The Iron Earl

by K. J. Jackson

  “I’m afraid we’ll be long gone from the area by then.” Lachlan’s hand slapped onto the pommel of his saddle. “So unfortunately, no, that will not do.”

  “An hour then?” Mr. Fitzgibbon jabbed his thumb in the air over his shoulder behind him. “Yer camp must be back there? We can deliver her right quick.”

  Lachlan shook his head, a frown crossing his lips. “Regrettably, that will not do either. I will just be taking her now, if you please.”

  “That don’t please us none, sir.” The cousin jabbed the tip of the blade into her side with the words.

  She twisted, trying to avoid the dagger from impaling her and she fell back against the jutting bones of Mr. Fitzgibbon. He’d moved closer, securing the trap. And the blade hadn’t moved from her side.

  In a flash of sparking fire, Lachlan kicked his horse into motion and aligned himself next to the front right side of the wagon, his broadsword drawn and the tip of it pressing into the cousin’s neck. “Well, it would please me. And I am the one with a longer sword.” His words still nonchalant, he could have been talking about buttering his toast.

  The cousin grabbed Evalyn’s forearm, twisting her closer into the blade.

  Lachlan’s sword jabbed inward, the tip indenting the skin on the cousin’s neck. “You are positive you would like to try me, sir?”

  A grimace crossed the cousin’s face, breaking through the mottled red outrage splotching across his pale forehead.

  Lachlan’s sword jabbed further into the cousin’s neck. “This is about a wench, nothing more, sir. Make sure you’re willing to die for it.”

  A long, breathless moment passed. Not a muscle by any party moved.

  The cousin’s hand dropped, the tip of the dagger slipping from Evalyn’s side. He released her arm.

  “Get on my horse, Evalyn.” Lachlan held the sword hard against the cousin’s long neck.

  Evalyn scrambled across the cousin’s lap, under the long sword, and awkwardly threw her leg up and parted her skirts. She slipped onto the saddle in front of Lachlan.

  Once she was seated, Lachlan pulled the reins, nudging his horse away from the wagon with his sword still held high. His eyes never left the cousin.

  Ten long strides of his horse and Lachlan set the steed to a trot.

  He didn’t look back.

  Evalyn attempted not to be mortified by her legs spread wide, her calves fully exposed, and her backside jarring into the rock hard torso of Lachlan with every jostle of the horse.

  But even through her humiliation, relief swept into her bones.

  For what she had been facing with Mr. Fitzgibbon and his cousin, she recognized full well she was in safer hands with Lachlan.

  At least for the moment.

  Ten minutes passed and Lachlan yanked up on the reins.

  She looked around at the surrounding trees and the unearthly shadows from the moonlight making the forest glow. Not the slightest whiff of campfire in the air. They were nowhere near the camp yet.

  “Get off the horse.” Lachlan’s words were low, simmering with rage.

  “What?” She twisted in the saddle to face him.

  A mistake, for the full blast of the fury seething on his face hit her. “Get off the blasted horse or I’m going to push you off.”

  His palpable rage stunned her, freezing her in place.

  “Stay on, Evalyn, and I just may beat you myself.”

  That jarred her into action. She jolted, swinging her leg over the pommel of the saddle, and slid down the side of the horse. The impact of the hard ground on her cold heels jarred her bones up to her skull. She swayed for a long second, fighting for balance against the pain reverberating along her nerves.

  “Now walk.” Lachlan nicked his horse forward.

  What she wanted to do was collapse to the ground. Shrivel into herself for the night. Become nothing, if only so she could rebuild her spine and spirit in the process.

  Three steps away from her and he looked back at her from high on his horse. “Move.”

  His anger prodded her forward.

  There wasn’t time to rest. To muster up energy. To steel her spine. Not when this man was her key to escape.

  She forced her legs—both of them lead weights—to move.

  He waited until she was next to his horse, her feet moving forward, before his low voice blasted into the night air.

