AT FIRST SIGHT: A Novella Page 8

  Lips tightened to stop her rattling jaws, she nodded.

  At that, he broke his horse into a gallop and she set off in determined pursuit. The frigid wind blew back her cloak’s hood and fretted her hair. His dark flowing hair and cloak flurried behind him like a storm cloud.

  Cold, frosty, and muted sunlight broke through the morning mist to reveal a sky the color of pewter. Riding the mare was nothing like sitting astride plodding, stubborn Molly. After only a mere hour of hard jarring, every bone, every tooth, in Evangeline’s body vibrated.

  Once, she thought she saw a tobacco plantation in the distance; then nothing but open stump-dotted fields, frost-tipped meadows, and groves of trees that proliferated the farther along the road they galloped.

  Just when she was getting ready to protest at the brutal pace, he slowed his mount to a fast trot. Her sorrel’s labored breathing streamed frost from each nostril and puffs of foam limned its mouth. Beneath her thighs, the mare’s barrel was sweaty; its steamy warmth she welcomed. Ahead, in the northwest, deep purple clouds clumped on the forested horizon, a sure sign of snow to come.

  Then Adam spurred his chestnut into a gallop again. Refusing to reveal her rapidly waning strength, she pushed her sorrel into catching up with him.

  Twenty-something miles at this brutal pace? Surely, he would walk the horses, give them another breather. Could the horses sustain the pace for an entire day – or longer? And more importantly, could she?

  Already her fingers, clenched on the reins, had gone numb, like her face and limbs. On both sides of her, the countryside was a blur; only Adam riding furiously at her side and the clattering pounding of hooves existed for her.

  There came a point when she knew she could go no farther. She made up her mind she would count sheep in her head to a hundred, ten times, then yell at Adam to stop. And even if he did not, she would. Yet, once she had completed her sheep count, she started over again – and again.

  Then, her knees began to lose their grip. She was slipping from the saddle. She grabbed for the pommel but her rigid fingers had lost all feeling – and she went tumbling. First the impact with the hard ground pummeled her shoulder blades and ribs. Next a tree trunk knocked the breath from her. She lay stunned at the side of the road for a minute, then groggily tried to push erect. Not far from her, the sorrel snorted.

  “No time for lollygagging,” Adam said a moment later, slipping his arms beneath her battered body and lifting her against his broad chest.

  She whimpered at the unexpected pain. “The horses,” she managed to murmur.

  “They’re too winded to bolt.”

  Their bolting was the least of her concerns at the moment. Her arms dangling, she groaned at the sharp, jabbing pricks of pain with each step he took.

  “It’s back into the saddle with you.”

  “Every bone in my body is broken,” she protested in a voice that sounded faint even to her ears.

  “They’ll mend.” The callous bastard was shoving her onto the back of the sorrel, who had to be as exhausted as she and relieved for the momentary breather.

  While she clung, dazed, to her mount’s wind-tangled mane, Adam rapidly untied the blanket at the pommel and deposited its contents in his saddlebags. Then, he was looping and knotting the blanket around both her and the horse’s lathered barrel. Using the blanket as a strap, he bound her securely astride her mount, so that she was thrust forward, her upper torso almost prone against the horse’s neck.

  “There, that should hold for another dozen miles or so.”

  The bastard. “I . . . I can’t go another mile.”

  Taking the mare’s reins, he sprang astride his chestnut and shoved his tall boots into the stirrups. “Hold tight,” he warned, and swatted her sorrel’s rump.

  On they galloped. The unbearable jolting . . .at some point, she realized she was weeping from her pain and her fear and her fury and was idiotically blotting her cheeks with the gray’s filthy mane. Surely, this Catamount, whoever he was, and the Swedish militiamen would abandon their chase.

  It seemed she went in and out of consciousness. Then, as the afternoon’s wintry sunlight waned, she realized the jouncing had also waned. The horses were cantering along a narrow trail, an Indian warpath hedged on either side and above by a dense primeval forest that blotted out sunlight. Gradually, the cantering slowed to a trot, then a walk that was more like a stumble.

