Chasing the Sunset(51)

When Maggie came to, she was thrown face down over the back of a horse, tied to the saddle in such a way that she was unable to move. The small horse she was lashed to had a peculiar, skittering gate, and Maggie was bounced around unmercifully. Her head thumped painfully against the saddle with every stride that the horse took, though she tried to keep still. She had little success, and a sob of hopelessness forced its way from her throat even as she attempted to hold it back. She could hear David cursing as he tried to control both the animal he rode and the one he led, the one she was tied to, and she kept still, hoping that he would not realize she was awake. The longer she could escape his notice, the better.

She was dangerously cold; one of her gloves had slipped off, and the scarf Kathleen had forced on her was trapped uselessly between her body and the rigid leather of the saddle. But no external temperature had ever made her feel as icy as the thought that raced through her mind right now.

No one would know where she was, or that David had taken her. They all thought him dead, just as Maggie had.

She had thought him dead when he had seen him last; he lay there on the floor before her, covered in blood. He had not seemed to be breathing, and she had been so shocked at her own actions, thinking only of running away before someone came and caught her. She had fled . . . and now he was here, alive, and he had taken her back.

It was the vivid landscape of her nightmares, come to life. She could only imagine what terrible retaliation he had planned for her. He had ever been one to save up his griefs and then exact a punishment that far exceeded the real or imagined slight. Maggie shuddered in dread,

thinking of some of the other chastisements he had forced on her. She could not go through that again, she could not . . .

Maggie tried to think, but it was nearly impossible. The wind shrieked around her like some wild thing, and she shivered almost uncontrollably now. Her head hurt so badly . . .

Maggie tried to lift up her head enough to see where David was taking her, but it was useless. Because of the way that she was tied, she could only lift her head off of the saddle a few inches, and her vision was blurred. Add the blowing snow into the equation, and visibility was nearly zero. Maggie realized that the blurred vision came from the blow on the head he had given her, and she vaguely recalled hitting her head again, hard, on the ground as she fell.

Nick.

Just the thought of him, of his dear face, made weak tears spring to her eyes, but Maggie brushed them resolutely away. Now was not the time; she had to think of some way to help herself. Maggie managed to wiggle around until her scarf touched her bound hands. She pulled, and strained, and tugged it from its position beneath her; it dangled for a moment before it dropped to the ground, the dark maroon color shockingly visible against the white background of the new fallen snow. Anyone who came this way would be bound to see it lying there. She just hoped that David did not turn his head and see it there on the white of the snow.

Maybe Nick would come for her; perhaps he was already searching. Surely, after an hour or so, Duncan and Kathleen had gone looking for some sign of her. How long had it been before they had realized that she was not coming back? Just how much of a lead did David have on anyone who might be searching for her?

Maggie realized that they were slowing down, then suddenly her horse came to an abrupt halt, jolting her on the saddle and startling a cry of pain from her. She heard the sound of a stubborn door creaking open, then she was being led out of the wind and into the building, whatever it was.

Even as Maggie blessed the surcease of wind that threatened to freeze her into a solid ice block, she feared what would happen now. She forced herself to go limp, playing dead and hoping that David would leave her alone as long as he thought her unconscious. He cut the knotted ropes from the saddle; Maggie could only assume that they were frozen and too stiff to handle. He left the ropes binding her ankles and wrists, then dragged her off of the horse by her hair and threw her onto the ground. Maggie felt a rib crack and tried to stay limp, but her face must have betrayed her. David laughed and drew back his boot to kick her viciously, close enough to the broken bone that Maggie curled up into a whimpering ball, flashes of light behind her eyes as she gasped through the excruciating pain and fought to stay conscious for real.

“I know that you are awake,” he crooned in a tender voice that frightened her far more than if he had shouted. “Come, my darling wife, open your eyes.” And he kicked her again with his boot, in the very same spot, making her scream in agony.

Maggie opened her eyes and looked into his hated face, because it was futile not to. He would just keep hurting her until he forced her to do what he wanted. She stared dispassionately at him, showing not a trace of fear, and that bothered him. He grew uneasy looking at her expressionless face. He wanted her to cringe and cower before him as she had before.

