The Prince’s Bride (HIDDEN ROYALS #2) by Charis Michaels EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Charis Michaels
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 5.5 MB
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Savernake Forest
Wiltshire, England
August 1811
The night was pierced by a woman’s scream.
The sound, brief and raw, shot above the canopy and scraped down the
hillside to bounce against the rock.
Deep in the forest, a man slipped from his saddle and fell into the shadow
of a limestone crag and listened.
Gabriel Rein knew the sounds of the forest after dark. He knew nocturnal
animals, he knew cave-dwelling smugglers, he knew drunken villagers
who’d lost their way home. But a woman? A screaming woman?
Gabriel’s life was so deeply embedded in the trees and rocks of
Savernake, he rarely, if ever, encountered others. He employed three men to
help him with the horses and an old woman to keep camp; beyond these,
Gabriel had very little contact with the outside world. A screaming woman
was not only unexpected, it was a moral dilemma.
After ten beats, she screamed again; a shrill rip of sound that grabbed
him by the throat and shoved him back.
Gabriel swore and looked at the sky. He’d waited weeks for the threat of
a storm without actual rain. His new commission was a young stallion
terrified of storms and he meant to expose him bit by bit. No surprise, the
horse was also unnerved by screaming. He stamped and huffed behind
Gabriel, yanking the lead.
They’d been picking their way along a rocky
path, acclimating to the smell of rain and the flashes of lightning. They’d
not gone far, and the horse had seemed willing to press on—until the
screaming. Now the stallion’s ears flicked back and his nostrils flared and
he dug in, refusing to proceed.
Gabriel stepped to the horse and stroked his neck, assuring him with low
words and the gentle clicking noise he used to calm frightened animals.
“No?” screamed the woman in the distance. A word this time. Her
inflection spoke less of a retreat and more of a request? The screaming
woman was negotiating.
Gabriel’s grooms had told him that the highwayman Channing Meade
was raiding again. Meade made camp on the edge of Savernake Forest in
August because the weather was mild and the deer were fat and the
constable was lazy. Perhaps the screaming woman had been swiped from
the village for Meade’s pleasure.
Perhaps she’d come willingly, only to
discover that Meade was a brute and his camp was a pit. Maybe the
highwayman had set upon a carriage, and the woman inside objected to
being robbed at knifepoint. Long Harry Road was little more than two ruts
disappearing into a tunnel of murky green, and travelers should know better.
I don’t care, Gabriel thought, stroking the horse.
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