"Yes, Egan, I... I know," she murmured. As she stepped from the carriage a great wind swept up, throwing dust and rotting brown-gray leaves into her messy hair; she exhaled deep, taking a breath of the air; she couldn't taste it, her senses dulled to their depths by the experiences of the morning. She hesitantly stepped towards the door to the manor. Her eyes closed again, the wind whipping against her, her dress clinging to her body; her hair thrown in tangled masses across her shoulder by the powerful gusts.
I loved him, she thought to herself. She wanted to give herself to him - just as they had promised in those hot, tense, wet throes of flaming passion. When he drew his coat atop their quaking bodies she had everything she had ever dreamed of - a true gentleman, one who respected her; one she loved, a man different from the others.
She entered the manor, immediately greeted by the sight of her father - arms spread, hopeful and caring, at the base of the foyer's grand stairwell.
"Nadia! Dear, how... how did everything go?..." he asked, his face crested with pain. Clearly he had hoped to see the two of them return together, and heartbreak filled his expression at the sight of a lone woman standing in the opened doors.
All he had wanted was to see her happy, before he passed. And she had been happy - happy like she never thought she could be, here in England; here in the moors and forests, where the world had been built against her freedom and happiness. But somehow, she had found it - for those few passing days with him, she had found it.
"Father, remember the story you used to tell? About mother?" Nadia asked, the winds gusting across her back. "About how you met."
"Your mother," he chuckled. "Oh, how I miss her... we met not far from here, remember?"
"Tell me," she insisted, her body shaking.
"Come inside, please, Nadia," her father pleaded through a cough.
"Please, father, tell me," Nadia insisted.
"I tripped in her dress and she called me a scoundrel," her father coughed out a laugh. "She hated me. And yet we met, again and again, at dinner parties, and because our parents insisted upon it," he chortled. "You know the story."
"She hated you, but you never gave up, did you, father?" Nadia asked, her voice shaking.
"Love is... a complicated thing, Nadia. It takes dedication, it takes sacrifice, it takes... well, stubborn, persistence," he advised.
"Stubborn persistence? And what's that you once said of me, father?" she demanded. His vexed expression shifted slowly to a warm smile.
"You're the most stubborn young woman I've ever known, Nadia," he responded gently.
"I have somewhere I need to go - I need to be rather stubborn, father," she said with a smile, "as I've a very... stubborn man. A man I love."
"Egan will get you there I'm certain," he replied.
"No, I must move with great haste. Shadow will take me there far faster," she responded, hurrying towards the stables. Her father beamed with pride as the door slammed behind his daughter. He'd finally gotten to see her so awash with that feeling - love.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"Hyah!"
Lady Havenshire's voice carried across the moors; she raced atop Shadow's back as the horse bucked and brayed anxiously, leaping along the cobblestone paths, through dusty trails and along pathways coated in dead leaves and dying autumn colors. The pathways connecting Emerys to Berrewithe had never seemed so long, so painstakingly jagged and mazelike, as they did now - when she needed to make every second count. She needed to see his face again - to tell him he loved her, and that as a stubborn woman, as stubborn a woman as ever lived in the moors, she wouldn't simply let him decide alone who was worthy of whom. She raced against time; she raced against her own doubts. She raced against a storm brewing at her back - gray clouds had gathered against her, threatening to stop her forced and hasty march across the roads, the thunder rumbling ominously closer and closer each maddening mile her steed traversed.
"Shadow, here! Hyah!" Nadia's mind worked quickly; she spotted a sideways path that she knew cut across the river bank that separated her estate from the wilds between Berrewithe and Emerys. The long and sloping road saw little traffic from carriages and merchants, on account of its steep and awkward slopes, but atop proud Shadow's back Nadia had no doubt the route would prove faster. Dashing past thorny yellowed bushes and tall, unkempt grasses, Nadia and her proud mount barreled through mud and mush and weeds, the storm growing louder with each passing moment. A crackle of blinding lightning frightened both Nadia and her horse, who whinnied loudly at the blaze of white light, but continued on heedlessly. As trees blurred past, she saw him everywhere - in everything. Her father had been right about her - stubborn. Stubborn enough to put herself at great risk... riding alone, a woman along the moors, as a thunderstorm rumbled forward... and worse, taking a rarely-used path carved along a marshy, rock-riddled highway.
