“Which are?”
“That he will be forced to pay for the sins of his past.” He yanked on the reins and suddenly, over the drip of rain and soft thud of hooves, she heard the sound of water rushing through the forest. A brook splashed wildly as it cut through the trees. Her abductor let his mount drink for a few seconds before pulling on the reins again and urging the big horse upstream.
“You are Holt’s enemy.”
“Aye.”
“Are you not worried that you, too, might be forced to face your own sins?”
His laugh was without humor and the warm arm surrounding her ribs pulled her even tighter against his chest. “Worried?” he repeated, his voice soft. “Nay, m’lady. I long for that day.”
Rage and humiliation burned in Holt’s gut, eating at him as hungrily as new maggots on a carcass. Icy sleet poured from the sky, creating mud and muck in the inner bailey as Holt waited in the gatehouse, his ears straining for the sound of his men. He only hoped they’d caught the blackguard who had stolen Megan. When his soldiers brought the fool back, Holt would take personal pleasure in whipping the bastard until his back was raw and bleeding, then have him hanged.
Who was he? Holt wondered, and his conscience pricked with the faces of enemies he’d made during his life. Aye, they had been many, but usually weak men or meek women who had seen the dark side of his temper. None of them would follow him here. So who would dare defy him so openly? Who?
His teeth gritted. All his carefully laid plans had changed. Instead of bedding Megan and basking in the glory of becoming the next baron of Dwyrain, he was standing in the driving rain, trying to conjure up the face of the cur who had deceived him.
Holt had been dancing with the scandalous Lady Peony, elderly wife of Baron Griffin, when he’d noticed the stranger in black—a tall man who caused more than one pretty female head to turn.
Within seconds, the stranger with the fierce countenance had taken Megan as his partner, twirled her about the floor, then as suddenly as he’d appeared, vanished with Holt’s new wife, leaving Holt alone in the middle of his own wedding celebration.
Holt had thought at first his mind was playing tricks with him, for his greatest fear had been that Megan would refuse to marry him, but after the ceremony when the ring was securely around her finger, he’d let down his guard, actually enjoyed the feast and music. Only later, when he’d finally understood that Megan had been abducted, he’d shouted out and then he’d heard the gasps, whispers, and titters of the guests.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Lady Peony had asked, her eyebrows lifting in delight.
“I know not,” Holt had grumbled and she’d thrown back her head and laughed, an ugly braying sound not unlike that of a donkey.
“What? What happened?” Ewan had searched the great hall with his pathetic blind eyes. “Where’s Megan?”
“She’s been stolen away,” Baron Griffin had surmised.
“What?” Ewan had leaned heavily on his cane.
“Holt’s bride has disappeared.” Sir Mallory had eyed each guest with suspicion.
“Disappeared? You mean she left, don’t you? But with whom?” another woman, whom Holt did not recognize, had asked. Her mouth had rounded in delighted horror.
“The stranger in black, did you not see him? Those eyes, so blue, and his visage … oh, my.” Cayley had looked to the doorway as if hoping to see the cur again.
“Like the very image of Lucifer!” Father Timothy had proclaimed. “He must be brought back!”
“How thoroughly and utterly romantic!” Cayley had said with a sigh, and Holt’s men had all laughed and made jokes about his first night as a husband with no wife. Speculation had run high that the man was Megan’s lover, that she’d expected him, that even now they were off in a private hideaway. His blood curdled to think of how he’d run outside into the rain, hearing the fading clatter of hoofbeats as he yelled to his lazy men to give chase.
Now, hours later, he still felt the sting of humiliation on his cheeks, the hard bite of betrayal. Guests and servants alike had gossiped and laughed at his expense and his wrath was greater than he ever could have imagined.
When at last his soldiers returned, they came with the bad news that the outlaw had evaded them deep in the forest.
“So you found her not?” Holt said, cutting through the litany of excuses made by his knights—Dwyrain’s best men—for returning to the castle without his wife or her abductor. What a pitiful lot!
“Aye, we lost them,” Sir Mallory admitted, his moustache dripping with rain and mud, defeat evident in his eyes as he tried and failed to meet Holt’s stare. He was holding the reins of his horse when a page came by and gathered them, leading the sweating, lathered beast away.
“How?”
“We followed their trail,” the soldier admitted, opening his palm to show a few wilted and dried blooms. Another soldier handed Megan’s bridal veil to Holt. “Hoofprints and flowers from m’lady’s hair. They took the fork that leads to Prydd, but … there were many tracks because of all the guests traveling through the rain. We found only the lady’s horse, grazing alone in a meadow at the edge of the forest by St. Peter’s Abbey.”
“Did you search the surrounding woods?”
“Aye,” Mallory said, “and the abbey itself, though the abbot was not pleased. We searched until our torches failed and the fog rolled in.”