Chapter 11
Margaretha
I tugged again at the neckline of my chemise, trying to pull it higher.
“Quit fussing,” Belinda said, clasping shut the line of hook fastenings at my bosom. “This shabby maid’s dress flatters you better than most of your gowns. I think it just the thing to elicit Friedrich’s admiration.”
Shifting my feet, I turned my attention to our saddled horses munching fresh grass.
I hadn’t yet confessed Friedrich’s admission of my beauty, nor his obvious attraction to me during our French lesson.
Though I should have informed Belinda of my progress, I couldn’t put down the nagging sense that confiding in her was somehow a betrayal to Friedrich.
Yet wasn’t this entire entrapment a betrayal to Friedrich?
I wouldn’t think on that. Samuel needed me, so it must be done.
“Are you nearly finished?” I asked. “If someone discovers us changing clothes in the forest—”
“Patience,” she sang. “And there.” She stood back, taking in my appearance with a smile before picking up our discarded gowns and tucking them into her saddlebag.
Our horses’ hooves padded over the soft forest floor as they carried us to the clearing where Friedrich stood, one leg crossed in front of the other and a shoulder propped against his favorite tree.
He almost smiled at our arrival, but his mouth turned down when he looked back and forth between the horses.
“You’re both riding aside.”
I was prepared for his reluctance. “We couldn’t very well ask the groomsman for a pillion saddle without drawing unwanted attention. You and I can share.” I gave him an encouraging nod.
“What do you think of the countess’s disguise?” Belinda called to him from her horse, forestalling his protest. “Is it convincing?”
Friedrich looked me over with a critical eye. “Your headdress is too fine. It will arouse suspicion.”
“Oh, I forgot.” I let myself down from Lange and started plucking out pins and unweaving braids, using my fingers to shake my hair loose before reaching into Belinda’s saddlebag to retrieve the last piece of my disguise. Sliding the thin, black headband over my hair, I turned to face Friedrich.
“Better?” I asked.
He studied my appearance again, but this time his eyes lingered on the length of my neck, his Adam’s apple dipping in his throat before he set his gaze on the horse.
“Very nice. We should be going.” He took Lange’s reins, leading him to a fallen tree.
My cheeks warmed with the excitement of Friedrich’s attraction as I followed behind, stepping onto the tree and lifting a foot into the shortened stirrup to settle myself in the saddle.
“You can sit behind me.” I patted the horse’s rump.
He raised his brows. “I have no experience riding bareback.”
“I’ll be guiding the horse. You just work to keep yourself balanced.”
He still eyed the horse skeptically but used the makeshift mounting block to hoist himself up behind me. Lange’s ears turned back, and he stamped a few steps rearward, to which Friedrich responded by clinging to the rail of my saddle.
“You’ll have a steadier seat if you hold onto me,” I suggested.
“I’ll be fine. Make sure you keep to the forest trails to avoid being seen.”
Maneuvering the horse through the shadows of the trees, I kept him to a slow walk, yet Friedrich still began to slip. And he slipped again only moments later. We could hardly make progress with how often I had to halt the horse and allow Friedrich to adjust his seating.
“What pretext did you offer the hunt master for your absence this eve?” I asked the fourth time we stopped.
“Bernhold hardly needed one. It’s Ulrich who’s the real taskmaster,” he answered. “What excuse did you give to . . . the person you give excuses to when your father is away?”
I leaned forward to smooth an errant hair from Lange’s mane into place. “That I’ve gone to bed early with a headache.”
“You sneaked out? What if the groomsman is questioned about a pair of missing horses?”
I clicked the horse forward. “Well, let’s just pray he isn’t.”
Friedrich let out a quiet chuckle.
“How go your French studies?” I asked.
“Well enough. You haven’t managed any shooting practice since our little . . . since our last lesson, have you?”
“No, I haven’t,” I answered. “And I’ve enjoyed the respite. From you more than anything.” I shot a mischievous smile across my shoulder in time to catch Friedrich raising his brows in surprise. But his forehead soon smoothed, and a hint of a smile touched his lips.
“Not much respite, I’d say, with barely three days since we studied French.”
“You count the days since you’ve seen me, do you?” My confidence rose with the success of each playful jest. “At least there I’m not expected to take your orders or put up with your brass.”
