Take her? What the blazes was she talking about?
Evie tried to ask just that, even as she was hauled out of the damaged carriage and set rather unceremoniously on her feet, but McAlistair spoke before she could so much as take a breath.
“Can you ride?”
“Ride?” She shook her head to clear it. “Yes, yes, of course.”
“Astride,” he clarified.
“Oh.” She glanced nervously at Mrs. Summers. Riding astride was not a gentlewoman’s talent. “I can, actually. I taught my—”
“Get on the horse.”
“But—” He cut off any further discussion by simply grasping her around the waist, lifting her off her feet, and dropping her into the gray mare’s saddle.
“Good Lord, what do you think you’re doing?”
McAlistair didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to take a bundle from Christian and tied it behind the saddle of the other horse. Baffled, Evie looked to Mrs. Summers, but found her placing the remains of their lunch in the gray mare’s saddlebags. Everyone seemed to be doing something, and doing that something with remarkable haste. Christian and Mr. Hunter were struggling to unhitch the horses. McAlistair and Mrs. Summers continued to pack supplies on the two free mounts.
Not one of them appeared the least bit concerned that she was currently sitting astride a horse with her skirts hiked almost to her knees. Considering, she looked to Mr. Hunter. No, not so much as a glance in her direction. That couldn’t possibly bode well for the would-be matchmakers.
Shifting and squirming, she pulled the material down as best she could before returning her attention to the group. She watched, bemused, as they hustled about, speaking among themselves in clipped voices and short sentences.
“Team’s stuck tight.”
“Head north first. Avoid the east road.”
“Send word to William.”
They were so efficient, Evie mused, so coordinated, so…She narrowed her eyes.
Good Lord, had they rehearsed?
“Rehearsed what, dear?”
She blinked at Mrs. Summers. Had she said that aloud? “I…nothing. I’m a bit muddled, is all.”
Mrs. Summers trained worried eyes on her brow. “You’re quite sure you didn’t hit your head?”
“Yes. Mrs. Summers, what is all this?”
“The men suspect an ambush may be forthcoming. It is not safe for you to be stranded here in the open.” She reached through the crumpled carriage door, dug about a bit, and returned with a pistol, which she calmly handed to Evie. “Keep it close, dear.”
Oh, for pity’s sake.
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from giggling, and, with a studiously serious expression, stowed the pistol away.
“I’ll be careful.” She very much doubted the thing was even loaded. “Thank you.”
Mr. Hunter stopped in his task to frown at them. “I’m not certain arming Miss Cole is a wise choice.”
“Miss Cole is a fine shot,” Mrs. Summers informed him.
“Shooting a target is not—”
“Leave it.” McAlistair swung up on the dark chestnut gelding. “We’ll meet up with you at the cottage. Day after next.”
“Meet them…in two days?” Evie felt the first wave of true unease. “You don’t mean—”
He did, apparently. He reached over and swatted the mare’s rump.
And they were off
Six
It was all she could do to keep up with the man.
Evie considered herself a fine horsewoman, and there were few activities she enjoyed more than a breakneck race across an open field, but the rugged path chosen by McAlistair was nothing like the wide pastures in which she was accustomed to riding.
They wove through trees, up and down steep hillsides, following no discernible trail at all. The man was pushing them as if he thought the devil himself were behind them.
It was a dangerous way to ride and, to Evie, that in itself was sufficient evidence that McAlistair had no knowledge of the ruse. He wouldn’t be taking such chances unless he believed them absolutely necessary.
The absurdity of it was that she knew it was completely unnecessary. Enough was enough, she decided. She’d been insulted in a letter, removed from her home, bruised in a carriage accident, and was now riding hell for leather over unfamiliar terrain, all because a few misguided meddlers thought she’d be better off with a husband. Their little scheme had ceased to amuse her.
She’d been willing to play along to a point, but that point did not extend to breaking her neck. Or McAlistair’s.
