He bristled. “Of course I’ve fired it! At target. And hit what I aimed at.”
Lenore sighed. Like the two cutthroats who followed them in the middle distance, she very much doubted if Michael could hit anything he aimed at. She gave his overladen mount an impatient look—it was plain they could make no better time, and if the pair following chose to overtake them, they could do so at will.
Still, if they stopped at an inn before dark, all should be well.
“Ye’ll be at the mercy of every robber and highwayman in the countryside—not to mention country rogues who might do you harm—if ye go from town to town with the fairs, whilst if ye married me—”
“Oh, Michael,” wailed Lenore, “please stop. I do not love you, Michael,” she added more gently. “And I have told you that before.”
“But I love you enough for both of us,” he said with ingenuous enthusiasm. “And in time—”
“We’ll part at Banbury,” said Lenore. “And in time you will forget me—soon, I hope. I would bring you no luck. What is that up ahead, can you see?”
They had been riding through meadowlands along the river, but now they had come to a heavily wooded area, overgrown with brush, and the track had narrowed so that sometimes they were scraped by branches even riding single file. It was as if a green foliage tunnel had closed around them.
“I think it’s a cart,” said Michael.
“I hope it’s a cart,” muttered Lenore, for squinting back, she had come to the panicky conclusion that the pair were gaining on them. Now she could see that the road ahead was solidly blocked; directly across it a huge wagon lay overturned and the six big draft horses that had drawn it stood disconsolately tangled in their reins before the wreck. Spilled from the wagon were several enormous pieces of oaken furniture and the driver, a big rough fellow in a worn leather jerkin, was standing on one edge of the deep rut that had broken his wheel, roundly cursing his luck.
Perforce they came to a halt before the wreck. Lenore looked at the broken wheel, the upended load, and felt sorry for the driver—the roads around Twainmere had been rutted sheep trails and she had seen many a broken wheel and helped to right many an overturned cart.
“Can ye move your horses so that we can go around?” asked Michael in a peremptory tone that reminded Lenore that Michael came from a manor house and was an only son.
The beleaguered driver did not relish that tone. He turned about, running a hand through his thick hair, and fixed Michael with a stern gaze. “I’ve got to take this load all the way to Southampton,” he growled. “Furniture it is for my master, who’s taking ship there for the Colonies—and me with it, if I can but get there. If ye’ll help me move these chests and this cupboard, young sir, perhaps I can get my wagon righted and out of your way.”
Michael looked down at his clean red clothing, bethought himself of his left garter hanging by a mere thread, and then eyed with distaste the fallen furniture, now covered with road dirt. These draymen were a careless lot; could not this oxlike fellow have seen that rut plain before him? “I have a weak back,” he said testily. “ ’Twas injured some years ago in a fall—I can pick up nothing heavy.”
Lenore turned to gaze at Michael with some interest. This was the first she had heard of a bad back—and the load with which he had staggered out of his lodgings in Oxford was sadly tiring his horse.
The wagon driver understood perfectly. His jaw hardened.
“Then, young sir and mistress, I’m afraid ye must take the track off to your left,” he said curtly. “For ye cannot get past me—not with that great tree and the thorn bushes pressing in at the side of the road.” He peered down the green tunnel behind them. “There look to be two sturdy travelers coming up who might help a man reload his wagon. Should they choose to help me,” he added with a sour look at Michael, “they’ll get through speedily.”
Lenore, who did not wish to wait until the two sinister travelers, who paced them in the distance, caught up, turned and looked in the direction he indicated. She saw a faint trail that wandered off between the trees—a sheep trail, she took it to be, leading down from the Cotswolds. She looked back restively at the oncoming riders and her voice sharpened.
“Let’s not wait, Michael. Let’s take the track.”
“Where does the track lead?” asked Michael, a little crestfallen at this detour.
“If you look sharp and keep turning right, ’twill lead you back to this road,” said the driver. “It comes out at a crossroads that lies ahead.”
