Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Minerva was restless, anxious, eager to stretch her legs and breathe the salt air. She could think of no reason for her state of agitation this morning.
No, that was not quite true. She had the memory of Dashiell’s kisses each day they met on the path, sweet and gentle and restrained. Proper, if kisses could be named as such.
But in the darkest hours of the night, she found she ached for more.
She could not help but wonder if that was his intent, if he knew exactly how those restrained brushes of his mouth made her long for the way he had kissed her in the parlor, as if restraint had become dangerous to him.
The hour was early, the sky flat and heavy and wrong.
There was no wind, and that, too, was wrong.
There was always wind on the cliff path, whipping her hair and cloak, flattening the long grasses.
But today was windless, the waves quiet, the grass standing unnaturally still.
Fog rolled in from the sea, cloaking the path so she could see only a few feet ahead.
Out of habit, she touched the pendant, finding it cool, inert. She exhaled a slow breath. Whatever was wrong this morning was just fog and her anxious nature conjuring unease from inconvenience.
The path curved. She glanced back to see the cottage had been swallowed by the mist. A frisson of unease inched up her spine. She could turn back. The cottage was there, behind the mist, just a few minutes’ walk.
After a moment, she continued on, but the crawling unease did not lessen.
She paused, listening, but heard only the gentle lap of the waves.
It was then she noticed that she could not hear the gulls.
They were always there and she was accustomed to their cries, sharp and quarrelsome, so much so that their absence was unsettling.
Again, her fingers sought the pendant. Still cool.
She tapped her fingers against her thigh, slowly, methodically, and then she continued along the path. She rounded the bend, silently counting each step, telling herself she was feeding a flame she ought to let die.
Almost had she convinced herself when she heard it, a scraping shuffle behind and to her left. Whirling, she looked about, straining to hear. After a moment, she had almost convinced herself there was nothing there when she heard it…breathing, ragged and purposeful. Heavy.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
There came no reply. Unease crawled along her spine.
Tapping her fingertips against her thigh, she strained to see through the fog. She made a long, slow exhale, and then, deciding discretion was the better part of valor, she began to retrace her steps back toward the cottage. The morning felt wrong.
She had taken only a dozen steps when a dark shape emerged from the mist, tall and wide. She stopped in her tracks, wariness churning through her. A man. There was a familiarity about the size, the shape of his torso…
Teague.
In her mind’s eye, she saw him as he had been in the village, his eyes fixed upon her with malice.
“You took her.” His words were slurred, his tone angry. “Stole her, you did.”
“Nessa is employed in my household,” Minerva said, forcing her tone to remain even. “She chose to come.”
She assessed the likelihood she could duck past him and quickly realized she could not. Then she wondered if she could run in the opposite direction, if she would be fast enough to evade him in the mist. Or if she was best off standing her ground, feigning calm.
“Worthless chit had no right to choose.” He took a step closer. “She belongs to me.”
Her heart hammered like a trapped bird in a cage. The wall to her right was chest high, too high to climb quickly. To her left was the drop. Teague stood between her and the cottage. There was only one way open to her, so she spun and ran, holding her skirts in both hands, feet pounding the path.
The mist obscured everything more than a few feet in front of her.
She dared not look back, certain it would slow her pace, certain he was mere inches behind her.
She could hear nothing but the roar of her own heartbeat, feel nothing but the pounding of her own blood and the tightness of her chest as she dragged in each breath.
Almost did she dare hope she had been fast enough.
Then something caught the back of her skirt and pulled her up short like a tether, accompanied by the sound of cloth tearing.
Minerva wrenched forward. Teague yanked her back. His free hand found her arm, and he spun her to face him, his grip brutal.
With a cry, she kicked at his shin and clawed at his face, her nails finding skin. He made a sound of pain and rage, his grip loosening for a heartbeat. She rammed her knee upward as Kitty had taught her. With a wheezing gasp, he doubled over but did not release her.
Twisting in his grip, she screamed and fought, using the side of her fist against his ear.
He bellowed and closed his hands around her throat.
Desperate, she clawed at his wrists. She drove her heel down on his instep. She rammed her knee up again, but he was wise to her now. He turned his hip to the side, deflecting, and tightened his grip on her throat.
He meant to kill her. Terror iced her veins.
She could neither breathe in nor out, her chest heaving, convulsing.
She fought him with all she had. Even as her lungs screamed for air, even as her vision darkened at the edges, even as the sound of the sea grew distant, distorted, she fought.
Her nails gouging his wrists, her body twisting this way and that.
The sky above her was black at the edges, closing in an ever-tightening circle.
Her thoughts grew sluggish, slow, incoherent. But one thought shone through. Dashiell. She had never told him how she felt about him and now he would never know.
And then the ground moved. She felt it through the soles of her feet, up through her legs, all the way to her chest where her lungs felt as though they would explode. The frantic tumult of a hundred drums pounded in her ears, merging with the wild pounding of her heart.
The grip at her throat shifted. She writhed and thrashed, dislodging Teague’s hold enough that she could haul in a single desperate breath. Then another and another. She gasped and coughed, barely able to stay upright.
In that instant, the ground shook harder, thunder crashing in her ears.
No, not thunder. Hoofbeats.
