What the hell was he to do with her?
To send someone as fragile and innocent as her into the world alone was not something he could fathom.
He left her lying there, sound asleep, while he took care of the horses. He removed their saddles and the packs, rubbed them down with handfuls of straw, and gave them food and water.
When he went back to the girl, she hadn’t moved, so he sat down at the rickety old table and chairs by the end of the stall and looked at her as he ate half of the meager meal Yates had set out for them. It took him only minutes to finish, and all he wanted to do was sleep. He wished he had his plaid with him so he could roll in it and cover his thin, torn clothing, but he didn’t.
He was considering where to sleep when the girl moved to her side, leaving part of her big wool cloak uncovered. He knew he shouldn’t, but the comfort she offered was irresistible. He lifted one side of the cloak, stretched out beside her, and pulled the heavy wool over him. If he weren’t so dirty, he would have snuggled beside her, but he knew the filth of him would soil her dress. As he fell asleep, he wondered how she could ride a horse for so many hours and stay so clean. But then, in his opinion, an ability to remain clean was one of the mysteries of women.
Four
Alex awoke with a start, but he lay still, his eyes closed, and listened. When he heard nothing, he got up and looked about him. On the surface, the barn was just as he’d left it, but he could feel that something had changed—or was about to change. His father said that Alex had inherited a wee bit of the Second Sight from his mother. She always knew when someone was coming. By the time Alex was six and he saw his mother scurrying about to clean the house, his heart began to race with anticipation because he knew something was about to happen. She was never wrong.
Alex glanced down at the girl, still on her side, and still sound asleep. He stood there quietly, listening to the soft sounds of the few animals in the barn; nothing was amiss. But Alex couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that something bad was about to happen.
When he glanced up at the holes in the roof, he saw that it was hours before daylight, which meant he’d had little rest. Something inside him said that he needed to get the horses out. When the danger came, he knew that he and the girl would have to leave quickly, so he needed to have their horses ready.
Quietly, Alex went to the stall where his horse was and ran his hands over the back of the animal. It wasn’t one of the racehorses he was used to, nor the sturdy Highland ponies of his youth, but the animal was a good choice for carrying the equipment that T.C. knew Alex would need.
In a soft voice, Alex apologized to the horse as he began to put the gear back on him. The animal had not had enough time free of its burdens, but under Alex’s gentle, knowledgeable hands, the horse didn’t protest.
Next, he moved to the girl’s mare and ran his hands down its flanks. He had an idea that this animal was probably the best T.C. had in his stables. The mare fidgeted, but Alex quietened her with his whispered words and his gentle hands. She was young, and he had an idea that she could run fast enough to leave others behind. As he checked the mare’s hooves, he couldn’t help smiling as he remembered the girl’s riding. She’d been taught well and was as at ease on horseback as if she’d been raised in the Highlands. At that thought he smiled broader. No doubt she’d tell him that any Virginian could ride as well as any Scotsman.
Slowly, silently, Alex began to saddle the mare with the pretty English saddle the girl used. It had no bags for carrying things and was therefore useless, but it was certainly lovely. Alex was glad to see that the girl hadn’t ridden sidesaddle—even though he knew she probably usually did.
When the horses were saddled, Alex went to the big barn door and cautiously opened it. He heard nothing, saw no one. Silently, he led the animals out, then walked them the half mile or so to the big oak tree and securely tied them there. If it didn’t rain, they’d be all right, but he knew they’d miss the comfort of the barn. After an apology to them, he made his way back to the barn.
He bolted the door behind him and went to the girl. She was still asleep, still in the same position he’d left her. Obviously, she’d had a lifetime of safety where there was never a need to stay alert even during the night. Alex moved about the barn, his hands running over the dark walls and searching. The only door was the one in front, but Alex felt that they might need another way to escape. There were four loose, rotten boards toward the back, and it was easy to remove them. He closed the wide gap by leaning the boards over it.
When he at last felt safe again, he went back to the girl. She rubbed her nose in her sleep, making him smile. Nate had once sent a tiny sketch of his little sister, drawn by their mother, and Alex had kept it by his bed for years. When Lilith saw it, she’d almost been jealous.
At the thought of his wife, his smile left him. Now all he seemed to have in his mind was the image of her in a pool of blood. Her death, her leaving, had at first taken away his will to live. It was T.C. who’d given him the idea of clearing his name.
“Go to Florida with Grady,” T.C. had said, his voice low so the guards wouldn’t hear him. “A few months on a flatboat in such splendor will give you time to think and to remember.”
“I don’t want to remember,” Alex had said.
“I know what it’s like to lose the person you love most in the world. I lost mine twice, first when her father made her marry someone else, then again when she died. I know it doesn’t seem like it’s possible, but time does heal wounds. Go to Florida, and give this town time to calm down. Let yourself gain some peace. Alex, you need to let people know that you’re innocent.”
