A moment passed before he shook his head and followed her. He caught up with her at the stream and watched from a distance, silent, as she knelt by the water and took the large hunting knife, handle wrapped in strips of rough leather, and slid it along the end of the squirrel. Skin removed, she worked the long blade efficiently, and within minutes, the squirrel was gutted and she was separating the meat.
He stepped closer to her. “That is a rather large knife.”
“It is. My grandfather’s. He hates it when I take it.” She smiled up at him with a quick glance. “What is it that brings you this way? You are the first soul I have come across in days—aside from that thief. Why are you in the area?”
“I breed horses. I was in the vicinity to assess a stallion for siring—impeccable lines, I was assured.”
“Not as impeccable as touted?” she asked, not looking up from the squirrel.
“No, it was not. It is why I like to make my own determinations on the worth of a horse, rather than send a proxy.”
She nodded and leaned forward, flicking innards into the running water, and then dunked the bloody knife into the stream. Blade clean, she set the knife on a rock and scrubbed both hands in the water, shaking her head. “Ouch. That is wicked cold.”
She looked up at him as she scrubbed her fingers. “I know you must be new to these parts, but do you know what mountain I am on? I am not quite sure how, but I seem to be off Shiote Mountain and am having a devil of a time orientating myself.”
“Which mountain?” Rowen’s eyes narrowed at her. Again, where the hell did she think she was? It was quickly becoming clear this woman was possibly a bit addled.
“Shiote. I have been following the stream. I assume I will hit the valley where I can see Shiote Mountain, but I cannot figure out how I strayed off the mountain in the first place. Shiote is my home—with my mother and grandfather.”
Her fingers clean of the blood, Rowen noted that several of her fingertips were stained dark, almost black. Whatever that was, it didn’t wash off. She quickly rinsed the meat and stood, walking past Rowen back into the woods.
Rowen was close on her heels this time.
“So you are lost?”
“Yes. I do not recall how I moved off the mountain. I was painting, and grandfather was with me. But I sometimes lose time when I am deep into a scene, and he tends to wander away from me to hunt.” She stopped to pick up a long stick, swiping the end twice with the knife to make a point, and then started to thread the meat onto the stick as she walked. “And then the next thing I knew, I was alone in these woods.”
“How long have you been following the stream?”
“A few days. With no luck of direction except for the stream. That is what my grandfather taught me to do. Follow a stream downward. You will always end up in a valley or a wide clearing to orientate yourself, or come across a travelled path. But I do not think that trail over there counts—aside from the thief—it looks more like a little used cut-through than anything else.”
“It is.”
She looked over her shoulder to him, relieved, just as they arrived at the fire. “Good—so you know where we are?”
She quickly sat on a thick root, adjusting her satchel on her lower back, and sank the tip of the knife into the dirt, the leather handle sticking upright. Tossing a few scraps of bark by her feet onto the fire, she started to roast the meat, slowly spinning it above the flames.
Rowen stood a distance from her, trying to decide what to do.
On the one hand, he didn’t want to leave her vulnerable to the thief coming back. On the other, she was clearly confused about not only her current location, but what land mass her feet were even on—and that meant she was thick in a heaping mound of trouble that she didn’t even realize she was in. Trouble he had no desire to embroil himself into.
He pondered her, watching her roast the meat, head cocked to the side as she hummed. She didn’t have the slightest inclination she was an ocean away from her mountain. His eyes drifted downward to the hunting knife stuck into the ground.
He stepped to a spot across the fire from her. “Why did you not take the knife to that man?”
The humming stopped. “The knife? Oh, this?” She glanced down at the blade by her leg, then looked up. “I do not know how to use a knife on a man.”
“You knew exactly how to use it on a squirrel.”
“Truly, sir, a squirrel and a man are hardly the same thing.”
“A given. But they both cut the same.”
Her face contorted into squeamishness. “Yes, well, my grandfather has never taught me how to use a knife on a man—only on game. I would not know what to do. Perhaps it is a skill I should ask to acquire.”
Rowen knelt, balancing on the heels of his black boots as he clasped his fingers in front of him. “It does seem a good skill to have. One never knows what is around the bend. Especially when one is a young female alone in the woods.”
“Honestly, sir. This is the first time I have ever encountered a thief in these mountains.”
“Your accent, Wynne. I am trying to place it.”
She pulled the meat from the fire, jabbing a thumb on the thick of it. “Spongy.” She shook her head, sticking the meat above the flames once more, and looked to him. “I am surprised an Englishman could discern regions. I do not have the mountain dialect, do I?”
Rowen shrugged, clueless. “No?”
“I lived in New York until I was thirteen. When my father died, my mother and I came to live on grandfather’s mountain. Even after all these years, I know I still do not have the proper twang.”
Hell.
There it was. She thought she was on a mountain in America. One mystery solved.
Rowen hid a sigh.
Any way he looked at it, he couldn’t leave her. A woman with no notion of where she was, where she was headed to—and as far as he could discern, entirely too innocent.
