Winter's Bride. Catherine Archer
husband will be very glad of that.”
Tristan froze once more, feeling as if ice had replaced the blood in his veins. Not only had Lily forgotten him and the love they had shared, but she was married. Married to another man.
How could she just forget him, forget all they had shared as if it were nothing? How could she forget the very product of the love they had shared, their own child, Sabina?
The thought made rage flow through him with the force of the winter storms that pummeled the coast at Brackenmoore, his family home. It was too much to be borne.
He would not bear it.
* * *
That night, Lily woke with a start, realizing instantly that she couldn’t breathe. There was something pushing down upon her face. The fingers pressing into her cheeks told her that it was a hand.
She made to move away, but could not. Her body was held by a heavy weight. It felt as if someone must be using his or her own body to hold her down.
Wildly she tried to think as her sleep-fogged mind attempted to make sense of what was going on. She tried to see around that large hand. The room was not as dim as it had been when she retired, for someone, surely her assailant, seemed to have opened a window, allowing the moonlight to pour inside. Briefly, she wondered if the chamber had been entered by that method, even as her desperate gaze came to rest on a man’s face.
She started, her mind reeling as she realized that it was the man from the stairs, the one who had caused such a strange reaction in her. The man had seemed so familiar, though she could not understand why. She did not know him, nor why he would accost her this way in her chamber.
She moved her head from side to side, trying to free herself, wanting to ask this madman why he would do this to her. He only held her more firmly, causing her teeth to dig into her lips painfully. Without thinking, she opened her mouth, sinking her teeth into that hard hand.
“God’s blood,” he cursed in outrage.
He lifted his hand for a brief moment, barely long enough for her to sputter, “Who are you?”
There was no reply. Immediately he forced a scrap of soft fabric between her lips and held it there, then secured it with another piece of cloth, which he tied behind her head.
Driven beyond her usual strength by fear, Lily began to struggle beneath his weight. Even in her frantic state the bedcovers hindered her greatly. Realizing that it was foolish to expend her strength in this hopeless position, Lily grew still. Glaring in frustration and confusion, she met his gaze. Those strangely compelling eyes of his, so close to hers, seemed to mock her puny efforts.
Anger made her thrash anew. Her exertions were redoubled when shame washed through her as she recalled her own folly in thinking him quite attractive, at knowing that she had not been able to forget the chance meeting on the stairs. In the long interval before she had finally been able to fall asleep, she had gone over and over that strange and unexplainable sense of recognition she had felt.
Bitterly Lily told herself not to think about that. She must certainly concentrate instead on finding out what he wanted with her.
As if her own thoughts had triggered him to act, he stood and began to roll her more tightly in the bedclothes. Horrified, she began to struggle harder.
It was of little use. His much greater strength and the fact that she was already covered in the blankets prevented her from freeing so much as a hand before she was completely immobilized from head to foot.
Then there was no more time for thought as she felt herself being lifted and draped over what she was sure was the man’s shoulder.
Desperately she wriggled inside the roll of bedding. Her reward was a jarring thump as she landed on the floor. She clenched her teeth at the pain in her hip, which had hit hardest, telling herself that it was worth it if someone had heard her. But the only sound that followed was a muffled curse from her assailant. He uttered a husky-voiced warning, “Don’t try that again, unless your hope is to get someone hurt. I won’t be thwarted,” before she was again lifted and flung over his shoulder.
This remark did nothing to ease Lily’s fears or explain what was happening. It told her only that the madman was serious. Though she was not familiar with her future husband’s men, that did not mean she could cavalierly put them at risk by alerting them. For whatever reasons of his own, this man clearly meant to take her no matter what the cost.
Perhaps it would be best to allow this knave to get her outside the inn, then make her escape.
With that thought in mind, Lily forced herself to acquiescence as she felt herself being carried out the door and down the stairs of the inn. No sounds came to her within the muffling folds of the blankets.
Tristan allowed himself not a moment of doubt or sympathy as he took her through the darkened inn. The common room was vacant other than for two gentlemen who snored loudly as they slept upon benches before the fire. The depth of their slumber indicated that it might be aided by drink.
He was not sorry. In spite of the cold seriousness of his warning to Lily, he did not wish to actually harm anyone. He would have taken her out the window, which was the way he had entered her room, but that would be near impossible, carrying the awkward bundle she made.
Nay, he did not wish to harm anyone—even Lily, though his heart burned like a hot coal inside his breast at the thought of her perfidy. All he wanted…well, he wasn’t sure what he wanted. He only knew that he had to confront her, tell her what he thought of her betrayal. He had to make her understand that she could not just look through him as if he did not exist, as if their daughter had never been born.
Sabina deserved better than that from the woman whom they had all thought dead—whom Tristan had mourned with an unceasing agony. Even when he had agreed to an engagement to his brother Benedict’s ward, Genevieve, he had grieved that his bride would not be Lily. Each and every waking moment since his recovery from his accident—that fateful accident in which he had thought she died—had been accompanied by pain at the realization that he must go on without her.
Jagged sorrow sliced him anew, but unlike all those other times in the past three years, it was dulled by a smoldering anger. She would know just what she had done to him.
Lily would acknowledge that she had wronged him—and their daughter.
Mayhap then he would let her go. He would be glad for her to return to her husband and the new life she had made for herself without them.
The very thought of that unknown man made Tristan’s lower belly twist with renewed rage. Quickly he made his way from the inn and out into the courtyard, where he had tied his horse.
He knew it would not be an easy journey to his hunting lodge, Molson, with Lily lying across the saddle in front of him, even with the full moon to light his passage. But they should be able to reach the lodge before dawn. He needed night to mask his escape. The soldiers who now slept so peacefully in their own chamber next to the one Lily had occupied, and the others in the stables, would have no witnesses to tell them where she might have gone.
Tristan was feeling as if things were going even better than he could have hoped as he laid her across the front of his patiently waiting stallion. It was then that she began to thrash about once more, and he very nearly dropped her on the ground. Roughly he whispered, “You are only going to hurt yourself if you fall. What good will that do you, Lily?”
It was as he spoke her name that she became suddenly and utterly still. This seemed odd…almost as if she were surprised that he knew it.
He shook his head, telling himself that it was impossible. She knew him. There could be no mistaking the shock on her face when she had seen him on the stairs of the inn, even though she had quickly pretended otherwise.
He swung up into the saddle behind her, urging Uriel toward Molson.
Daylight