“Yes!” she cried, breaking away. He allowed her to go. She sat upon the edge of his desk.
“My God,” he whispered in what she was certain to be raw fury. “He used horrific force against you? He dragged you—my very wife!—beneath him. Horribly and cruelly against your will?”
“Of course!”
“My God!”
She kept her head lowered. She brushed her cheek as if to take away tears of shame.
“You did not tell me!”
“I could not—I could not speak of it at first. But now you have to know so that you need not be saddled with me, or with this farce of a marriage. Lord Cameron! I free you to find a proper and innocent bride.”
“How ghastly!”
“Yes!”
“How very deplorable!”
“Yes!” She dared to turn, looking up at him at last. Shadows seemed to have fallen over the room, and she felt the silver probe of his eyes deeply upon her. She leaped up, lowering her head once again. “I shall see my things are moved. I will sign anything necessary to free you—”
“No, my love,” he said very softly.
“What?” she gasped. He came toward her, taking her shoulders. Her head fell back. His eyes sizzled, and she wondered at his thoughts. “Your—honesty—is commendable, my love. But can you truly think so poorly of me? You are my wife, sworn to me before God. I will not cast you from my side, no matter what your generosity. So, go, my love, back to our room. When my business is done, I will join you there, and most gladly still!”
In disbelief she stared at him. His eyes danced in lamplight and shadow. He lowered his head slowly to hers, and she was too amazed to move. His mouth covered hers with passion and fire, his lips molding tight to hers, his tongue probing and ravaging past all barriers with fervent demand. Warmth filled her, as shocking as the invasion that seemed to fill the whole of her body. Laps of flame seemed to lick within her stomach and all along her spine, and spin and swirl to the very heart of her desire at the juncture of her thighs.
She wrenched away from him, gasping and desperate, despising herself, despising the very passion he could elicit and evoke within her. He watched her, his hands on his hips, his eyes knowing.
She backed away from him, trembling.
He smiled, and she felt as if she faced the very devil.
“Go to our room, love. To our bed. I will follow you swiftly, I swear it.”
She wanted to deny him; she wanted to rage and tell him that she despised him completely.
But it wasn’t the truth, and so she said nothing.
She no longer wished to fight; only to run.
And escape.
XII
Skye turned swiftly and fled.
Outside Lord Cameron’s door she knew that she had little choice left but to run. Where in God’s name was her father?
She fled up the stairs and back to his room, frantically digging through her belongings until she found a skirt and jacket more serviceable than the gown she wore. She changed nervously, ever watching the door lest he should appear. He did not. Leaving all of her belonging behind, she left the room. She sped down the stairway, then backed against the wall, certain that she heard Roc Cameron talking with Peter. She ducked into the dining room, her heart thundering. Footsteps passed by on the hardwood floors. Their echo dimmed. Skye thrust open the door and checked out the hallway, then tore through the hallway and out to the porch.
The outbuildings stretched before her.
She had no difficulty locating the stables, for the building was large and impressive and the painted doors were open to the afternoon sun. She hurried along the path until she came there. A young groom, raking up hay, paused and bobbed her way.
“I need a mount, please, Reggie, is it?”
He smiled his vast pleasure and quickly nodded. “We’ve Lady Love, she mild and sweet—”
“Oh, no!” Skye allowed her eyes to flash with laughter. “I ride very well, Reggie, and would have a fleet mount to show me much of the property while it is still daylight.”
“There’s Storm then, milady. But he’s Lord Cameron’s stallion, and a wild one at that.” His gaze was skeptical, and she felt sorry for the lad. He had long obeyed one master, but now he had a mistress, too, and he didn’t seem to know if he should bow to the wishes of the one or worry about the other.
“Storm!” Skye said sweetly. “Wonderful. Reggie, fetch him for me, please, he sounds perfect for what I have in mind!”
Her smile convinced him. Reggie quickly returned with the animal in question. He was gray, and huge, prancing with his every movement and watching her with deep, dark wide-set eyes. He was one of the most handsome horses she had ever seen.
Except for the white, she thought. The great white animal she had seen upon Bone Cay. The Hawk’s horse.
She bit her lip, unwilling to think further. She glanced nervously to the house, hoping that Lord Cameron’s correspondence was holding his attention. She smiled a dazzling smile to young Reggie. “Thank you. Reggie, you are swift and sweet, and I promise that my husband will know how kind and helpful you have been.”
Reggie, blushing furiously, brought the horse around to the mounting block and Skye quickly mounted upon him. She glanced around uneasily, getting her bearings. Northeastward along the river, and she would reach Williamsburg. Three hours, he had said.
Skye glanced anxiously toward the powder blue sky. She prayed briefly that the daylight would hold for her, then she gathered up the reins and nodded to young Reggie. “Thank you!” she cried swiftly, then she turned the huge horse about and swiftly nudged him. It was not difficult now, for a great sweeping drive beneath trails of oak led toward the main road.
She leaned against the stallion’s neck, whispering to him. “Storm! Go! Race as you like, it cannot be too fast for me!”
