The Rogue’s Stolen Bride

Chapter Sixteen: Dawn

Kaida

I opened my eyes slowly, feeling strange and out of place. The forest floor was hard beneath me, and a tree root was poking me in the ribs. I was curled on my side with only my old cloak to cover me against the cold and damp. If not for Maggie, I wouldn’t even have a cloak.

All my good clothes had been left behind in the carriage. I couldn’t exactly ask my k.idnappers to take my trunk along with my person. Thankfully Maggie had the foresight to pack the carpet bag. There was a clean shift, an extra dress, a hairbrush. And hidden at the bottom, those clothes I had borrowed from Riley when I disguised myself as George.

I moved my limbs carefully and swallowed down a whimper of pain. Despite my wolf’s speedy healing, my muscles were still sore and stiff, and my skin was still raw from the saddle. The salve from Blackwood had helped, but there was little an ointment could do for open sores.

I should have anticipated this. I should have planned better. I should have slipped a pair of riding breeches under my long skirt. But a long list of shoulds wasn’t going to help me now.

I sat up slowly and looked around the camp. Maggie was still snoring softly beside me, her head pillowed on her bent arm. The campfire had died out — not even a wisp of smoke rising from the ashes. On the other side of the cold fire pit I could make out the shape of Jace Blackwood, wrapped in his tattered black overcoat, still as a stone.

He wasn’t what I had expected from a rogue mercenary. For starters, unlike his three associates, he didn’t carry that rancid stink that most rogues acquired. I had noticed it when we shared a horse. He smelled slightly metallic, like wet iron, and beneath that something rich and fragrant — like a spice I had once tasted but couldn’t quite place.

His trousers were still folded neatly on the ground beside me. With a furtive glance at Maggie, I lifted the coarse fabric to my nose and breathed in slowly, still trying to name that elusive undertone.

Inside me, my wolf stirred.

I felt a strange flush of heat at the thought of wearing Jace Blackwood’s clothes. Of wearing his scent. Having it against my skin, rubbing against my most intimate places. I tucked the trousers firmly under my arm, went into the woods to see to myself, and tried not to think about any of it.

When I was finished I reapplied the healing salve, then pulled the breeches on under my torn skirt.

Jace Blackwood was a large man. Much taller and broader than my brother Riley. I had to tear another strip from my already suffering skirt to anchor the waist in place, and roll the legs up several inches. The fabric rubbed against my raw skin, and the pain was brisk and efficient in erasing whatever foolish thoughts I’d entertained about wearing the rogue’s clothes.

By the time I returned to camp, Jace and Maggie were both awake. Maggie was taming her black curls into braids with the focused determination of a woman maintaining standards under adverse conditions. Jace was saddling the horses. His eyes moved over me in a quietly assessing way — taking in the breeches visible beneath my skirt hem, the improvised belt, the rolled cuffs — and I held my chin up and said nothing and hoped the dim morning light was doing me some favors.

If he recognized anything of “George” in the way I was dressed, he kept it to himself. Instead he held out a hard biscuit.

Maggie was already gnawing on hers with an expression that needed no translation.

“Mount up,” Blackwood said. “We can’t rest easy until we’ve put more distance between us and that vampire.”

I agreed wholeheartedly. I stuffed the rock-hard biscuit in my pocket for later and checked Gerald’s girth before I forced my stiff body back into the saddle. I held the bag while Maggie scrambled up behind me with a groan that came from somewhere deep and heartfelt.

“Sorry, Mags,” I murmured.

“Save your apologies,” she said, rubbing a quiet hand across my back. “You can make it up to me later.”

I picked up the reins and nodded to Blackwood. He said nothing, turned his horse, and urged him forward at a brisk pace. Gerald followed without being asked. I bit down on my lip as the saddle found every sore place it had made yesterday and reintroduced itself.

We rode in silence for two hours. Even Maggie was too miserable to do more than groan occasionally.

By mid-morning the trees had thinned and the track had widened, and ahead I could hear water moving before I saw it — a shallow creek running over a sandy bottom, catching the light in pieces. Blackwood raised a hand and slowed without a word, and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

We dismounted stiffly. Maggie made a sound of profound relief and went immediately to the water’s edge, pulling off her shoes with single minded focus. The horses dropped their noses to drink. I stretched my back and tried not to make noise about it.

Jace stood at the creek’s edge a few feet away, scanning the tree line on the far bank with the quiet alertness that seemed to be his natural state. Not tense exactly. Just permanently ready.

“How far to the next village?” I asked.

“By nightfall,” he said. “If we don’t stop again.”

“We’ll need supplies.”

“I know what we need.”

I looked at the water running over the stones. He looked at the far bank. The creek moved between us with cheerful indifference.

“You could tell me where we’re going,” I said.

He was quiet long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then — “East. For now.”

“East is a direction. Not a destination.”

“It’s what I’ve got today.” He glanced at me sideways, and something in his expression was almost — not quite — amused. “You’ll have the destination when I’m sure we’re not being followed.”

“Are we? Being followed?”

He didn’t answer that either, which was answer enough.

I watched him for a moment — the line of his jaw, the way he held himself, that permanent watchful stillness. This close, in the open morning light, the iron scent of him was cleaner and sharper than it had been last night. And underneath it, elusive as ever, that warm dark, spiced note I still couldn’t name.

“You’re staring,” he said, without looking at me.

“I’m thinking,” I said.

“About what?”

“About whether you’re actually going to get us to Havenhill or whether I should be making contingency plans.”

He did look at me then. Those midnight blue eyes, direct and unreadable. “I’ll get you there,” he said. Quiet. Certain. The kind of certainty that didn’t need to announce itself.

I believed him. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to.

Before I could answer, something changed in him — subtle but immediate, like a door closing. His chin lifted fractionally. His eyes moved back down the trail the way we had come.

“What is it?” I said.

“We need to move.” He was already turning, already reaching for his horse’s reins. “Maggie. Shoes on.”

Maggie looked up from the water with her shoes in her hand and read his face and put them back on without a word.

“What did you smell?” I asked quietly, coming up beside him.

He paused just long enough to glance at me — something shifting in his expression that might have been surprise, that I had understood so quickly what he was doing. “Someone is on our trail.”

“Lord Vance’s men?”

“Possibly.” He swung up into the saddle. “We’ll follow the creek upstream for a while. Running water breaks the scent trail.”

I looked at the creek. I looked at him. “You’ve done this before.”

“Many times,” he said, and held out his hand to help me mount.

I took it. His grip was firm and brief and entirely impersonal, and I was aware of it for much longer than I should have been. When I hesitated with my foot in the stirrup, his big hands unceremoniously pushed my butt upwards. He let go as soon as I cleared the saddle, but the tingling imprint of his palm against my backside lingered for a long time.

We turned upstream and rode, the water running cold and clear around the horses’ legs, and the trees closed in around us, and I did not look back.