Seven
“My house! My cat! What—who—!” Tibby gasped when she’d got her breath back. “I need to warn—” “Don’t worry, miss. It’s all in hand and you’re safe now.” He urged his horse on.
“Safe. Y-yes.” She clung to the saddle. She’d never traveled so fast in her life. She tried to look back, trying to see over his shoulder. “But what was that crash? And who are you?”
“Ethan Delaney, at your service, miss.”
Tibby belatedly remembered her manners. “Thank you, Mr. Delaney,” she managed shakily. She could hardly believe she’d actually escaped from those vile men, safe and in one piece. Sort of.
Bouncing along on top of a horse galloping ventre à terre, having been kidnapped by a strange Irishman, was not exactly safe.
“Did the swine hurt you at all?”
“N-no. Thank you.” Tibby winced at the tightness of his arm around her. She tried to look back. What was happening? She’d expected to see them rush into the road after them, but she couldn’t see anyone.
“I can’t see anyone following us,” she said.
“Are they armed? With guns, I mean.”
“No. I think the leader had a gun, but he left.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Four. They just appeared,” she said shakily, remembering. She’d opened the back door to let Kitty-cat out and seven large foreign men had burst in on her. “There were seven this morning, but their leader and two men left after they’d tied me up.” She rubbed her wrists.
He lifted her wrist and glanced at it. It was chafed and raw-looking. “The devils!” he muttered.
She stared at his big, rough-looking paw. Scarred and nicked, bearing testament to a rough life, it was not a gentleman’s hand.
She couldn’t see his other hand, but she could feel it. Holding her tight.
“They untied me to cook for them!” she told him. “And to answer the door.”
“They didn’t…hurt you in any way?”
Tibby knew what he was asking. “No,” she told him. “Plain spinsters are not to their taste, thank God.”
He gave her an odd look. “But they made you cook for them?”
“Yes. They’ve eaten every scrap of food in the house.” She added angrily, “And they poked through my things in the most insolent way. And they smoked! And one kicked my poor little Kitty-cat and the others laughed in the most callous fashion.” She was badly shaken, but now that she was free, the anger that had been simmering inside her all day was growing.
“Thank you for rescuing me. It was very brave of you to involve yourself in someone else’s troubles.”
“Oh, I’m right at home in trouble, miss. You did well to warn me the way you did.”
He meant her note. She’d hoped he would help her, but she’d imagined nothing like this. So bold! So audacious—to simply snatch her from the grasp of those despicable villains and ride off with her like…like Young Lochinvar.
The lines rang in her mind, to the beat of his horse’s hooves.
One touch to her hand and one word in her ear,
When they reach’d the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
She was no fair Ellen from a poem. Nor anyone’s bride. Her note had told him to fetch the authorities, not gallop away with her.
