Chapter Eleven
“I’m sorry about the horse. I stepped on a thorn and fell,” she explained, her voice small.
In truth, it sounded as if she were crying—or about to. The thought twisted his mouth with displeasure. Tears were a demand for sympathy, and sympathy was a weakness he could not afford. He fought the urge to resent her for it.
“Sorry will nae return the horse.”
“I understand why you’re upset about the horse running off—and about my part in that—I just don’t understand why you have to be so mean about it.”
“Two days ago, I possessed naught but the clothes upon my back and an English shackle upon my wrist. By some rare turn of fortune, I had relieved the scouts of horses, food, blankets, and water, only to have all of it squandered before the day was out.”
“Okay, well first, I wouldn’t call having to commit murder a rare turn of fortune—”
“Jesu, lass, leave it, will ye?”
Aye, he was angry about her carelessness—and his own for assuming she could manage the horse—but the memory tormenting him wasn’t of the animal disappearing from view.
Instead, it was the sight of her seated upon the hillside with her skirts bunched carelessly upward from all her awkward scooting.
He had seen more of her legs than any honorable man ought to have seen of a woman not his wife, pale and shapely against the rain-darkened earth, the skin fair and soft enough to beg a man’s touch.
He scowled at the memory, even as he understood it was his reaction to so tempting a view that caused fury to rise.
He’d been three months among English soldiers and prisoners, wasting away day by day, surrounded by filth, iron, rats, and endless pain.
Longer still, he knew, since he’d last enjoyed the company of a woman.
The war had consumed the better part of his adult life, leaving precious little room for thoughts of marriage or softer pursuits, and he seized readily upon the explanation that war and captivity had simply sharpened an appetite long neglected.
Mayhap any reasonably comely woman would have had the same effect after so long a deprivation.
He preferred that answer, because the alternative was far more troublesome.
He refused to be distracted by Anastasia.
She might indeed be touched in the mind.
She might be entirely truthful in believing herself to be a traveler from another age, but belief alone did not make such madness reality.
Whatever strange fate had brought her into his company, she remained an impossible mystery, and as such, she made a poor companion for him, already burdened with too much.
His concern belonged to Scotland, to the traitor, and to the men who had died because of Raghnall Hay.
He fixed his attention upon the valley stretching before them and lengthened his stride as best he could, wondering if he should be reciting his childhood Latin to keep his attention from fixing on the feel of those same soft legs in his hands and wrapped around his back and hips.
He glanced heavenward and scoffed silently, Any other ridiculous distractions You want to lay in my path?
“I just wanted you to know that I was sorry,” she continued, “and that I didn’t mean to let him go, but—”
“Aye, but a guid intention dinna keep the horse, nor will it recover the beast.” Had one of his own men surrendered the reins so easily, Bram would have judged him just as harshly. Leadership demanded it. Men died when small mistakes were excused simply because they had not been made maliciously.
“And still,” she persisted, stiffening along his back, “there’s no reason for you to be a jerk.”
He gritted his teeth and let the matter drop, hoping she did so as well.
When they finally reached the waiting gelding, Anastasia slid awkwardly from his back before he might have lowered her more carefully.
Bram turned toward her, his brow heavy.
“I think,” she said, not meeting his gaze, “maybe now is a good time to... part ways. I don’t want to cause you any more trouble. I get it; I might be more of a hindrance than a help.”
He rolled his eyes and fetched the gelding, unlooping the reins, before walking it over to where she stood with her one foot extended so the heel bore her weight.
“Get on the horse, Anastasia,” he said impatiently. “Aye, I’m angry, and so I’ll be for some time. But I’m nae without honor that I would abandon ye here, in the middle of nowhere.”
Tears glistened in her eyes, and she shook her head. “No. I want to go home anyway, and you’re going in the wrong direction—”
“Ye bluidy told me home lies seven hundred years away,” he shot back. “What matter then a few hundred miles when centuries stand between ye and it?”
“But maybe I need to be where I was—in York—to be, I don’t know, put back where I was taken from,” she suggested.