It was that last part that particularly unnerved him. Depending on whom fate put in her path next, life could go very horribly for her.
Young. Attractive. Innocent. He shuddered. Very horribly.
The last thing he wanted was to be saddled with an addled woman—he had enough problems to deal with here at Notlund.
Wynne pulled the meat to check it again, impatient, and groaned as she stuck it back into the fire, tapping her booted feet under her skirts. He imagined her heavy cloak did her well in this cold but could see the skirt of the dress she was wearing was rather thin.
He would have to take her with him—the very last thing he wanted at the moment. But first, he would have to delicately convince her to come with him.
“You are a painter?”
Her bright smile appeared. “Yes. I was taught in New York from an early age, and since we moved to the mountain, my grandfather has been teaching me. He is not trained like the masters in the city—his strokes, his sense of scene and how he approaches it is very different—but his pieces are breathtaking. He has taught me things I never would have imagined. And he has shown me how to make my own paints from what I can gather from the land.” She chuckled. “Which my instructors in New York would be appalled at. Such a thing is so far beneath them. But I actually enjoy it.”
“You create your own paints?” Rowen asked.
“Yes. Grandfather is nothing if not self-reliant and demands the same from me. He is happy to take care of mother, though. We are very alike, he and I, while I am told my mother is very much as my grandmother was.”
“Your grandmother has passed?”
“Yes. I never knew her.” Wynne pulled the skewered meat from the fire, tested it, then smiled and started peeling back strips of meat and blowing on them. Shaking her fingers from the heat, she stood and held the stick above the fire to him. “If you do not grab pieces now, I will gobble it all before you blink.”
Rowen held his hand up. “Please, eat. I am not hungry, and you look ravenous.”
The side of her mouth pulled back
, perplexed. “I am, but my mother would be horrified if I did not share. Especially after your kind help.”
“I truthfully want to watch you eat it. I am not hungry.”
Eyes narrowed at him, she stepped back, sitting on the tall root and tearing into the meat. Several pieces swallowed, her suspicious look only intensified. “Why did you come with me if you were not hungry?”
She tore off another piece and chewed slowly, staring at him.
At least she had the good sense to question his motives. That was the first sign of healthy skepticism he had seen from her.
“I do not desire anything from you, Wynne. I know where I am and would be pleased to help you on your way,” Rowen said. “I would have offered earlier, but it was clear you were famished and needed to eat. And I did not wish to leave you alone with that thief still in the vicinity.”
Her left eyebrow rose, touching the blond hair that swept across her brow into the long side braid. “Your intentions are honorable?”
Rowen nodded. “They are. If you will place your trust in me, I would like you to accompany me for a stretch down the trail we were on.”
She fingered a strip of meat hanging from a bone. “Why?”
“I think it will help you get to where you need to go.”
“You know where Shiote Mountain is?”
“No. But I can at least get you to a place where you can figure out where you need to go.”
She eyed him for a long moment, fingers still rolling the piece of meat back and forth. “My grandfather would not approve.”
“Your grandfather is not here.”
“But he always told me, no matter what, follow the water. It would get me home.”
“That may be, but I think in this instance, he would approve.” Rowen stood, hands behind his back in the least threatening manner he could manifest. “If where I bring you does not solve your problem, I will be happy to return you to this stream, and you may go along your way. It is still early afternoon, and at the worst, it will only take away part of your day.”
She popped the piece of meat into her mouth, staring at the fire. She looked up at him, her hazel eyes big. “You are an honest man? Honorable?”
“If I were going to steal your brushes or assault you, would I not have already done so?”
“You might just be an odd duck that likes to watch women eat.”
Rowen laughed at her solemn look. “That is true. But I think the odds are slim on that account, and you can safely take the chance that I am not one of those.”
She stood, fingernails scraping the last remnants of the meat off the bones. “I will go with you, but please, if you are an odd duck, I would prefer you continue to hide it from me.”
If he was the odd duck?
Rowen shook his head. “I will do my best.”
{ Chapter 2 • Worth of a Duke }
“You are worried about the oncoming darkness?”
Wynne nodded, peeking out at Rowen from under her wide, black hood. She had it pulled down to her brow and realized he probably couldn’t see her nod. The sleet had eased, but the overcast skies had only darkened as they walked. “I am. You said it would only take an hour or so to get to where you wanted to take me.”
“Yes. I did. But I did not anticipate that you would refuse to ride on my horse.”
Her face went down, eyes on the slushy dirt of the trail for a few steps before she looked at him again. “Sir—Rowe—I realize you have had to walk as well, and I apologize, but as I said at the beginning, I cannot ride on a horse with you. It is much too forward and I do not know you.”
“The last four hours have done nothing towards knowing me?”
She smiled and could see he was hiding a chuckle. “You do realize you have only asked me questions and have artfully dodged everything I have asked of you?”
“I have?”
The smile didn't leave her face. “Do not pretend ignorance. You know exactly what you have been doing.”
Rowen unwrapped the reins of his horse from his knuckles and re-twisted them around his palm before answering. “I am accustomed to traveling in solitude. And not at all accustomed to talking with another for any length of time.”
