Tiger's Eye Read Online Free Page B

long. Yet she was suddenly, wildly, afraid to let go.
    Her feet in the soft half-boots scrabbled wildly for a toehold. There was none. The wind hit her, making her body sway.…
    Isabella risked a look down. It was a mistake. Even through the wisps of mist that floated like ghosts through the darkness, she could see that the ground was far, far away, studded with what looked like rocks, and without so much as a bush to break her fall.
    From inside the window came a groan. She let go.
    Isabella landed with tremendous force on the balls of her feet, then pitched forward onto her knees. Her legs screamed a protest—but they worked. She didn’t waste so much as a second scrambling away from the house.
    Behind her there were no sounds of pursuit. She cast one haunted look at the lighted window in the front of the house, then fled toward the line of trees that marked the end of the yard. She was just one long stride short of the woods, her skirt hiked around her bare knees as she ran like a hare with the hounds after it, when a tall shape stepped from the shadows to loom in front of her.
    Isabella screamed.

V
    “H ush, now! Avast, lassie, don’t shriek!”
    But the whispered words might as well have been in Arabic for all the attention she paid them. Thoroughly unnerved, Isabella let loose with another night-shattering scream even as the man grabbed her and clamped his hand over her mouth.
    “Damn it, shut her up, Paddy! Why don’t we just send in a bloody bugle corps to announce our coming and be done with it?” The order and disgusted mutter that followed it came from another man, not quite so tall or massive as the first, but tall and massive enough to cow Isabella. Like the first man, he just seemed to materialize from the shadowy woods.
    Caught in the grip of enormous arms that held her against a chest wide enough to belong to two men, Isabella knew when she was beaten. She went very still, her eyes huge with fright over the ham-sized hand that covered most of her lower face as well as her mouth. With her back to the first man, she was able to gain no impression of him except for his enormous size. But even by the wavering, mist-filtered light of the slivered moon, Isabella could see that the second man was riveting. He was tall, broad-shouldered and hard-looking, with an arrogant tilt to a head that was as perfect of feature as an ancient Greek coin. His hair was tawny gold, waving a little in the mist and secured at his nape, and if she wasn’t mistaken, if the fragmented moonlight was not playing tricks on her eyes, his eyes were the same tawny gold as his hair.
    Another man joined them, then another, and another. Five men in all. They stared at her with varying degrees of suspicion and hostility. The man with the golden eyes was running them over her in a nasty, speculative way that frightened Isabella. As if he was considering how best to dispose of her …
    With a horrible sinking feeling Isabella faced the fact that she had been captured once more. How had they known of her escape? Or had they? She could have sworn that at least three of the brigands were downstairs when she went out the window. And the fourth man, her caretaker, had certainly not managed to outflank her and wait, hidden, in the woods. So were there more of them than she knew? Were these men guards who kept watch in the woods? But they had been afraid that her scream would alert the men in the house.…
    Who they were didn’t matter. Surviving did. Isabella opened her mouth to ask them their intentions toward her, but all that emerged from behind that suffocating hand was a wordless whimper.
    “Paddy!” It was a sharp alert to keep her quiet, given by the golden-eyed man in a hoarse whisper.
    “Be still, lassie.” The words muttered in her ear carried a hint of a plea, as well as clear warning. His hold was unbreakable; she was helpless as a child against him. But he seemed to be exerting very little of what she felt sure was his enormous