The Rogue’s Stolen Bride

Chapter Ten: The Ambush

Jace

I had been in position since before dawn.

Greymore Forest was good cover — dense and dark, the old trees pressing close to the road on both sides, their roots buckling the packed earth in places where years of neglect had let nature take back what civilization had claimed. A man who knew what he was doing could stand ten feet from the road and be completely invisible. I knew what I was doing.

My three companions, unfortunately, knew somewhat less.

“Stop moving,” I said, without turning my head.

Behind me, Bram went still. For about thirty seconds. Then he shifted his weight again, and the undergrowth rustled.

“Bram.”

“My foot’s gone to sleep,” he whispered.

“Then suffer quietly,” I said.

To my left, Cutter and Pike were mercifully silent, which either meant they had taken my instructions seriously or they had fallen asleep standing up. With those two it could have been either. They were not, any of them, what you would call sophisticated operatives. But they were loyal, they were strong, and they would do exactly what I told them to do as long as the instructions weren’t too complicated.

Keep it simple. That was the key with men like these.

The plan was straightforward enough even for Bram’s limited capabilities. When the carriage came into view, Cutter and Pike would take the two lead riders. Bram would handle the rear guard. I would deal with the driver and then go straight for the carriage door. No unnecessary violence. Disarm, restrain, and move. Clean and fast.

I had run through it with them three times the previous evening, using sticks and rocks to represent the carriage and the guards, which Bram had found enormously entertaining and which had given me serious doubts about the whole enterprise.

But here we were.

I leaned my shoulder against the broad trunk of an oak tree and watched the road and tried not to think about George Sherman.

I failed.

There was something about that boy that had been nagging at me since the moment he’d walked into the Blue Pony and stood there staring at me with those enormous brown eyes like a rabbit who had wandered into a wolf’s den and was trying very hard to look like he belonged there. Something that didn’t add up, no matter how many times I turned it over.

The hands, for one thing. The smallest, most delicate hands I had ever seen on anything that called itself a man.

The voice, for another. That strange slip into alto when George got flustered, which was often.

And then there was the other thing. The thing I liked least about the whole business. The thing I had been shoving firmly to the back of my mind every time it surfaced.

I had felt something. When George’s hand had shot out and caught mine across that grimy table, something had moved through me that had absolutely no business being there. Something I was not going to examine too closely in the cold light of a forest morning while waiting to commit a kidnapping.

I was attracted to the boy.

There. I’d thought it. I immediately wished I hadn’t.

It didn’t mean anything. It was an aberration. A momentary confusion brought on by too little sleep and too much bad ale. It would not be happening again.

The sound reached me before the sight — the rumble of wheels on packed earth, the rhythmic strike of hooves, the creak of harness leather. I straightened away from the oak tree and rolled my shoulders.

“Ready,” I said quietly.

Behind me, the forest went still.

The carriage came around the bend at a steady pace, four mounted guards in formation around it, sitting easy in their saddles. They weren’t expecting trouble. Why would they be? They were escorting an Alpha’s daughter along a quiet road on a grey morning. Routine work.

It was about to get less routine.

I stepped out of the trees.

Everything happened fast after that, the way it always does when a plan that looked simple on paper meets the messy reality of execution.

Cutter and Pike came out of the tree line hard and fast, moving with the kind of brutal efficiency that was their one genuine talent. The two lead riders barely had time to reach for their weapons before they were unhorsed and on the ground. To their credit they didn’t stay down — both men scrambled up immediately, which told me Alpha Hawkins had chosen his guards well.

“Easy,” I said, in the voice I used when I wanted people to make sensible decisions. “Nobody needs to get hurt today.”

The guards looked at me. They looked at Cutter and Pike. They looked at their swords, which were currently on the ground several feet away from them.

They made sensible decisions.

“Tie them,” I said to Cutter. “Hands behind their backs. Leave them comfortable enough to work themselves loose by nightfall.”

Cutter nodded and moved efficiently to the task. These men were just doing their jobs. They didn’t deserve anything worse than a bruised pride and a few hours sitting on the cold ground.

Behind the carriage I heard a grunt and a thud that told me Bram had managed his end without too much catastrophe. The driver had dropped his reins and put his hands up before I’d even looked at him, which showed commendable common sense.

I moved to the carriage door.

My hand closed around the handle and I pulled it open and looked inside and —

She was nothing like I expected.

The girl sitting rigidly upright on the carriage seat was young, dark haired, dark eyed, with sharp elegant cheekbones and a mouth that looked like it was on the verge of something — laughter or fury, it was hard to tell which. She wore a deep green dress that was modest to the point of severity and a delicate gold chain at her throat with an amethyst pendant catching the grey morning light.

She was, without question, the furthest thing from average I had ever seen in my life.

For just a moment neither of us moved. Her dark eyes met mine and something moved through me that felt uncomfortably familiar.

Then she screamed.

It was an impressively convincing scream. Full throated, genuinely alarming, the kind of scream that would carry all the way back to Cedar Ridge if the wind was right. The guards behind me shouted and surged forward and I heard Pike swear colorfully as he struggled to hold his man back.

“Easy,” I said again, to everyone and no one. I reached into the carriage, got one arm around the girl’s waist, and pulled her out over my shoulder in one smooth motion.

She fought like a wildcat.

Feet kicking, fists pounding my back, screaming bloody murder into the forest air — she was putting on a spectacular show. I tightened my grip and turned toward the trees, and that was when I became aware of a second problem.

“Put her down!” a voice shrieked behind me. “Put her DOWN you great filthy animal!”

I turned.

Standing in the carriage doorway, clutching a large carpet bag in both hands and vibrating with righteous anger, was the most ferocious small woman I had ever encountered in my considerable experience of ferocious small women. She was dark skinned, bright eyed, and absolutely incandescent with rage, and she was winding up the carpet bag like she intended to take my head off with it.

I ducked. The bag whistled over my head and connected instead with Bram, who was standing just behind me, and who went down like a felled tree.

There was a brief silence.

“Huh,” said Cutter.

The small woman looked at Bram on the ground. She looked at me. She looked at Kaida still slung over my shoulder. Then she picked up her carpet bag, stepped over Bram with considerable dignity, and planted herself in front of me with her chin up and her eyes blazing.

“I’m coming too,” she said.