Chase the Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

William, unappeased.
    “That I do not know, my friend, and unfortunately, neither does she.”
    William’s button eyes widened in incomprehension. “Don’t quite take yer meaning.”
    “Amnesia, William.” The word clearly meant nothing to the other man, so Benedict explained the situation succinctly.
    “Then turn her loose,” William said with the happy beam of one who has hit upon the perfect solution. “If she’s not going to die after the burning, then she can make her own way. She won’t know nothing, won’t have anything to tell.”
    “You are a fool,” pronounced Benedict with calculated insult, knowing that the other man stood sufficiently in awe of his leader’s intelligence and planning ability to be cowed by the accusation. “Do you think I am about to let loose an unknown quantity who waspresent at the burning of the Trueman barn? When I know who she is, then I shall decide what to do with her.”
    William struggled with this idea in the long silence that followed. He was not one of the brightest members of the band by any means, but once an idea took root he could be relied upon to stick with it through thick and thin. And he carried a great deal of weight with the others—not least because of those powerful blacksmith’s shoulders and brawny forearms, and the huge hands that could wrestle an ox. “Reckon so,” he pronounced eventually. “Could be a Trueman, after all.”
    Benedict shook his head. He had some knowledge of the construction of the Trueman family. “There is no daughter, and the girl wore no wedding ring, so she is not married to one of the sons. Trueman has no kin except his immediate family.”
    “What’s to do, then?” William asked.
    “Listen to the gossip and tell the others to do the same. If she’s from these parts, the news of a missing girl will take flight soon enough.”
    “Aye, ‘tis true. And ye’ll be keeping her close till then?”
    You do not know how close, my friend, Benedict thought, remembering the fury and the fear in those deep blue eyes as he had bound her to the bed. But what else could he have done? “Aye, I’ll keep her close, but you do not help by seeking me out when it’s forbidden.” He returned to the attack, sharper now with his own annoyance at what he had been forced to do.
    William shuffled his feet on the pine needles and looked suitably discomfited. “I’ll be off, then. Ye’ll send word?”
    “I’ll send word.” Benedict watched the burly figure melt into the trees as if he were a part of them, then turned back to the cabin in the clearing. The scream reached him before he gained the center—a scream that rose in an eerie crescendo, galvanizing him into a headlong dash for the door.
    The figure on the bed twisted and thrashed, the deep blue eyes wide with blank terror. The blanket had fallen to the floor with the wildness of her movements, but Benedict barely noticed as he bent over her, swiftly unfastening her captive wrist. “What is it, lass?” His voice was gentle as he came down on the cot beside her, sliding an arm beneath her to draw her against his length. She came shudderingly into his embrace, tremors racking her slim frame.
    “Who am I?” Ceaselessly she repeated the whimpered question. “There is nothing there, nothing but darkness.”
    “It’s there, sweeting, you just have to find it.” His hands were all over her, the soft, sweeping caresses insisting that she acknowledge the humanity that in her dream seemed to have been denied her.
    “There is nothing, just an abyss. I am at the bottom of a chasm … I am nothing, nothing.” She sobbed out the black terror of nothingness, struggling for words to describe the devastating knowledge of annihilation.
    “You are real, Bryony. Real and alive. Can you feel this?” Urgently, instinctively, he brought his lips to hers, locking on to her mouth in a kiss of honeyed sweetness as a hand moved to one breast, closing over the soft mound, a fingertip circling