“Not that you’ve ever taken my orders anyway. If you did, you’d be a decent shot by now.” The smile in his voice was obvious.
I answered with a playful jab of my elbow into his gut.
He bent forward with a huff, chuckling until he lost his balance again and slipped.
He was half off the horse and struggling to pull himself back into place when his haphazard movements frightened Lange, and the horse reared upward.
I leaned forward to counter the steep incline, but behind me Friedrich was falling.
He groped wildly for some kind of stronghold, his hands catching at my waist to keep aright, but instead his weight pulled the both of us down.
Time slowed as we tumbled to the ground, he landing on his back, and I on top of him, knocking the air from his lungs with a wheeze.
“I cry you mercy, Friedrich. Are you hurt?” I pushed myself off him and onto my knees as he sat up, his arm cradling his side.
It took a bit for him to finally catch his breath. “I think you broke my rib,” he puffed.
“Truly?” I tried to pry his arm away to see for myself, but he swatted me back.
“Be still. I was not serious.”
I sighed my relief as he slowly got to his feet, stretching himself out with a few grimaces. Seeing him well, I tracked down the horse and gathered the reins to find us another makeshift mounting block.
Belinda called up the trail. “My lady, are you hurt?”
“I’m unharmed.” I lifted myself into the saddle and reached a hand down to help Friedrich, but he borrowed my stirrup, pulling himself back onto the horse with some effort. He was again taking hold of my saddle’s rail when I grasped his shirt, stopping him mid-motion.
“Friedrich, we haven’t the time, and you haven’t the ribs to spare for this foolishness. Hold onto me, or we’ll never make it to the mining village.”
His eyes were wide when I let him go, but he complied, scooting forward on the horse until his chest pressed against my back.
“I’m not sure where to put my hands,” he admitted.
“Set them round my middle.” I clicked the horse forward, pretending not to notice when Friedrich awkwardly settled his arms around my waist. He was warm—his hands around me, his chest pressed against me, his breath on my ear—but the warmth only made me shudder.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“I was recalling the horrors of the mines.” Not entirely true. “At what age did your mother first send you to work there?”
He cleared his throat. “My mother never sent me. I met the miners after I’d been traveling through the forest and caught a chill. When I knocked on their door, they took me in without question, nursing me back to health. Then I stayed on, not having anywhere else to go.”
“And when did you find your way to the bowyer?”
“Soon after I left the mines.”
His answers were always so brief. “Does it pain you to speak of your past? You seem reluctant to talk about it.”
“I’m reluctant to be a bore. I can’t imagine how this dull accounting of my life could possibly interest you.”
“And yet it does.”
His sigh stirred the hairs by my ear. “I traveled to Wildungen to look for work with the tradesmen. They each had apprentices already, but the bowyer was kind enough to take me on as an unofficial apprentice, second to his nephew. After the old man’s death, the new bowyer’s fists fell too heavy on me, so I took to the vagrant life. ”
“Only to be caught poaching and sent off to war.” I shifted in the saddle, cocking an eyebrow toward him.
“Well, it did take them a few years to catch me.” His impish smile brought back the fluttering in my stomach. “And what is your story? Where did you go after we met at the mines?”
Clearing my thoughts of Friedrich’s grin, I turned forward.
“To Waldeck for a time, to live with my father’s cousins, and then I was sent to the Netherlands as a ward of my mother’s brother.
” I nibbled my lip as I pondered. “It’s strange being back here.
At first, I dreaded it, returning to the place of the plague.
Sleeping in the same bed where I slept while my mother and baby sister died—and I fairly with them.
I’ve always seen the place as a scene of death and sadness and regret, but being here now, it’s somehow different.
There’s still sadness, but now it’s touched with something . . . sweet.” I murmured the last word.
The pulse of Friedrich’s heartbeat drummed on my back, and I found myself leaning into it. There was a tautness, a buzzing in the air around us that words would only taint, and I held very still, afraid that if I moved, I’d destroy it.
Friedrich seemed to sense it too. He didn’t trouble himself to speak for some time, but when he finally did interrupt the silence, his voice was gruff. “We’re nearing the mining village.”