They rode hard across unknown, wild country. Bronwyn could feel Stephen’s big stallion beginning to tire.
Suddenly Stephen slumped forward onto Bronwyn’s back. She didn’t have time to think before she grabbed the reins and jerked sharply. The horse left the bit of a road and plunged into the woods. She knew she had to get Stephen off the horse before he fell. They couldn’t move quickly in the woods, but perhaps she could find a few moments of cover.
She stopped the horse suddenly, the bit tearing its mouth. Stephen’s inert body fell to the ground before Bronwyn could dismount. She gasped as she jumped beside him. There was a bloody place along the back of his head where an arrow had creased the skin. She didn’t have much time to think, as she could already hear the other riders approaching. The forest floor was covered with dried leaves, and an idea came to her.
Quietly, so she wouldn’t be heard, she led the horse away from Stephen. She couldn’t risk the sound of a slap, so she unfastened her brooch and jammed the sharp end into the horse’s rump. It began running almost instantly. She ran back to Stephen, fell to her hands and knees, and pushed him against a fallen log. She covered him with armfuls of leaves. The heathery plaids he wore blended with the leaves. She lay beside him and dug herself in.
Seconds later they were surrounded by angry, stomping men. She held Stephen close to her, her hand over his mouth in case he should waken and make a sound.
“Damn her.”
She held her breath; she’d recognize Davey’s voice anywhere.
“She always did have seven lives! All of which I mean to take,” he added viciously. “And that English husband of hers! I’ll show King Henry the Scots rule Scotland.”
“There goes her horse!” said another voice,
“Let’s go!” Davey said. “She can’t have gone too far.”
It was a long time before Bronwyn moved. She was too stunned, too upset at first, to move. When her brain cleared a bit, she turned cautious. She wanted to be sure that Davey left no one behind in the area. She hoped to hear the sound of approaching horses, her own men, but when they did not appear in an hour, she stopped hoping.
It was full dark when Stephen groaned and made his first movement.
“Quiet!” she said, running her fingers along his cheek. Her right arm was dead from his weight on it for so long.
Slowly, listening for each sound of the forest around her, she moved the leaves away. Her eyes were keen in the dark, and she’d had some time to listen to her surroundings. There was a stream not far from them at the bottom of a steep ridge. She ran down to it, then knelt and tore away a large square of linen from her underskirt and wet it.
She knelt by Stephen, placed a few drops of water on his lips, then wiped the gash on the back of his head. The gash was not bad on his forehead, but she knew that sometimes such wounds had more serious consequences. It was quite possible that his brain could be addled.
He opened his eyes and stared up at her. The moonlight made his eyes silver. She leaned over him with concern. “Who am I?” she asked quietly.
His face was very serious, as if he puzzled over her question. “A blue-eyed angel who makes my life heaven and hell at the same time.”
She groaned in disgust, then dropped the bloody cloth in his face. “You are, unfortunately, the same.”
Stephen made a sorry attempt at a grin, then tried to sit up. He raised one eyebrow when Bronwyn quite naturally slipped her arm around him and helped him. “Is the news that bad?” he asked, his fingers rubbing his temple.
“What do you mean?” she asked suspiciously.
“If you’re helping me, the news must be worse than I thought.”
She stiffened. “I shouldn’t have covered you but left you exposed for them to find.”
“My head is killing me, and I don’t feel like arguing. And what the hell did you do to my back? Drive steel pins into it?”
“You fell off your horse,” she said with a certain amount of satisfaction. Even in the darkness she could see his look of warning. “I guess I should start at the beginning.”
“It would please me greatly if you did,” he said, one hand on his head, the other rubbing his back.
She told him as succinctly as possible about Davey’s plan to kidnap Stephen.
“And no doubt you agreed,” he said flatly.
“Of course not!”
“But getting rid of me would have solved many of your problems. Why didn’t you agree to his plan?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly.