Susan Paul - The Prisoner Bride

For her part, Dina seemed not yet to have taken much note of their captor, much to Glenys’s relief. The very last thing she needed was for Dina to fall in love with the man, which was doubtless what most other females did upon setting sight on him. Dina merely sniffled and wiped her nose and murmured, with her head lowered, “Master Aonghus and Master Culain, and your aunts. What will become of them when you don’t return to Metolius? There’s no one there to watch over them.”

Glenys had been thinking much the same thing, now that it was clear her captor could not be reasoned with. She looked him fully in the face, asking, “Aye, what of my elderly relatives? They are not used to being alone, without someone to care for them.”

He gave a thoughtful frown. “But were you not going to leave them soon, when you went on your quest to search out the Greth Stone?”

“Nay, I should never do so. I had already arranged that my cousin, Helen, would come and stay with them while I was gone, but she’ll not be arriving for three weeks more, at the very least. Now they will be alone, with little idea of how to go on.”

“Hmm.” He placed a long, beautifully shaped finger against his chin and was silent for a moment, clearly thinking this through. Glenys was surprised that he even cared enough to consider the matter. At last, he lowered his hand and said, “If I can devise a way to send this cousin of yours a missive so that you can ask her to come to Metolius at once, will you give me your vow not to secret some message into it about who has taken you and in what direction we are journeying?”

“Nay,” Glenys said before she could think, too angry to do otherwise, “I make you no promises.”

“But, mistress!” Dina cried. “You must do so, lest some harm come to your aunts and uncles. There is no other way.”

Glenys knew it was so, and felt unfathomably foolish. “Very well, aye,” she said tightly, flinging off the comforting hand Dina attempted to set upon her arm. “I give you my vow. If you can arrange such a missive, though I doubt you can do so.”

His handsome face held that infuriatingly amused look once more. “I have many friends, mistress,” he said, “as you will soon discover.”

Glenys looked at him sharply. “So faithful that they would lower themselves to lend you their aid in this heinous crime?”

He nodded. “Aye.”

“Very fine,” she replied angrily, crossing her arms over her chest and looking out the window. It was dark now, and a soft rain had begun to fall, splattering lightly through the arched opening. If it fell much harder, they would be forced to use the window coverings, and would be shut in together in darkness. That was an unhappy thought. But it couldn’t be helped. None of this could be helped. She could only do as he had suggested and accept what had befallen her, and pray that the small white stone in her pocket didn’t begin glowing. After all that had just passed, Glenys was in no mood to explain it, or anything about her family, to her wretched captor.

Kieran knew that he shouldn’t have used his well-honed wiles on his captive, especially after he’d vowed not to seduce her. He’d done so more out of habit than anything else, but that gave him little excuse. He shouldn’t have spoken to her in so dallying a manner, and would strive not to do so again.

But Mistress Glenys made it hard.

Her face was, indeed, just as he’d thought earlier, quite angular. Perhaps not as square as he’d believed, but possessed of the same intriguing angles and fine lines that a perfectly cut diamond might possess. Not beautiful, nay, but utterly fascinating. He couldn’t stop looking at her. Emotions played themselves out along her long, straight cheekbones and in her intelligent, wide-set gray eyes and high, arching eyebrows. And such emotions they were! Anger, frustration, rage—even outright dislike, which Kieran wasn’t used to seeing directed at himself. Aye, Mistress Glenys Seymour was a woman worth looking at. Far more interesting in expression and manner, and most certainly in speech, than most women he met. It was a pity that the maid, Dina, was so commonly pretty in her looks, else he might have been able to set his interest upon her. But she looked very like the hundreds of other blond, blue-eyed maidens he’d flirted with in the past dozen years, so much so that Kieran doubted he could pick one from the other if they’d all been lined up in a row.

A man would never have that problem with Mistress Glenys. Even now, as she was gazing out the window, aggravation stamped on every feature, the dwindling light, being rapidly swallowed by the imminent storm, teased the curves and angles of her face, bringing ephemeral shadows to life and causing her gray eyes to appear almost black. Her generous mouth—perhaps her only soft feature—was pressed together in a tight line, and a few strands of her sunset-colored hair had come loose from the braids atop her head, feathering lightly against her cheeks.

“’Twill not be long now before we stop,” he said, wishing that he might be able to tell her something else. The rain, which had begun to fall softly now, would make their journey far more unpleasant this night than he’d hoped. In a more positive light, it would also help to cover their trail.

“Good,” she replied tightly, not looking at him. “It appears that we will be obliged to lower the window covers soon. That will give us opportunity to do so.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “’Twould be wisest to do so before returning the carriage to London. I should hate to see such finery ruined by wet.” He ran one hand appreciatively over the red velvet covering the heavily cushioned seat. For a town carriage that wasn’t meant for travel of any great distance, ’twas both fine and comfortable. True, there wasn’t any glass in the windows, but the heavily waxed window coverings would do just as well for keeping occupants dry in a storm.

“Return the carriage?” Mistress Glenys asked, looking at him in the singular manner she’d displayed over the past half hour, which said, quite clearly, that she thought him mad. “What can you mean?”

Even as she spoke, Jean-Marc began to draw the carriage to one side of the road, bouncing them over small rocks and bumps as he drove into a copse of trees. Leaning toward the window, Kieran whistled in greeting to a man who appeared there, already leading a pair of horses from their hiding place.

Jean-Marc brought the carriage to an unsteady halt. Even before it had fully stopped Kieran opened the door and alighted, looking up first to where Jean-Marc sat to make certain all was well.

“No one followed,” Jean-Marc called down to him, tying the leads to the carriage post. “Had a bit of company, but that’s what comes from being on a main road.” He lightly hopped down from the driver’s seat. “Better hurry if we want to reach Bostwick’s before many more hours.”

“Aye, and without being found out,” Kieran agreed. Overhead, a loud rumble of thunder rolled across the sky, and the next moment the rain began to fall harder. It wasn’t a deluge yet, but that would happen soon enough. He stretched a hand into the carriage and said, “Hurry, now. We must be on our way.”

Mistress Glenys gave him a look filled with furious disbelief. “You can’t mean to…to ride on horseback in this rain?”

“’Tis just what I mean,” he told her, impatiently holding his hand more firmly out to her. “Come, mistress. We’ve a distance to cover before we’re safe away. Set your headcover about you, if you have one, and your maid as well.”

“We have none!” she cried angrily. “We had no plan to travel far beyond Metolius this day.”

“Then you must brave the rain as best you can. Thank a merciful God you had the sense to bring your heavy cloaks.” Behind him, he could hear Jean-Marc and Tom Postleheth readying the steeds for riding. Kieran cast one glance at them, saying, “Give Tom his gold, Jean-Marc, and let him be on his way.” Turning back to Glenys, he stated, “Come of your own will, mistress, or I will drag you from this carriage. I vow it before God.”