Gabriel shuttled from one tree to the next, moving silently closer. He heard horses—four, possibly five—their hooves stamping, the creaks of their tack. He squinted, trying to distinguish shadow from figure. There was a line of mounted riders, their backs to him. The men sat alert in their saddles, intently focused on the business in the road. The animals appeared sleepy, bored.
Gabriel inched closer, spinning the handle of the ax in his hand. He wouldn’t need the weapon, he reminded himself. He meant only to be ready. It was easier to throw if it was in his hand.
A fallen tree stretched parallel to the road and Gabriel slunk to it, flattening himself against the damp, spongy floor of the forest. From here, he could see beyond the mounted riders to Channing Meade, unmistakable for his size, pacing before the men on horseback. Against his swollen belly swung the helpless figure of a woman in a cloak. Meade would dwarf most women, and this one was no exception. He clutched her back to his front and pressed a dagger to her cheek.
Gabriel closed his eyes. He exhaled. And now he’d seen her. A woman restrained. A knife. Five men looking on.
What did I expect?he asked himself.You followed the sound of distress. She was literally crying out for help. Youknew.He swore in his head. His gut constricted like a taut rope, the fibers snapping under the weight of indecision. His own safety versus hers. Weakness versus might. The unprotected at the hands of the merciless. Lust and greed unchecked, and no one else for miles. His sanctuary disrupted.
When he opened his eyes, Meade was pacing back and forth, parading the terrified woman before his men. Gabriel squinted, trying to see. Her profile was partly obscured by hood, then her hair, Meade’s round shoulder. Finally, the highwayman turned in the same moment clouds slid from the moon. He saw her. She had pale skin and big eyes; her expression was taut with fear. She was young but not a child. She was afraid but not hysterical. Meade wrenched her face upward and her delicate profile looked as out of place in the forest as a teacup.
Gabriel swallowed back something bitter and hot. He felt suddenly winded, his body coiled, eager to pounce. He forced himself to exhale and look away. He studied the five men on horseback, inventorying their weapons. He examined the mounts, trying to assess their age and fitness. He looked down the road to the east and up to the west and checked the position of the moon. He looked at everything and saw nothing so clearly than a woman in need of help.
“Please, sir,” she said, her voice terrified but steady. “Believe me when I say I’ve got nothing. Nomoney. 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,” Channing Meade snarled. “You’ve a horse, haven’t you?”
“Please do not harm the mare,” she begged. “She is not valuable. They loaned her to me for no fee, but they’ll want her back. They’ll come looking for her.”
Meade shut her up by grabbing her hair and snapping her head back. Gabriel flinched. A hatch in his chest swung open. Cold, fresh air stung whatever was inside.
“Answer me with sass, will you?” Meade growled. “See how far that gets you.”
“Please,” the woman cried, “I’m telling youplainly. If it’s valuables you seek, you’ll be disappointed. I’m sorry, I simply don’t—”
“Your body then,” Channing Meade said, yanking back her head with a snap. “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.”
Gabriel was off the ground before Meade finished the threat. He pressed his hat low on his head, gripped the ax, and darted to the road.
Chapter Four
How, Ryan wondered, had she managed to be attacked by two different men in one night? It was a record, surely—especially when she factored in the third man—the one who’d attacked her in Guernsey.Thatman had been the reason she’d traveled to Savernake Forest in the first place. All told, she’d suffered three attacks in the span of a month. She was at capacity for marauding men.
She was not, however, afraid—no, that was inaccurate. She was afraid, but she wasn’tterrified, not anymore. The current attacker had thrown her over his shoulder and run. He conveyed her, bodily,awayfrom the ambush and the scrambling, shouting men. Her scalp burned from the highwayman’s meaty fist, and the wound on her leg pained her, but no one in this moment was actively threatening her.
“Please, sir,” Ryan asked, hoping to discover her agency in this particular abduction. Her voice came out like a wheeze. With every footfall, the man’s shoulder nudged into her gut. Her hip was pressed into his ear and held in place by a tight arm around the back of her thighs. Ryan’s face bounced, upside down, against the hard plates of his back. She held onby squeezing handfuls of his coat. The wound on her leg had begun to throb.
“If you please,” Ryan tried again, speaking to her abductor’s back. She turned her head to the side, sucking in a breath. “I should like to appeal to your sense of—”
“Quiet,” the man huffed. “Do not speak. Meade will not stay down for long. Even now, his men will give chase.”
“Yes, alright,” she whispered, “but please may I be allowed to walk?” Surely this should be suggested by one of them. The puncture wound in her leg was four weeks old, and she no longer walked with a limp.
“No,” he rasped.
“Perhaps you could turn me upright and swing my legs around so I could—?”
“No.”
He was hiking them steadily upward, pushing around trees, climbing over fallen logs, trudging through sunken spots packed with forest decay. With every step, he dislodged a spray of rocks. Ryan watched the debris bump down the hillside in a waterfall of gravel. How they remained upright, she had no idea.
After five minutes of steady climbing, they reached a crest of exposed rock, and the man fell against it, breathing hard.
She cleared her throat and he brought a finger to his lips.Shhh.
Ryan switched to a whisper. “I beg your pardon? But if you would simply release me to—”
Shouts from men cut her off—voices from below that echoed up the hill. Amid the shouts, she heard thrashing and snapping, the sound of the forest disrupted.