It was time to tell him the truth.
She called out to him: “Mr. McAlistair! Mr. McAlistair!”
Either he didn’t hear her, or he chose to ignore her. She finally gave up and simply pulled her horse to a stop. He’d figure out she wasn’t following him, eventually.
She didn’t have to wait long. McAlistair spun his mount around and brought it to a halt facing hers.
“Are you tired?”
She blew an errant lock out of her eyes—one of many at this point, she was sure.
“No, I’m not tired.” They’d only been riding for a quarter hour, for heaven’s sake. “I wished to s-speak to you. I…” Oh, dear, this was going to be very awkward. “The thing is, Mr. McAlistair…” She shifted in her saddle. “The thing is, this is entirely unnecessary. All this f-fuss and bother, it’s just…unnecessary,” she finished lamely.
He didn’t speak, or move, or give any indication that he’d heard her. If he hadn’t been staring directly at her, she’d have thought he wasn’t listening at all.
“It’s a ruse,” she continued with a bit more force. “A very silly ruse that’s gotten entirely out of hand.” She twisted her lips in disapproval. “A carriage accident, honestly. Someone could have been injured.”
He remained still, but unless she was mistaken, his eyes narrowed a bit. “Explain.”
“Right. Well. It’s nothing more than an absurd attempt at matchmaking, you see. The note, this trip, all of it was set up with the hope I would fall madly in love with my rescuer.”
“Who?”
She tried not to smile at the sign of jealousy. How lovely.
“I’m not entirely certain, but I suspect it’s Mr. Hunter. Odd choice for a white knight though, isn’t he? Gray perhaps—”
“No. Who’s responsible?”
“Who’s…? Oh.” Oh. “Mr. Fletcher, with Lady Thurston and Mrs. Summers. It has something to do with a deathbed promise Mr. Fletcher made to the late Duke of Rockeforte.”
He seemed to consider that for a moment. “No.”
“No?” She blinked at him. “What do you mean, no?”
“You’re mistaken.”
“I’m not. I overheard their conversation on the matter…most of it,” she amended. “Enough of it,” she added when he sent her a dubious look. “Enough to know the threatening letter was sent by Mr. Fletcher.”
“No.”
Irritation bit at her. “Yes. No. Who. Tell me, Mr. McAlistair, do you ever speak in whole, multiple-word sentences?”
“Occasionally.” He took hold of her horse’s bridle and tugged gently to start them moving again. “Ride.”
She leaned forward and slapped his hand away. “No.”
For the first time since meeting him, Evie had the occasion to see McAlistair look surprised. It was only a slight widening of his eyes, but she noticed it, just as she noticed when his brow furrowed by the smallest fraction of an inch.
“You’re not stammering.”
How thoughtful of him to point it out. “I stammer when I’m nervous, and I’m not nervous at the moment. I’m annoyed. I don’t care to be treated like some helpless idiot you can order and drag about.”
“You’re not an idiot.”
“Then why—”
“But you are mistaken.”
If she thought he’d give her the time, she would have squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten, slowly. She squeezed t
he reins instead, hard. “How can you be so…” Damnably bloody-minded. “…So certain this isn’t all a preposterous attempt to see me maneuvered into matrimony with the right gentleman?”
“Because,” he said with a wry hook of his lips, “she sent you with me.”
McAlistair started them forward again, and this time Evie let him.
She considered resisting further, but since he didn’t seem inclined to be reasonable, and because the pace he set was hard, but no longer dangerous, she decided against it.
Besides, he had a point.
She sent you with me.
Why the devil had Mrs. Summers sent her off with McAlistair?
Why had Mrs. Summers sent her off at all? There were a thousand different ways that could have been contrived to put her together with her intended rescuer. Most of them, she was sure, did not require a carriage accident, a dangerous ride through the woods, and two days alone with a man who was not an immediate member of her family. If anyone were to discover she’d gone off alone with McAlistair, she’d be ruined.
