by Laura Parker
Evan reached the black bulk of the house first, slipping around the side toward the rear. She did not see a door open, but a sudden spill of yellow light into the yard betrayed its opening. Jack drew her into the deeper shadow at the side of the house and then turned his attention to the windows.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
He wrapped a hand about her mouth and then released her to motion upward. When her eyes had adjusted she saw the subtlest smudge of light coming from an eave high above the ground.
“Kit’s room,” she whispered, again breaking the silence her eagerness. He had told her in an early letter that his bed was shoved into a tiny room under the attic eave of the house.
Jack moved quickly to the front of the house with her close as his shadow. When he boldly reached for the front door latch, she held her breath but it gave without resistance. With a smile back at her, he pushed it open and beckoned her ahead of him. She felt in her pocket for the pistol she had brought along. She had come this far. Nothing and no one would deny her access to Kit. The precaution proved unnecessary, for the room was empty.
She scarcely noticed the room through which she passed save to note its orderliness and the richness of the fabrics at the windows and covering the floor. The kirk believed in plain living, but the quality of the austerity depended upon the wealth of the faithful. Venetian glass winked at her from the cupboard and the dull gleam of silver candlesticks caught her attention as she headed for the narrow stairway that led upward.
She climbed the dark passage by feeling her way along the walls, bumping a picture frame with her shoulder. The steadying presence of Jack’s hand at the small of her back kept her nerve strong as she climbed into that bleak gloom, that and the knowledge that somewhere within these walls Kit lay waiting for her.
Once on the landing she went more slowly. Even so, she stubbed her shoe tip on a table and would have tumbled forward had Jack not caught her from behind.
“The last door,” she heard him murmur. She found the latch and lifted it. The door yawned wide on more darkness and then she saw another stairway, this one much steeper and narrower. The way to the attic, she realized, and began climbing by using hands and feet this time. Near the top she began to see a glow, the same glow she had seen from the outside.
She scrambled up the last few steps, uncaring that her boot steps rang on the uncarpeted wood. Kit was here. She could feel his presence.
The room, incredibly enough, seemed colder than the night beyond the narrow window. Burning peat behind a small grate gave the only light. The first and only thing she saw in its glow was the small figure lying inordinately still beneath the covers of the narrow cot tucked under the slanted roof.
She approached the bed slowly, fighting down panic. It was too dim to tell from the foot of the cot who lay there. The head of the cot was tucked into a shadow created by the slanting walls. The figure was covered to the chin, as if it were laid out for a burial.
She moved to the bedside and reached out her hand. She was not a coward. Even if it was Kit’s corpse, she had to know. The thin blankets were damp to the touch but when she felt beneath them there was the rapid, shallow rise and fall of a chest.
“Kit?” she whispered, as if she were not certain she wanted him to hear her.
The shape twitched and uttered an inquiry in the unformed sound it made.
She reached up and slowly pulled back the cover, exposing the heartbreakingly familiar features of her brother. With a sob of joy, she knelt down on the floor beside him.
“Awake, dearest. I’ve come with a friend to take you away.” She put her hand on his shoulder and shook him gently. “You must help me, Kit. Wake up.”
The boy turned his head toward the sound of her voice, his features contorting in confusion. His lids flickered opened and he gazed blankly up at her with feverish blue eyes ringed by sickly smudges. Except for two bright spots of color that burned in his cheeks, he was alarmingly pale. “Who?” he whispered wonderingly.
She touched his cheek and felt the fire that fueled the unhealthy flush of his cheek. He was every bit as ill as she had feared. But she tucked the information away for a less critical moment. “Sabrina, Kit. Your sister.”
A flicker of recognition entered his expression and his chapped lips quivered. “Is that really you, Bree?”
“Yes, Kit. No other.” Sabrina reached for his hand and squeezed it. How weak he sounded. Yet he was rational enough to remember the nickname he had given her before he was old enough to pronounce her name properly.
“Did I not promise to come for you? I am here.” She worriedly brushed a few silky strands of pale hair back from his damp brow. “We must hurry, love. Are you well enough to travel?”
“Oh yes!” He levered upright in the bed and flung his thin arms about her neck. “I knew you’d come. They said you wouldn’t, Bree. But I knew you would!”
Sabrina bit her lip as she hugged his frail body to her own. He was much too thin. She could feel his ribs through his nightshirt. Dear God, she had arrived not a moment too soon.
A coughing spell came upon him suddenly, a retching dry hacking that shook Sabrina as she held his spasming body in her arms. By the time the fit ended he was damp with sweat and gasping for breath.
“It—its my lungs,” he said hoarsely. “The co-cold. So co-cold.”
Fighting back weak and useless tears, Sabrina gave him one more squeeze before lowering him back onto the cot. “Don’t fret, Kit. I am here to care for you now. No one will separate us again, that I swear to you.”
He smiled a thin crescent moon of a smile that she had almost forgotten. “You pro-promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she answered.
“You ca-came, Bree.”
She did not trust her voice again. If she began to cry, Kit would think he was even more ill than he must suspect.
