the gates of a prison. The heavy folds of her skirts and the rigid constriction of her corset seemed to drag her down like the weight of iron shackles. Even her own rational mind, hardened by a lifetime of common sense, held her back from following the cry of her heart—to shed the chains of house and clothes and reason, to spread her wings and soar with the albatross over the oceans to places she would never see in her sober lifetime; places whose very names resonated with music—Cathay, Zanzibar, Constantinople, America…
Pulling back into herself she dropped her gaze from the sky to the spot where her long, pale fingers rested on the limestone sill. When she glanced up again there was a dark speck moving along the distant road toward the house.
Little by little the speck materialized into a wagon—a ramshackle one-horse dray with two men hunched on the seat and a long, dark form lying across the open bed. Rowena’s hand crept to her throat as she recognized her father’s gelding, Blackamoor, dancing alongside the wagon on a tether. The gelding’s saddle was empty.
Her long legs took the steps two at a time as she raced downstairs to what, in grander days, had been the great hall. Her slippered feet flew across the rush-strewn floor, their swift passage releasing the scent of crushed rosemary behind her.
By the time she reached the front door, Rowena’s heart was hammering with dread. What had possessed her to let her father go off alone this morning? She should have ridden along on the pretext of some errand or devised an excuse to keep him at home. Whatever disaster had befallen him now, the fault was at least partly her own.
The front doors opened straightaway onto the moor. Rowena burst outside to see that the dray was still a considerable distance off. Too agitated to wait, she caught up her skirts and broke into a headlong run that bruised her feet through the thin leather house slippers. The sea wind tore the pins from her hair as she plunged toward the road. Would she find her father hurt? Ill? Even dead?
At the crest of a long hedgerow she paused for a moment to rest. Her ribs heaved beneath the constricting stays of her corset, and her breath came in agonized gasps, but she had halved the distance between herself and the dray. Only now did she have a clear view of the two men on the seat. One of them was the driver, an unkempt hireling she had often seen in town. The other—
Rowena’s knees buckled with relief as she recognized her father’s stoop-shouldered frame and low-crowned woolen hat. He was all right. She had worried herself to a frenzy for nothing.
But why had he taken the trouble to hire a dray? What was the nature of the dark, mysterious shape that lay across the planks behind him, wrapped in what appeared to be a canvas sail? Had Sir Christopher purchased some exotic new specimen? A large fish, perhaps? A dolphin? A dead seal? She thought of the long marble dissecting table in the laboratory and the exhausting days and nights to come as they labored to learn and catalog their discoveries before putrefaction made the work impossible.
“Rowena!” Her father’s sharp-edged voice rang out across the distance. His arm beckoned her to come, but she was already running toward the roadway, her skirts gathering green burrs where they trailed behind her.
By the time she reached the edge of the road she was too winded to speak. She stood warm and panting, her hair streaming in the breeze as the dray, drawn by a spavined cart horse, lumbered toward her.
“Rowena. Good.” Her father nodded in his terse way. “I’ll be needing some help with this specimen. Ride Blackamoor back to the stable. Tell Thomas and Dickon to be in the courtyard when we arrive. Have Ned clear out the barred room in the cellar and spread the floor with clean straw. Quickly.”
“The cellar?” Rowena stared up at him, dumbfounded. “But how can you mean that? The place is little more than a rat warren! No one goes down there, ’tis so dark and damp and moldy! Father, I truly do not understand—”
“Soon enough you will. Hurry, now.” Sir Christopher reached in front of the driver, seized the slack reins and pulled the plodding nag to a halt. Blackamoor, impatient for stall and feed, snorted and tugged at the tether that held him to the side of the dray.
“Steady, there.” Rowena eased closer to the high-strung gelding, caught the bridle and, with her free hand began unloosing the tether. While her fingers worked the knot, her gaze was compellingly drawn to the canvas-swathed bundle that was lashed with thick ropes to the bed of the dray. From what she could see of the thing inside, she could judge nothing except that it was long—the length of a tall man. Her lips parted in astonishment as she saw a slight movement and realized that beneath its heavy wrappings the creature was breathing.
“Father!” She spun around to face him, her heart pounding. “The beast is alive! You must tell me what it is!”
“Later, Rowena.” He dismissed her demand with a scowl. “The less said here, the better. We can talk at the house. Now, ride.”
The knot parted, freeing the gelding’s bridle. Rowena swung expertly into the saddle, legs astride, skirts bunched over her thighs. As she paused to gather the reins, her eyes fell once more on the dray’s tightly bound cargo.
Mounted, she could see what she had not been able to see from the ground. The edges of the canvas sail had parted at the near end of the bundle to reveal a face.
A human face.
The face of a man.
Rowena’s heart lurched as she leaned closer, oblivious to her father’s impatient glare, oblivious to everything except the sight of those riveting male features.
The eyes, set beneath straight ink-black brows, were closed. Deep-set, they lay in the hollows of a fiercely noble face that seemed all bruises and jutting bones, fleshless beneath taut bronze skin. A lock of black hair—all she could see—trailed across one purpled cheek. For all his evident strength the man looked ill and starved. He smelled of vomit and seawater, evidence of a long, rough ocean voyage. But why in heaven’s name was he lashed to the bed of the dray? Surely, in his condition, there was no danger of escape.
Compelled by a strange urge, Rowena leaned outward from the saddle and extended her right hand toward the stranger’s battered, motionless face. Ignoring her father’s sharp-spoken warning, she brushed an exploring fingertip along one concave cheek. The cool skin was as smooth as the finest tanned leather, the long, rugged jaw bearing not a trace of beard stubble. It was almost as if—
Rowena gasped and snatched her hand away as the man’s eyelids jerked open. The eyes that glared up at her were as black as polished jet—their hue so deep that she could see no distinction between iris and pupil.
But it was not the startling color of those eyes that froze her as if she had been turned to stone. It was the blaze of hatred she had glimpsed in their depths—a hatred so pure, so intense, that it seemed to rise from the depths of hell itself.
She wrenched her gaze away. “Father—”
“Not now, Rowena,” Sir Christopher snapped. “Later, once the brute’s safely locked away, I’ll tell you everything. Go, now, there’s no time to lose!”
Rowena shot her father a look of horrified dismay. Then, knowing there was nothing to be done here, she wheeled the horse and galloped off toward the house.
Black Otter willed himself to not struggle as the two burly white men seized his arms and began dragging him off the bed of the cart. Over the course of the terrible sea voyage, he had taken on the desperate strategy of a trapped animal. Watch and learn. Wait for the best chance. Then strike to kill.
Early
