It wasn't his own men, he realized quickly. They were a day's ride away by now, hopefully in the shelter of Langley, where he himself should be riding toward in an hour's time. They were under orders to keep marching and he knew they would have done so. So there was only one possibility. It was the enemy who pursued them.
Get back inside.
He tensed, not sure if he could make it without being seen. He paused, watching the watcher.
A lone man, he sat a dark horse and wore the uniform of the Scots troops loyal to King George. Alexander stifled the urge to spit. How dare one of their own, a Scotsman, be loyal to that usurping pretender? He moved carefully toward the door.
As he snuck across through the flower-beds, so slowly, he wondered why he was doing it. There was no reason for those men to be watching this cottage! They were probably just passing through, looking for shelter or food or a place to rest of the night, as his men had.
They have no reason to think we're here. Unless they're deliberately searching the village for us.
Or, he realized, as he reached the door and opened it, because they saw the horse.
He glanced back at the lean-to, where he'd seen Randell's horse stabled. A big, fine horse, he was clearly a cavalry mount.
He cursed himself for his own inattention! What had he been thinking, leaving the horse there? What, he added, angrily, as he shut the door and strode to the fireplace – realizing he still had a log in his arms for her fire – did he think he was doing at all?
“They're here,” he said curtly to the woman.
She turned round to face him, as if seeing him for the first time.
Her lips – soft and pink – parted to ask him a question, and that was the precise moment that the front door rattled with a sharp kick.
FLIGHT FOR FREEDOM
Prudence whipped round and stared at the door in horror. They were breaking into her home!
What could they do? She didn't stop to think. Running to the bed, she grabbed her patient. She jerked him upright, even as he threw off the bedclothes and vaulted to his feet.
The man in the bed protested – or so she thought – shouting something. The other man – the arrogant one – answered him with hasty urgency.
Prudence looked from one to the other, bemused. She didn't understand any of what they said. Right now, all she cared about was escape, even as the front door shuddered and then a splintering crack echoed through the room.
“We need to get to the kitchen,” she called. “To the back door.”
“Yes. I'll get the horse,” the man called back.
She took her patient's arm and helped him into the kitchen, across the threshold. As she walked, as quickly as she could, toward the door it opened, it occurred to her that whoever now pursued them, it was he who they sought. Also, he was the only one who could get them out of it. He was her only means of communication with her patient, and her only safe passage away from these wicked men who were breaking into her cottage.
“Here!” he hissed as loudly as he dared.
Prudence followed him through the door and out into her garden. She could see men now, riding through the trees, past the smith's cottage and round the corner to her front door. Thankfully, the wall around the smith's cottage prevented them from riding round the back of her cottage, where only a small wooden fence existed to keep them out.
“I'll take the other horse,” he said. “You get up here, and I'll lift him up.”
“Yes, sir,” she said automatically. It occurred to her, as she stood beside the great pale-colored stallion, that she had no reason to trust this man so absolutely. She had no reason to trust him at all.
Then all her thoughts were whisked away in the impossible contemplation of riding. She had never ridden anything in her life.
“Come on! Get up! Oh...” He swore under his breath and then, to her utter astonishment, he lifted her around the waist and pushed her onto the horse's back, as if she weighed no more than a sack of flour.
She felt her legs grip round the horse and she was too shocked to think about it, too shocked to contemplate the fact that he had touched her. Her mind was all taken up with the impossible task of staying on the creature.
“Get him!”
Prudence frowned, then immediately bent to help haul her patient onto the horse, wincing as his shoulder bunched and the pain made him gasp. “Easy,” she murmured. “There, there.”
She saw the officer – she assumed he was an officer, for he gave orders as if he'd done it always – glance up at her and then stride into the woods. It was then that the thought occurred to her.
“What other horse?”
She shouted it after him, but her own horse began to walk, then, making her let out a yell of terror.
“Och, lassie,” the man before her murmured. Prudence heard him say something else – something she didn't understand, and then he chuckled and took the reins. Thanking the unpleasant officer for his plan of setting the injured man on the horse before her, she gripped around his waist and tried her best to cling on, blushing furiously as she felt her body press into his.
He shouted something else, and their horse turned, sharply, and then – without saddle or bridle to speak of, though she had seen people ride with both – they shot into the woods.
“Keep going North,” the officer yelled, and Prudence, looking sharply round, saw him on a horse – a big brown – that she had no clue he’d found.
Before she had any chance to think about it further, she felt her stomach lurch up into her throat as they sped ahead, toward the hills.
She felt herself grow nauseous. They were going so fast! The horse would fall, they would hit a tree...
Her mind was going too fast to keep up, and the world kept coming at her, in flashes of brown and gray and gold that were too fast, too blurred, to make sense of at present. The world was a tunnel of brown and gold and wind, tugging her hair.
“Stop,” she whispered. “Oh, stop!”
However, they carried on. The wounded man in front of her must have been more recovered than she’d imagined, she realized. He was laughing – laughing! – and the speed was insane.
“We will have an accident,” Prudence yelled into his ear, even as a tree whizzed past.
