Her eyes filled with tears yet again. She wished she could. She wanted to dance every day. Not a single day passed when she wasn’t wishing she was dancing. “I can’t. If I fall the wrong way, I could shatter my ankle and then I won’t even be able to practice.”
“You won’t fall, Miss Darling,” he promised.
She scoffed lightly. “How do you know that?”
“Because I’ll catch you.”
Chapter Nine
Frosty swirls rosefrom Ghost’s huge nostrils, but the horse made no sound nor moved an inch in the brisk morning air. Gray wondered, while they waited in the stillness of the forest, if his horse cursed him for bringing him out into the cold. Gray doubted she did, since Ghost, a splendid war horse, had been with him in the army. Thanks to Ghost’s color, on foggy mornings, like this one, Gray went unseen until he was on top of his enemy.
He’d left the castle on the pretext of finding more thieves from the band that had been raiding the villages. But he wanted to be away from the woman who brought him to the edge of a precipice with her smiles behind a saucy mouth and her fierce courage even in the face of a brute like Harry Gable.
The bastard. Gray knew Harry had threatened to toss Miss Darling out into the cold if she didn’t laugh at him. She’d risked it for Gray and lost. He’d had no choice but to offer her a bed. It was one more thing to hate Harry for.
Aria Darling was turning his insides to warm honey. He wanted…no, he needed to be away from her, so he came out here, where the cold felt familiar.
He pulled his hood farther up on his darker, wet head. He’d bathed and washed the lard and powder from his hair on the beach along Castle Cove. His body had dried, but his hair hadn’t. He felt a chill from deep within and blamed Miss Aria Darling.
He’d wanted her to dance. He’d even considered dancing with her, but she’d refused. In the cold light of day, he was glad she had refused. He must have been out of his mind. Why did he want to get closer to her? She was already in trouble. He thought of her too often. He even thought of her family now. He fell, lost in the memory of the blue depths of her eyes. His blood sizzled in his veins at the thought of touching her. He’d promised to catch her if she fell.
He heard a twig snap to his left and inched his ear toward the sound. His thighs tightened around Ghost.Easy, my lady. Not yet.
The horse didn’t move.
Something running through the bare bramble. Something big.
Now!
Ghost leaped forward and took off running. Sitting low on her back, Gray barely had to guide her. She knew what they were after.
Gray saw the rider, the first of three more. They rode up beside and behind Gray, swinging their swords. He ducked and blocked with his sword, but he didn’t want to kill them.
“I’m the Marquess of Dartmouth. Stop, and your head won’t be impaled on a pike in front of my castle.”
Two of them slowed and lowered their swords. Gray pulled on the bow behind him, then plucked an arrow from his quiver. He aimed upward and let the arrow fly. Before it landed, he loosened the rope tied to his thigh, leaped from Ghost, and tied the two men to Ghost’s waist.
“If you try to escape, she will kick your face off.”
The thieves paled and swore they wouldn’t try. Gray ran to the third thief felled by his arrow. The thief was hit in the shoulder. It had been a risky shot. Gray couldn’t aim for the culprit’s leg. The arrow would have gone through flesh and blood and landed on the horse. He checked the horse just to make sure the creature wasn’t injured, then dragged the thief to his two friends. The thieves’ horses, though untethered, remained close to Gray.
“What’s goin’ to happen to us?” one of the first two asked.
“That’s up to my father,” Gray let them know and moved toward Ghost. He gave the horse a scratch down her long nose. “It was worth getting out of bed for, hmm, old friend?”
“So then,” said the thief with the arrow through his shoulder and a sneer on his face, “the rumors are true, you do speak to animals.”
“Mostly just this one,” Gray smirked at him, then leaped onto Ghost’s back.
“My lord?” the other of the first two called out.
Gray half turned to him, tied to Ghost behind them.
“Will we be killed? You said we wouldn’t be.”
“I said you wouldn’t be impaled on a pike in front of my castle. Do you remember?”
The thief, a young man of about eighteen years, lowered his gaze and nodded. “My father will never forgive me, but I had no choice. My mother already perished from lack of food. My father suffers constant ailments, and there’s no food for him to get well.”