Chapter 16

THE MOON HAD MANAGED to fight its way from behind a cloud and shed just enough light for Mab to make out the figure of the unconscious man under her. She stared down in disbelief. One minute she’d been walking Tilly away from her hiding place under the tree, and the next thing she knew, she’d collided with something – someone – and tumbled down the verge.

It was a miracle she hadn’t broken her neck.

From what little she could make out in the brief second she had to view his face, she was overwhelmed with a strange sense of recognition – which was utterly ridiculous, as Mab almost instantly forgot faces. She would like to have said “he just had one of those faces”, the phrase that her uncle Brian had used to describe the duplicated single ladies of the ton that used to loiter about him during balls. However, there was certainly nothing mundane about him. His jawline was chiselled with sharp, stubble covered angles – slightly on the lean side, like the villagers after a modest winter – with plump lips and dark eyes that were rolling back into his head just before the darkness enveloped the grounds.

A wave of nausea washed over Mab, and she threw her hands onto his chest to steady herself. She was surprised to find herself noticing how lean his body was under her fingertips. She shook her head to rid herself of those thoughts.

“Mab!” shouted Tilly, rounding the side of the monument. “I think I k-killed him!”

Mab was surprised that she could hear Tilly, though the steep side of the mound, the bit that had been partially exposed by an excavation, seemed to shelter them somewhat from the worst of the storm.

Killed him.

Mab was finally pulled to her senses. Was the man beneath her dead?

Without thinking, her fingers glided up his chest and fumbled about his neck. It was desperately hard to tell – the bitterness of the night had begun to numb her fingers, and between the rain and mud, finding a—

Ah! There it is. A pulse!

Mab hadn’t killed him, though if they didn’t get him back to the house soon, the weather surely would. And she was almost certain that, underlying the smell of fresh earth and sweet ozone, a strange copperiness lingered. She really hoped that the wetness on her hands was solely from rain and not a fatal head injury from the man beneath her.

From the corner of her eye, she could just make out the form of a second prone body lying a couple of feet to her side, the eerie form of Tilly hovering over it.

The rain was still beating hard on the ground, and Mab slipped ungracefully in the mud as she attempted to disentangle herself from the body she’d fallen on. Her knees wobbled as she finally pulled herself into a standing position, then immediately slipped, her face connecting with the slick mud. Groaning, she carefully pushed herself to her feet once more.

Tilly’s haunting form was staring at her outstretched hands disbelievingly. “He just came out of nowhere ... both of t-them ... and he must have slipped when I w-walked into him ... and you were just gone ... and I killed him! I killed a man! I didn’t mean to!” Tilly grabbed hold of Mab’s shoulders. “What are we going to do? Please don’t let Aunt áine send me back ... I c-can’t go back ... I killed him!”

“Calm down, Tilly,” Mab said, though she herself was starting to shake with fear.

Mab dropped to her knees, hands outstretched and feeling the new form beneath her. This man, from what little she could see in the dark, wasn’t as robust as the other. As her fingers fumbled down his face and towards his neck, she noted that his features weren’t quite as sharp as the other mans. Finally, she managed to press her fingers into the man’s neck.

“He’s not dead either,” she said. “They’re just unconscious.”

Tilly let out a sigh of relief.

“We ought to get to the house,” Mab said. “We need to find one of the guards to help us bring them back.”

Tilly looked from Mab to the prone forms and back to the house. “What if we can’t f-find them again?”

“Can’t find ... Oh.” Mab looked back towards the house. She hadn’t thought of that. She and Tilly simply had to walk towards the lights; they’d be able to find their way to safety easily enough. But trying to find the bodies in the dark ...

Mab hadn’t quite noticed just how big the ancient mound was when she’d viewed it from afar. Having climbed it and subsequently fallen down it, she realised it was practically the size of a large hill. It would take a long while for the guards to search the perimeter of it, and searching for two mud-caked bodies with nothing but candlelight to guide them ... Mab wasn’t convinced that the men would be found before daybreak, and by then, it would most likely be too late.

Mab glanced towards Tilly, who was once again looking at her hands in disbelief.

“We’ll have to drag them back ourselves,” Mab shouted over the cool wind that had begun to creep around their sheltered side of the mound. After what Tilly had told her about her fear, she wasn’t sure if the girl would be able to bring herself to touch the men, but Mab couldn’t do it by herself.

In the pitiful light offered by the sliver of moon, she could see Tilly look from her hands up to Mab. Though Mab couldn’t be sure on account of the darkness, she could have sworn Tilly wore a look of resolve.