Enoch panted with the exertion, staring down at her with a half snarl still on his face. After leaving the courthouse, he had taken lunch in the form of several beers, and while beer and ale were staples in the colony he had downed several pints of the brew before deciding that Mirabella needed a lesson. One did not simply walk out on one's fiancé. More importantly, one did not walk out on a legal contract. Enoch desired her, wanted what was owned to him and now he was intent on taking it. His eyes roved along her prone body, taking in its pleasing curves and sweet face. As drunk as he was, he could still function... But not here. Not in the preacher's house with her so called husband returning soon. Enoch did not fear Ebenezer. The man was nothing a scarecrow with a beardless and boyish face, stuffed with nothing but scripture and hot air instead of leaves and straw. What could he do against a man such as Enoch, who was stronger than even the blacksmith?? 

Bending low, he scooped Mirabella up into his arms. He slavered slightly as the sigh of her lips parted just so, her neck exposed. It was tempting to take her right then and there, oh so tempting! But no. Not when he might be found out too quickly. He also wanted her awake for this, to know that it was the man she had betrayed who took her maidenhead and bound her. Out the door and into the woods he went, unknowingly following that same deer path that Mirabella and Ebenezer had used just the night before until he came to that same clearing that she had danced in. Settling her down as she started to groan, he ripped off her bonnet and pulled her long hair freely from its bun. It spilled luxuriously out upon the green grass, shining brightly in the sunlight and arousing her attacker all the more. To see a woman's hair unbound like this... Enoch cruelly grabbed at its length, pulling and twisting her hair into a rough rope and tying it off around a handy tree root. With her hair tied to the ground, she would not be able to escape his attentions so easily.

***

Ebenezer felt a hint of panic when he saw the house door standing ajar. Surely his father had returned first was all, and Mirabella was airing out the house? Two men living on their own had given the house a certain odor, he had to cringingly admit; what woman would not want fresh air as she cleaned? The closer he came, however, the more the worry increased. "Mirabella? MIrabella!"

The door bar had been forced, he found, the one bracket literally smashed out of the doorframe and allowing the thick wooden bar to drop away. Ebenezer called her name out again, several times more as he searched the house without sign. "Enoch," he muttered, "It had to be Enoch. But where would he go? Think! He wouldn't take her to his home, even his father would not stand for that... The woods then. He would have taken her away unobserved and into the woods, it was was the only answer! Any other direction and he would have been seen in the broad daylight by any number of people, but as the forest's edge bordered the Stone family's property... There was little time to waste, but a few seconds were spared for an additional consideration. Off into the woodlands Ebenezer charged, each hand carrying a piece of his past that he thought he would never pick up again.