  “I don’t want you with us anymore than you want to be here, Evalyn, but that was the bargain we struck. And I abide by my word.”

  Her head whipped up to him. “Then I am freeing you from your word, Lachlan. Leave me be.”

  “I said I would give you safe journey and that is what I intend to do.” His gaze stayed forward, locked on the road ahead. “Those men that picked you up were not safe. Tell me you are not so daft as to believe otherwise.”

  “They had done me no harm other than to offer me a ride.”

  “A ride to where?”

  She shrugged. “A ride.”

  “And you thought it wise to just hop onto a random wagon with random men without any questions—why?”

  “I…I…” Her cheeks started to burn. A modicum of distance from those ruffians and she realized how insane her actions had been. But it couldn’t be helped. The terror that had seized her when Colin hit her demanded she escape. Escape by any means necessary.

  She shook her head. “I did not leave Wolfbridge to trade one brutal existence for another.”

  “Brutal existence?” His head snapped back. “One day with us and it’s a brutal existence? You realize you almost welcomed with open arms a true brutal existence with those blackguards back there? What the damned hell were you thinking, getting into a wagon with those highwaymen, Evalyn?”

  She started, craning her neck to look up at him. “Highwaymen? No, they said they were farmers.”

  “Yes. I was just talking to the steward of Baron Rogerton’s lands and he warned me on two men of that very description that have been a scourge on these roads for months.”

  Her head dropped, her look going to the rutted dirt of the road in front of her. “Oh.”

  “Oh? That is how you defend yourself against idiocy?”

  “I didn’t know they were highwaymen.”

  “Did you not recognize they were two lecherous ruffians that could overpower you in a mere second?” His low voice pitched louder, almost to a boom. “Did you not see that? Did you not see that it is the middle of the night and no respectable gentleman would be out in a wagon at this time looking to pick up a stray woman?”

  “I…I…”

  He yanked on his reins to halt his horse. “I what, Evalyn? What?” His head shaking, a low breath seethed out. “How you’ve managed to stay alive this long with that lunacy in your brain is a blessed miracle.”

  Her feet shuffled to a stop as her shoulders pulled back, her spine stiffening as her lips drew inward.

  He glanced at her, looked forward, then his gaze fell back to her, his eyes piercing. “Now you are silent?”

  Her fingers curled into fists, her nails digging into her palms, and she turned her head, determined not to let the tears brimming in her eyes fall.

  He was right.

  She should be dead. Should be dead a hundred times over. She’d been told it her whole life.

  Yet there she stood, alive.

  She turned fully to him, but she couldn’t look up at him. Only his boot. His well-worn black boot tucked into the stirrup.

  She found her voice, feigning her own ire. “I had to escape—I could not help it. After I dropped the soup on him, Colin struck me and I—I panicked. I ran.” Her chest started to shake, the air vibrating in her lungs as she tried not to get swallowed again by the rash of terror she’d felt by the fire. “I ran and then I was on the road and they passed by. Mr. Fitzgibbon offered to bring me to the nearest village, so I went with them. I knew full well the danger, but I…I could think of nothing but escape…” Her voice petered, dwindling to a whisper. So much for her f
alse chagrin.

  A frustrated growl shook from Lachlan’s chest.

  Her head bowed and she turned from his leg.

  For whatever she’d thought she’d gain by escaping her stepfather’s tyrannical eye, she realized in that moment she had nothing.

  She was still just as powerless as she’d always been.

  But now powerless in an entirely new way she had no inclination as to how to navigate.

  Nothing to do but walk.

  She picked up her heavy legs, starting forth on the road again.

  Lachlan sighed and slid off his steed, his feet thudding onto the ground and shaking the dirt beneath her toes.

  Before she took two steps, he grabbed her arm, stopping her and turning her toward him. He stood in silence, his fingers digging into the muscles of her upper arm. Silence until she lifted her chin, braving her gaze upward.

  She looked up at him, the moon high in the sky above his head casting a glow about his wild brown hair, a rich deep color, like fresh bark pulled away from a tree—alive, deep. He looked like a fierce Viking she’d once seen an imprint of in a tome she’d snuck from her stepfather’s library.