“Is your solitude a choice or happenstance?”
He shrugged, once more adjusting the reins of his trailing horse in his hand.
She pushed the hood from her forehead, letting it fall to her back, and she scratched the matted hair at her brow. Rowen spoke with a calmness, a smoothness that eased into her ears. That is, when he spoke.
She stole another glance at his profile, wondering if he realized the obnoxious way in which she continued to look at him. The man was handsome. She hadn’t realized it at first—she had been so overwhelmed by the thief.
But once she really looked at Rowen, studied him over the fire, she hadn’t quite been able to stop. Every time she had dared to flick her eyes onto his face, she was sure she would have gotten used to his looks—that they wouldn’t startle her.
Every time, she was wrong.
He was entirely too interesting to look at—his dark hair, strong chin with a light smattering of dark scruff, and eyes that she was still trying to figure out. So deep in color, only the faintest hint of brown kept them from true blackness. He dressed simply—dark buckskin breeches, tall black riding boots, a simple dark overcoat.
But it was something else about him—how the air around him vibrated—that unnerved her more and more the longer they walked. Much like her grandfather, this man was solid, of the earth—he had a raw force that she had to cut through, just to get her eyes on his face.
Wynne gave herself a slight shake and diverted her attention to the trees that were beginning to lessen. The forest was finally thinning out. Hopefully they were close to wherever Rowen was leading her.
She glanced at him. “Well, even if you have shared very little, you have been remarkable in listening to me talk for the last hour about the best ways to sift and grind ochre from my mountain and to then procure it into paint.”
He nodded. “I do now know more about ochre pigments than any man ought to have the right to know.”
“You are teasing me?”
“Possibly.”
She laughed. “If nothing else, I do think you are patient man, if not talkative. And possibly quite bored—but you have maintained the utmost in polite interest.”
The trail began to widen noticeably, and they walked a stretch up a long hill in silence.
“Do you think it is much further?” Wynne asked, halfway up the hill.
Rowen pointed ahead. “Just up this hill the forest breaks, and that is where I think you will find an answer about your locale.”
Wynne nodded, trying to hold the knot in her stomach down. She hadn’t confessed to Rowen the fact that, over the past two days, she had grown increasingly worried that she had strayed so far from home. Her mother would be beyond worry at this point. The opposite, she imagined her grandfather would give her just a slight nod once she walked back into their log house. Wynne had never seen him worried about anything.
Reaching the crest of the hill, her feet suddenly crunched onto loose grey gravel as the woods around them abruptly ended. In front of her, a wide, flat expanse of winter-dormant grass rolled upward.
And then she saw it. Her eyes went impossibly wide in shock, but it didn’t halt her feet. Without thought, her feet remained in motion, walking forward.
Ten steps and she stopped, jaw dropped.
“Where are—what is that?” she asked.
A step behind, Rowen moved beside her, looking at her, but Wynne could not shift her eyes to him.
“It is a castle.” His voice was far too casual for what was in front of them.
“Yes, but where…how…who built that here? I have never seen anything like it, never heard that this existed here.” Wynne gawked at the ancient greying castle. Atop an enormous, open hill, large stones were stacked, the high parapet walls creating a square. A keep rose
from inside the walls, and tall, rounded towers—weathered harshly by the years—capped each of the four corners.
Rowen cleared his throat. “It all depends on where you think here is.”
Her eyes flashed to him, shrewd. “What? What do you mean, ‘where I think here is’?”
“Do you not find it odd that you were near your mountain, and then suddenly, we come upon this castle that you have never seen, never heard of before?”
“Of course I do.” Her arms crossed over her chest in a weak attempt to protect herself from the riddle he spoke.
“Look around, Wynne.” His arm swept wide across the landscape. “Look around.”
Wynne quickly scanned the long flat grounds rolling downward from the enormous grey structure. Her head jerked back to him.
“Turn your body and look around.”
“What?” Her eyes cut into him.
“Spin. Turn your body around and look. Truly look around you.”
Hesitant to look from his face, Wynne slowly started to turn on the balls of her feet. Her eyes shifted to the landscape around her. It passed by in a blur—the trail, the brown of the trees, the castle.
“Look upward, Wynne, upward.”
Wynne spun again, eyes above the treetops into the grey sky. Nothing but high clouds. High clouds as far as the eye could see in every direction.
“No. No. No.” She spun around again.
“There are no mountains here, Wynne.”
“No—a trick—this is a trick—a trick—it has to be.”
“Wynne—” Rowen took a step toward her, but she sprang away before he could get another word out.
Tearing up the long hill to the castle, she ran faster than she ever had in her life. Minutes of running, her thighs burning, her feet lead weights, she didn’t stop. Didn’t stop until she reached the base of the castle.
Sliding to a halt, the toes of her boots stopped in the mound of dirt hugging the base of the castle. Panting hard, she stared at the grey stone as her hot breath sent droplets to cling in the pockmarked crevices.
Lord of Fates: A Complete Historical Regency Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Page 2