Exile for Dreamers - Tess’s Story Kathleen Baldwin Baldwin, page 1 Exile for Dreamers —A Stranje House Novel— By Kathleen Baldwin Exile for Dreamers - Tess’s Story Kathleen Baldwin Baldwin, page 2 Dedication To the men who taught me to run, swim, hunt, gallop horses, ride the rapids, ski powder, hang-glide, and rock climb - back when girls did not do that sort of thing. To Daddy, for teaching me to box at a time when it was sacrilegious to strap a pair of boxing gloves on a little girl, and to the boys whose noses I broke – I am truly sorry. And to Susan Thank you for your extraordinary skills as an editor. I’m grateful you can see when I am blind. Exile for Dreamers - Tess’s Story Kathleen Baldwin Baldwin, page 3 Chapter 1 Tess I run to escape my dreams. Dreams are my curse. Every night they haunt me, every morning I outrun them, and every evening they catch me again. One day they will devour my soul. But not today. Not this hour. I ran with Phobos and Trobos, the half wolves half dogs who guard Stranje House. We raced into the cleansing wind. What is the pace of forgetfulness? How fast must one go? “Tess! Wait!” Georgiana’s gasps cut through the peace of the predawn air and broke my rhythm. I slowed to a stop and turned. A moment later, Phobos broke stride too, and trotted back beside me. He issued a low almost imperceptible growl, impatient to return to our race. Georgie leaned forward breathing hard. Her red hair hung in wet ringlets, dampened from the sea spray that had bathed us as we ran along the cliffs. But we were inland now, headed for the woods between Stranje House and Ravencross Manor, and except for the misty ghostlike vapors swirling about us, the air was much easier to take Exile for Dreamers - Tess’s Story Kathleen Baldwin Baldwin, page 4 in. Winded, she gulped greedily for more. “I have to stop. My side hurts.” Trobos trotted behind her and nipped at Georgie’s heels. “Ouch!” She jerked her boot away. “Stop that.” “She wants you to keep running.” “I’m trying.” Trobos tried to nip her again but Georgie swatted at her. “Back!” The dog growled in warning and Georgie withdrew. “Trobos,” I scolded. She tilted her head at me, tail wagging, and shook droplets of moisture out of her black fur. Quizzical as to why I’d called her off, after all, she was only doing what was best for her pack, training the young one to run faster. “Walk.” I looped my arm through Georgie’s and tugged her forward, needing to get Georgie moving before Trobos took to nipping again. “Ever since that night on the beach, when she kept you warm, Trobos considers you one of her pack. She practicing for when she becomes a mother in a few weeks” “She’s having puppies.” Georgie’s eyes opened wider. “Is that really why she nudges me with her nose so often? She thinks I’m one of her pack?” “In a sense. Yes.” It was true, but I had to stifle a smile. Georgie was such an unlikely creature of the forest, especially clad in that bright white cotton dress. It was one of the absurdly frothy concoctions her mother had sent with her to Stranje House. Georgie had ripped the flounce off so that it was short enough to run in, but the fierce white only served to make her appear more flame-like. Georgie is a burst of fire, a blazing beacon in the early morning gray. Exile for Dreamers - Tess’s Story Kathleen Baldwin Baldwin, page 5 Unlike me. I am part forest. Wearing this brown dress, I blend with the woods. My eyes are green as leaves, my hair dark as shadows on bark, and my skin is as pale as frost. I am Welsh, a daughter of the earth. My mother used to tell me that the spirit of these things, the soil and trees, the rocks and beasts, they call to us. “We are part of this land,” she would say. Only now, my mother lies silent, cloaked in the very earth she spoke of with such love. I shook away those thoughts. “Are you well?” Georgie asked. “You went pale for a moment.” I refused to speak of my mother’s death, so I ignored her question and mumbled, “Trobos also nudges to show affection.” I pulled Georgie into a faster walk. “Today she’s prodding you to make you keep running, so you’ll learn to go faster and longer. If you don’t want to—” “I want to. I just can’t. My legs won’t go any farther this morning.” “Strength isn’t in the legs. It’s in the mind.” I run because I fancy I’ll escape my wretched dreams, but with Georgie, it is a different matter. “Why did you want to come running with me this morning anyway?” Her chest heaved. “You know why.” I had my guesses, but I wanted her to say it, so I kept mum. “If I’d been faster that night in London…” She gasped for more air and didn’t finish speaking. “Don’t say such things.” I hated to see how she was letting guilt chew on her heart. I wished she would stop blaming herself for what happened in London and Calais. “If Exile for Dreamers - Tess’s Story Kathleen Baldwin Baldwin, page 6 you’d been faster that night, Lady Daneska would’ve captured you, too. And then she would’ve delivered two hostages to the Iron Crown instead of one.” “You don’t know that.” She yanked her arm away from mine. “I might’ve been able to lead Captain Grey to them. Or perhaps, if I’d caught up to them on my own, I could’ve stopped Daneska and freed Seb—” she trailed off, unwilling to say Sebastian’s name out loud. I bit my bottom lip to keep from blurting out the fact that if she had caught up to them, she and Lord Wyatt would probably be dead now. “He’s alive and well, thanks to you. It’s over. Sebastian is off to who knows where, serving king and country.” That didn’t seem to console her. She stared off at the pink of the sun that was beginning to rise on the eastern horizon. “It was my fault he was captured in the first place. If I’d caught up to them, maybe I could’ve bested Lady Daneska.” She said it softly, as if even her words slid uncertainly down a thin strand of false hope. “That’s a heavy basket of ifs and maybes. Daneska is fast and skilled with a blade. You’d had no training yet, I don’t see how—” “That’s the point, isn’t it?” Her chin jutted out like it always does when she musters her courage. “Madame Cho is teaching me. I’m getting better with the dagger, and in the future I want to be able to run faster in case I need to . in case someone’s life depends upon it.” She shoved a handful of curls defiantly away from her face. “I’m going back to the house now. I don’t want to be around when you meet up with Lord Ravencross. We’re nearing the spot.” She waved her hand at the place, as if I’d forgotten where we were. The trees were up ahead, and we neared the clearing where I usually cut through to Exile for Dreamers - Tess’s Story Kathleen Baldwin Baldwin, page 7 his pasture, the juncture between the two properties where he liked to exercise his horse, Zeus, the place where he used to pretend he didn’t plan to meet me. But things were different now. “He won’t be there.” My words came back at me and landed hard, like stones dropping on my chest from a great height. Georgie denied them with a shake of her head. “Surely, he—” “No.” I drew in a deep breath, forcing air into my squeezing chest. Breathe and face life squarely. That’s what I try to do. There’s no sense in lying to oneself. “He hasn’t come out riding early, not once, not since that night in London when I left him standing on the dock.” Georgie stepped closer as if to comfort me. “Perhaps he doesn’t know we’re home.” I moved back. “Don’t be absurd. It’s been two weeks.” “Only thirteen days,” she corrected, always accurate, always exact. “He may not have observed…” Fortunately, she dropped that foolish line of defense, except then the pity in her expression made things worse. I wanted to run again, instead I did something I never do with Georgie, I argued. “You like to put a favorable construction on things, don’t you? Well, in this case, you are just plain wrong.” I didn’t intend for it to sound that harsh, but I couldn’t let her sympathy weaken me. In less strident tones I added, “He’s taken a dislike of me. And why shouldn’t he? What sort of a young lady takes a running leap off the end of a pier and grabs hold of a moving ship?” Exile for Dreamers - Tess’s Story Kathleen Baldwin Baldwin, page 8 “But you had to do that.” The loudness of her declaration startled us both and the dogs.