“Come on, Michael,” said Lenore crisply, for those dark silhouettes she could see behind them down that long, leafy tunnel were fast closing the distance. “We can find a quiet place to rest the horses and have a bite to eat before continuing on.”
Sulkily Michael followed her as she turned Snowfire down the almost indiscernible lane that led into the forest. She lost the feeling of fear that had nagged at her as they rode along to the sound of birdsong and the fragrance of wildflowers, for this was the kind of country she understood—sheep country on the edge of the Cotswolds.
“I think we’re lost,” said Michael unhappily.
“No. I’ve been watching the track. There’s been no turnoff, and now the trail is veering to the right. Your horse is near to falling from all that weight, Michael, and I must feed Lorena. I can hear a brook tinkling over there to the left. Listen, can’t you hear it? What say we find it and stop for a bite of bread and cheese?”
“All right,” said Michael glumly. “But I still say we’re lost. We’ll end up spending the night in this forest.”
“Nonsense.” Lenore dismounted and located the brook. A tiny rivulet it was, clear and cold. It was fed, she guessed, by a spring. From it, they and the horses drank. On the shady leaf mould of its bank she spread a linen square and laid Lorena down upon it. The baby slept on. As she busied herself getting out the food that Mistress Watt’s cook had packed for her journey, Lenore said over her shoulder, “You should take all those heavy bags off your poor horse, Michael—he needs rest more than we do.”
Michael, bent over the brook dashing water on his hot face, muttered something unintelligible.
Lenore turned to fix him with a level gaze. “If your back is too weak to lift them off,” she said evenly, “I will do it.”
Michael reddened. He got up at once and fell to unloading his horse. Lenore smiled grimly as she heard him mumbling to himself.
“Now,” she said with puckish humor, as he flung himself down panting beside her and she offered him some brown bread and cheese, “you can count yourself lucky to have escaped me! Suppose I had said yes to your offer of marriage! What would your life have been like then?”
“In truth you do drive a man hard,” Michael admitted, taking the bread and Cheshire cheese she offered him. “But”—he looked wistfully into her beautiful face—“I’d hope that once wed, you’d lighten your grip on the reins.”
“Never,” she told him, biting into the brown bread. “You should have helped that man with his overturned load, Michael. ’Twas unkind to leave him there in the road.”
“You heard him say those two travelers would help him. Besides, it was his own fault that he ran his wheel into that great rut. ’Twas plain before him to see!”
“Some would say ’tis my own fault I’m where I am today,” mused Lenore. “But I could still use a bit of sympathy for my plight!”
“Ah, I do sympathize with you, Lenore—”
“Only because you love me.”
“What better reason?” he asked simply.
Lenore sighed. What better reason indeed? Who was she to criticize Michael, who was so childishly, so ardently in love with her? She fell silent, watching the horses graze as best they could, and she and Michael finished munching their bread and cheese and shared a plum tart.
She was suddenly aware that Michael was staring at her very wistfully.
“Lenore,” he said in a husky voice, “we will part when we reach Banbury and—and I h
ave never kissed you. I love you with all my heart, and I have never once kissed you.”
His plea was so genuine, his face so earnest and sad that Lenore felt pity for him. She leaned over and gently pressed her lips to his.
Michael gave a great shuddering sigh and pulled her to him. He was awkward as he kissed her—and kissed her again.
Achingly she was reminded of all the nights Geoffrey had held her in his arms and she had thrilled to his touch. Remembering was a kind of sweet anguish that grew unbearable. She pulled away from Michael.
“I must feed my baby, Michael.”
“Oh, Lenore, couldn’t we . . . ?” His voice shook and his hand trembled as he touched her breast.
She flinched. “No, Michael, no.”
“All right,” he sighed, and hunched his shoulders away from her, a picture of abject misery. She gave him a hopeless look, wondering if this sort of behavior had got him his way at home. She supposed it had.
Briskly she moved over to where the baby lay, sat down beside her, picked her up very tenderly, and kissed her awake. Big blue eyes considered her gravely.