  A warrior, meant to intimidate.

  His mouth opened. “Once we reach my lands, lass, you are free to leave, free to find a different path in life. I’ll not hold you to my household. But until then—until you are in safe lands where you can, as you say, disappear—I stand by my vow. I will get you there without harm.”

  His eyes caught the light of the moon, reflecting sparks of blue as his words lost all anger, his voice oddly soft. “You need to know I have already set the way of things with Colin. With all the men. No one in my camp will ever hit you again, Evalyn. No one.”

  The words stole the breath from her lungs.

  He wasn’t a fierce Viking. Not at all.

  An angel warrior, meant to protect.

  She nodded.

  She believed him.

  { Chapter 5 }

  Evalyn stared at the dead rabbit in her hand, its belly cut half open.

  She swallowed down the gag in her throat, her tongue curdling.

  Rupe had knocked the berries she’d collected from her hands when she’d arrived back in camp, grinding them under his heel. He’d shoved the rabbit into her left hand, his gutting blade into her right just before he’d grabbed the torch angled out from the wagon and stomped off, grumbling about how it would be impossible to find the right berries now that dusk had settled.

  Trying to poison the whole camp.

  He’d spit the accusation out at her and the look he’d given her would’ve melted steel.

  She’d failed him again. He’d sent her out to collect the red berries that they’d passed a half mile back, and she’d come back with reddish-pink berries. Poisonous reddish-pink berries.

  Rupe was her only ally in the camp, for she eased his job by little bits here and there, but she would quickly lose the only person that talked to her if she kept erring like this.

  She’d bungled it three days ago when Rupe had taught her how to gut and skin rabbits, her vomit just missing the full cauldron of stew.

  The day before that she’d botched it with all the men when they had to take turns staying up on watch instead of sleeping because of the highwaymen she had entangled Lachlan with.

  She was no longer Evalyn. No longer the extra baggage that hitched herself to the rear wagon. Wretched wench. That was how she was now known.

  Lachlan had ensured they couldn’t hit her, but everyone addressed her as a wretched wench every chance they got.

  Everyone except Rupe and Lachlan. Lachlan never addressed her. Never looked at her. And Rupe just liked her name, rolling his tongue along the V every time he said it.

  Rupe was likely to join the lot of them dubbing her a wretched wench after her latest misstep.

  Trying to poison everyone in the camp endeared her to no one.

  Evalyn stared down at the drops of rabbit blood oozing over her hand. Bile chased up her throat. The scarlet drips fell, almost landing on her skirt and she jumped back.

  Dirt, she had chance of removing from her mother’s dress. Streaks of blood, not as much.

  She looked at the men in the camp, standing and sitting about the main fire, cups of Scotch whisky to their faces, the low rumbles of their laughter and conversation filling the night air. Lachlan and two of the men were absent, gone to speak with the local landowner. Everywhere they stopped, bundles were either added or subtracted from the wagon per Lachlan’s orders. Rupe had said Lachlan did a fair bit of trading everywhere he traveled.

  The men still in the camp all looked at ease, the wide fire lending light to the cloudy night and bathing their hulking forms in the warm orange glow of the flames.

  She gagged down the bile that stained her tongue and moved toward the back of the wagon where Rupe prepared the food. She had to gut this rabbit. If she didn’t, he would banish her as his help, and then where would she be?

  At least Rupe offered her an existence. A reason for being in the camp.

  She set the knife down on the wooden planks folded flat from the rear of the wagon and began to stretch the rabbit out when a scream reached her ears from behind.

  A scream of terror.

  Her head whipped up, searching the faces of the men by the fire. None paused in conversation, none looked as though the scream had reached their ears.

  “Did anyone hear that?”

  The closest man to her, Colin, looked up from the fire. “Get to that rabbit wretched wench.”

  Scattered chuckles floated through the air.

