He grinned. “His are the best.”
“Do you have any?”
He nodded. “One definite benefit of being connected to the family.”
“I love the exhilaration one gets when pounding along—I think that’s what I enjoy the most.”
He blinked. Decided hard riding wasn’t the best choice of conversational topics. At least not for him. Especially not with her. “What about dancing?”
“I love to waltz. I even enjoy the older forms, the quadrilles and cotillions. They might be less fashionable now, but there’s a certain . . . reined power in them, don’t you think?”
“Hmm.” Where was an innocent topic when he needed one?
“Have you ever danced the gavotte?”
“Years ago.” And he still remembered it. And of course the thought of dancing that particular measure with her, in full flight, instantly filled his mind.
Searching for distraction, he looked around.
“Get down.” His hand on her back, he pressed her down into a low crouch. Hunkering down beside her, he looked into her startled face. “Riders on the road.” They were walking parallel to the road to Annan, but a good two hundred yards to the south, using hedges and coppices to screen them from roadbound travelers.
After a moment, he grimaced. “Stay down.”
Leaving his hand on her back to ensure she did, he swiveled and raised his head. Looked, then relaxed a trifle. “They didn’t see us. They’re riding steadily on.”
She straightened her back. “Constables?”
Removing his hand, he nodded, looked again, then rose and gave her his hand. Gripping her fingers, he drew her to her feet.
She straightened, sighed, and looked down. “My evening slippers aren’t holding up too well.”
When he looked down, she slipped her fingers from his and lifted her hems enough for him to see the poor, bedraggled excuse for footwear she had protecting her small feet.
He bit back the curse that leapt to his lips. “Holes?”
“Not so much holes as they’re not waterproof. They aren’t designed for hiking through soggy fields.”
He hadn’t thought . . . and clearly neither had Fletcher, Cobbins, or Martha. He looked ahead. “We’ll have to get you proper walking shoes. Perhaps in Annan.”
She started walking again. “They’re all right, at least for the moment.”
Falling in beside her, he let the subject lie and put his mind to considering the more immediate details of their flight. He—they—had planned on driving to Richard and Catriona’s estate, but now . . .
It was some time later—two miles or so later—when she spoke again. “It’s a pity we can’t slip back toward Gretna. I was hoping to hide somewhere close—close enough to get a glimpse of this mysterious laird when he arrives.”
He grunted. “I’d flirted with the notion myself, but with the authorities as well as him looking for you, it’s too dangerous.” He glanced at her, then added, “I scouted around, looking for cover, but there wasn’t anywhere we could have hidden and in safety watched the inn.”
Heather met his eyes briefly, then nodded and marched on. She was starting to accept that he wasn’t as arrogantly high-handed as she’d always thought—witness his scouting, trying to find a way to give her what she’d wanted even though he himself had never been that keen, never convinced that a glimpse would be worth the effort. He was probably right, yet he’d tried to find a way to accommodate her wishes.
Despite not getting what she’d wanted, the knowledge made her feel more content.
They walked into a sunset muted by churning clouds. Before the encroaching darkness deepened, Breckenridge paused to check the map.
“We should be nearly at Dornock.” He looked ahead, squinted. “I can see roofs ahead—that must be the village.”
“We can’t just walk up and ask for shelter, can we?” She’d thought through the ramifications. “Those riders would have stopped and warned the villagers about us—about me, at least.”
He grunted an assent. He surveyed the still largely flat fields, then touched her arm, pointed a little way further south. “There’s a barn there, close enough to reach before the light fails. Let’s see what it’s like.”
She didn’t reply, merely started walking.
Tucked in one corner of a field, isolated and at least three fields from the nearest farmhouse, the barn proved sound and filled with hay. Much of it was loose, and the fragrance that surrounded them when they climbed to the loft was redolent with the memory of summer.
Breckenridge looked around. “We’ll be warm enough up here, and safe enough.” He glanced down at the ladder they’d climbed up. “The ladder isn’t fixed—I’ll pull it up for the night.”
So she’d feel safe. Heather hid a grin; for a man whose expression she could still rarely read, he was becoming quite predictable in some ways.
Setting down her satchel, she slipped off her cloak, flicked it out, and spread it over a wide, deep pile of hay, then turned and sat, wriggling her hips to create a comfortable hollow. Reaching down, she eased off her poor slippers, studied them in the fading light. “I don’t suppose we can risk a fire.”
Looking up, she met Breckenridge’s shadowed eyes.
After a moment, he shook his head. “No. Too risky.”
But he’d thought of it. She nodded and set the slippers aside, used her cloak to rub her feet dry, then stretched out her toes, flexed her ankles, and reached beneath her skirts to massage her calves.
He cleared his throat. “We haven’t any food, either.”
She glanced up, faintly smiled. “I don’t think going without food for one night is going to hurt either of us.”
He held her gaze, after a moment said, “You’re being very accommodating. I was expecting something rather closer to hysterics.”