Now, Alex glanced up at the roof. He could get another two hours of sleep before they needed to leave. As yet, he wasn’t sure what he should do with the girl, but a plan was beginning to form in his head. All he had to do was keep her safe until they reached the place where he was to meet James Grady. If Alex could get her safely there, he could leave her with T.C.’s friends. She could wait there for a few weeks, then pay someone to escort her home. Her story would be that the murderer—he drew in his breath at the thought—had kidnapped her, but she’d managed to escape him.
As Alex lay down on the straw beside her, he withdrew his big knife from the sheath hidden under his torn, dirty shirt, and put it beside him. There was a pistol and a rifle on his horse, but Alex well knew how firearms could jam, that powder could get wet. For right now, a knife was his best defense.
Cay awoke slowly, and for several long seconds she didn’t know where she was. Her eyelashes were matted together and there was something lumpy in her back. Blinking and rubbing her eyes, she turned her head. When she saw him beside her, she had to work to keep from gasping. His hair-covered face was inches from hers, and the stench of him was nearly overwhelming.
Her only thought was how to get away from him. Now that there’d been some time since the escape, surely she and Uncle T.C. could figure out a way to prove her innocence. Since he looked to be soundly asleep, she thought of rolling away and tiptoeing out, but since the big cloak was entangled around them, to move more than her arms would wake him.
As her eyes adjusted to the dull light in the barn, she saw the knife by his side. If she could reach it, she could hold it at his throat and force him to . . . to release her. Yes, that was it.
As she stretched her bare right arm over his face, she watched him to see any signs of his waking, but he didn’t move. She was so sure he was asleep that when he spoke, she gasped.
“Lass, what are you up to?” he asked softly, his eyes still closed.
Cay’s thoughts spun as she imagined rolling away from him and running. Could she reach the barn door before he did? Would whoever owned the barn help her get away?
With his eyes still closed, Alex reached for the knife beside him, and offered it to her, handle first. “Is this what you’re after?”
In one swift movement, Cay took the knife and held it to his throat. “Release me
or I’ll take your life,” she said in her most threatening tone.
“Lass,” he said patiently, “if you need to get away from a man, you can’t give him warning.”
She pressed the knife deeper on his throat. “Out of respect for my godfather I won’t kill you. All I want is to get away from you.”
Alex still hadn’t opened his eyes but lay there quietly, the knife against his neck. “You’re free to go, but I warn you that there hasn’t been enough time. If they can’t find me to hang, they might decide to stretch your wee neck.”
“But I’m innocent.”
Opening his eyes, Alex looked at her. Their faces were just inches apart. “Helping a condemned man to escape is innocent?”
“I was helping my godfather, not you!”
“Ah, then they can hang him beside you.”
She put the knife closer on his throat. “If I had any sense, I’d kill you now and let people see—”
She broke off because Alex brushed the knife away with his arm, and quickly rolled to his feet. “Someone is out there,” he whispered as he pulled Cay to stand up, but her feet got entangled in the bottom of the voluminous cloak and she fell against him.
“Ah ne’er saw a lassie as useless as ye,” he muttered as he pushed her away.
Cay nearly fell against the barn wall, but she got herself untangled and stood upright to see the man run to the door and look out a crack. In the next instant he was beside her. “Old man Yates is coming and he has someone with him. We must go.”
Cay had just seen the food on the table and her stomach rumbled in response.
“No time to eat now, lass,” Alex said as he pushed her toward the back of the barn. When she nearly tripped again, Alex grabbed the piece of bread and shoved it inside his dirty shirt. In the next second he was in front of her and he set the wall boards to one side. Someone started pounding on the big double doors. Sounding angry and sleepy, Alex called out, “Whit dae ye want?”
“Say it in English,” Cay hissed at him. She was already outside, and it occurred to her to run to the front of the barn and give herself up, but she thought of the Scotsman’s words of a double, or triple, hanging, and she hesitated.
“What do you want?” Alex shouted as he slipped through the open place in the wall. But the seam of his trousers got caught and he couldn’t pull free.
It was only then that Cay realized she was still holding his knife in her hand. She raised it and for a moment Alex’s eyes met hers—and Cay knew he thought she was going to stab him.
Swiftly, she brought the knife down by his side, cut the seam to his trousers, and released him. The look of thanks in his eyes almost made her blush.
“The horses are under the oak tree. It’s just a short distance down the road, but we can’t go that way. We need to go through the fields and quickly. Can you run, lass?”
“I can escape brothers,” she said, as though that was an answer to his question. Hitching up the cloak and the bottom of her gown, she flung them over her arm.
Puzzled by what she’d said, Alex began to hurry across the fields, and Cay stayed with him. After they’d been running in a zigzag pattern for nearly twenty minutes, Cay was tempted to remove the cloak and her gown and run in her underwear. And if she did that, she’d use the Scotsman’s knife to cut her corset strings. Right now she needed to breathe deeply more than she needed a tiny waist.
Once, they had to cross a wooden fence. Alex went first, then lifted his arms to help her down, but when she nearly fell on him, he staggered backward.
“You are a very weak man. I’ve leaped on my brothers from tree branches and not taken them down.”
Alex opened his mouth, as though he meant to defend himself, but he closed it again, and began running, Cay close behind him. But she heard him muttering to himself and saw him shake his head a few times. That she’d managed to annoy him made her smile. It was the least she could do when he was causing her so much discomfort.
