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irrefutable logic.
    Bitterness darkened his eyes. “I’m a man. They’ll only string me up from the nearest oak or cut my throat. But you’re a woman. If Brisbane’s dogs don’t tear you to shreds, his men will.”
    Suddenly Tabitha didn’t want to play this particular game anymore. She wanted to snatch Lucy into her arms and sprint for the far side of the meadow. She wanted to tip her face to the sky and wail, “I want my mommy!”
    But her mother was nowhere in sight and this man’s urgency was real, as real as the blood still seeping through the clumsy flannel bandage, as real as the bite of his fingers into her flesh, the desperate entreaty in his eyes.
    “Take my mount and go,” he commanded. “Before ’tis too late.”
    The forest no longer looked cheerful and welcoming, but dark and sinister—just right for Snow White’swicked stepmother and an entire orchard of poison apples. The baying of the hounds was growing louder and more relentless with each passing second.
    Tabitha looked uncertainly at the horse. “I’ve never ridden before. Is it anything like riding in the back of a limousine?”
    Her captor softened his grip, caressing her knuckles with his gauntleted thumb. “Go, lass,” he said gently. “We’ll have no more of your dallying.”
    Oddly enough, it was that tender rebuke that decided her.
    Tabitha would never know where she found the strength to try and get him astride the horse. He cursed the entire time, colorful indictments of the fair sex in general and herself in particular. Her shortcomings were described in meticulous detail, down to her wretched stubbornness, disobedient nature, and deplorable lack of wit. When he tumbled off the horse for the third time while reaching to give her ears a halfhearted cuff, she was finally forced to admit defeat.
    They lay on their backs in the grass, Tabitha gasping for breath, the knight glowering at her through the dark locks of hair that spilled over his forehead. She felt a familiar vibration shimmy up her spine, a thousand times worse than it had been before. The ground trembled as if a herd of elephants was stampeding straight for them. Not elephants, she realized in panic, but horses.
    She scrambled to her feet.
    “Now will you go?” the stranger bit off, his eyes glazed with a blend of fury and pain.
    Sunlight glinted off steel, catching Tabitha’s frantic eye. She snatched up Lucy and thrust the kitten into the man’s hands. His sputters deepened to oaths when she bent to retrieve his fallen sword. It strained every musclein her shoulders to lift the massive weapon, but lift it she did, staggering around to face the invisible threat.
    If these men were ruthless enough to cut down a wounded man, they would have to come through her first.
    Tabitha had never thought of herself as being particularly brave. Somehow she found the courage to stand her ground when the horses came pouring out of the forest, led by a pack of baying hounds. The riders reined in their mounts less than a foot from her outstretched blade, fanning out in a circle to surround them. The hounds bared their teeth and snapped at her pajama legs. Tabitha bit her bottom lip until she tasted blood to keep from crying out in terror.
    The man mounted at the head of the party shouted some incomprehensible command and the dogs fell back, slinking away with flagging tails and reproachful looks.
    “I can hardly blame them,” their master drawled, “I’d sulk, too, if I’d been deprived of such a tasty morsel.”
    Tabitha slowly lifted her gaze to the face of the man who held their fates in his velvet-gloved hands. She expected to find a ruthless sneer, not the sort of urbane smile so prevalent at company cocktail parties. A rush of confusion dizzied her. Surely
this
was the man her mother had chosen to star in her fantasy.
    He rode a snow-white charger with a profusion of ribbons and bells braided into its silky mane. They tinkled a winsome melody each time the spirited