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James knew something was wrong the moment he woke up. His bed was too cold, too empty, too devoid of a certain auburn-haired girl who seemed to be entirely focused on making his life more complicated. He knew she was only in the garderobe down the hall, or, more likely, seeing to the horses' needs in the stable. However, somehow despite that assurance, the panic that ran through him was real, and he started dressing hurriedly. He was just buttoning his jacket when the cry in the inn went up, and he vaulted down the stairs, hitting the floor with a thump and dashing over to the knot of confused people at the inn door. He didn't know why he thought that Jo must be at the center of it all, but he didn't question it.
"What the hell happened?"
The older woman who owned the inn looked up at him, her eyes like blue marbles, round and wide.
"Sir, two men just rode in off the road and kidnapped your wife! She was seeing to the horses, and they just rode in and took her!"
"Which way?"
"North, sir, they fled north up the road."
Back to West Riding, deeper into Yorkshire.
James cursed, and even as the woman asked if they should call the magistrates, and an old man opined that it was the work of Spanish bandits, James was already dashing to the stables.
He felt as if every muscle in his body was wound tight, and he forced himself to slow down. If he flew through this, he would make mistakes, and that would allow them to get farther away with his Jo. That would not be allowed.
James felt a surge of gratitude when he found the horses in the stable undisturbed. That meant the men were at least not experts. If they were, they might have taken the horses or even harmed them in some way to prevent pursuit.
Instead, both Gunner and Tempest were fine, though both horses were agitated, pacing in their stalls and tugging at their tethers.
"Don't worry, I'm not happy about this either. Calm, my beauties. Calm, and we'll get her back. We won't let them keep her."
He saddled both horses, leading them into the yard. He ignored the inn people who watched him from the window. All that mattered right now was finding Jo and making sure the people who took her never even thought about doing so again.
James started to mount Gunner out of habit, but then Tempest tugged on the reins, making him look at her. Ordinarily, he would say that a situation like this was no time to experiment with a horse he didn't know, but there was nothing ordinary about Tempest at all. He could have sworn he saw something of understanding in her great dark eyes, and in a flash, he made a decision.
"Come on, sweetheart. You want her back just like I do, don't you?"
The moment he was on Tempest's back, Gunner's reins held in his free hand, Tempest danced as if she was being held back bodily from what she needed to do, was born to do. When James touched his heels to her side, she was off like a shot, stunning him with her speed and the smoothness of her gait.
All right, so there's a reason Jo and her father considered this horse to be something special.
As they shot north along the road, James’ pleasure at the ride slid back to reveal his panic at losing Jo. The idea of her being with the rough men who had assaulted her the first day they'd met made his stomach lurch. If they harmed a hair on her head, he would shoot each and every one of them.
He closed the fear off behind a wall. It was still there, screaming and clawing for a voice, but James chose to focus on his rage instead. Rage would focus him, and panic would only distract him. He needed to be clear, no matter what.
Jo, Jo, please hang on. I'm coming.
It only took twenty minutes before he saw two figures in the distance, and with a mutter, James urged Tempest on. Gunner couldn't keep up this pace forever, but apparently, he wouldn't have to. The men had fled when the woman at the inn gave up the cry, but they must have slowed, not expecting pursuit.
Grimly, James recognized two of the three men who had accosted Jo when they first met, and he remembered how he had sent them running.
If they give me an excuse to shoot this time, I'm not going to think twice about it.
They heard him coming before he was quite upon them, but their ponies were lathered from their earlier run. They could easily see that they were not going to outrun him, and instead, they wheeled to face him. To James’ fury, he realized Jo was tied up like a shot hare over one man's horse. She was limp in a way that frightened him badly, and again, he stuffed the fear down so he could act.
"Stop! We're taking this runaway girl back to her family, you have no reason to—"
The man speaking fumbled in his waistcoat for something, and whether it was a knife or a gun, James didn't stop to see.