She snorted. “And what good would they do?” She raised a shoulder. “We’re in this together, and doing the best we can. I don’t expect you to perform miracles.” Lying back on her makeshift pallet, she looked up at him. “And as long as you don’t expect miracles from me, I daresay we’ll manage well enough.”
He stared at her, his expression, as usual, impenetrable. Of all the men she’d ever met, he kept his features under the most rigid control. Then he shrugged off the satchels he’d carried, set them near hers, and turned back toward the ladder. “I’m going to check around the building. I won’t go far, and I won’t be long.”
Heather lay back, let her muscles relax, and tracked him by sound. He moved around within the barn, then went outside.
While she waited, she held onto a mental vision of him—imagined him walking around the structure, assessing it. Her brothers, her cousins, were protective men; she was accustomed to the foibles of the species. Breckenridge, however, although every bit as protective, if not more so, hid it better. She considered, then murmured, “No, that’s not right.” He didn’t so much hide his proclivities as mute them, negotiate around them. Make them seem reasonable and sensible and justifiable.
His was a more subtle, but also more effective, approach.
If he’d been one of her brothers, or even one of her cousins, she’d have felt smothered by now—and she’d have been sniping and resisting his orders and restrictions for all she was worth, on principle if nothing else. But because he was reasonable and listened—or at least seemed to listen—to her wishes, then she could be reasonable, too.
Given her previous view of him, that she’d come to the point of regarding him as “reasonable” struck her as exquisitely ironic.
By the time he returned, darkness had fallen, but the moon was half full, shedding sufficient light to make out shapes even inside the barn. When he reached the top of the ladder, she slid her feet back into her slippers, stood, and shook out her skirts. “I need to go outside. I won’t go far, and I won’t be l
ong.”
He froze. She smiled sunnily at him, even if he probably couldn’t see well enough to appreciate the effect. She’d given him back his own words. She’d trusted him, now he had to trust her.
With obvious reluctance, he shifted, allowing her to reach the head of the ladder. “It’s dark.”
“I’ll be careful.” She started down the ladder, then glanced up at him. “Just stay there.”
Reaching the ground, she walked to the barn door, lit by light slanting down through a window high in one side wall. Pulling open the door, she glanced out, then slipped around the corner of the barn to attend to the call of nature.
She walked back inside five minutes later, only to find him waiting just inside the door. She narrowed her eyes at him, but he didn’t meet her gaze, simply pulled the door closed, then lifted a heavy beam and angled it across the opening.
“If anyone tries to come in, they’ll have to shift that—we’ll hear them.”
She humphed and walked toward the ladder, wondering if he’d thought of the beam before or after he’d followed her down to the ground.
He trailed close behind her, claimed her hand, and helped her onto the ladder. She climbed up, careful not to get her feet tangled in her skirts. Once she stepped free, he followed her up, then turned and, with surprising ease, hauled up the long ladder.
She settled back on her cloak and watched as, bathed in the faint moonlight, he maneuvered the ladder to lay it along the edge of the loft. Even though he was fully clothed, she still got an impression of the play of muscle necessary to achieve such a feat.
There was no denying Breckenridge was one of the ton’s favorite rakes for good reason.
Smiling to herself, she relaxed on her makeshift bed.
He looked at her, then picked up his own cloak, shook it out, and spread it on the hay, not next to her but on the other side of their satchels. She inwardly humphed. While he sat, then lay back and settled, she sat up and pulled her satchel closer. Opening it, she hauled out the other plain gown and her evening gown. The silk, she hoped, would help to keep her warm.
Breckenridge, of course, had simply wrapped his cloak about himself. Given how warm he always seemed to be, he would probably be warm enough. She fussed, laying first the evening gown, then the plain gown over her, then she lay down and wrapped the skirts of her cloak around her.
She was, she told herself, warm enough. She wasn’t likely to freeze.
Breckenridge spoke out of the thickening darkness; the moonlight was starting to fade. “We’ll head for Annan in the morning—see if we can slip into the town, get some breakfast and shoes for you at least.”
“Hmm. I suppose in a town rather than a village we’ll have a better chance of escaping attention.”
He didn’t reply.
“Good night,” he eventually murmured.
“Good night.” Settling her head on one hand, she closed her eyes.
Silence fell.
Whether it was her hearing sharpening once she’d shut her eyes, or that the sounds only began some minutes after she and Breckenridge had become silent and still, rustlings started, at some distance initially, but as the minutes stretched, she could swear the furtive shifting of the hay was growing nearer, and nearer . . .
She was suddenly wide awake.
Suddenly in a greater panic than she’d been earlier in the day.
The only thought that occurred to her, the only possible way to secure relief, involved shockingly forward behavior.
To escape mice, she could be shockingly forward.
Rising, all but leaping to her feet, she grabbed up her gowns-cum-covers, swiped up her cloak, and dashed past their mounded satchels to where Breckenridge had stretched out.
Through the dimness she could just make him out, stretched on his back, his arms crossed behind his head. He might have been silent, but he hadn’t been asleep. She could feel his frown as he looked at her.
“What are you doing?”
“Moving closer to you.” Dropping her gowns, she shook out her cloak and laid it next to his.
“Why?”
