazzling smile to young Reggie. “Thank you. Reggie, you are swift and sweet, and I promise that my husband will know how kind and helpful you have been.”
Reggie, blushing furiously, brought the horse around to the mounting block and Skye quickly mounted upon him. She glanced around uneasily, getting her bearings. Northeastward along the river, and she would reach Williamsburg. Three hours, he had said.
Skye glanced anxiously toward the powder blue sky. She prayed briefly that the daylight would hold for her, then she gathered up the reins and nodded to young Reggie. “Thank you!” she cried swiftly, then she turned the huge horse about and swiftly nudged him. It was not difficult now, for a great sweeping drive beneath trails of oak led toward the main road.
She leaned against the stallion’s neck, whispering to him. “Storm! Go! Race as you like, it cannot be too fast for me!”
The animal could race, she discovered. Earth thundered and tore beneath her, the trees and the world spun by. On the main road she loosened her rein and gave him his lead, ducking low against him and becoming as much one with him as she could. He was wonderfully powerful, and his muscles tautened and relaxed, tautened and relaxed. The wind whipped her face, and she loved it, for it was cool and fresh and it seemed to cry to her of freedom. She was nearly home. To her home. Away from the pirate, and away from the lord.
She let the stallion run for a good twenty minutes, then she pulled him in, afraid that she would injure such a noble beast. She still passed small wooden and thatch-roofed houses, farmhouses, and acre after acre of rich and verdant fields. Cows and horses grazed upon fields on the one side, and the forest stretched out on the other, deep and green and dark. Once, these had been the lands of the great Powhatan Confederacy. Now, there were few Indians left. War and disease had ravaged them, and the white man had pushed them ever further west.
Skye shivered anyway. Like the darkness, the thought of Indians never failed to bring new terror to her soul. She longed for courage but it was not to be hers.
She looked upward. Shadows were beginning to fall. She closed her eyes for a moment, beginning to feel dizzy. The daylight was fading fast, far more quickly than she had expected. When night came, it would come completely. She would be here, in the forest, with the darkness all around her.…
But she would not be caged, she assured herself. She would not be contained with the darkness in close quarters. A moon would rise, and stars would rise, and it would not be so awful.
“And I will have you!” she told Storm. His ears pricked as she spoke. “You handsome thing, you, I will not be alone. I will be free, and I will be fine.…”
Her voice faded away as she heard a rustling from the foliage. She looked toward the river and assured herself that there were other manors there, that Tidewater Virginia was coming to be very well populated. Indeed, her father’s friend from Daniel Dridle’s tavern, Lord Lumley, lived out here somewhere. She was not alone.
Shadows came deeper. She reined in, watching as the sun sank quickly to the west. There were no glorious colors of night, not that evening. Twilight came, shadowland, and then darkness.
Something rustled behind her in the brush. Panic seized upon her, pure and simple, and Skye dug her heels into the stallion’s flanks. The animal took flight.
Skye’s hair whipped before her, the stallion’s mane flew back. Suddenly, a branch slapped against her, and she realized that they were no longer on the road, that the horse had raced into the thick and never-ending green darkness of the forest.
“No!” she shrilled, pulling back. And then she realized Reggie’s hesitation in giving her the huge stallion, for she quickly discovered that the horse was more powerful than she. Desperately she tried to rein him in. She was a good rider, more than competent, she had ridden her entire life. It was just that the horse was stronger than she, and at the moment, every bit as panicked as she by the darkness.
“Storm!” she cried in dismay. The foliage tugged and tore at her clothing and scratched at her hands and face. She ducked lower, wondering when the horse would plow straight into an oak and kill them both. “Whoa, boy, whoa…”
There was another rustling sound. The horse reared straight up. Skye tried to hold her seat, but it was impossible. She screamed, letting go, frightened that he would fall and roll upon her. She hit the ground hard herself, and though stunned, she rolled into the brush, anxious to avoid the huge thrashing hooves of the stallion.
He fell to earth, rose and flailed the air, and fell back to the earth again.
Then he took flight, leaving her breathless and defenseless and totally alone in the darkness of the forest.
For several long moments she just lay there, paralyzed with fear. She heard the crashing sounds as the stallion rode away, far, far away from her. She began to hear the little rustlings all around her.
“Damn you, horse, oh, damn you!” she cried out softly. Her hands lay over her heart and she stared up at the sky, willing the moon to become more apparent.
There were insects all about her, she told herself. There could be snakes. She lay in the brush. She needed to move.
Carefully she stretched out her limbs. None was broken, and she closed her eyes and breathed quickly, then opened them to the night once again. She could not give way to fear. She could not!
She stumbled up and dusted the fragments of leaves and trees and dirt from her bodice and skirt.
The road! She needed to reach the main road, and walk swiftly, and not think of the darkness or the forest. She whirled around and looked up. There was a moon out. It offered a gentle glow. It was not so horribly dark. And there were stars in the heavens, too. She would be all right, she would be all right.
That way. She twirled around very slowly and repeated the words out loud. “That way. The road to Williamsburg is that way.” She started to walk, tripping over fallen branches, feeling the slight sob in her each and every breath come just a little bit louder. The road was not that way at all. She was going deeper and deeper into the forest. An owl screeched over her shoulder suddenly and she screamed aloud, falling to her knees, breaking into sobs. She simply could not bear the awful darkness, not alone.
She fought for control and listened to the night. What, besides the horrible owl, lurked in the forest? The Indians were all gone—oh, God, please, it was true, they were gone, they were all gone!—but perhaps there were bears. Brown bears with long claws and a deadly hatred for men and women.…
