the clearing.
He smiled. “How careless of them to put their horses where someone might sneak up and steal one.”
“You’ve got to be joking. How are we going to pull that off without getting caught?” She jangled the shackles. “Not to mention the fact that riding might be a bit difficult. How are the two of us even going to get on a horse?”
“We’ll figure that out when the time comes.”
“But the lawmen who were searching for us might have talked to these people. They might have offered descriptions and a reward. Going into that camp is too dangerous.”
Nicholas contemplated the possibilities for a moment. She was right. They had no way of knowing how long the gypsies had been here. It would be risky. “I’ll go in under cover of darkness while you stay—”
He cut himself off.
“Sorry,” she said wryly. “Wherever you go, I go.”
Glancing down at her, he remembered that he had made the same mistake before, but for a completely different reason. Last time, it had been because he wasn’t used to being half of a pair. This time...
It was because he wanted to keep her safe.
That fact rendered him speechless. The strangest feeling coursed through him, like none he had ever known—a powerful urge to protect her.
“Besides, I can take a little danger, if you’re determined to do this,” she continued, oblivious to the real reason behind his silence. “I’m not all that fragile.”
He could argue that point, he thought. She had shattered quite completely in his arms this morning. “I know,” he told her instead, brushing his thumb along her jaw, regretting for the first time that she had such courage, that she was so willing to put herself in danger.
“So what are we going to do?”
He was wrestling with an answer to that question when a new noise came from the far end of the camp. One that seemed out of place in the forest. A familiar clang of metal striking metal.
A sound that changed everything.
It was the unmistakable clatter of a hammer on a blacksmith’s anvil.
Chapter 17
Moonlight trickled through the interlaced tree branches, falling in shimmering pools, dancing across the forest floor. The silver-blue glow faintly lit their way as they crept closer to the gypsy camp. Sam could barely breathe past the fear that clamped around her chest like a band of steel. Nick led the way, stealthy, silent. She couldn’t believe he could be so calm. So coolly assured that this insane plan would work.
Midnight’s hush had fallen over the woods, broken only by the flutter of wings through the leaves overhead as a bird took flight... an occasional cough or snore from one of the wagons... the bark of a dog. The chain made little noise. She had sacrificed the remains of her petticoat to muffle the shackles, braiding the cloth in and around the iron links to render them silent.
Or at least as silent as possible.
If the gypsies had appointed sentries, or if one of their dogs caught a scent, or a sound, she and Nick could quickly find themselves facing a group of suspicious people, questions they could not answer. And loaded pistols.
The vividly painted wagons loomed out of the shadows like a handful of jewels scattered across the clearing. Only a few more yards and they would reach their target.
Still within the cover of the forest, Nick halted, his voice scarcely a whisper as he pointed at one of the wagons. “That one?”
“I think so.”
They moved toward it, along the edge of the trees, both glancing around, cautious. All afternoon, they had circled the camp, studying it from every angle, engaged in a heated debate. As evening fell, they had snuck closer for a bit of careful reconnaissance, and finally faced the facts: stealing a horse would be useless because they couldn’t hope to ride—not wearing the chain. And they couldn’t exactly burst in and hold the camp’s blacksmith at knifepoint, demanding that he remove the shackles.
So they had come up with a different strategy. One that would free them from the chain once and for all and net them a horse or two.
If they didn’t get killed first.
They stopped in the shadows at the point where the forest gave way to the clearing. At least ten yards of open ground lay between them and their destination.
“That’s the one,” Sam whispered, crouching beside Nick in the underbrush.
He shook his head. “No guards, not even a dog.” His voice was no more than a faint, warm breath against her