Then, deftly tossing a napkin over her breast to hide it modestly from Michael’s view, Lenore fed Lorena. She was able to forget Michael, to forget Geoffrey, to forget the world for a little while as she rocked her baby in her arms, tickled her under the chin, and was rewarded by a small gurgling laugh. One by one she took up Lorena’s tiny fingers and counted them in tune to a singsong nursery rhyme.
A bit sulky that there were no more kisses forthcoming, Michael stretched out by the brook with his hat over his eyes to shade his face from the summer sun slanting through the overhanging trees and rested as Lenore, leaning against a dark tree bole, sang her child a sad, sweet lullaby.
It was peaceful there in the woods with the birds singing overhead, but the slanting sun reminded Lenore that it was growing late. She got up and put the food away, and Michael again loaded up his weary horse. They mounted up—Lenore with Lorena sleeping peacefully in the crook of her arm—and rode on. For all that she’d told Michael they weren’t lost, Lenore was beginning to be uneasy about finding the road again when just ahead through the heavy brush they saw the stone crossroads marker.
CHAPTER 21
Lenore frowned. Something wasn’t right—the birds had stopped singing. Around them the air seemed still and heavy, somnolent and waiting.
Michael had no sense of danger; he brightened. “ ’Tis the road at last,” he sighed, urging his horse forward. “The inn should be—”
He never finished his sentence.
From behind the bushes at the roadside leaped two men. Lenore screamed. The big one—Tubbs—lunged at Michael, whose horse reared up and gave him time to drag out his pistol and cock it and fire it. The ball struck Tubbs in the chest. He gave a curse as he toppled, but his hamlike hand had latched onto the hem of Michael’s short red cloak and he pulled the slender youth from the saddle as he went down. Michael’s horse snorted and darted away, heading back down the road to Oxford, and the two men fell to the ground, locked in unequal struggle.
Swan meanwhile had leaped for Lenore’s bridle, and she had lifted her foot and given him a solid kick in the jaw that numbed her toes but sent him sprawling backward to stretch his wiry length by the roadside. As he toppled she heard Tubbs give a howl—Michael had kneed him. Now Lenore saw Tubbs bring his hamlike fist down with such ferocity on Michael’s head that she could hear the crack when Michael’s neck snapped and his head tilted at a crazy angle as he slumped over, dead.
Paralyzed by this turn of events, Lenore had no time to react to them, for Snowfire, rearing and terrified at this sudden attack, wheeled and bolted, almost unseating her. Back down the track they had come he ran wildly, and over Lorena’s thin, frightened wail she heard big Tubbs howl, “Get the wench, Swan—I’m bleedin’ half to death!”
Swan, on his feet again and cursing, ran for his horse and streaked off after Lenore.
Lenore, with the white stallion charging down the narrow track she had so recently traversed, looked back through whipping branches to see Swan thundering after her in wild pursuit. Snowfire was faster, but the track was treacherous at this pace. Lorena was wailing at the top of her voice, but Lenore was thinking fast now. She dared not return to Oxford, nor could she now take the road to Banbury with that great hulking brute waiting to cut her off at the crossroads. Just past the place where they had stopped for lunch, she had noticed a tiny track leading off to the left—another faint sheep track leading into the Cotswolds. It lay just ahead around a turn. She would have a chance to dart into that wall of greenery and lose her pursuer there—and if she did not lose him, she would be no worse off, for she dared not seek the main road.
She managed to turn Snowfire’s head, and without hesitation careened off down an unknown trail.
It was a mistake.
Twenty feet down the track Snowfire caught his foot in a hole covered up with leaves and stumbled to his knees, throwing Lenore over his head.
My baby, my baby! she thought in panic as she sailed through the air toward a wall of green. Head bent and arms locked protectively around the bundled-up Lorena
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as if they had been a cage, she landed rolling in a bush. Thorns tore at her, she felt her head jerked violently as some of her hair was pulled out by clutching twigs, there was a sharp pain in her shoulder as a branch gouged her, caught and ripped the material of her sleeve—and then skidded harmlessly by as the material tore free.
