Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It felt strange, knowing Christopher was in the room opposite her own. Angelika had locked her door before she got into bed. She could not say she liked his presence, because she still thought of it as Will’s room. Now Christopher was using that tub, sleeping in that bed, and erasing the last traces of his rival’s presence. Male cats rubbed against things to mark them as property. She could picture it now.

She’d slept soundly for around two hours, but was now awake, tossing and turning. It felt like a waste of time to be asleep when the house and grounds were so full of interesting guests and Mary was out there somewhere. Thunder cracked in the distance. Would she be kept dry? Did the big man have enough sense to keep her warm, and somewhat comfortable?

Angelika could not see Will’s cottage from her window, but she was absolutely sure that he would be awake. She could feel a pull from him. He must be so hungry after not touching his meal. She pulled on a robe in the dark and put on her boots. In the kitchen, she found some leftover cheese and bread, and lit a lantern. She needed to see Will’s face one more time, to ask for a hug, and to decide if the name Arlo suited him.

It was only a quick shortcut through the orchard.

During the day, she could agree to the men’s terms, and they seemed reasonable. Stay close to someone, and be guarded by them. But what were the chances that in the next three minutes she would intersect with the huge man’s path? She hardly flattered herself that he was so taken with her that he was waiting right now. She preferred the more likely outcome: she would soon be lying in Will’s arms on his narrow bed, in his monastery-white room, listening to the storm rolling in.

Taking a calculated risk was typical Angelika.

The air outside was perfumed by approaching rain clouds, and something else strange that turned her stomach and made her hungry. She swung her lantern and walked through the first rows of apples, past the Conqueror variety, picking one out of habit. Biting it, she found it to be the same flavor as always: sour and sweet, the taste of childhood. It made her think of her brother and that day with the spade, and how Will had asked if she had planted her own tree. “I should have,” she said out loud to herself to cover her nerves. All this talk of monsters and kidnapping couldn’t help but affect her. “I am going to start creating things on my own, without Victor, no matter what he says.”

She could hear a crackle. Was it rain?

“I’m going to get married in the Notre-Dame in Paris,” she said, breaking into a jog.

In the far distance, up on the hill, there was a light glowing in Will’s cottage. Perhaps it was a candle on the sill, burning for her like the star of Bethlehem. “I’m going to wear a dress that will employ ten seamstresses for a year, and I am going to have to increase my fitness to walk down that long aisle—”

She burst through a row of trees, and what she saw and smelled had her heart sinking into the earth.

It wasn’t Victor’s big man. But it was men. Men from the village, four, five, huddled around a campfire, and they were not the regular gardeners. They had sacks of apples around them. It was theft, but no matter. She saw liquor bottles, and a rabbit cooking on a spit. In the heartbeat that they all stared, she saw them look at her nightgown, her loose hair, and the fact that no protector stepped out behind her.

“Hello, luvvie,” one said, and his smile and tone were all the warning she needed.

Mary had drummed the following into her during her adolescent years:

No hesitation, no politeness, run.

Angelika swung her arm in a full circle, throwing the lantern into the middle of the group, and she began to run through the rows, faster than their rabbit. Behind her, she heard the roar of confused outrage. Her head start would last only as long as it took drunk men to get to their feet.

“Will!” Her scream pierced the air. “Will, open the door for me!” If he was asleep, or the cottage was further than she thought, it would be too late for her.

Never had she had such a profound empathy for hunted animals as she did now; she could feel every footstep behind her, could hear every branch snap, grunt, curse, and oath. At times it felt like she was miles ahead; other times she felt the pluck of fingers on her clothes. Her ankle turned and she lost a boot, just as her brother had on that fateful night when they created their masterpieces.

“Angelika!” Will’s faraway shout was coming from the wrong direction. She had somehow gotten turned around, and she was in the green apples when she should be surrounded by russet red.

Her hesitation cost her.

Hands grabbed her upper arms and lifted her clean off the ground. She smelled liquor and sweat. In her ear, a stranger sneered, “Where’re you off to?”

Everything hung suspended in an odd moment, then time spun faster, and she began kicking her feet. The guttural sounds she heard behind her were horrible. Snarling like a wolf, growling like a bear. The hard grip was wrenched away from her body, and she fell down to her hands and knees. She could hear Christopher shouting, even fainter than Will. Rolling onto her back, she looked up to see her attacker having his neck broken very efficiently by Victor’s huge man. The next one who blundered into the fray met the same fate.

Her rescuer tipped back his head, and let out a howl that echoed off the mountain.

He grabbed at a third man, who uttered his final foul word before joining the growing pile. “No! That’s enough,” Angelika panted, and they let the others flee into the night. Now they were alone.

Gasping for air, she asked, “How did you find me?”

“I think I always will,” he replied.

Her nightgown was up around her thighs. She pushed at it, but her hands were covered in dirt. He knelt over her, brushing at her ineffectually with his unusable hands, uttering a tsk. He radiated nothing but protective, brotherly concern. Her breaths were sobs of sheer relief.

It was this tableau that Will and Christopher both crashed in upon, from opposite rows of apples.