The animal could race, she discovered. Earth thundered and tore beneath her, the trees and the world spun by. On the main road she loosened her rein and gave him his lead, ducking low against him and becoming as much one with him as she could. He was wonderfully powerful, and his muscles tautened and relaxed, tautened and relaxed. The wind whipped her face, and she loved it, for it was cool and fresh and it seemed to cry to her of freedom. She was nearly home. To her home. Away from the pirate, and away from the lord.
She let the stallion run for a good twenty minutes, then she pulled him in, afraid that she would injure such a noble beast. She still passed small wooden and thatch-roofed houses, farmhouses, and acre after acre of rich and verdant fields. Cows and horses grazed upon fields on the one side, and the forest stretched out on the other, deep and green and dark. Once, these had been the lands of the great Powhatan Confederacy. Now, there were few Indians left. War and disease had ravaged them, and the white man had pushed them ever further west.
Skye shivered anyway. Like the darkness, the thought of Indians never failed to bring new terror to her soul. She longed for courage but it was not to be hers.
She looked upward. Shadows were beginning to fall. She closed her eyes for a moment, beginning to feel dizzy. The daylight was fading fast, far more quickly than she had expected. When night came, it would come completely. She would be here, in the forest, with the darkness all around her.…
But she would not be caged, she assured herself. She would not be contained with the darkness in close quarters. A moon would rise, and stars would rise, and it would not be so awful.
“And I will have you!” she told Storm. His ears pricked as she spoke. “You handsome thing, you, I will not be alone. I will be free, and I will be fine.…”
Her voice faded away as she heard a rustling from the foliage. She looked toward the river and assured herself that there were other manors there, that Tidewater Virginia was coming to be very well populated. Indeed, her father’s friend from Daniel Dridle’s tavern, Lord Lumley, lived out here somewhere. She was not alone.
Shadows came deeper. She reined in, watching as the sun sank quickly to the we
st. There were no glorious colors of night, not that evening. Twilight came, shadowland, and then darkness.
Something rustled behind her in the brush. Panic seized upon her, pure and simple, and Skye dug her heels into the stallion’s flanks. The animal took flight.
Skye’s hair whipped before her, the stallion’s mane flew back. Suddenly, a branch slapped against her, and she realized that they were no longer on the road, that the horse had raced into the thick and never-ending green darkness of the forest.
“No!” she shrilled, pulling back. And then she realized Reggie’s hesitation in giving her the huge stallion, for she quickly discovered that the horse was more powerful than she. Desperately she tried to rein him in. She was a good rider, more than competent, she had ridden her entire life. It was just that the horse was stronger than she, and at the moment, every bit as panicked as she by the darkness.
“Storm!” she cried in dismay. The foliage tugged and tore at her clothing and scratched at her hands and face. She ducked lower, wondering when the horse would plow straight into an oak and kill them both. “Whoa, boy, whoa …”
There was another rustling sound. The horse reared straight up. Skye tried to hold her seat, but it was impossible. She screamed, letting go, frightened that he would fall and roll upon her. She hit the ground hard herself, and though stunned, she rolled into the brush, anxious to avoid the huge thrashing hooves of the stallion.
He fell to earth, rose and flailed the air, and fell back to the earth again.
Then he took flight, leaving her breathless and defenseless and totally alone in the darkness of the forest.
For several long moments she just lay there, paralyzed with fear. She heard the crashing sounds as the stallion rode away, far, far away from her. She began to hear the little rustlings all around her.
“Damn you, horse, oh, damn you!” she cried out softly. Her hands lay over her heart and she stared up at the sky, willing the moon to become more apparent.
There were insects all about her, she told herself. There could be snakes. She lay in the brush. She needed to move.
Carefully she stretched out her limbs. None was broken, and she closed her eyes and breathed quickly, then opened them to the night once again. She could not give way to fear. She could not!
She stumbled up and dusted the fragments of leaves and trees and dirt from her bodice and skirt.
The road! She needed to reach the main road, and walk swiftly, and not think of the darkness or the forest. She whirled around and looked up. There was a moon out. It offered a gentle glow. It was not so horribly dark. And there were stars in the heavens, too. She would be all right, she would be all right.
That way. She twirled around very slowly and repeated the words out loud. “That way. The road to Williamsburg is that way.” She started to walk, tripping over fallen branches, feeling the slight sob in her each and every breath come just a little bit louder. The road was not that way at all. She was going deeper and deeper into the forest. An owl screeched over her shoulder suddenly and she screamed aloud, falling to her knees, breaking into sobs. She simply could not bear the awful darkness, not alone.
She fought for control and listened to the night. What, besides the horrible owl, lurked in the forest? The Indians were all gone—oh, God, please, it was true, they were gone, they were all gone!—but perhaps there were bears. Brown bears with long claws and a deadly hatred for men and women.…
What had ever caused the Camerons to come to such a godforsaken place! She hated it. She would never leave the city of Williamsburg again once she found it, she would never, never leave it again. But she had to find it first; she had to find it.
She stumbled to her feet. Her hand came to her throat as she heard movement behind her. She went dead still, the blood draining from her face, and listened. A bear. It had to be a bear, moving slowly but certainly, and with stealth. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound would come from her. She turned blindly and started to run again.
