Chapter 1

Martin FitzHugh leaned forward and peered through the coach’s rain-streaked window. Even when a flash of lightning briefly lit the night, he could see nothing. The rest of the time, so deep was the darkness, he felt it to be solid. However, sound made up for any lack of vision. The wind, shrieking as if in torment, ripped the remaining leaves from the trees and hurled them down where a pounding rain flattened them into the mud. The great hooves of the four horses squelched and slurped as they strained into the traces. The coach itself creaked and groaned as it twisted and lurched along.

After that, Martin slumped back, bracing himself in a corner and praying the vehicle would not upset, while he tried to shut the storm out of his awareness. For the tenth or perhaps fiftieth time, he questioned his sanity. What had possessed him to accept a position at some remote Welsh hold? It might as well be Darkest Africa for all the civilization he had seen the past two days, while they followed a deteriorating road deep and yet deeper into the hill-cut region. By now, they must be in an impenetrable wilderness.

Although he could barely understand the driver’s thick accent, Martin thought he had said something like “Ve iz nearly there now, sor,” in answer to his timid question as to their whereabouts. That had been hours ago, around sundown, before the storm struck.

I believe my life is turning into a cliché. Martin gave a wry chuckle at the wild thought.

Indeed, it was a dark and stormy night, perhaps the darkest and stormiest he had ever experienced. His waning faith that he would arrive safely at Ravensrawn declined to nothing. If the coach was not struck by lightning or crushed beneath a falling tree, surely the horses would bolt, causing it to careen from the road and sink into a bottomless swamp or go flying off a cliff.

The coach jerked to a stop. Martin only realized it once he noted no more jolts, tilts, and sloshes. Although the storm had not abated the wind carried broken snatches of speech to him. The muffled words were too few to make any sense of. Much as he dreaded sinking his new boots into the muck, he contemplated alighting to find out what had happened. Had the coach mired or broken some critical part? He could not believe there would be highwaymen out on such a night as this.

Before he could act upon the thought, the door against which he had been leaning fell open so suddenly he almost tumbled out. Black against black, a hulking figure loomed over him and a pair of quick, strong hands seized him before he fell…even before he could resist. He muttered an oath of protest upon finding himself borne through space. For a moment, wind and rain lashed him. Then, he settled upon hard thighs and the rounded pommel of a saddle, as an enormous, oily-textured cloak enveloped him, cutting off the wind, the wet, and the cold. A powerful arm gathered him close as the horse surged and wheeled away from the coach.

Martin found himself bundled so thoroughly he had to struggle to find a crack to stick his nose through. He inhaled the cool, damp air and willed himself not to give in to the fear, which threatened to overwhelm him. Had terrible turned to even worse?

However, even terror could not nullify his native curiosity. Although he doubted his captor could hear him above the noise of the storm, to which was added the sounds of the massive horse driving through the night, he framed several anxious and indignant questions. “Who are you? Where are you taking me? What do you think you’re doing, anyway?”

The answer came in a low-pitched rumble of a voice, somewhere above him. “I do not thinkI am doing anything. I’m merely doing it. What I am doing is taking you to Ravensrawn, bypassing a bridge washed out by this devil-spawned storm. As to who I am, ‘tis nothing you have need to know. It would never do to have the urgently needed tutor for the young earl and his sisters swept away to sea in a flood, so I came to fetch you thither. My apologies if the conveyance does not suit. I could arrange for no better at short notice.”

“You know me then…who I am, I mean?” The revelation took Martin by surprise. How could this faceless man recognize him in the pitch-dark night?

When the rider laughed, the motion rocked him a little in those powerful arms. “Could there be so many young gentlemen traveling to Ravensrawn when the road leads nowhere else and by his Honor’s coach at that? Who else could you be but young Master FitzHugh?”

“Aye. There is that. I must admit I am he. Now, you are one better than I, for you know who I am, while I do not know who you are.”

“For now I am your humble servant who must remain nameless. The deed is of the moment, not the doer. Hang on now for Nightwind must leap a gorge. It’s not so very wide or deep, yet if you struggle, it might unbalance him.”

“I’ll be very still,” Martin managed, turning his face inward against the warm, solid bulk of the man’s body. Although he considered himself a courageous person, he squinched his eyes shut. There seemed to be nothing he could hang on to, though he felt around inside the bulky cloak.