Only then, as the blinding blast of white subsided, did Nadia notice the peculiar horseman at the side of the rarely-traveled path, leading his white-skinned horse to drink at the side of the road. Nadia felt it odd... practically none dared travel this roughly-hewn path. Nadia tried not to worry about the sight, though her heart began to thump in her chest when she saw another horseman clad in black, a scarf drawn across his features, further along the path. Lightning flashed blinding again and Shadow stepped through a morass of muddy puddles, her pace slowing briefly before taking to the bridge up ahead - a rickety bridge of crumbling stones drawn across the river bank, the rushing sounds of a shrunken stream gushing along her ears. The bridge rose tall above the stream, and she dashed across it quickly... but a wary glance back took notice of a gaggle of horses gathered at the shadowy arches beneath the bridge, and a gathered group of men in patchwork clothing, their faces masked, swords and flintlocks slung at their waists, scrambling as they saw her pass.
Her heart stopped and terror froze the blood in her veins as a realization struck her hard as a musket-blast to the back.
Bandits, she realized too late. So few took this roadway... particularly in the interest of avoiding entanglements with the sorts of bandits who infested the distant paths. At night the bandits scattered across every roadway, but now Nadia had crossed daringly into their own domain, and they gave chase. Nadia tightened her profile against the horse, urging Shadow on with loud walloping calls, spurring the creature into a fevered run as she heard horse hooves clopping behind her.
The storm... the bandits, and the threat of losing a man's love. They all loomed over her shoulders, chasing her desperately - threatening to claim her love, her comfort, her future, and now - her life.
"Shadow! Hya!" She glanced over her shoulder as she called to her steed, and the bandits dragged slowly behind her; she took a detour from the rough roadway, her horse deftly leaping across a small stream and hopping up a series of stony cliff-faces. Grinning, she looked back and found several of the foul horsemen confounded by the path, their steeds unwilling to brave those same dangers... but a few were gaining on her, and her heart pounded against her ribs. She felt Shadow's pace slowing; Nadia had pushed the poor horse hard, and now her stamina had begun to wane. Her hands shaking, Nadia gripped the reins tight, leading her tired mount back to the roadway. Shadow gave her all, galloping along; even the horse, it seemed, knew the stakes, feeling sympathetic to her loving master's pained plight. A loud crack rang out, but it wasn't thunder; terror in wide eyes Nadia looked back to see the bandits gaining ground, hooping and shouting, firing their pistols in her direction. She swooped to one side, then the other, leading Shadow skillfully along a lower path down a mountain as her pursuers kept close. Another volley of crackles erupted, loud and high-pitched; her breathing met a wild, fevered pitch, adrenaline pumping fear and flight into her every being. She had made a grave mistake, and as the thunderstorm drowned out the sound of the shouting, screaming bandits chasing after her, trying to intimidate her, she closed her eyes.
She saw him; her love, the only one who could still her heart. She wondered in that moment if she would ever see him again.
Shadow whinnied and Nadia's eyes flashed open as a bullet whizzed past, only a mere inch from striking the steed in the flank. She realized that the bandits had no interest in harming her - they instead wished simply to isolate her, kidnap her, so that they might ransom her, or use her for... rather more nefarious purposes. She swallowed hard, gripping with all the strength her body could to Shadow's reins, but she felt Shadow pacing slower, and slower; the bandits laughed as they began to keep pace, surrounding Nadia on each side.
"Shadow! Here, hya!" she directed her horse along a side path, through some trees; the bandits closed rank behind her, but two clumsy riders moved slowly and found themselves acquainted rather harshly with the ground when their steeds stopped suddenly in the thicket of trees, launching their riders careening into the dirt. Still, six men on horses galloped along behind her ailing mount, and when the trees cleared they rode side-by-side now with Nadia, two of them pulling to each side of her.