  Maybe, another hour passed before Adam mercifully halted the horses and led them off the warpath into the nigh impenetrable foliage. He began untying the blanket’s tight knots, and her sorrel nickered softly its relief.

  The release of the blanket’s binding pressure shot excruciating pain across her lower back and shoulders. She gasped. “I hate you, Adam Sutcliff.”

  “Good.” When he lifted her from her mount, she winced. He set her on her feet, his hands supporting her waist to keep her from collapsing. “That makes what I have to do later easier.”

  She was too fatigued, hurt too much, to bother even asking what he had to do later could possibly be. What could be any worse than the body’s torment she now felt?

  She leaned against the rough bark of a nearly denuded tree to keep from slumping to the ground. No warming sun light reached through the heavily branched canopy, and she could not stop quivering with the biting cold. Around her drifted winter’s shriveled leaves.

  Shocking her, Adam ran examining hands over her shoulders, along her ribs, over her hips, then down each limb in what was a most outrageously intimate manner. She wanted to slap them away, but the single effort to raise her own hand was the most she could manage. Her hand fell back like a leaden weight. Seeming satisfied, he snatched up the blanket and wrapped her, as snuggly as a cocoon did a caterpillar.

  He grabbed his saddlebags and hefted them over one shoulder. He took his dirk and severed the reins of both horses, then smacked their rumps, sending them both plunging through the brush.

  Startled, her glance flew up to his.

  “They’re spent.

  “Me, too,” she muttered.

  “We’re on our own now, milady.” With that, he flung her over his other shoulder and began plowing between the trees.

  “Stop,” she panted. “This. Is. Hurting. Me.”

  Her remorseless captor continued onward, climbing, if judging by the pitch of her body, gradually but steadily.

  Occasionally, a branch wacked her backside, but her ‘ouches’ did not slow him down. Even his labored breathing did not deter his climbing progress. Then, once he breached the tree line, gusts of cold, brisk wind laden with snowflakes whipped her hair loose and pelted her face. He floundered along the ridge. One time, he laboriously backtracked his steps. Next, he was stooping, and a half-darkness swallowed them.

  He lowered her to the comfort of soft ground. She lay there, inert. Vaguely, she was aware of thudding and clinking somewhere near.

  Mercifully, he soon abandoned her. She was miserable. Every of inch of her body hurt and shook with bone-chilling cold. Her lashes were sealed with ice crystals. If his desertion was what he had meant by his earlier cryptic remark that what he had to do later would be made easier, then she considered it a boon.

  But such was not her luck. She heard his returning footsteps. Forcefully, she peeled open first one ice-sealed lid, then the other. She perceived she was lying in what appeared to be a musty cavity in the side of a cliff. He hunkered on his haunches beside her. Weary, she closed her eyes against his criminally charming grin. “Uww-uww, spare me your at-attention, prithee” she begged.

  “Aww, milady,” he said, pushing aside her blanket’s folds, “you prick my ego.” Before, her numbed lips could form a retort, he tossed back the flaps of her saturated woolen cloak, and rolled her onto her stomach.

  She groaned a hearty protest, but his hands deftly loosed her dress’s tiny buttons aligning her spine. With a practiced hand and uncharacteristic gentleness, he peeled first her dress, with its bodice’s myriad buttons, over her should
ers and down her torso and limbs. Corset unlaced, pockets and chemise’s ribbons untied, pantalettes removed – off they all came.

  With no strength to resist, she lay face down, naked to his eyes and sniveling with embarrassment, rage, and agony.

  But the worst was still to come. Directly, in front of her face his saddlebags were propped against the rock wall. He reached inside one bag and withdrew first one handful of snow, then another. He pressed the snow onto the backs of both of her limp arms.

  She screeched and went rigid, but he continued rubbing the melting snow up and down her arms’ length vigorously.

  “Tit for tat,” he said. “I do recall your less-than-tender ministrations with snow upon my poor self.”

  Each muscle his long fingers kneaded, almost punishingly, it seemed to her. “Take your pistol – and just shoot me now.”