He laughed, and they sped onward. Prudence closed her eyes and willed her breakfast to stay down.
As they reached the crest of the hill, the man slowed the horse. Prudence, eyes open now, swallowed to keep her breakfast from coming up again. She looked around as her compatriot shouted.
“You staying on?” a voice said, in Lowland Scots.
Prudence felt her head whip round and she stared in surprise. “You!”
There he was, the annoying fellow with the red hair and the calm sneer. He raised a brow at her.
“It's me, yes,” he said, that familiar smile quirking his mouth. “I would have thought you'd be more grateful than that.”
“Grateful is a funny thing to be for a terror like that,” Prudence managed to say. That was when her arms and legs finally gave out together and she fell forward and then slid sideways off the horse. She landed in an uncomfortable heap on the leaf-mold and vomited.
When she looked up, wiping her mouth, white with exhaustion, he was looking down at her. To her surprise, there was no distaste in his expression. Instead, his eyes glowed with a gentleness she had not imagined.
“Handkerchief?” he asked. He fished one from a belt-pocket, and passed it down to her.
“Thanks,” she murmured, albeit shakily.
She dabbed at her mouth with the handkerchief. She felt stitching there and, looking down at it briefly, noticed that it had some sort of pattern sewn onto it. A coat of arms, she thought. She was about to look at it when she heard him cough.
“That's enough. I'll have that back.”
His face was bitter and hard. She blinked, amazed at the speed of the transformation.
“Fine,” she shrugged, and passed it up to him. She felt
hurt. He had been so kind a moment ago! To see that hard, cold arrogance creep back across his eyes made her sad again.
The man on horseback said something. He answered.
“What are we doing?” she asked, and a stab of horror hit her. “What have they done to my cottage?”
“They left it,” he said quickly. “It's not ransacked.”
“Not...ransacked,” she echoed. She closed her eyes, imagining the men and the cottage, the door kicked in, hanging drunkenly on its hinges, the plates smashed to splinters on the floor, chairs overturned.
“My cottage,” she whispered. “It's all I have.”
“I'm sorry,” he said. “When I left it was intact. I pray they didn't wreak too much damage.”
“Too...much – damage,” she echoed. She felt stupid. Why was she standing here, in the forest, the scent of vomit in her clothes, the ache of emptiness in her stomach, repeating everything this man said? Her cottage was broken. What must she do now?
“I promise I will not let you starve,” he said. Prudence looked up at him and felt an icy rage.
“I wouldn't even have to think of starvation if you hadn't led that pack of hooligans here,” she snapped. “I think you could do better than that. Like, for instance, you could tell me your name. You owe me that much, at least.”
His brow rose. “I will tell you what I can risk,” he said.
In that moment, Prudence wondered about his circumstances. What was he doing – a nobleman, clearly, for she knew that from the accent as much as from the crest sewn on his kerchief – hiding in woodlands?
He's with the Jacobite uprisers.
That much was obvious. He was a soldier, a commander, and he led troops through the woods. This man was one of his troops and they had been injured. Now whoever had shot at them had arrived to finish the job.
“I only ask for your name, sir,” she said slowly. “And where you are going.”
“My name is Alexander.”
She raised a brow. His first name? What manner of man gave his first name to women he met in the woods when he was clearly a laird of sorts? “I see,” she murmured.
He smiled. She frowned. “And?” he asked.
“And, I see,” she said, confused. What was she supposed to have said?
He chuckled. “I told you my name. You might do me the courtesy of telling me yours?”
“Oh!” Prudence colored. She had never had to introduce herself to anyone before, at least not in circumstances like these, when meeting a noble. The housekeeper had asked her name at her first employment, but that was all. “Um,” she stammered. “I'm Prudence.”
“Prudence,” he said. He gave the name a considering weight, as if he was tasting it.
It was an intimate consideration, and Prudence felt the blood flood into her face. She looked at her shoes. “Yes, sir.”
“You may call me Alexander,” he said quickly.
“Alexander.”
At that point, the man on the horse yelled something. Alexander's cheek jumped with a smile, and then he turned to her, schooling his face neutral.
“What'd he say?” Prudence asked.
He smiled, unable to contain it. “He said I don't know what you two are blithering on about, but it's cold out here, and there are men down there who want to kill us. Could we go?”
“He did?” Prudence felt herself smile, too. She looked up at the horse, and her face fell. “Can you help me up?” she asked, realizing how difficult it would be for her to mount up again.
“You're not coming with him,” Alexander said flatly. “You're going with me.”
Prudence stared at him. She opened her mouth to protest. He jumped down from the horse then, neatly, and landed beside her.
“This one has stirrups,” he said, gesturing toward the horse. She stared.
“Where did you...?”
“Stole him from an officer,” he said curtly. “One of those lurking in the woods.”
“Did you...” She was about to ask if he had killed said officer.
“If you put your foot in it, you can step up,” he said, evading the question.
Prudence, deciding she didn't really wish to know the answer to her earlier question, did as she was bid. The stirrup seemed a long way off the ground. The horse shifted, stepping sideways, and she sighed. Alexander held the reins and the horse stilled so that she got her foot in finally.
