“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.