If it weren’t for the fact that a scandal for her meant a scandal for her entire family, Evie rather thought she wouldn’t mind being a ruined woman. Surely there was great freedom in no longer being subjected to the stringent rules of the ton. But there was her family to consider, and if anyone caught wind of her ride today…
She threw a glance over her shoulder and wondered if she could find her way back to the carriage without McAlistair’s guidance. Likely not, she decided, which left her no choice but to continue on and hope that when they finally stopped, she could convince him of the ruse, persuade him to return to the others, and pray no one outside their little group would ever be the wiser.
And then what? Did she want to go back to the others and tell them she knew the truth? The scheme would be called off—which seemed a fine idea at the moment—but Mr. Fletcher would only try again at a later date, and with more care taken to assure she didn’t discover the ploy in advance. That prospect seemed considerably less fine.
And the possibility of scandal was fairly low, she admitted. The secretiveness of the whole ridiculous endeavor made certain of that.
Though she didn’t much care for the idea, it seemed following McAlistair was her best option at present.
So follow him she did, up and down more hills, fording streams, keeping primarily to the woods and entirely off the roads. They slowed to a walk from time to time, giving the horses a chance to rest, but for the most part they pushed their mounts, and themselves, as hard and as fast as the terrain would safely allow.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sun beat relentlessly on Evie’s head and shoulders. Under other circumstances, she would have relished the feel of it. Sunny days were not so common that she was in the habit of taking them for granted. Just now, however, she didn’t feel grateful so much as hot and increasingly sticky. The watered beer she drank offered little relief, and it didn’t help matters that she’d neglected to take her bonnet from the carriage.
To top off what she was beginning to think of as the most disagreeable excursion of her life, her leg was beginning to give her pain. In the past, Evie had found that her weak leg always began to stiffen and ache after she’d been in a saddle for more than an hour. She could go a bit longer if she made regular stops to walk about and stretch, but even with that, two hours was really her limit.
At a guess, she and McAlistair had been riding nonstop for well over four hours. The muscles in her leg had begun to protest mildly after the first hour; after the third they’d been screaming. Now, however, they’d become disconcertingly silent. She made an attempt to flex her toes and found she couldn’t feel them. She was dead numb from the top of her right hip all the way down.
Dismounting, she realized grimly, was going to be a problem. Then again, that particular worry operated under the assumption that dismounting would, at some point, be on the itinerary. Given the way McAlistair was driving them, she wondered if he meant to ride straight through to Norfolk.
More than once she opened her mouth to demand a break, and more than once pride held her back. She hated being seen as weak or fragile. She detested the looks of pity she received from others when her leg grew tired and her limp became apparent. And she despised the whispered comments she sometimes caught as she passed through crowded ballrooms: “Poor dear. Quite badly damaged in the accident, you know.”
Damaged. She loathed that word above all others. She most certainly was not damaged, and if need be, she could stay on a horse as long as any man.
Most men, she qualified after a time.
This man, she qualified again after another hour. She could, and would, stay on a horse as long as McAlistair. Even if it meant she couldn’t move afterward, which was, unfortunately, becoming a more likely outcome with every passing minute.
On the next occasion of McAlistair slowing the horses to a walk, Evie took the chance of awkwardly pulling her foot from the stirrup in the vain hope that even a slight change of position would help. It was a struggle to balance and to fit her foot back into the stirrup when they began a faster pace, but there was nothing else for it. She had to do something.
Unfortunately, the somethings she tried appeared to be of little use, and by the time McAlistair brought the horses to a stop in a small clearing, she was nearly at her wit’s end. She was exhausted, annoyed, sore in all the places she could still feel, and rather disappointed with herself. It shouldn’t be so damnably hard to sit in a saddle for a mere half-day’s ride.
She watched as McAlistair scanned their surroundings.
“Are we done running away, then?” she groused, fully expecting her angry words of exhaustion to be met with angry words of pride. Gentlemen never ran away.