  He repeated his freezing applications on her shoulder blades. “I will admit I have had you in my sights for a long time now.”

  “And ye-yet,” her teeth jittered, “you pro-prolonged my misery.”

  Laughing, he went to work on her spine, and her buttocks.

  She should have died of shame. “Cru-cruel,” she got out.

  “I know, I know. But if you hope to keep your tresses out of range of Catamount’s knife, tis important you be ready to run come daybreak.”

  That reminder was enough to compel her to comply to his outrageous abuse of her muscle-cramped body

  “We have to keep ahead of them.” His thumbs were digging into the arches of her cramped feet, and she moaned rebelliously. “You have done better than I expected.”

  His approval was unexpected. She knew he was right, that what he was doing was the best remedy for inflammation and bruises, but never could she remember her body suffering so wretchedly. Dressed or undressed, she no longer cared. She gave unto his hands, which with almost tender caresses relieved her of her pain.

  Nigh paralyzed, she was his problem.

  She must have dozed off because next, he was flipping her onto her back, and sharp pains stabbed her every muscle. Annoyed that he had disrupted her blessed numbness, her lids snapped open. He was straddling her, leaning over her, his loose hair, the dark brown of burnt oak, curtaining them. His icy fingers dug into the striated muscles of her shoulders. Her alarmed gaze clashed with his amused one.

  “I trust this is pleasuring you,” she got out between chattering teeth, “because it most certainly is not pleasuring me.”

  “I most likely enjoyed more pleasuring myself as a youth behind the outhouse, Evangeline, than I am with you now. So, cease your worrying that I shall violate you.”

  She did. When a few moments later, she opened her eyes, the thin sunlight had deserted the cavern. At the cavern’s entrance, the snow was mounding in a mixture of sleet and slush. Her cold flesh was quivering. She couldn’t see him, but sensed him crouching over her. He had taken up the horse blanket. Now, he chaffed her arms, her calves, her breasts and shoulders with caressing strokes of the blanket that generated warmth into her shuddering limbs.

  A short time later, arms around her, he enfolded them both within the blanket. His heat thawed her frozen body and gradually, insistently, warmed it back to life. It seemed to her, he smelled of tropical sunshine and bonfires and heat lightning – ironically, making her feel secure, safe – and warm. Smiling, she fell back asleep.

  When next she awoke, she could make out Adam’s powerful dark shadow with its billowing sleeves projected on the cavern wall by a small, smokeless fire he had started with twigs and branches. Judging by the darkness without, she figured that no more than a couple of hours had passed.

  He hunkered in front of his saddlebags. His heat that had encompassed her during the night had settled into a fiery pulse in her lower regions. Weakly, she pushed upright, clutching the blanket against her chest.

  With a rueful grin, he pivoted toward her. A day-old shadow of a beard smudged his jaw. His hair streamed wildly about him, and his eyes were shadowed. He looked haggard, but unquenchably virile. In his extended hand. he held out a short length of sugar cane stalk. He had cut away its leafy sheath. “Dinner, milady – or, mayhap I should say breakfast.”

  Famished, she snatched it from him, and he warned softly but with a voice that contained the thunder of the sea. “Chew – don’t swallow – the pulp.”

  He went back to repacking his saddlebags’ contents. Feeling shy, she studied him over the shoot she gnawed carefully. The rational, logical Evangeline reminded her that Adam Sutcliff was a mercenary, who would do whatever it took to further his aims. And gaining his heart’s desire, his family’s estates, meant using her to seal the land purchase with the Lenape.

  Yet, in all fairness, the fanciful dreamer that was another Evangeline, could do no less than acknowledge her admiration of such determination – a determination that some might described as ruthlessness. Aye, she was powerfully attracted to Adam Sutcliff; an attraction that had intensified with all that had passed between them, compacted into such a brief time.

  But fall in love with him, she would not. She was no foolish village lass.

  “You left a stalk of sugar cane on the bed . . . your bed . . .” she said, “back at the Virgin Queen Tavern. The sugar cane, it is engraved on your saddlebags. Why?”

