Chapter 3 #2
She stared at the long offending branch.
If she left it there, the next carriage to drive this way could possibly not see it, and a resulting accident or injury to the carriage—at the very least—was possible.
The best thing would be to move it. It did not appear so large as to be outside her capability of lifting, though she was sure to ruin her gloves.
Something she would rather not be forced to replace at this moment.
Stripping off her gloves, Emma left them in her basket and placed it out of the way on the grassy side of the road. She clasped the rough end of the branch and tried to push it back up the small hill beside the tree it fell from, but it would not budge.
Changing her strategy, Emma moved to the side of the branch.
She gripped some of the smaller branches in an attempt to roll it, but it only moved a quarter turn before other small branches got in the way.
She gave it another shove but lost her footing and slid in the slick mud, going down on her side.
Wet, sloppy water soaked into the fabric of her pelisse.
Drat. What was she to do now?
Emma slicked off as much of the mud as she could, surveying the situation. She could take it by the smallest end and rotate it so instead of lying across the road, it was parallel to it. That seemed the best course of action.
Well, the best would have been to walk home and send a few grooms to manage it, but they were so busy as it was. Surely she could do this on her own. And if a carriage arrived in that time and someone was injured, she would not have been able to forgive herself.
Taking the end of the tree limb in both hands, Emma tugged, shifting it a foot at a time as it swerved out of the main area of the road. She smiled as she noticed her progress. It was working.
The clopping of horses’ hooves sounded in the distance, igniting the steady pounding of Emma’s heart. Someone was coming her way, just in time for her to move out of the lane. She pulled hard on the branch, forcing it the rest of the way off the road as the horses came into view.
A fine carriage with a team of prime horses pulling it. Perhaps Lord Gifford was in residence. It would be poetic—the very man she had once rejected seeing her in a muddied dress on the side of the road, working like a common farmhand.
She moved to hurry away from the branch when it tugged on her skirt, and a tear rent the air. No.
A flap of fabric near the hem of her dress dragged in the mud. Emma clenched her jaw, stepping back from the road farther as the horses drew near. The window was open. In an effort to avoid her identity being revealed, she glanced at the limb near her feet, waiting for them to pass.
To her ever-growing exasperation, a man’s voice rang out and the horses trotted to a stop.
Emma’s eyes drifted closed. She’d only been forced to speak to Lord Gifford a handful of times since jilting him, and each of those circumstances had been of brief duration while surrounded by others. Now he would most assuredly feel justified in his choices all those years ago.
The carriage door swung open, and Emma stepped around the branch, walking away, feigning unawareness that they’d halted. Ridiculous, when she was about to pass behind it in order to retrieve her basket.
“Excuse me, miss,” a man called to her.
Emma stopped, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Even the space of nine years could not dull the effect that voice had on her racing heart. This was no pompous baron. Owen was here. He had arrived a week early.
“May I be of any assistance?” he asked, his voice drawing closer.
She searched the lane, the fields to one side and trees to the other. There was no way to escape him now, nowhere to hide. She was better off greeting him and having their first meeting done with, so they could pass indifferently moving forward.
Perhaps he would not even remember her, and all her concerns would have been for naught.
Inhaling shallowly, Emma turned to face him. Her breath caught.
Owen was little changed, but the slight alterations had done him a world of good.
He had been handsome in his youth, but now he was striking.
His skin was darkened to a deep gold, his hair the same thick brown it had always been.
His arresting gray eyes were pinned to her beneath brows that had knit together, his expression drawing into one of utter astonishment.
He’d lost the softness to his face, going from the boyishness of a young gentleman into the defined lines of a man.
His jaw snapped closed as his eyes drank her in.
Emma had never felt so naked in her life, standing on the cold road in a filthy, torn gown.
Wind chilled her cheek, proving that the mud was not confined to her pelisse alone.
“Emma,” he said quietly, her name dragging over his lips like a plea.
Perhaps they would not be passing as strangers, after all.
She gave a barely perceptible nod, fighting the volley of shivers coating her arms. He knew her.
That brought her the smallest sense of relief and a heavy measure of dismay, knowing how she currently presented.
Swallowing thickly, she held her back straight.
“Welcome back to Briarstead, Captain Buckley.”