  Her head dipped and she looked down at the rabbit clutched in her fist, trying to set her hands in motion while disengaging her brain from what she had to do.

  A muffled fresh scream echoed through the trees behind her, then abruptly cut off.

  Her head snapped up.

  Rupe. Hell.

  Not the one person in this blasted camp that had made the journey bearable.

  She glanced at the men. Not a one paused at the sound.

  Her feet started running before her mind caught up and she dashed into the woods, aiming as straight as she could to where she thought the scream had come from.

  At least she was fast now—Lachlan had procured boots for her from Baron Rogerton’s household when they had set up camp the first night.

  The pair of brown boots had been sitting under the wagon when they had arrived back in camp. Well worn, the leather on them soft and supple, they were slightly tight but entirely comfortable as opposed to her mother’s silk slippers she’d been hobbling along in.

  Lachlan had deposited her that first night at the wagon, walking away without a word, his anger still simmering. Rupe had been the one to point out the boots to her. And Lachlan hadn’t so much as glanced in her direction in the last three days.

  She had a hard time faulting him for it—she’d run away while he had been busy procuring her a pair of walking boots.

  The screaming had ceased, leaving her with only the sound of leaves crunching under her feet. Evalyn’s steps slowed. Her eyes searched the darkness and she realized how quickly it got dark in the forest away from the camp. Damn. She still had the rabbit clutched tight in her hand. She’d run without thinking and her hand had stayed clamped on the animal. Now she’d have to carry it until she got back to camp or risk Rupe’s ire at tossing away a quarter of the stew.

  A gargled scream cut into the air and she shifted her direction. She was close, close to the sound. Close to Rupe.

  A light flickered through the brush. The torch burning along the ground fifty strides away.

  She ran, weaving through trees.

  Her feet skidded, sliding through dead leaves as she stopped just beside the torch on its side, sputtering to stay alive.

  Her look went frantic, searching for Rupe.

  She heard a growl a second before she spotted him. Propped back against a tree, blood cut across his cheek, his hands blocking in front
of him.

  Blocking what?

  She searched the shadows, her eyes flying wide open before she squinted, disbelief taking a hold of her.

  No. It couldn’t be. Impossible. Not here.

  Another growl, low, almost a furious purr.

  A shadow moving in darkness, a black jaguar took a step forward, its yellow eyes reflecting the light of the torch with the eerie glow of a demon. The huge cat looked to her, taking one step toward her, then reversing course and moving toward Rupe.

  A demon cat that had cornered its prey—Rupe—and was stalking in for the kill.

  Evalyn surged forward, jumping in front of Rupe before the hunter could pounce.

  A meow—tiny but loud—left her lips.

  The cat stopped in mid-stride.

  She meowed again. Louder, more plaintive—a kitten searching for its mother.

  The sleek black head of the panther tilted.

  Her heart thundering in her ears, Evalyn stepped forward, slowly lifting her hand, palm up. She meowed again.

  The panther took a step backward, its thick paw crunching leaves as it bared its teeth and it seethed out a low growl—a warning.

  Evalyn meowed, shuffling another step forward. Another meow, and she lifted the dead rabbit she still clutched in her right hand.

  The black cat took a tentative step forward, its nostrils flaring as it sniffed the blood of the rabbit.

  Evalyn meowed again, this time holding the sound as long as she could as she moved forward. Her open palm next to the jaguar, she extended her arm, her fingertips just brushing the slightest fur under the panther’s chin.

  The cat didn’t move.

  She meowed again and stretched the rabbit onto her palm.

  For a second that lasted a hundred years, the cat stared at her with its yellow eyes.

  Then it looked down, sniffing the blood of the rabbit.

  With the gentlest of teeth, it bowed its head, taking the rabbit from her hand.

  In a blink, it was gone. Silent as it disappeared into the blackness of the night.

  Leaves crunched. Twigs snapped. Then nothing.

  She exhaled, terror she hadn’t felt a moment ago rolling into her limbs, sending her hands to shaking.