  “Because it is a reminder. Fear, like the cane’s sharp leaves, keeps the sweetness of life hidden.”

  “No, I mean why did you leave it in the bed?” She could not bring herself to dignify it as the bed they had shared. Despite his tender care of her that night, she must not forget tales of his hedonistic court exploits that covered a range not of a single night but years.

  He looked over his shoulder at her and considered her through a sweep of sooty lashes. “Like, I said – as a reminder.”

  She swallowed her mouthful of sweet juice in one gulp. “For you – or for me?”

  “For us both.”

  Bemused, she watched as he stood, buckling his rapier scabbard and tucking his dirk and pistol into his belt.

  “Listen, we need to be ready to strike out at first light. We’re keeping off the warpath and cutting our own way through the underbrush.” He held up what looked in the fire’s half-light to be a sickle.

  “Despite my experience with the machete in Barbados, the going will be slow,” he continued, “but I am anticipating Catamount and his curs to have followed either the warpath or our mounts – at least, for a while, which just might buy us some time.”

  She recalled now his earlier reference to Barbados. She had been too fraught with extremes to follow up on that inadvertent opening he had given her. “Why had you gone to Barbados?”

  “To serve out my seven years of bondage – until I reached the age of twenty.”

  Her lips parted in a horrorstruck inhalation. “You were a bond servant – at thirteen?”

  “But, God Almighty, did I learn, among other things, how to hack my way through sugar cane – or any kind of forest.”

  “That is how you lost your finger?”

  “Aye, but I gained survival skills. It was the sugar cane that kept me alive when food was scarce. Shall we have at it?”

  “It is still dark,” she protested. Nevertheless, blanket held modestly before her, she struggled to don her tattered clothes and cloak.

  “I do not think darkness will stop this Indian called Catamount.” Gentleman that he was not, he focused his attention on knotting the leather reins he had severed from the horses’ bridles, for what purpose she could not imagine.

  §§ CHAPTER EIGHT §§

  What recklessness, delivering himself up to the fickle friendship of the Indians.

  But then never had Adam imagined such a woman as Evangeline Bradshaw existed. At the St. Knut’s celebration in Printz Hall, he had watched the capering backcountry females attempt to dance with ungainly hen-pecking, wing-flapping movements, while she had glided as gracefully as a swan. And they had eyed her with an admiring sort of simper.

 
; He seemed to have started a courtship in reverse, with his taking her in the intimacy of his bed first, then getting to know her during their precipitous flight. But courtship it had been from the moment he had first sighted her at Whitehall, thought he may not have had time to properly court her then, had he even thought it the expedient thing to do.

  Only as he began to know her better – to see demonstrated her valiant nature, her inviolable integrity, and her temperamental spirit – was he able to understand better himself; albeit, a little too late to make a difference.

  To her consternation, he looped the two pair of bridle reins, from the horses’ bits, between the back of his belt and around her small waist – affording a goodly pacing distance of a couple of yards. “We will be running full tilt,” he explained. “This way you cannot lag behind nor lose sight of me in the underbrush – and I shall be taking the brunt of it.”

  ‘Full tilt’ meant as fast as his sickle could swipe the brush from his path, which was damnably fast, given his youthful experience with the bite of the plantation overseer’s whip.

  “How far behind do you think is Catamount?” Those soulful eyes were looking up at him with trust.

  She was a fool. He hitched a final knot around her waist, then threw the saddlebags over his shoulder. “You would do well to consider feeling his breath upon your nape.”

  With that, he spun and trotted off in the predawn down the path that sloped away from the cavern into the forest. For less than a mile, he hacked his way through the snow-wet shrubbery, then he felt the tug on the reins and turned. She had gone sprawling face first over an exposed, humped sycamore root. He retraced his steps and scooped her up by her armpits.

  “Watch the ground,” he instructed, ignoring the exasperated huff of air she blew out.

  Once more, he set off through the thorny, entangling brush. For the next five or so miles, she did not once trip. But later, when a panther screamed, she lunged for him and tripped again. Chuckling to himself, he scooped her up with a hand beneath one armpit and steadied her.