Free Patricia Rice by Wayward Angel Page B

She could feel the tension building inside of her. Something was wrong. She didn't know where or how, but she knew it and responded without giving it much thought. Perhaps the Inner Light they spoke about in Meetings gave her these notions. If so, she should heed them, even if they made no sense.
    She wasn't much prone to logic on the best of days, anyway.
    She cried out at an unexpectedly sharp sensation shooting through her ribs. Despite the pain, she leaped to her feet and tied the strings to her bonnet. She knew she wasn’t feeling her own wound. She felt Pace's.
    The certainty of that knowledge sent her fleeing down the stairs, grabbing her heavy cloak as she let herself out the side door to the stable. Harnessing a horse to the cart would be difficult, but she knew she must do it, just as she knew she needed her black bag of medicines.
    One of the bondsmen who slept in the barn sleepily helped her harness the horse. Apparently awaiting his master's return, he didn't complain of this extra service. Dora thanked him, but he merely wandered back to a stall and his slumbers.
    She stopped at her empty farmhouse to find the bag, but the tension she experienced earlier escalated to terrified anxiety. She couldn't separate Pace's emotions from her own. Of course, if she had any sense at all, she would admit that all the terror was her own and she imagined everything.
    She urged the cart down the lane at the fastest pace the horse could manage. No one noticed or cared. She had gone out this way before at a summons from some farmhouse where the women had remembered Mother Elizabeth's services. She didn't have as much experience or knowledge as her adopted mother had, but she had some use in nursing, and that was better than none.
    She steered the cart east. If she'd thought about it, that would be the last direction she would take. The river and town were to the west and south. Those were the most likely places to find trouble. But she knew she must go east.
    Of course, Pace's troops were probably stationed in Lexington or Cincinnati. He would come from the east. Perhaps her instincts weren't so far wrong after all.
    The pain in her side had dulled to a throb. The tension bothered her most, the feeling of something terribly wrong. She urged the horse faster, praying she could arrive in time.
    She almost convinced herself that she had lost her mind. But the Light was stronger. Although in her case, the word "light" was a misnomer. She saw only darkness. The cart careened down a narrower road at her urging.
    There, just ahead, in the gully beside the Butler's feed lot. Dora reined the horse into a wagon road between some trees and swung down from the cart. The clouds covered any sign of moon, and the sky appeared pitch black. The trees along the fence row deepened the darkness.
    In the distance a horse whinnied and a hound bayed. A shiver shot down her spine. With a sinking feeling, Dora knew now what she would find. Pace was incapable of doing anything so simple as coming home for the holidays for fun.
    "I'm not going into those brambles, Pace Nicholls. Get thyself out here before those hounds find thee."
    A stiff shadow unfolded itself from the weeds in the gully. His broad shoulders tilted at an uncomfortable angle, and Dora cried out in alarm. "You've been shot!" She bit her tongue on the slip of speech.
    Pace didn't comment on it. He pulled a slight figure from the gully and shoved her toward Dora. "Get her out of here. Hurry!"
    Time shifted and tumbled. Pace was hurt. He needed medical attention. She couldn't leave him here for the hounds and the slave catchers. The cart would barely hold two. She couldn't leave the terrified black child clinging to her ragged shawl alone in the roadway. If they caught Pace in the cart with the child, they would throw him in jail and fine him heavily.
    Pace's dark shadow had already disappeared into the shrubbery by the time Dora grabbed the child's hand and dragged her toward the cart. He