The Prince's Bride
Chapter One
Savernake Forest
Wiltshire, England
August 1811
The night was pierced by a woman’s scream.
The sound, brief and raw, shot above the canopy and scraped down the hillside to bounce against the rock.
Deep in the forest, a man slipped from his saddle and fell into the shadow of a limestone crag and listened.
Gabriel Rein knew the sounds of the forest after dark. He knew nocturnal animals, he knew cave-dwelling smugglers, he knew drunken villagers who’d lost their way home. But a woman? A screaming woman?
Gabriel’s life was so deeply embedded in the trees and rocks of Savernake, he rarely, if ever, encountered others. He employed three men to help him with the horses and an old woman to keep camp; beyond these, Gabriel had very little contact with the outside world. A screaming woman was not only unexpected, it was a moral dilemma.
After ten beats, she screamed again; a shrill rip of sound that grabbed him by the throat and shoved him back.
Gabriel swore and looked at the sky. He’d waited weeks for the threat of a storm without actual rain. His new commission was a young stallion terrified of storms and he meant to expose him bit by bit. No surprise, the horse was also unnerved by screaming. He stamped and huffed behind Gabriel, yanking the lead. They’d been picking their way along a rocky path, acclimating to the smell of rain and the flashes of lightning. They’d not gone far, and the horse had seemed willing to press on—until the screaming. Now the stallion’s ears flicked back and his nostrils flared and he dug in, refusing to proceed.
Gabriel stepped to the horse and stroked his neck, assuring him with low words and the gentle clicking noise he used to calm frightened animals.
“No?” screamed the woman in the distance. A word this time. Her inflection spoke less of a retreat and more of a request? The screaming woman was negotiating.
Gabriel’s grooms had told him that the highwayman Channing Meade was raiding again. Meade made camp on the edge of Savernake Forest in August because the weather was mild and the deer were fat and the constable was lazy. Perhaps the screaming woman had been swiped from the village for Meade’s pleasure. Perhaps she’d come willingly, only to discover that Meade was a brute and his camp was a pit. Maybe the highwayman had set upon a carriage, and the woman inside objected to being robbed at knifepoint. Long Harry Road was little more than two ruts disappearing into a tunnel of murky green, and travelers should know better.
I don’t care,Gabriel thought, stroking the horse.
The forest had been a sanctuary to Gabriel since boyhood. He’d grown up in a constant state of evasion, tracked by spies and bounty hunters and mercenaries. He knew stillness and quiet like other children knew lessons and sport. He was a champion at holding his breath.
Now he was a man, and Gabriel wasn’t sure if the sanctuary was a necessity or simply a preference. He’d been here for so long, it was all he knew. The forest allowed him to owe nothing and rely on no one. His loyalties extended to his staff and his horses and no further. The work he did for clients was negotiated by an emissary; the same man provisioned his camp with supplies. The extreme seclusion had kept him alive for more than a decade. It kept everyone else alive. It was survival.
As to the survival of the screaming woman? He couldn’t say. Except for rare encounters with women—professionals who kept things quick and anonymous—he knew very little of female companionship. And he didn’t care about this screaming stranger.
I don’t want to care,he thought.
The horse snorted and tossed his mane. Gabriel made the clicking noise and pulled on his lead, reining him around. They would return to camp. The rain wouldn’t hold off forever. The horse shouldn’t be subjected to rain and screaming.
“Please!” came another cry from the woman. “Help!”
Gabriel paused. There was a note of demand in her voice. An earnestness, a reasoning. This wasn’t uncontrolled wailing, she was expectant. She summoned. The sound slid under his skin and burned.
Behind him, the stallion threw his head, yanking the lead. The horse was now properly agitated, dancing backward, snorting and hoofing the ground.
“Help!” the woman cried again.
Gabriel swore under his breath, keeping his hand steady on the horse’s neck.
I don’t care, he repeated in his head.
The stallion pulled backward, seventy stone of frightened animal straining against the lead. Swearing again, Gabriel allowed the horse to reverse from the path.
I don’t care.
There was a circle of grass where the terrain leveled off, and Gabriel ripped up a handful of the fragrant sweet reed and held it out, inviting the animal to graze.
I don’t care.
He looked around. A giant oak loomed nearby, and Gabriel tethered the horse to a low limb, his flank shielded from the wind by the trunk.
I don’t care.
He’d fitted the stallion’s bridle with blinders, and now he pressed the leather patches against Zeus’s eyes, obscuring his sight. Each precaution was made with ease and gentleness, his movements rote. Soothing a frightened horse came as naturally to Gabriel as breathing, but he knew almost nothing about frightened women. And yet, his ears were acutely tuned to the sound of—
“Please help me!” came another terrified cry.
Gabriel—who really, truly did not care—pulled the ax from his belt and slipped into the trees.