“Put this on him, and this and this.” Jack tossed articles of clothing into the bed from a cupboard he had discovered on the far wall.
“That’s too much,” she protested when he tossed a third shirt her way.
His mouth set in a grim line. “We must travel a way tonight. I won’t see him die of exposure. And be quick! I don’t like what I’m hearing.”
Sabrina stiffened. “What do you hear?”
“Silence.”
The house was very still, she realized, as if it held its breath in anticipation of the consternation and fury their actions were about to cause. If it unnerved Jack, she reasoned, there must be cause for concern.
She picked up a piece of clothing but could not seem to make heads or tails of the threadbare piece.
“I can dress myself,” Kit said with a return of some of his old spirit. He reached for the garment.
“You must conserve your strength,” she countered with as much motherly stricture as she could muster. “You are ill.”
Jack walked over and took the shirt from her hands. “Kit’s no longer a babe, to be dressed by his sister. We’ll deal better together.” He lifted her to her feet and then pushed her gently toward the stairs “Why don’t you see what you can find of value in the kitchen, then wait for us in the yard? Bread, cheese, water, wine. Something to sustain a man like Kit?”
To Sabrina’s amazement he winked at her brother.
Kit looked up at the stranger with widened eyes. “Who—?”
“Your sister calls me Blackjack. We’ve been sharing an adventure.”
Kit smiled wanly. “Bree always was one for adventures.”
“Yes, she is a rather cocky wench.” Jack’s smile sobered and his tone sharpened as he turned to Sabrina. “We’ve very little time.”
She understood at once that the too-still house troubled him. She reached out in the first uncalculated gesture she had ever made toward him outside of the rapture of their embraces and touched his arm. “Thank you.”
She saw his silver eyes widen at her simple
gesture, as if she had touched a place in him that all their intimate embraces had neglected. In that moment the facade of the supremely self-sufficient noble who required nothing and no one in his life slipped to reveal the lonely man haunted by his self-imposed exile from life.
He is more alone than I. That leap of awareness at this unexpected moment appalled her. She had carelessly uncovered his vulnerability and the thrill of it was equalled by her embarrassment. She turned and fled.
It took Jack several minutes to pull on and button up the boy in the sum total of his sartorial belongings. Many were little more than rags. His mouth was a grim line of anger by the time he was done. The rightful heir to a fortune, if his sister were to be believed, had been treated as a foundling.
When he was done, he wrapped the boy up in his bedding. Thinking little of the protection it gave, he stripped off his greatcoat and swung it about the boy. Then he picked him up and carried him like a babe in swaddling down the stairwell.
He was not surprised that Sabrina met him at the bottom of the first flight.
“I fear I stole rather a lot,” she said, as she held up the cloth into which she had stuffed and tied her booty.
“Let us hope it will do,” he said and headed down the hallway toward the main stairs.
The sound of something heavy falling jarred the silence below, halting them at the top of the stairs.
Jack turned and quickly forced Sabrina back down the hallway and up against the far wall into the shadows.
“Don’t move.”
She heard his whisper and then felt him shift Kit’s weight to her before stepping away from them both.
She tightened an arm about her brother, who leaned against her but stood on his feet. Then she heard the faint sounds of footsteps below and moments later the creak of a stair under the heavy weight of a man’s tread.
She pressed Kit behind her into the shallow recess of a doorway, too afraid to make a sound. Had the McDonnells returned unexpectedly? If so, why were they sneaking about like thieves? Or were they about to surprise the maid Evan had been entertaining?
Finally she saw them, two dark silhouettes against the gloom at the head of the dim hallway. They moved with the furtive unease of thieves and one carried a shuttered lantern. She glanced away into the shadows opposite where Jack had melted but could not find him. Then she saw the distinct flash of metal in the umbra and knew he had drawn his sword.
The intruders moved with clumsy unfamiliarity. The only reason she did not cry out from sheer anxiety was because she held Kit as well as her breath. She felt a convulsive shudder pass through him and knew Kit was trying to hold back his cough. She reached for the pistol she carried, gripped with agonizing fear for his safety as the lead man came toward. But Kit could not contain the seizure of his lungs. It burst forth from him in an explosive sound that startled both the intruders and Sabrina.
A hot-breathed curse erupted from the man nearest her as he swung the lantern up and pushed open the shutter. She cried out when the light splashed across her, momentarily blinding her.
“Got her!” she heard him cry gleefully.
She tried to wrench away from the man who grabbed her arm, but his grip was like an iron cuff. Hampered by the wrappings of blankets and coat, Kit could do nothing to help her as the man dragged her from the shadows.
Sabrina heard the swish of a blade cut the air and then the scream of surprised pain as Jack leapt from the shadows opposite onto his quarry’s back.
A gruff curse hissed through the teeth of the man who held her and he dropped the lantern. As it hit the floor, it cast a harsh light upon the blade he had drawn. She heard soft grunting sounds as men grappled on the floor. The sounds of a fist meeting solid flesh came to her ears. She cursed with an unthinking savagery as she was wrenched forward and her arm twisted painfully behind her back as the man forced the cold bit of steel to her throat.
“Stand back or I’ll slit her, I swear.”
