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She bit her lip lightly. Maybe she should go back. She looked over her shoulder in the direction of Castle Delaney.
The Midnight Shadow would never leave his friends alone in the woods at the mercy of the French. The thought pierced her mind and bolstered her courage.
As she moved slowly through the woods, the dried twigs and leaves crunched beneath her feet. She paused again to call out for her friends. “Mary! Garret!”
An eerie silence answered her. She looked around the quiet forest, her instincts telling her to flee. But how could she leave her friends?
Then she heard the crunch of approaching footsteps. “Mary?” she called hesitantly.
A figure emerged from behind one of the trees in front of her, but it wasn’t Mary. As the shape neared, Bria recognized the boy and gasped silently. Randolph Kenric. He was bigger than she was and four years older. His brown hair hung loose around his shoulders. He looked like a wild animal.
The silence around her grew even more thick and ominous. Kenric once skinned a kitten just to see how loud it could howl.
Bria stepped back. Her foot landed on a branch and snapped it in half. He turned his head and his brown hair fell into his eyes. He swiped the strands away to glare at her.
Bria took another step back.
Kenric smiled. “Ahhh,” he said. “The heir to Castle Delaney. You’re a little off your lands, aren’t you?”
“I’m looking for my friends,” she admitted.
“Which one? The peasant girl I shoved in the mud or the sniveling little boy?”
Anger pierced her, and her small fingers clenched into a fist. What gave him the right to treat her friends like that? Her eyes raked him with rage. “You’re a mean cur, Randolph Kenric,” she told him and turned to march toward Castle Delaney.
“Hey,” Kenric called. “Didn’t your father just leave to fight some war?”
Bria didn’t answer him. She swatted aside a branch, continuing to move through the forest back toward her lands, her home.
Suddenly, she was yanked to a halt by biting fingers digging into her arm. Kenric wrenched her around to face him. “Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you,” he commanded. “What kind of manners were you brought up with?”
“Let go of me,” Bria ordered.
“Is that a command, your ladyship?”
She tried to pull her arm free, but he held her wrist tightly.
“I just asked you a question,” he said innocently. “But you’re too good for the likes of me, eh?” He chuckled low in his throat. “I’m not nobility like yourself, after all, just a poor cousin of the Knowles. Shall I grovel before you, my lady?”
Bria twisted her arm. “Let me go,” she said again, trying to sound commanding. But her voice caught in her throat as tears of fear stung her eyes.
“You need a lesson in humility.” He began dragging her through the forest.
Bria dug in her heels, but her slippered feet were no help on the leaf-carpeted forest floor, nor against Kenric’s strength. She tried to pull his fingers from her wrist, but he held her tight. He pulled her deeper into the woods, into the darkness. “Stop it!” Bria called.
“You know, running through the forest alone isn’t such a good idea,” Kenric said. “You might fall into a bramble patch.”
Bramble patch! Horror consumed Bria. She twisted and turned, trying to free herself, pushing at his hand with her free one. But his laughter rang out, as strong and vicious as his hold.
Kenric reached the edge of the bramble patch and stopped. Bria stared at the dangerous growth, the thorns looking like millions of miniature daggers. Some were long and straight like blades, others curved like hooks. All of them were sharp. She struggled against his hold, pulling at his grip, crying, “Why are you doing this?”
Kenric turned his dark smile from the spiked plants to her face. “Because I want to.”
“Let her go!” a male voice commanded.
Bria looked up to see a man cloaked in black, a black mask on his face, a black cape on his shoulders. The Midnight Shadow! He stood at the edge of the woods, his hands on his hips, his back tall and straight.
Kenric turned to look... and then broke out in a grin. “You must be joking!”
