C Harris - Where Shadows Dance

“ Ye bloody bitch ,” growled Sullivan, lunging for her. She threw the pot at him and snatched the butcher knife off the table. Clenching it in a two-handed grip, she slashed the blade like a sword across his throat.

Hot, bright red blood spurted everywhere. Streams of it. For one awful moment, she could only stand, the knife still clenched in one fist, and stare at him as his step faltered and his eyes rolled back in his head.

“Wot the ’ell?”

Looking up, she saw the coachman stumble to his feet near the hearth. Their gazes met across the room, his jaw slack with horror.

Then they both scrambled for the pistol hanging near the door.

He was closer than she, and he reached Sullivan’s coat first, for she tripped over Sullivan’s body on the way. But the coachman was more than half drunk and he was still trying to pull back the hammer when she buried the butcher knife in his back.

He howled and stumbled sideways, but he didn’t go down. She tried to pull the knife out so that she could stab him again, only she couldn’t seem to yank it free. She heard a scuffle of footsteps behind her and looked around to see the buff-coated man staggering to his feet, the side of his face burnt and blackened from where she’d hit him with the pot.

“I’m gonna make ye wish ye’d never been born,” he spat, charging her.

Giving the old coachman a shove out of the way, she snatched the pistol from his loosening grip, pulled back the hammer, and fired.

Sebastian was galloping down the overgrown lane when he heard the booming report of a pistol. He checked for a moment, a sick fear seizing his gut. Yanking out his own pistol, he spurred the bay forward again.

He clattered into the yard of a tumbledown cottage softly lit by moonlight. The door stood ajar. The familiar, tall figure of a woman leaned against the outer wall of the cottage. She had her head tipped back, her eyes open wide; in one hand, she held a pistol, the barrel pressed against the blood-soaked skirts of her once elegant walking dress. “ Hero ,” he said, sliding off his horse beside her. He realized he was trembling. “My God. Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not,” she said, her voice unbelievably calm and steady. She nodded toward the inside of the cottage. “They’re in there.”

His own pistol held in a tight grip, Sebastian pushed the door open wide.

A gray-haired, liveried coachman lay facedown just to the left of the door, a butcher knife sticking out of his back. Another man, younger, wearing a buff-colored coat, was sprawled on his back halfway between the door and a crude table, a bloody hole blasted in his chest. He was alive, but barely. He breathed his last as Sebastian bent over him. A third man—taller, darker; Sullivan, Sebastian suspected—lay near the table. Someone had slashed his throat so viciously, they’d half cut off his head.

Sebastian put his gun away and walked back outside.

She was still leaning against the rough wall of the cottage. Just standing there, her chest rising and falling with her quiet but rapid breaths, her gaze on nothing in particular. At his approach, she turned her head, her eyes huge in the moonlight.

She said, “Are they dead?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He nodded toward the blood-splattered interior of the cottage. “You did that?”

She glanced down at the pistol, then up at him again. “They killed Marie.”

Reaching out, he drew her into his arms.

She came stiffly, holding back. “I’m all right,” she said, her voice muffled against his neck. But he could feel the faint tremors rippling through her.

He brought his hand up, hesitated, then began to stroke her hair. “I know.”

“I’m all right,” she said again, trying to pull away, as if ashamed of even that momentary betrayal of fear and weakness.

But he held her close, his lips pressed to her hair, his eyes squeezed shut. “Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s over.”

S ebastian closed the door to the old-fashioned coach and paused for a moment with one hand on the latch. The coach still stood where the kidnappers had left it, beside the lean-to of the ramshackle cottage; the body of the abigail, Marie, lay where it had been thrown by her killers, on the straw-strewn carriage floor. His fists tightening around the hack’s reins, he turned to walk back to where Miss Hero Jarvis watched him from the center of the yard.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She nodded and glanced away, her lips held in a thin, tight line, her throat working as she swallowed. He had the feeling she was holding herself together with a gritty combination of pride and determination.

He said, “I can still put the horse to. You could ride on the box with me if you don’t want to be inside with ... her.”

“No. Let’s just . . . go.”

He swung into the saddle, then slipped his foot from the stirrup and leaned down for her. She put her hand in his, and he gripped her forearm and hauled her up in a scrambling rush of ripping muslin skirts and rucked-up petticoats.

She settled easily behind him, but he was aware of her gaze drifting back to the carriage.

He said, “It’s not your fault.”

“No. But perhaps if I had been kinder to her ...”

Gathering the reins, he turned the horse’s head toward the lane. “I find it difficult to believe you were ever unkind to her.”

“Perhaps not unkind, exactly. But if I’d been less impatient, more understanding, then perhaps she wouldn’t have ...”

He said again, “It’s not your fault.”

They rode through shadowy woods and empty, moon-silvered fields, the steady plodding of the horse’s hooves the only sound in the stillness of the grass-scented night.

He was aware of her holding herself stiffly behind him, her hands barely touching his waist. And he found himself wishing she would simply relax and lean into him, take some measure of comfort from his warmth and his nearness. He could only guess at the horror of all that she had been through in the last twelve hours or the extent to which she was still struggling to come to terms with her own capacity for violence and the need to make that knowledge a part of her understanding of herself.

She said, “I keep thinking I should feel some measure of remorse or at least regret over the deaths of those men. But I don’t. I’m glad I killed them.”

“Personally, I find that perfectly understandable. I see no reason for you to feel remorse. But then, my own propensity for violence is considered by some to be excessive.”

She surprised him with a soft, ragged chuckle. “And you are a man. Our society expects women to be gentle and forgiving. Not ruthless and . . . lethal.”

“Gentleness and forgiveness have their place. This was not one of them.”

Her hands shifted subtly at his sides. She said, “I’d like to think I killed them because of what they did to Marie. But that’s not true. I killed them because they made me afraid. I don’t think I’ve ever been that afraid.”

Her admission both touched him and surprised him. He said, “I was afraid too.”

There was an awkward pause. Then she said stiffly, “Under the circumstances, I will understand if you wish to withdraw your offer of marriage.”

It took him a moment to grasp what “circumstances” she was referring to. “That’s very kind of you,” he said, keeping his voice light with effort. “But I have no intention of allowing you to cry off at this late date.”

“I am not attempting to cry off,” she said with some heat. “But you must realize that what happened today will inevitably become known.”

“Your kidnapping is known already.”

“So.”

“So?”