Maggie was shocked at the difference in David’s appearance. Being in the middle of a snowstorm was not sufficient excuse for the extent of the change in him. He had always been fastidious about his looks, but evidently that was a thing of the past.

He had lost twenty pounds at least, and his face was haggard and unshaven. His whiskers grew in patchy fuzz, some of the hair gray, the rest of it brown. His clothes not only hung on him, they were filthy and encrusted with what looked like the dirt of weeks. His eyes had a hunted expression that had never been there before, darting here and there, never lighting very long on any one place. He could not be physically still either, his fingers playing with the frayed edges of his coat, tugging at his collar, pinching at his whiskers.

He was nowhere near the intimidating sight that he used to be, and Maggie realized with a shock that she was not really afraid of him anymore. Oh, she was afraid of what he might do, she was afraid of his physical violence, but he did not strike the abject terror into her that just the very glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye used to do. He was a pathetic specimen of a man altogether, and confidence suddenly surged into Maggie, bringing reserves of strength with it. She felt hope rising in her, and she felt almost peaceful all of a sudden, as if a warm hand had reached out and clasped her shoulder.

This man was not the monster of her dreams.

He was just a man, a rather paltry one at that . . . and men, unlike monsters, could be defeated.

She was not the same girl that he had married. Maggie had turned into a woman in the months that she had been away from his spurious influence . . . and she was strong. Strong enough and smart enough to get away from him as long as she stayed alert and luck was with her.

“Finish untying me, David,” she said now, calmly. “I cannot feel my hands and we need to get a fire started. You do have flint to start a fire with, do not you?”

He gaped at her. She held out her wrists to him, shaking them impatiently, raising her eyebrows imperiously. He scurried over to cut the rest of the ropes from both her hands and her feet, and Maggie remembered how he had always bowed down to the people who had treated him like dirt.

She pulled off her one remaining glove and rubbed the circulation back into her wrists and ankles while looking around. They were in some abandoned outbuilding, one that obviously had not seen occupation for a long, long time. A pile of waist-high, nearly rotten wood lay in one corner, and she put out her hand for David to help her up, concealing both her distaste at touching him and the pain that she felt in her side. The room spun crazily for a moment, then righted itself as she stood upright with difficulty.

All of the wood was not too rotten to use, she informed him in a haughty voice once she had inspected it. He hunkered down and put the knife he had used to cut her free by his foot, striking sparks off the flint he retrieved from his saddlebags and catching the ultra-dry wood on fire just as it lay, without moving any of it.

Maggie tried to disguise her amazement. Dear God, that pile of wood came nearly to her waist! He was going to burn the building down around their heads.

She looked at him closely as he muttered to himself and warmed his hands to the rapidly burning blaze. He had picked up the knife again, dropping the flint to the floor and leaving it there where it lay. He tilted the knife back and forth, studying the way the fire made light dance off of its sharp edge. He appeared as if he had gone past some point that, once advanced beyond, could not be returned to. He looked up at her, over the flames now nearly as high as Maggie’s head, and the red light flickered over his features, making him appear to be the devil he always was in Maggie’s dreams.

“Things changed after you left, Maggie,” he said, getting to his feet. “I could not explain where my wife had gone, and one of the servants sent the police around a couple of weeks later. They all hated me and I know that was your fault, too. The policemen found all that blood in the parlor, because the stain never quite came up, you know. That is something else you will have to pay for, my dear.”

Maggie inched away, toward the door. If she could just reach one of the horses . . . He had not even unsaddled the poor beasts, or taken their bridles off, but that could work to her advantage now.

“They asked me all these questions about where you were, and of course I could not answer them. I had told everyone that you had gone to stay with my aunt, but there was no aunt. When I could not produce you, Maggie, they got very suspicious, but they could not prove anything because they did not have a body. But that did not stop the gossip, and I could not get work anymore, Maggie. Everywhere I went, people whispered that I had killed my wife, and no one wanted to pay a murderer to take care of their finances. I lost the house when the bank called in all my notes. I had borrowed pretty heavily, you see.”