Page 46 of A Fearless Heart
“Get the hell away from the lady,” a new voice commanded.
Dazed, Cady looked up to see a dark-haired figure towering over her, facing the two men, who were now somehow five feet further away. Gabe.
“Who’re you?” the younger man spat out, glaring at Gabe as he tried to get his footing back.
“I’m the one telling you to get the hell away from the lady,” Gabe snapped back.
Not much room for diplomacy from that quarter, Cady noted, still not quite comprehending what was going on, only knowing that the situation changed.
The three men clashed once more, and then Gabe did something to the older man’s arm. Cady couldn’t see because the arm was twisted behind the man’s back. But whatever it was, it must have been painful. The man winced and cried out, begging Gabe to stop.
After a moment, Gabe relented. He strongly suggested that the two men leave Calderwood property by the fastest possible route, and threatened to remove several important body parts if he saw either man again. His warning was quite descriptive. Cady thought she’d heard crude language from him before, but it was nothing compared to what he used toward those men.
They left, at a pace just under a jog, looking back over their shoulders with expressions of mingled fear and hatred.
Gabe waited until they were out of sight. Then he knelt down where Cady had fallen. “You all right?” he asked, his tone gruff.
“Oh, Lord.” Cady reached into the slit of her dress to get at the pocket, patting frantically until she felt the little linen packet containing the mushrooms. “I’ve still got them.”
“What?”
“Something I was harvesting,” she said evasively, remembering that she didn’t trust him.Even though he just saved me, she realized.
“Did you know those men? Can you tell me their names?” he asked.
“I’ve never seen them before, but they guessed who I was. I wish I knew what they were doing here.”
“Poachers, most likely,” Gabe said. “Like that person I saw before. They were after rabbits or some other game, and saw you by chance. Can you stand? You didn’t get hurt when he pushed you down, did you?”
He held out his hands, and Cady puts hers in his. He pulled her up easily, and encouraged her to walk a few steps. Cady was relieved to find that the only damage was to her dress. “I’m fine. I can walk.”
“Until we know who those men were and who else might be sneaking onto the estate, you shouldn’t go out alone, Cady.”
She nodded, too upset to correct him about the familiar term of address. “This is what I get for going out at all. I should have stayed inside. Then I’d have been safe.”
“You couldn’t have known. It wasn’t your fault.”
“They called me a witch.” Her voice shook. “When they first saw me, one saidIsn’t that the witch of Calderwood?”
Gabe’s expression went stormy. “Don’t listen to them.”
“They hate me.”
“They’re idiots and they don’t know anything.”
She shivered. “If they hate me, why would they touch me like they did?”
Gabe reached out one hand to take her by the shoulder, but then stopped abruptly as her words sunk in. He said, in a tone that very much sounded like he could ensure it, “They’ll never touch you again.”
“Butwhy?”
“Men are pigs,” he answered. “Whatever we might say, our minds usually all go to the same place.”
She gave one sad little chuckle. “You know, when I was going through all the things I’m scared of today, one thing I forgot to fear was being assaulted by total strangers while I walked in my own woods.”
“Maybe that means you can let go of some of that long list of fears. Then you can worry about the bad things that actually do happen.”
“Or I’ll just never leave my room.”
