The Prince's Bride

Chapter Two

Lady Marianne “Ryan” Daventry was not, by nature, a screamer.

Ryan was a suggester. A stater of simple truths. A calm voice of reason when emotions were high and tempers lost. Her middle sister Diana had the flash temper and a very hearty scream. Their youngest sister, Charlotte, with her girlish fear of mice and bugs and branches scraping windowpanes, was also a known screamer. But not Ryan. Ryan, in fact, could only remember ever having screamed once or twice in her entire life.

But she screamed now. She was well and truly terrified, and she screamed the raw and desperate scream of a survivor.

At least she’d come into the forest alone. Her one consolation. Ryan was defenseless, yes, but her maid, Agnes, was safe back at the inn. Agnes had wanted to accompany her and Ryan had refused. Even without the threat of ambush, Agnes was unsuited for forest trespass. The maid was afraid of nice men in polite settings; she would never survive a snarling man with no life behind his eyes.

“Cry all you like,” hissed the man with his hand clamped to Ryan’s jaw. “There’s no one within fifty miles to hear you scream.” With his other hand, he pinned her against his chest, her body dangling half a foot from the road.

Ryan couldn’t really say how she’d gone from mounted on horseback to the painful grasp of this fetid, sneering man. She’d been plodding carefully through the forest, nudging the frightened mare onward, when she came upon a row of men on horseback just over the crest of a hill. They sat so heavily, their ranks so impenetrable, she’d mistaken them for a line of statues blocking the road. But they weren’t statues: they were highwaymen and the brute who now held her was their leader. He’d emerged from the blockade like a cannon ball rolling into the chamber of a cannon.

Despite her fear, she’d kept control of her mount and reined around. But he’d been deceptively fast for his size and managed to swipe the reins before she could bolt. Then his hands were on her and he dragged her from the saddle like a basket of wash.

“Believe me when I say I’ve got nothing,” she now whimpered to the man. “No money. No jewelry. Not even food. I rode from the inn in Pewsey to have a look at the forest’s edge and lost my way.”

“Of course that’s your claim,” the man said, releasing her chin with a teeth-rattling shove. Ryan tried to scuttle away, but his hand returned, this time with a dagger. He pressed the flat side of the dull blade against her cheek. “You’ve a horse, haven’t you?”

“On loan from the inn,” she insisted. “Please do not harm the mare. She is not valuable. They loaned her to me for no fee, but they’ll want her back. They’ll come looking for her.”

He pulled the knife from her cheek and dug his hand into her hair, yanking her head back with a snap. The pain and helplessness of being steered by her hair took Ryan’s breath away.

“Answer me with sass, will you?” the man mocked. “See how far that gets you.”

“I’m telling you plainly,” she insisted, “if it’s valuables you seek, you’ll be disappointed. I’m sorry, I simply don’t—”

“Your body then,” the man announced, wrenching her head back. “Easier to divvy up. A turn for every man. We’ll make a game of it. Find anything you may have hidden in the process.”

Without hesitation, Ryan screamed again.