Teague let her go and she slumped to the ground, dizzy, sick, her throat burning.
She saw the blurred image of a massive gray beast hurtling to a stop, saw a dark shape spring from its back.
Scuttling backward like a crab, she pressed against the stone wall, her vision clearing. Her hand was at her throat, the dry rasp of her own breathing loud in her ears.
Dashiell. The dark shape was Dashiell.
He turned his gaze upon her for a second, his eyes dark and cold, his expression a frozen mask. For that single second, their gazes met and held. She felt as if with that look, he reached inside her, assessing her, ensuring that she was alive. Then he gave a short nod and turned to Teague.
Dashiell was tall and broad, but Teague had both height and width on him.
Minerva tried to push to her feet, tried to call out, to tell Dashiell that they should leave, just leave.
But she had not the strength to stand and the only sound that emerged from her damaged throat was a painful, tiny croak.
Dashiell stalked forward, his expression icy, his movements precise.
His first blow caught Teague in the throat, the man’s breath escaping in a pained wheeze.
The second blow caught him in the nose. Blood gushed down over his mouth and chin.
Dashiell moved in a brutal dance, each blow landing with vicious intent.
Teague roared and thrashed and flailed and landed not a single blow.
Minerva lost count of how many times Dashiell hit him. She only knew that Teague lay bruised and bloodied on the ground, and still Dashiell pummeled him, blow after blow. She could not say how he tallied the cost, but at some point, he was satisfied that he had damaged Teague enough.
He turned to her then and she watched his icy mask melt away, watched something else blaze in his expression. Concern? Anger? Worry?
Before she could decide, he had crossed to her and crouched down before her. His hands came to her face, tilting it up, his thumbs at her jaw. Then the tip of his index fingers went to her throat, so gentle, so at odds with the violence he had just dealt Teague.
“Minerva.” His voice was both rough and gentle.
“I a-a-am all r-r-right,” she whispered, her voice sounding wrong, abraded and thin.
His jaw tightened. “You are not.”
She did not argue because he was not wrong.
Teague lay on the ground where Dashiell had left him, his breathing a series of wet grunts. His boots scraped along the ground as he writhed and moaned. His movements slow, agonized, he pushed up onto hands and knees and then onto his feet. Minerva could summon no sympathy for his pain.
It struck her that he should not be on his feet at all, that the punishment Dashiell had meted out to him was enough that he should still be lying on the ground.
The pendant at her throat warmed even as wariness coiled through her.
Teague stumbled forward, his movements awkward. Stiff. Wrong.
“D-D-Dashiell,” she croaked, unable to say more, willing him to understand that something here was not right.
Teague’s arms lifted away from his sides as he took another jerky step forward, his legs straight, knees unbending, as if he were pulled into a movement against his will.
The mist blanketed everything, white and absolute, obscuring the horizon, shrinking the world to twenty feet of path and the sound of the waves at the base of the cliff. The pendant went from warm to hot as Teague took another awkward step forward, his entire body jerking as he went.
Minerva’s heart gave a hard, sharp kick as a shape coalesced in the mist, dark and undulating, amorphous, yet suggestive of two forms, two men, locked in a struggle.
The Trevelyan brothers. She knew them, had seen them, felt them when she had stood at the cliff’s edge just before Kitty’s arm had come around her waist. She knew them and she knew the horror of her body moving against her will.
Teague’s feet scraped forward another step.
Horror congealed in Minerva’s gut.
Her gaze flashed to Dashiell’s where he crouched at her side. He was watching Teague, his expression blank and cold. He intended to do nothing to stop this terrible tableau.
“Dashiell.” His name was neither whisper nor croak. She wasn’t even certain she had been able to form the word or if it only ricocheted in her thoughts.
He held her gaze for a long moment. “He tried to kill you,” he said.
Do not let him die like this. Not for his sake but for your own. For mine.
She could not say the words, could not shape sound past the trembling of her body and the clacking of her teeth. She felt cold, so cold. The pendant burned with a scalding heat.
But, somehow, Dashiell read her thoughts in her expression.
He moved then, rising and crossing the path in three strides. He grabbed Teague from behind by his upper arms and pulled. But Teague was bigger, bulkier, and the Trevelyans’ malevolence was pulling him forward.
For a terrible, endless moment, no one moved.
Then Dashiell yanked Teague to the side and threw him to the ground. Teague crawled away on his hands and knees, a sound, low and formless coming from between his lips as though torn from his very soul.
Dashiell stood for a moment staring into the mist. Minerva no longer saw the brothers and she suspected Dashiell did not see them either. Her trembling fingers went to the now cool pendant at her throat. Then Dashiell was crouching beside her once more, his hand at her back.
“Wait here,” he said. He straightened and rose and a moment later, brought Cato to the wall.
He did not ask her if she could mount. He only bent to put his hands at her waist and drew her to her feet, his touch gentle, careful.
Then he set her foot in the stirrup, lifted her to the saddle, and swung up behind her.
She closed her eyes, grateful for his warmth at her back and his arms around her.
He tightened his hold and only then did she realize she was trembling all the harder.
Behind them, Teague moaned and whimpered.
Neither looked at him as Dashiell set Cato in motion.