Something was after her. Something in the darkness. It was stalking her, quietly, slowly, seeking her out.…
Then there was nothing.
Silence …
There was silence, but no, the forest wasn’t silent at all, it was just that the rustling was drowned out by the rush of fear in her ears, by the awful pounding of her heart. The forest was not silent at all; it was alive with sound. She was being pursued. She was no longer quietly stalked, she was being pursued.
She lost her bearing and spun in a circle. She started to run again and realized then that the sounds were growing louder. She was racing toward the beast that was pursuing her in the night.
Suddenly she screamed, throwing up her arms to cover her face as she dashed from the trees and straight into the path of a running horse.
The horse reared as its rider jerked back with ferocity. The animal went up high on its hind legs and then crashed over backward into the brush. Someone swore furiously as the animal stumbled up. Skye screamed again as the horse went thrashing by her into the woods. She turned to run again herself.
It was not over; it had not ended. Blindly she turned to run, aware that the forest was still alive, that she was still being pursued. Recklessly, desperately she ran. The branches touched upon her hair like spidery fingers, pulling it. Tree roots seemed to come alive beneath her feet, reaching out to trip her.
And clouds fell over the moon. As if the very heavens laughed at her, dark clouds covered the moon and cast her into deeper, greener darkness.
Then a shrill cry to split the very earth burst from her as hands seized upon her. She was falling, falling hard upon the earth in the darkness, fighting wildly and desperately against the thing that stalked her in the night.
“Skye!”
She couldn’t register her own name, nor did the man above her mean anything to her at all. She beat out and kicked at him vigorously, unaware that he swore softly, irritated and alarmed. She knew only that she was losing the battle. He straddled her hips, pinning her to the earth, and then he captured her flailing hands, and they were pinned down to the earth, too.
She screamed in terror and frustration, thrashing even as she was held.
“Skye!”
The clouds drifted away from the moon just as he said her name again. Spiderwebs seemed to fall away from her vision, and reason came slowly back to her.
Roc Cameron, taut and solid, straddled her. She stared at him, and slowly, slowly exhaled. It was no beast, just the man who claimed to be her husband. She might have been better off with a tusked boar, she thought briefly, but that thought quickly faded. She might fear his temper upon occasion, but it was so different than her absolute terror of the darkness.
“Skye!” he repeated, and she went very still, swallowing tightly, staring at him.
“What in God’s name were you doing?” he demanded.
“Me!” she cried. “You stalked me, you scared me to death, you—”
“You, madame, nearly killed yourself running into my mare. After not only having deserted me, but having stolen my finest mount in the process.”
“I didn’t mean to steal him. I would have returned him.”
“And yourself?”
“I am not yours.”
“You are.”
“That’s debatable.”
“I say that it is not,” he told her softly.
She opened her mouth to argue with him anew, but at that very second another treacherous cloud chose to close over the moon. Darkness fell upon them and all that she could see was the startling silver flame of his eyes. She started to shiver.
He lifted away from her and she was stunned to find herself clinging to him. He freed himself from her grasp. “Hold, my love. I will build a fire.”
He was true to his word, and prepared with a striker and flint. She sat shivering by a tree while he gathered up tinder and logs and arranged them to his satisfaction. He struck hard with his flint upon the striker and drew sparks, and in seconds his t
inder had caught, and soft flames began to rise, higher and higher. His face was caught in those flames, and then the glow fell over them both and lit up the darkness of the forest.
He had changed to come for her, she noted. He looked like a woodsman. Gone was the elegance of his customary attire, and even the more casual garb he sometimes wore upon his ship. Tonight he was clad in simple buckskin and cotton with a homespun cotton shirt beneath his jacket. His hair was still queued, but he had eschewed his wig. Despite his clean-shaven cheeks, she had never seen him look more like the Silver Hawk than he did that night, alone with her in the forest.
She started to shiver all over again, but then it had little or nothing to do with fear. She hugged her knees to her chin and watched him, her eyes wide with the night.
He came over to her and drew her gently close. She protested his touch, then gave in to it, leaning against him.
“Why did you come after me?” she asked him. “I would have been all right—”
“All right? Like hell, madame! I found you because Storm came tearing out of the woods. You’re not even heading in the right general direction!”
“That’s because I got lost. I would have found—”
“You were in sheer terror before you ever came thrashing into my horse. And now we’re both stuck out here because that stupid mare will run like the blazes home and Storm will break his tether to follow her back. Leave it to a fool stallion to go racing after a female.”
“Just as you run after me?”
He gazed at her sharply. She was too weary, and still trembling too fiercely, to seek a fight. He smiled slowly. “Just as I race after you, milady.” He paused, finding a tousled tendril of her hair to smooth back. “Why did you run?”
“I had to,” she murmured simply.
He left her standing, finding another log to set upon the fire. For the longest time he was still, tall before her. She had tried to escape him, but now he was her barrier against the night, and she was glad of him there. She spoke softly. “I—I needed to find my father.”
He cocked his head for a moment, listening to something. Then he came back beside her. “I am worried about your father myself. I would have taken you first thing tomorrow morning to Williamsburg by carriage.”