His pride, however, seemed sturdy enough to weather her peevishness. He swung off his horse in a fluid movement she envied. “For now. The horses need to rest.”
They weren’t the only ones, she thought. What she wouldn’t give for a hot bath, a change of clothes, a soft bed, and a few minutes of privacy just then could be counted on one hand.
McAlistair glanced up at her briefly before setting to work untying one of the bundles from his saddle. “Get down. Stretch your legs.”
Oh, how she’d love to. “No, thank you.”
He stopped and looked at her. “Get down.”
She straightened in the saddle, trying for a regal appearance, and suspected she failed utterly. “I’m perfectly comfortable, thank—Don’t!” She threw a hand up as he came toward her.
A small line formed between his brows. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing. It’s…I’m a bit stiff, that’s all.”
“Then let me help you down.”
She shook her head, a small clutch of panic and embarrassment blooming in her chest. If he tried setting her on her feet now, she’d only topple onto her face. “I…I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Why?”
She began rubbing her hip discreetly in the hopes of bringing it back to life. “Because I’m not fond of being tossed on and off my horse like a sack of flour. An odd sentiment, I’m sure, but—”
“It’s your leg.”
Her hand stilled. Blast, the man had eyes like a hawk. “As I said, I’m a bit stiff. I’ll be perfectly fine in a—”
She cut off when he simply reached up and wrapped his large hands about her waist. There was nothing for her to do but grasp his shoulders when he swung her off the horse.
He set her on her feet, but much to either her relief or horror—she’d decide that later—he didn’t let her topple. He slid a strong arm around her back, the other around her shoulder, and took the majority of her weight.
“Does it hurt?” he asked softly over her head.
She couldn’t bring herself to look up. They were pressed together as if in an embrace. The soft wool of his coat tickled her nose and carried the alluring scent of soap and leather and man. She could feel the muscles of his legs against he
rs—one of hers, anyway—and the hard expanse of his chest pressed against her breasts, which seemed to have inherited all the feeling lost from her leg. They felt heavy all of a sudden and acutely sensitive. She heard him murmur something over her head, but it was impossible to decipher the words over the roar of blood in her ears.
She wanted him to let go and step away. She was terrified he would.
A strong hand stroked down her back and she struggled not to shiver.
“Evie, does it hurt?”
Her eyes fixed on a small white button of his shirt and stayed there. “No…not yet. It’s numb.”
She thought perhaps he nodded. She felt the movement in his broad shoulders, but she hadn’t long to consider it before he shifted, slipped an arm around the backs of her knees, and lifted her.
She gasped and wrapped her arms around his neck without thinking. It was the oddest sensation, being carried as if she weighed nothing. Once again she found herself torn between delight and discomfort. But before she had time to think on that or dwell upon how much she wanted to lay her head against his shoulder and close her eyes, he was kneeling down to gently place her on a soft patch of grass.
“You should have said something earlier.”
“I did,” she responded, reluctantly letting her arms slide from his neck. “I said this was all a ruse and we should go back.” Strictly speaking, she hadn’t said that last bit, but it certainly could have been inferred.
Without responding, he reached to pull her skirts up to her knees. Stunned, she instinctively swatted his hand away and yanked them back down.
He raised his dark head to catch her eye and ran his tongue across his teeth. “I’ve been looking at your knees all day.”
“I know.” Or, at least, she’d known he could have, and if she weren’t feeling so wretched at the moment, she probably would have been gratified to learn he had. “I’m sorry. It’s a spontaneous response to having a man push my skirts up.” Oh damn, that sounded dreadful. “That is…I’ve never been in the position before, but—”
“It’s all right.”
He gathered up the material again, and this time lifted it gently and slowly. Still, she had to fist her hands to keep from shoving it back down again. How ridiculous. She had been riding about all day with her dress caught up above her knees. Why should it bother her now?
Mcalistairs Fortune Page 5