The land warmed as they approached the river flats. The air carried the faint tang of brine, though the Thames lay yet some distance ahead. Once, as they crossed a shallow dip, the ground beneath the hooves gave a low, resonant thud, as if hollowed beneath, and Brutus halted, ears pricked, before darting onward again.
Harrowe shifted in his saddle. “You do not feel it as before. You look lost.”
Darcy did not answer. He did not know what he felt. There was no pulling, no dragging ache in his chest as there had been when Elizabeth stood too near him in London. Notso much surety as when he had seen her fleeing Ramsgate, knowing she was coming for him.
There was only a gathering, a sense of proximity closing.
They rode in silence for another mile. Then Brutus stopped dead. He stood rigid in the centre of the road, head high, gaze fixed beyond a low rise where the lane curved toward the river crossing at Dartford. His hackles lifted, not in threat but in alertness.
Darcy drew rein. The horse stamped once, impatient.
Harrowe followed his line of sight and swore under his breath. “What is that?”
At first, Darcy saw nothing but motion at the far edge of the road where it met the yard of a coaching inn. Then the figure separated from the background—skirts gathered, hair loosened by wind or flight, running not with decorum but with desperation.
The road between them felt at once too long and too short.
Darcy did not think. He drove his heels to his horse’s flanks and closed the distance at a gallop.
Harrowe shouted something—warning or question—but the words were swallowed by the pounding of hooves and the rush of blood in Darcy’s ears. The figure ahead stumbled, recovered, and ran again, not looking behind her. Even at that distance, he knew the tilt of her shoulders, the line of her stride.
“Elizabeth!” he shouted, though the name was lost to the wind.
She faltered as she reached the open stretch before the ferry landing, one hand rising briefly as though to catch herself against air that would not support her. Her pace slackened. Her steps shortened.
Harrowe’s voice cut sharp behind him. “Darcy, it’s a devil! Hold hard, lad!”
Darcy had already swung down from the saddle before the horse had fully halted. The reins fell slack. Brutus streaked past him, reaching her first, circling once at her skirts with a low, urgent whine.
She turned at that sound, and her eyes, wide and dark with exhaustion, found his. For an instant, she seemed uncertain whether he were real.
Then her knees gave way.
Darcy reached her before she struck the ground, catching her against his chest with more force than grace. The impact jarred through his arms, through his ribs, but he did not release her. She weighed little, far too little, and her breath came in shallow pulls against his collar.
“Elizabeth!” he yanked his gloves off with his teeth, then his hands were at her cheeks, her throat, testing her pulse. Her eyes were not closed, but they looked glazed, as if she had spent the last of her strength reaching him.
Harrowe reined in hard a few yards away, staring at the stranger who had flown toward them on foot.
Darcy held her upright and felt, not the tearing recoil of pain he had feared, but something else—fierce and immediate and undeniable.
Dread.
She did not rememberthe last yards of running. Only the tearing in her lungs, the cold air cutting her throat raw, and then—arms. Solid. Certain. Darcy’s.
“They are coming,” she gasped, clutching at his coat. “They are hunting me—”
“I know,” he said, though his voice was not calm. It was thinner than she had ever heard it, drawn tight as wire. “I am here.”
Behind her, the road roared. Not wind. Not sea.
Voices.
Brutus barked and charged the road, standing guard against the onslaught. Hooves struck the frozen earth. A carriage wheel shrieked as it braked too hard. Men shouted. Someone cried out, “There! There she is!”
Elizabeth twisted in Darcy’s hold and saw torches swinging in the dusk, their flames bent sideways in the windless air as though unwilling to burn straight. The inn servants were among them. The militia officer. Stable hands. A boy from the yard. Faces she had passed without notice only an hour before, now sharpened by certainty.
Witch.