“Ye canna go to York, lass,” he informed her coldly. “Naught but trouble waiting on ye there, looking as ye do.”
She let out a half gasp. “Looking as—oh, you mean because of the way I’m dressed?”
“?Tis only half of it.”
“What’s wrong with—?”
“Ye canna go to York,” he ground out.
“But I can’t stay with you,” she returned, with just as much heat. “What if I make another mistake? One that costs you your freedom? What if—?”
“Cease,” he commanded. “There will be nae more mistakes. I’ll nae... entrust ye with anything of import.”
Her shoulders slumped. “See? You know I’m not... cut out for this—anything in this century.”
He drew a slow breath, forcing some measure of patience into his voice. “Lass, ye just said it. Ye are ill-equipped to make any journey alone. Ye ken you’re safer with me.”
She looked thoroughly wretched. “But maybe you’re not safer with me.”
In all probability, he was not, but he still wasn’t about to abandon her.
“Get on the horse, Anastasia,” he directed again, knowing full well that it would be easier if she possessed some fault beyond simple inexperience.
Had that been the case, he was certain he could easily dismiss her, that he could better recall that she was only a burden.
When she still didn’t move, he goaded her, “Will ye let a wee conflict cause ye to behave absurdly?”
An incredulous scoff sounded from her. “Oh, my God, will you stop with the manipulation crap already!”
He lifted a brow, silently asking if she would, indeed, abandon safety over a mere quarrel.
“Fine,” she huffed and hobbled closer to the horse, reaching up to grab the pommel and the back of the saddle, and saying as she hauled herself up—not without difficulty, “but that’s on you and not me if I cause some other disruption or—Christ, how am I supposed to get up here when it’s so tall?
” she asked, one foot in the stirrup and struggling to swing her leg over the gelding’s back.
“Ye could make some dedicated effort to cause nae disruption,” he suggested dryly.
“I’m making a dedicated effort right now,” she muttered with ill-concealed frustration, unable still to gain the saddle. “It’s just not going especially—”
Before she could finish, Bram stepped forward and settled one large hand firmly beneath her bottom, and with little more than a single effortless push, he lifted her high enough that she tumbled rather unceremoniously into the saddle.
She gasped more from surprise than indignation, hastily clutching the pommel with both hands before she might have slid straight off the opposite side. Once she found her balance, she twisted in the saddle to throw him a thoroughly affronted glare.
Whether her cheeks burned now from the awkward and unsuccessful attempt to mount the horse herself or the altogether familiar manner in which he had chosen to provide assistance, he couldn’t say.
Bram met the look without apology, but then came face to face yet again with her bare legs.
In settling herself astride the gelding, Anastasia’s skirt had ridden high once more, exposing again a generous length of her thighs where the damp fabric had gathered.
He looked away at once—much quicker than he had previously—annoyed that so much willpower was required to remove his gaze from her soft flesh.
“Are ye quite settled now?” he asked curtly, refusing to let his expression betray what truly occupied his thoughts at the moment.
“I am,” she said pertly, her back ramrod straight.
Bram climbed into the saddle behind her, gathered the reins, and nudged the gelding forward once more.
The rain showed no inclination of relenting.
It trickled from Bram’s hair into his eyes often enough to become tiresome and ran beneath the collar of his tunic in icy rivulets.
He was fairly certain he’d damaged the wound in his shoulder.
The pitiful scraps of bandages she’d used would never have held in this rain.
It would be bleeding anew, he had little doubt of it.
The horse plodded steadily onward through the rain, ears flicking now and then as droplets pattered against them.
Anastasia had grown uncharacteristically quiet before him.
Whether she sulked over their quarrel or merely endured the miserable weather, Bram neither knew nor particularly cared to ask. Her silence suited him well enough.
They continued northward for what he judged another hour and more, keeping as much to the shelter of the woodland as the country allowed.
The rain seemed sometimes heavier beneath the trees than outside of them, collecting upon the leaves until the slightest breeze loosed whole showers upon their heads.
At no point did they come upon the runaway mare, nor did they find any sign that they were on her trail in their steady northward trek.