His laughter was deep and free. It seemed to echo around the clearing in the woods. “I’m in for it now, right?”
Her answer was a kiss.
***
At last, they needed to return. They dressed each other. She even managed to tie a respectable knotin his neckcloth, something she’d been wanting to do since they had first met that stormy evening.
Before the faint light of the sun could be seen on the horizon, they began walking back to Moorcock. Elise wore her hair loose. They held hands. She did not know what the future held, but she knew it included Kit.
Elise didn’t look past the hedges of her father’s house as they passed. She did grip Kit’s hand tightly.
All was quiet in the village at this wee hour in the morning. Not even the pigs were wandering around.
“I imagine Tamsyn will be anxious for us to return,” Elise said.
“We shall make it up to her,” Kit agreed.
“Now I feel very selfish.”
“Don’t,” Kit replied. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.
The door to the Thorn and Thistle was open. They walked past the taproom. No one was sleeping there. They started up the stairs. At the top of them, Elise heard Tamsyn whine.
She moved ahead of Kit, anxious to let the dog out. It might have been safer for Tamsyn to be shut in the room but it was not her nature.
“I feel so guilty,” she said quietly to Kit and opened the door.
But Tamsyn was not impatiently waiting by the door ready to greet her.
As dawn’s light streamed through the window, Elise walked in, her attention on the bed where they’d left Tamsyn, but then she came to a halt.
A large, thick-set man with a whiskered face beneath a battered top hat sat in a chair, and he wasn’t alone. Two others who looked equally disreputable in their manner flanked him. One leaned against the wall. The other stood by the bed.
The man in the chair raised his brutish arm. He had Tamsyn by the scruff of her neck as if she weighed nothing. He dangled her in the air. “Are you looking for her?”
Chapter Twenty
Never bolt the door with a boiled carrot.
Irish proverb
“Put her down,” Elise demanded, her heart in her throat. She feared the man had done something to Tamsyn by the way she seemed to just hang in his grip.
But at the sound of her voice, Tamsyn snarled and snapped. The man laughed. He stood and gave her a hard, mean shake and Elise lunged forward—
Kit’s arm came around her waist. He swung her to stand behind him.
“Damn it all, Holbert, can’t you leave well enough alone?” Kit’s voice was deadly quiet.
“I’m afraid I can’t, Cox. You and I have unfinished business and I hate loose ends.” He emphasized his words by standing and throwing Tamsyn to the wall. The dog landed with a yelp of pain.
Elise pushed her way past Kit before he could stop her and knelt by the dog. “Tamsyn?”
A golden-brown eye opened and looked at her. Tamsyn was hurt, but she moved. She tried to rise on her front feet.
Then Elise heard Holbert say, “What have we here?”
Before she knew what anyone was about, the man by the bed grabbed Elise and jerked her up. She tried to release his hold, but then he caught her hair and held her secure.