“Now,” he instructed. “Lean on the saddle and draw yourself up. Swing your leg over. There, now.”
Prudence winced. How was she supposed to do that? The saddle was a long way up, and it even sounded impossible to do that. She bit her lip and, not wanting him to think ill of her, swung her leg up even as she pressed down.
“Oh!” she found herself sitting, abruptly, on the horse. He looked up into her face. She smiled.
He grinned. “There, now. Not so hard, eh?”
“How are you...oh!”
He stepped into the stirrup and executed the same move as her, lithely, so fast she could barely see it. Then, sitting behind her, he reached forward for the reins.
“Walk on.”
Prudence drew in a gasp and then they were walking forward, much slower this time.
Behind her, she could feel the warmth of his body, molded to hers. She resisted the urge to lean back against it. He was so soft and strong! She liked the sensation of riding like this, so close to him. She could feel his heart beating against her back. She could smell the musty scent of him, a mix of spice and sweat and clay that was intoxicating and made her heartbeat thump. She felt heat rush to her cheeks and wondered why she felt like this.
Prudence! It must be the tension. It's getting to you.
All she knew was she had never felt so strange.
“We have a long way to go, yet,” he said. His voice was resonant and she could feel it thrumming through her chest.
“Where are we going?” she managed to ask.
“Back down again.”
“But won't they..?” Prudence began. The men who were looking for them were yet there! “If we go down, then...?”
“That's why we're going back down,” he said curtly. “Because they think we're up here. They'll follow us.”
“And we'll end up behind them.” She felt him smile. She couldn't have said quite how, but something about the muscles in his throat, where he leaned against her shoulder, and the sound of his lips moving, betrayed the grin.
“You are right.”
Prudence felt herself glow. She couldn't say why, quite, but the fact that she had impressed him pleased her more than it should. “So we can go back to the cottage?” she asked. That was her second thought. They could at least tidy up a bit, fetch provisions, maybe repair the damaged front door.
“We won't go back.” He said it softly. Then, as she drew in a breath to protest, he added, “I'm sorry.”
“But...” she murmured. Her things! Her beautiful cottage! The only thing she had ever owned!
“I'm sorry,” he said slowly. “We can go back later, maybe. I promise. But not today. Not tomorrow either.”
“But then, where are we going?”
“We're going to the fortress,” he said slowly. “Near Flenmore.”
“Oh,” Prudence whispered. She had no idea where Flenmore was. She had no idea, really, where the McReid estate – where her mistress lived – was, or where the town of Duncliffe was, where they had first stayed. All she knew, and all she wanted, was the tiny village in the forest where her cottage was. Where they would not be going.
“I am sorry we had to take you with us,” Alexander said slowly. “You shouldn't have been caught up in this.”
“No,” Prudence said in a small voice. “I shouldn't.”
All she had done was stop to heal a wounded man, someone who had been delivered, literally, to her doorstep. Healing was her calling – it was what she had wanted to do, longed to do, the moment she was granted her own piece of land and her own choice of employment. Now she was bei
ng whisked away across a foreign country?
“You must be brave.”
Prudence felt that statement like a stinging blow.
“That's easy to say,” she whispered. “I think I have been quite brave enough already. I've had brutes march into my home and break it, and now more brutes are carrying me somewhere I do not wish to be.”
“So I'm a brute, am I?” The voice was neutral. She had no idea if he was hurt, or angry. Or if he merely grinned.
“Yes,” she said decisively, feeling furious still. Brave, indeed! How brave would he be if raiders were on his doorstep and strangers whisked him away to an unknown place?
Brave is easy when you already feel like you have power.
Being brave, she realized, was something she had done all morning.
“Well, since I am a beast, I suppose you are here because you are afraid of me?”
“I'm here because I haven't any choice. And besides,” she added, honestly, “I'm more afraid of them.”
That made him chuckle. “Fine,” he said. “Accepted. Now, hang on tight. The slope is steep here, and I don't feel like having to pick you up again.”
“Fine,” she said crossly. She leaned forward and gripped the saddle-rim and he, laughing, reached forward and leaned closer to hold the reins. She tensed, feeling his body on hers and wondered, fleetingly, if he had done it on purpose.
Then there was no time to think anymore, because they were starting to move faster again.
AT THE FORT
Alexander tried to ignore the disconcerting sensation of the warm bottom pressing against his crotch as he rode. He tensed, doing his best to ignore the sensations that fired his blood and made his loins ache as her warm, sweet roundness pressed into him.
Come on, Alexander. Stop thinking like that. She's not doing it on purpose and neither are you.
He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and headed down the path.
Riding with someone sitting in front of him was harder than he would have imagined. It was all very well if he wasn't supposed to be the one navigating, but as it was, all he could do was lean forward and strain to see around her. Not, he thought wryly, that having to lean against her was all that bad. It felt like she was in his arms, held tightly.
The Highlander’s Healer (Blood of Duncliffe Series) Page 4