“No, don’t hurt her!” Kit cried. Throwing off his bedding he launched his thin body at the man.
Sabrina felt the blade leave her throat and knew without thought what she was about to do. She still held the pistol in her free hand. She saw Jack leap up from the floor but she knew he would never be in time to save Kit. She lifted the weapon and fired into the man who held her.
She was freed as the man’s fingers sprung open.
Jack grabbed and pushed her toward the stairwell. “Hurry!”
Sabrina did not need a second urging. Her only thought was to escape with Kit. She moved quickly to his side and put both arms about him.
But it was much too late for stealth. The dancing flicker from a lighted candle was rising up the stairwell.
A moment later the astounded faces of Evan and the McDonnell maid appeared above the edge of the landing.
Sabrina followed their gazes and a ripple of renewed apprehension flowed over her. The lantern’s illumination spread over the inert forms of the two intruders. The one nearest her stared sightlessly up at the ceiling, a broad dark blotch oozing blood from the center of his chest. The second man was grunting and rolling from side to side. Stiffening, she looked away.
“What’s going on?” demanded Evan, though the look on his face was far from guileless.
Jack’s voice contained its usual aloof boredom. “If you do not unblock my path, Evan, you will receive a measure of the same.”
He picked up his saber, allowing the candlelight to reflect its blooded length. He did not hold it aggressively but the evidence of its violent potential backed Evan and the maid down the stairs.
Jack’s gaze went straight to Sabrina. “Are you all right? And Kit?”
Sabrina nodded yes to both. “I—I,” she stammered, as angry with herself for showing her fear as for her inability to be of aid.
He smiled at her. “You were magnificent!”
Sabrina tried to hold on to the steadying influence of the arrogant amusement she saw in his face, but her world had been too badly tumbled. “You threw yourself upon those men without knowing whose battle you fought or why. You might have been killed!”
Jack wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her for that accolade but there was no time. Nor did he deserve the praise. He knew it was his fault they were attacked and that only her quick thinking had prevented tragedy. When she had a steadier head and time to think, she would realize that, too.
For the first time in his life, he felt the watery-guts sensation of his own shortcomings. Because he did not know how to defend against that overwhelming inadequacy, he retreated into temper. “Hurry along. Leave Kit to me. For God’s sake, mistress, don’t forget the victuals!”
Offended and indignant, Sabrina snatched up the bundle she had liberated from the kitchen and hurried down the staircase once she saw Jack pick up Kit.
Because she had a temper too, and fear always lit its wick, she marched up to the young maid conversing in subdued tones with her lover and said, “Tell your mistress that I came to claim my brother and that he will never again be needing her care.” She paused, then added, “And, if I were you, I would not know the direction I took or the precise hour I came or even who was with me.”
She glanced at Evan, who looked as guilty as any accused man. “Nor you, either. I don’t believe any imagined tale of bravery you may think to weave will satisfy the family of the man who died tonight.”
With that, she marched out of the McDonnell farm and into the night. And ever after she would wonder where she found the courage to do it.
The pace Jack adopted once they left the house struck every other thought from Sabrina’s mind but the will to keep up. Even with Kit in his arms, he would have quickly outdistanced her had she not concentrated on matching her stride to his. Stones threatened to trip her while the rough grasses and bracken continually snagged at her skirts. The earlier rains had left pools in every low place. Within minutes she had stepped in so many puddles that the w
ater seeped through her boots and dampened her stockings.
It took every ounce of attention to find her way along in the darkness lit only by the cheddar rind of a moon that was ending its journey through the sky. To the right the barest hint of dawn was beginning to smolder, but it would be hours before it lit their way. If not for the sight of Jack’s back, an ever-receding lure before her, she would have given up the first half hour and collapsed on the cold bare ground.
But he did not slacken his pace or even pause to ask if she were all right. Gaining strength from her rage at him, she propelled herself along by muttering under her breath malevolent incantations.
“Damned preening cockerel!”
“Arrogant whoreson of a pox-ridden nanny goat!”
“May he develop a pustule blight on the buttocks of his pride!”
She invented ever more colorful invectives as she went along, some dredged up from every curse she had ever heard and some she made up for added spice. But finally, even her anger could not be sustained.
The wind had torn her hood from her head so many times that it eventually worked free the pins from her hair so that it streamed in a thick dark fall over her back and shoulders. Still Jack kept his pace out over the wide, wild moor. If he had a direction in mind she could not guess it. She could only plow along behind him in mindless toil until her lungs ached and her feet swelled inside her boots and all that was left in her miserable heart was the desire to do murder.
She had killed a man!
No, she could not think about that or she would fall down in the mire and howl like a banshee. She had saved Kit’s life. That is what she had come to do. Now they must make complete their escape.
She did not know whether they walked an hour or two or ten. Jack paused only twice, to give a little wine and water to Kit when he began to cough, and then he was off again before Sabrina could properly catch her breath.
The sky seemed only marginally lighter than when they began when Jack suddenly paused before her, looking out over an escarpment of hills, the lower slopes of which were darted by dark humps she recognized as grazing sheep.
