The Sapphire Broach

Chapter 4 (rough draft)

Ivy struggled against her captor. She threw her elbow into the man's ribs, then bit down hard on his hand when it loosened against her mouth.

He grunted and shoved her face. "Stop!" He pulled her tighter against his chest. "It's me."

She had no idea who "me" was, and did not particularly desire to wait around to find out, but no matter how she squirmed, she could not loosen his grip.

"Stop fighting, you froward woman, and you will be fine!" he whispered in her ear. "You have been nothing but trouble since the moment I saw you fall off that cliff. I have half a mind to let those soldiers take you, but then my rescue efforts would be vain."

Oh. Him. Ivy knew nothing about him—other than his knack for saving her life, of course, and his idiocy when it came to lighting fires. He could have let her drown, or let the soldiers arrest her, but he had not. That said more about him than if he had approached her and spent a quarter of an hour introducing himself. Surely she could trust him.

She quit resisting and felt his grip loosen in return. They squatted together and listened to the soldiers trample passed them and off into the blackness. The man's rapid breath brushed against her exposed neck and sent goose pimples down her spine.

Silence filled the night.

"Come along." The man pushed her up. "I believe they are gone."

He took several steps in the direction Ivy had been fleeing, but she did not follow.

He turned back to her. "I said, come along."

A bit of moonlight broke through the forest branches and illuminated the man. He had light brown hair and a strong jaw line covered in several day's stubble that looked almost reddish in the weak light. He did not look particularly strong, but she remembered the strength of his arms when he held her against her will moments before. He was taller than her, but not by much. She guessed him to be no more than a year or two older than her.

"There is no time to sit and stare at each other," he said. "We must hurry!"

"Where is my dress?" She could not leave without the broach.

"Your what?"

She ran a hand down her shivering body to, indicate her lack of apparel. "My dress. Did you not realize that I am standing here in not but my underdress?"

"I noticed. Your dress is back at the camp where I hung it on a tree. Now come along!" He took her hand and pulled.

She yanked her hand from his grasp. "You removed my dress?" She had to get the broach! How was she to find the spot where they had camped?

He sighed and looked at her as though she were an insufferable child. "I had to remove it or you would have frozen to death. Besides, that ridiculous dress nearly dragged you to your grave at the bottom of the lake. I tried to cut it off in the water, but lost my knife. My best knife!"

"You . . . no!" How thankful she was that he had lost his knife. Imagine the broach lost in the depths of the lake! What would she have done? "We have to go back! We must find it!"

"Oh, no. There is no 'we'. If you desire to go back and be captured by those men, you may, but I will not be going with you." He turned and walked away.

Ivy panicked. She couldn't find the campsite on her own. She couldn't even remember which direction to go in the dark. "Please!" She ran in front of the man and put her hands on his chest to stop him. "I beg you, please help me find my dress!"