“Mice.”
He let a heartbeat pass, then asked, carefully, “You’re afraid of mice?”
She nodded. “Rodents. I don’t discriminate.” Swinging around, she sat on her cloak, then picked up her gowns and wriggled back and closer to him. “If I’m next to you, then either they’ll give us both a wide berth, or if they decide to take a nibble, there’s at least an even chance they’ll nibble you first.”
His chest shook. He was struggling not to laugh. But at least he was trying.
“Besides,” she said, lying down and snuggling under her massed gowns, “I’m cold.”
A moment ticked past, then he sighed.
He shifted in the hay beside her. She didn’t know what he did, but suddenly she was sliding the last inches down a slope that hadn’t been there before. She fetched up against him, against his side—hard, muscled, and wonderfully warm.
Her senses leapt greedily, pleasantly shocked, delightedly surprised; she caught her breath and slapped them down. Desperately; this was Breckenridge—this was definitely not the time.
His arm shifted and came around her, cradling her shoulders and gathering her against him.
“This doesn’t mean anything.” The whispered words drifted down to her.
Comfort, safety, warmth—it meant all those things.
“I know,” she murmured back. Her senses weren’t listening. Her body now lay alongside his. Her breast brushed his side; through various layers her thighs grazed his. Her heartbeat had deepened, sped up a little, too. Yet despite the sensual awareness, she could feel reassurance along with his warmth stealing through her, relaxing her tensed muscles bit by bit as, greatly daring, she settled her cheek on his chest.
This doesn’t mean anything. She knew what he meant. This was just for now, for this strange moment out of their usual lives in which he and she were just two people finding ways to weather a difficult situation.
She quieted. Listened.
The sound of his heartbeat, steady and sure, blocked out any rustlings.
Thinking of the strange moment, of what made it so, she murmured, “We’re fugitives, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“In a strange country, one not really our own, with no way to prove who we are.”
“Yes.”
“And a stranger, a very likely dangerous highlander, is pursuing us.”
“Hmm.”
She should feel frightened. She should be seriously worried. Instead, she closed her eyes, and with her cheek pillowed on Breckenridge’s chest, his arm like warm steel around her, smoothly and serenely fell asleep.
Breckenridge held her against him, and through senses far more attuned than he wished, followed the incremental falling away of her tension . . . until she slept.
Softly, silently, in his arms, with the gentle huff of her breathing ruffling his senses, the seductive weight of her slender body stretched out against his the subtlest of tortures.
Why had he done it? She might have slept close to him, but she would never have pushed to sleep in his arms. That had been entirely his doing, and he hadn’t even stopped to think.
What worried him most was that even if he had thought, had reasoned and debated, the result would have been the same.
When it came to her, whatever the situation, there never was any question, no doubt in his mind as to what he should do.
Her protection, her safety—caring for her. From the first instant he’d laid eyes on her four years ago, that had been his mind’s fixation. Its decision. Nothing he’d done, nothing she’d done, had ever succeeded in altering that.
But as to the why of that, the reason behind it . . . even now he didn’t, was quite certain and absolutely sure he didn’t, nee
d to consciously know.
Exhaling slowly, he let his senses expand, checking the barn for any intrusion, then settled to see out the rest of the night.
Chapter Eight
They set out for Annan a little after dawn. The day was cloudy, but the wind had softened. Given the state of her slippers, Heather was grateful it wasn’t raining.
She’d woken to find herself wrapped in her gowns, her cloak, and Breckenridge’s, too, but he’d been gone. He’d walked back into the barn as she’d reached the bottom of the ladder; by the time she’d gone out and come back in herself, he’d been climbing down the ladder with their satchels already packed and her cloak over his shoulder.
Side by side, they walked steadily westward. Skirting Dornock village—a few houses lining the road to Annan—to the south took them close to the shores of Solway Firth. The water was gray, but relatively calm. As the sun rose at their backs, the surface of the water took on a rosy hue.
They’d passed Dornock and could see the roofs of Annan ahead when Breckenridge stopped her with a hand on her arm. She glanced at him, saw him looking at the road a few hundred yards to the north. Following his gaze, she saw two riders—both constables, who had been heading west—slow to meet with a pair of their comrades riding in the opposite direction. The four milled, clearly exchanging news, then formed up two by two and headed toward Annan.
She and Breckenridge were traversing a wood, one with plenty of bushes between the trees; as long as they didn’t move, they wouldn’t be spotted. They held still and watched the four constables ride on. Heather looked ahead; judging by the roofs, Annan wasn’t a large town.
As the constables reached the outlying cottages, she glanced down at her slippers. Considered, then asked, “How far to Dumfries?”
Breckenridge glanced at her. After a moment replied, “As the crow flies, which is more or less the route we’re walking, about twelve miles.”
She grimaced, raised her head. “We’d better get on, then.” Suiting action to the words, she stepped out.
Breckenridge kept pace alongside her. She appreciated that he didn’t make a fuss, or ask what she meant. She’d spoken first, intentionally absolving him of making any decision that would, as he would see it, adversely affect her well-being.