When they finally reached the horses, she halted in surprise. He’d told her they were under the big oak tree, but hearing that and seeing them were two different things. She stopped, her clothes bunched over her arms, her drawers damp and clinging, her stockings torn and filthy. “When did you do this?”
“No time for questions now, lass,” Alex said. “We must leave here.” When she didn’t move, he took her hand and pulled her forward. “Must I throw you into the saddle?”
“You?” she said, coming out of her shock. “My youngest brother is stronger than you are.”
“Tally?” Alex held his hands together, she put her foot into them, and vaulted into the saddle. “That boy is more likely to throw mud at his enemy than hit him.” The instant he said it, he regretted his words. He was referring to something Nate had written about his younger siblings when Nate and Alex were just boys.
Cay stared at him with her eyes wide. “How do you know that?” Her father still laughed over the huge mud fight she’d had with her youngest brother when they were three and four.
Reining his horse around, Alex tapped his temple. “Have you no heard of the Second Sight, lass? I can read minds.” He gave her a smile, showing even, white teeth, then ducked and led his horse out from under the overhanging branches. In the next moment, he kicked his horse forward and began galloping.
“And I guess he assumes I’ll follow him,” Cay said as she patted her mare’s neck. She glanced back the way they’d come. It wasn’t quite daylight yet, but she could see enough to know that no one was coming after them. Maybe she should go back to the barn and get that man to help her return to her family.
Cay even turned her horse that way, but something stopped her. Maybe it was the way the Scotsman had let her keep his knife when he could easily have taken it, or maybe it was his mention of Tally. Or it could have been her uncle T.C.’s belief in him, but she didn’t run away from him.
“I think I’m going to regret this,” she said aloud as she turned her horse toward the Scotsman and went after him. It took a while to catch up, and if his horse weren’t so laden with supplies she didn’t think she would have. He could ride as well as her Scottish cousins.
When she rode up beside him, his look showed his relief. “I came because you have the bread,” she said loudly. He reached inside his tattered shirt and withdrew the hunk of coarse, stale bread, and handed it to her.
It was no easy task to reach across the two running horses and take it, but Cay had run relay races with her brothers, so she knew how to grab something while going full speed. She snatched the bread and for a moment she thought, Am I supposed to eat this dirty thing? If she hadn’t been so hungry and if he hadn’t been watching her, she would have thrown it down, but she wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. She tore off a hunk of the bread with her teeth and chewed it with gusto.
“Well, Catherine Edilean Harcourt, maybe you aren’t useless after all,” he said in a clear American accent, then kicked his horse forward.
For a moment, Cay was so stunned that he knew her name that her horse slowed down.
“Come on, lass!” he called to her. “We haven’t got all day for you to lay about.”
“Lay about!” she muttered as she ate the last of the bread. “Come on, girl,” she said to her horse, “let’s go get him.”
Five minutes later, she passed him, and ten minutes after that she was so far ahead that when she looked back she couldn’t see him. For a moment she thought she’d lost him, but when she turned a curve in the road, there he stood—and he was angry.
“Do not do that again,” he said softly, but his tone was almost frightening. “I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you are. It’s one thing to tease a man, but to endanger your mare is another. You could have hurt her forelegs on this hard road.”
“Me?” Cay said, her mare going in circles around him while he and his horse stood perfectly still. “You beat me here, so you must have run faster than me. Didn’t you use the road?”
“Ho
w I went is of no concern to you. If I’m to protect you, you must obey me.”
Anger ran through her. “The only man I ‘obey’ is my father—and sometimes Adam,” she said as an afterthought. “As for you, if you can’t keep up, then I suggest you sit down and wait for the sheriff to find you.” With that, she reined her horse around, and took off down the road as fast as the mare would go.
It took over three miles of riding as hard as she could before her anger began to calm down. Of all the overbearing, arrogant things that had ever been said to her, his was the worst.
She slowed her horse and looked behind her. There was no sign of the man. Well, maybe, truthfully, what he’d said hadn’t been the worst of the worst. One by one her brothers had all told her she was to “obey” them. And the truth was that she had. They wouldn’t let her, so much younger and a girl, tag along with them if she hadn’t. But she’d never obeyed Tally!
When her horse gave a little limp, Cay got down and walked her to the shade of a tree. The poor animal needed to rest—as did Cay. She listened but heard nothing. There was no one else on the road. As soon as she stopped, she realized how very hungry and thirsty she was. Her mare had only the pretty leather saddle she’d brought from home on it. There was no canteen as the Scotsman had.
She was leaning against the tree when she heard voices. She stood up quickly, ready to greet whoever it was, but in the next second she realized that a group of men was approaching. She glanced down at herself. Her ballgown had once been beautiful but was now dirty, with beads hanging off of it in strings. Still, it could be seen that the dress had been expensive. And there was her mare, a lovely animal, with the handmade saddle on her back. All in all, Cay thought it would be wiser to not allow a group of strange men to see that she was a woman alone. Until she saw them and assessed who and what they were, she thought she should hide.