Page 15 of The Devil Baron

“We need to get you somewhere safe. Where are your men? What happened to them?”

“I—I don’t know. We heard screams and bodies hitting the ground and then the carriage almost overturned and then the horses took off at a breakneck pace. I don’t know where the men are. You didn’t pass them?”

He shook his head. “No. But we should find them. There was a crossroad a way back—maybe they are there?”

Her eyes flew open, her stare piercing him. “No. No. We have to go after her. We have to find Eva. On your horse we can go faster. We have to find her.”

Now understanding the direction she walked in, his right cheek lifted in sympathy. “Is that what you were walking toward?”

She nodded. “Of course. We need to leave now and you need to help me.” Strength filtered back into her words with purpose clear in her mind. “Please. You need to help me before they are too far away. I have to find her.”

He paused, staring at the desperation in her eyes. She truly did love her aunt. For all that he rarely encountered the emotion, he recognized it in her. So odd.

He nodded. “We will try and catch them.”

A grateful smile tried to find its way onto her face as her swollen bottom lip lifted with the motion, but it only allowed her mouth to pull into an awkward line. “Thank you. Please, we must hurry.”

She dipped out from under his arms and went around the horse, waiting for him.

He followed her, lifting her up onto the saddle. She swung her leg over the horse, pulling her skirts down the best she could.

She was serious about riding fast to try and find her aunt.

Rafe pulled himself up onto the saddle behind her. A tight fit, but that was what he’d planned upon.

As he set his arms around her to reach the reins, she twisted and looked back up at him, her eyes earnest. “Thank you.”

He nodded to her and flicked the reins, the horse starting forward.

The easiest kidnapping ever.

The tiniest part of him pitied her.

They were never going to find the carriage.

{ Chapter 6 }

“We’re not going to find it, Victoria. It’s long gone.” It’d been a mostly silent five hours and three villages since Rafe picked her up at the roadside.

They’d asked questions in each of the villages. No one had seen the carriage.

She worried her swollen lip, glancing back to him and shaking her head. “No. It cannot be. It cannot. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe we should have taken that crossroad between the last two villages. We should go back and check. The horses couldn’t have run on at that pace for too long, so they must be somewhere.Somewhere.”

Still aggravatingly insistent. Just as she had been every time he’d brought up the possibility of giving up the search for the day.

He stared at the top of her head, watching it swivel back and forth, constantly searching for the slightest clue as to what happened to the carriage. “It’s gone.”

“No. Someone must know something. We just haven’t looked in the right area—haven’t talked to the right people.”

“We need to stop, Victoria. It will be nightfall soon.” He’d dropped the “lady” two hours ago and she hadn’t objected. She was too frantic to find the carriage to pause and battle against the intimacy of his using her name.

Her body twisted against him so she could fully look at him, her blue eyes pleading. “We can’t stop, Lord Winfred. We cannot. We have to keep going.”

“It is Rafe, as I am beyond Lord Winfred with you, and we need to stop.” He pointed forward. “I can see the next village up ahead. There is nowhere else we will make it to tonight. And you have to be freezing.”

“I’m not. I’m fine. I’m always warm, too warm. We continue on.”

“Or we stop soIcan warm up.”

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