He looked around. A giant oak loomed nearby, and Gabriel tethered the horse to a low limb, his flank shielded from the wind by the trunk.
I don’t care.
He’d fitted the stallion’s bridle with blinders, and now he pressed the leather patches against Zeus’s eyes, obscuring his sight. Each precaution was made with ease and gentleness, his movements rote. Soothing a frightened horse came as naturally to Gabriel as breathing, but he knew almost nothing about frightened women. And yet, his ears were acutely tuned to the sound of—
“Please help me!” came another terrified cry.
Gabriel—who really, trulydid not care—pulled the ax from his belt and slipped into the trees.
Chapter Two
Lady Marianne “Ryan” Daventry was not, by nature, a screamer.
Ryan was a suggester. A stater of simple truths. A calm voice of reason when emotions were high and tempers lost. Her middle sister Diana had the flash temper and a very hearty scream. Their youngest sister, Charlotte, with her girlish fear of mice and bugs and branches scraping windowpanes, was also a known screamer. But not Ryan. Ryan, in fact, could only remember ever having screamed once or twice in her entire life.
But she screamed now. She was well and truly terrified, and she screamed the raw and desperate scream of a survivor.
At least she’d come into the forest alone. Her one consolation. Ryan was defenseless, yes, but her maid, Agnes, was safe back at the inn. Agnes had wanted to accompany her and Ryan had refused. Even without the threat of ambush, Agnes was unsuited for forest trespass. The maid was afraid of nice men in polite settings; she would never survive a snarling man with no life behind his eyes.
“Cry all you like,” hissed the man with his handclamped to Ryan’s jaw. “There’s no one within fifty miles to hear you scream.” With his other hand, he pinned her against his chest, her body dangling half a foot from the road.
Ryan couldn’t really say how she’d gone from mounted on horseback to the painful grasp of this fetid, sneering man. She’d been plodding carefully through the forest, nudging the frightened mare onward, when she came upon a row of men on horseback just over the crest of a hill. They sat so heavily, their ranks so impenetrable, she’d mistaken them for a line of statues blocking the road. But they weren’t statues: they were highwaymen and the brute who now held her was their leader. He’d emerged from the blockade like a cannon ball rolling into the chamber of a cannon.
Despite her fear, she’d kept control of her mount and reined around. But he’d been deceptively fast for his size and managed to swipe the reins before she could bolt. Then his hands were on her and he dragged her from the saddle like a basket of wash.
“Believe me when I say I’ve got nothing,” she now whimpered to the man. “No money. No jewelry. Not even food. I rode from the inn in Pewsey to have a look at the forest’s edge and lost my way.”
“Of course that’s your claim,” the man said, releasing her chin with a teeth-rattling shove. Ryan tried to scuttle away, but his hand returned, this time with a dagger. He pressed the flat side of the dull blade against her cheek. “You’ve a horse, haven’t you?”
“On loan from the inn,” she insisted. “Please do not harm the mare. She is not valuable. They loaned her to me for no fee, but they’ll want her back. They’ll come looking for her.”
He pulled the knife from her cheek and dug his hand into her hair, yanking her head back with a snap. The pain and helplessness of being steered by her hair took Ryan’s breath away.
“Answer me with sass, will you?” the man mocked. “See how far that gets you.”
“I’m telling youplainly,” she insisted, “if it’s valuables you seek, you’ll be disappointed. I’m sorry, I simply don’t—”
“Your body then,” the man announced, wrenching her head back. “Easier to divvy up. A turn for every man. We’ll make a game of it. Find anything you may have hidden in the process.”
Without hesitation, Ryan screamed again.
Chapter Three
While he ran, Gabriel told himself all the things he would do when he reached the source of the screams.
He wouldnotinsert himself into the conflict, whatever it was.
Hewouldobserve it from a concealed location. Downwind. With a clear path to retreat.
He would ascertainwhoandhowandwhy—all for his own information. It was pertinent to the peace and quiet of the forest and his solitude. This was reconnaissance, not a rescue; prevention, not preservation.
For a long, hopeful moment, the screams had paused, but now they rang on. Sometimes words, sometimes only sound. Always resonant fear. As long as she cried out, he knew she lived. The more she cried, the easier she was to locate. The sounds came from Pike Hill on Long Harry Road. He’d suspected this. The rise would conceal an ambush; the ledge would restrict escape. Gabriel kicked into a sprint.
The undergrowth was thickest between the trail and the road; serpent vines and spiked saplings, thorns thick and waist high. It was a nuisance in the dark, but Gabriel knew the land. He slipped easily through unseen gaps in brush, sidestepping bogholes and leapingover logs. He pushed deftly over, around, through, a silent piece of the night.
When he reached the last stand of trees before the roadside, he paused, allowing his breathing to slow, searching the undergrowth for stragglers or a watch. He saw no one. Channing Meade was sloppy. Not that it mattered. Gabriel had only come to look. He crept forward. Before he could see the road, he heard them.
“Cry all you like; there’s no one within fifty miles to hear you scream,” growled the man’s voice. So it was Channing Meade. Gabriel had never met the man, but he’d observed him from various lookouts.