She came up with a sickening jolt against a big tree trunk and for a moment lay there, gasping for breath. In terror she sat up, lifted her head to toss back the tangled hair that hung like a shawl over her locked arms, and unlocked those scratched, bruised arms to assure herself that Lorena—still squalling lustily—was all right.
“Hush, hush,” she murmured in anguish, for those pounding hoofbeats were coming closer.
Behind her Snowfire scrambled to his feet and Lenore, on her feet now and prepared to remount, realized sickeningly that he could hardly bear his weight on his right forefoot. She’d never outdistance her pursuer now—and already he must be rounding the turn.
They could not run—they must hide!
She grasped Snowfire’s reins, and putting gentle fingers over her baby’s mouth to silence those strident wails, she led the limping white horse through a stand of poplars into a deep thicket. On she struggled through the heavy undergrowth, wincing at the pain that shot through her left shoulder, but managing to reach out bravely to protect both the baby and the horses’s head from whipping needled branches.
After several minutes of this she paused to rest—and listen. No sound of hooves came to her through the patch, of thorns behind her.
The silence worried her. Her pursuer could not have passed on—surely she’d have heard him thundering on up the track. But she’d best be still now, for the slapping branches she’d had to part to let them through had made some noise even though her shoes and Snowfire’s hooves had padded almost silently over the soft, damp leaf mould underfoot.
In the oppressive stillness where even the birds had ceased to sing, she cast an anxious look around her— and screamed.
From behind a tree Swan leaped, grinning, and plunged toward her. She could see his yellow teeth flashing past an intervening thorn branch. Dropping Snowfire’s reins, her only concern now to save her baby, she ducked and slid through an opening in the green wall to her left, heard Swan’s howl as he plunged full tilt into the thorn branch and the long needles tore into him.
Weaving through the heavy underbrush, she could hear his crashing progress behind her, his muttered curses, as she fought her way through the thicket, bending this way and that as she squeezed between tree boles, tore free of rope-like vines whose tendrils threatened to twine about her and hold her fast. Her breath was rasping in her throat as she broke free of the thicket into a tiny clearing. Her foot caught on an exposed tree root and she stumbled and went down heavily
on her knees—once again breaking Lorena’s fall with her bruised, scratched arms.
Before she could rise, Swan had crashed through the thicket into the clearing behind her, seized her by the collar of her dress, and was hoisting her, half-choked, to her feet. His arms were wiry and hard, and as if she were a puppet on a string he swung her around to face him with a triumphant laugh.
“Thought ye’d got away, didn’t ye?”
“Please,” gasped Lenore, “I’ve no money—”
“Money?” He laughed again. “Did ye think it was money I was chasin’ ye for?”
Lenore swallowed. “I know people who live on this road,” she told him fiercely. “They’re due to come by any minute—and they have dogs and guns. You’d do well to let me go!”
“So-o-o ... ye still have fight in ye.” He leered down into her face. “I like a wench with fight.”
Lenore flinched away from him, but her mien was defiant. His fingers were digging into her shoulders so hard she was sure there’d be a blue mark where each one pressed. The pain in her left shoulder sickened her, but she stood her ground.
“The people I know will pay you well if you let me go unharmed!” she cried, trying to buy time.
“Ye’re a good liar, too,” he approved. “Course that cart driver told us which way he’d directed you when Tubbs and I helped him move his cart so’s we could get through. So we both know ye’re a stranger to these woods.”
Lenore felt she might faint.
Swan’s jaw jutted closer. His voice grew surly and held a threat more terrible than any she had heard before. “Now ye’ll give me no more trouble,” he told her heavily, keeping a viselike grip on the arm with the torn sleeve and running a stubby finger down her flinching throat and between her breasts. “Ye might escape me, mistress, but yer baby won’t. I could make do with it—if you get away.”
Lenore’s face turned so ashen that her violet eyes stood out as dark, horrified spots. With all that was left of her ebbing strength she edged her baby further from that yellow-toothed evil face thrust down into hers.
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