When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James

Author:Eloisa James
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical Romance
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2011-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Linnet sat up and followed Piers’s fixed gaze toward the horizon. Coming toward them was a kind of dark mass, as if the night sky had appeared out of nowhere, come down to the sea and was—

Piers yanked her to her feet, reaching with his other hand for his cane. Then he dropped her hand. “Run! Run as fast as you can back to the castle.”

She looked back over her shoulder. The dark, roiling cloud was coming, so close that she could see it moving. But the uncanny thing was that the sky opposite was still blue, the sun still shining.

He had started up the path. “Linnet!” he bellowed, not looking back. “Run, you blithering idiot!”

She dashed after him. He was going quite quickly in a sort of three-pronged run, watching the ground intently to manage where his cane landed on the rocks. Once she caught up, she turned around again.

The cloud wasn’t black. It was a kind of dark green-blue, and it bulged as if it were alive. Fear replaced fascination. She ran after Piers again. “What is it?” she asked. “What is that?”

“Weather,” he said tersely. “Bloody Welsh weather, that’s what it is. Would you please start running?”

“I’m not going without you,” she said. A wind running ahead of the cloud reached them, and the words were ripped from her mouth.

One glance over her shoulder and Linnet knew they wouldn’t make it to the castle. Whatever was in that cloud was eating up the blue part of the ocean, racing toward the coast like a ferocious animal. And yet, oddly, the sun still shone in the sky directly above them.

Piers was going even faster now, the power of his left leg clear as he thrust himself forward. “The guardhouse,” he shouted, his words barely intelligible in the howl of the wind. They were almost at the curve of the path, and just beyond that stood the little building.

The wind was shoving them from behind, and all of a sudden Linnet felt needle points of icy rain strike her shoulders and back. Piers, impossibly, put on such a burst of speed that he drew ahead. Then he was at the door, yanking it open, reaching back for her as she came up panting, grabbing her hand and pulling her so strongly that her feet left the ground.

Slamming the door behind them.

One second, in which they looked at each other in the dim twilight of the house. Then as if gunfire had erupted, the wooden door shook from blows so strong that the frame visibly trembled.

“Oh, my God,” Linnet whispered. “What is that?”

“Hail,” Piers said, turning and limping into the room. “That’s why we leave the shutters closed on this house at all times.” He paused and cocked his head. “The size of tennis balls, from the sound of them.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Linnet exclaimed. She stared, transfixed, at the door. It was shaking as if hundreds of fists were pounding from the outside, as if a wild mob were trying to gain entrance.

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