Instead, he drove Tempest straight for him, counting on speed and motion to stop the man from firing. He could see the man's revolver come halfway out of its rope hitch, and then the pony shrieked as Tempest flailed at it with her sharp hooves. She was more delicate than the pony but taller and faster by far, and as the pony shied, James grabbed the man by the arm, tearing his gun away and dragging him to the ground. The man hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, his pony sent scattering into the forest nearby. That left one more man to deal with, and he had managed to get his gun out of his coat, even if the hand he pointed it with was shaking.
"Keep your distance! I will shoot you if I have to."
James pulled back a straining Tempest, aware that at some point, he had released Gunner. His focus narrowed to the man and the girl in front of him. He wished he could see Jo's face, to really know that she was all right, but right now, he couldn't worry about that.
"You're not keeping her," James snapped. "She's a free woman."
The man snorted. "She's a runaway with an uncle who will pay a great deal of money for her return. What do you want? You want to split the bounty with us?"
"She's not a goddamn bounty, and she's going nowhere with you. That's a one-shot revolver you've got. If you think you've got the guts to fire it, you better be sure that you're a good shot. Otherwise, you're going to need to deal with me, and I am a very good shot and a very angry man right now."
He could see the man thinking about it, see the options flash across his eyes. For a moment, James thought it had worked, and the man would simply leave Jo be. Then a hard look crossed his face, his finger tightened on the trigger, and time seemed to slow down.
Several things happened at once. The man fired the revolver and, as James had guessed, he was a terrible shot with a bad gun. Even as he cut Tempest to the side and came up close to the man, his ears were echoing with the boom of the shot, and he was reaching for the man, ready to drag him off his horse only... it was already happening?
The man seemed to rise up in the saddle suddenly, as if trying to jump, and then he started to slip. The saddle rolled, dumping the man on the ground. The pony had had enough and shied away, and as James watched in terror, Jo slid off the mount as well.
"Jo!"
James was terrified he wouldn't get there in time, that she would fall and dash her brains out or break both legs. One squeeze of his knee, however, brought Tempest close, and just as she was slipping all the way off the fleeing horse, he caught her around the waist, dragging her up on the mare with him.
"Very good timing, James!"
James had been so heated by rage and fear that Jo's cheerful words were almost alien.
"Are you all right? I swear to God, if they harmed you..."
"No, no harm done to me at all, though I do have an idea. Come on, here, untie me and let's get those ponies."
The men had scattered into the brush of the forests, but their ponies were easy enough to find. They were shaggy strong beasts, not smart, but willing, and they followed along easily when James and Jo took them by their reins.
Jo, properly mounted on Tempest again and rode close to the tree line, where her kidnappers had disappeared.
"I hope you will think twice about making deals with men like my uncle. If you want your mounts back, you may apply for them at the magistrate’s."
James grinned when he heard the faint swearing from the trees. Here on the back roads of the north, it would be a long walk for men on foot, and those men, in particular, would not be interested in reclaiming their mounts from any sort of legal authority.
Jo turned to him. "Shall we be off?"
"Yes. What the hell did you do, by the way? That man looked like he suddenly slipped off his pony for no reason."
"Oh, that was easy. I pretended as if I fainted to make sure he wasn't looking at me, and then I went after the cinch on the saddle. I've been waiting for him to fall off for a little while now."
"But you couldn't have known I was coming right when that was convenient."
"No, but any distraction or hurdle in the path of my captors was a good thing. And..."
"And?"
She looked down, concentrating on picking a shred of leaf or grass out of Tempest's mane. "And I knew you were coming for me at some point. it might not have been that moment, but you were coming for me."
James felt his heart squeeze in a way he didn't understand, and his throat tightened. "Yes. Yes, I would always come for you, Jo."
As they led the ponies along, the sky above them darkened. James could feel the first drops of rain falling on his head, but right then, all that mattered was the warm glow that Jo lit within him with only a few small words.