Chapter Five #2
North. He hadn’t lost his bearings. Scotland lay ahead, but his thoughts kept turning to the woman stumbling along behind him. He’d meant to ignore her, but that was proving more difficult than he’d imagined.
He heard on occasion her feet in those absurd shoes slipping on wet ground, and sometimes he’d hear a rustle from behind, moving branches she failed to avoid entirely.
After another few hours, in which she’d thankfully spoken little, he was aware that her pace had slowed, and that she lagged further behind him.
Only because he’d had no sign that the English still gave chase or were closing in did he slow his own pace to accommodate her.
Though it had been hours ago, he’d yet to completely dismiss the image of her sitting in the mud with tears on her face.
He didn’t know what sense to make of that, why the image should have unsettled him.
Mayhap his months of captivity—being exposed day after day to suffering and death so close and personal—had made him more attuned to the suffering of others.
He had seen grief enough to last several lifetimes.
Still, a woman’s tears over should not have struck him so profoundly—and what did she cry over anyway?
Mud on her skirts? The ruin of her inappropriate footwear?
Some place called A-mer-i-ka to which she longed to return?
She was no concern of his beyond the simple fact that she had somehow become entangled in his escape. Once she reached safety—whatever that meant for her, he was sure he didn’t yet know—their paths would part, and he would think no more of her.
Of course, she would never survive alone, he scoffed silently.
The realization was born not of contempt but of simple observation.
She moved through the forest as though every root and stone conspired against her.
She possessed neither the footing nor the instincts of one accustomed to wild country.
She had courage enough—that much he would grant her—but courage without knowledge often buried a body as surely as cowardice.
His jaw clenched, as he imagined that if the English did find him again, she might well be the cause of it.
The farther north they traveled, the steeper the land became.
The broad stretches of forest slowly disappeared behind them, giving way first to scattered outcroppings of stone and then to hills obscured in dense pine and birch.
Bram altered their course several times without explanation to her, wanting to scatter his trail as best he could.
He ignored a narrow game trail that wound comfortably around the base of a hill, choosing to climb a bit instead.
Where the trees opened into level ground where walking would have been infinitely simpler, he skirted the edge instead, choosing rougher country where roots twisted through moss-covered stone and every step demanded careful footing and constant attention.
Though he’d slowed his pace some time ago, the lass did not follow easily, and Bram heard, or sometimes caught out of the corner of his eye, every one of her stumbles.
He hadn’t offered his hand or any assistance since he’d pulled her slump earlier, telling himself she would either keep up or she would not.
She was no child to be coaxed along, and he told himself repeatedly that he had neither the strength nor the time to concern himself with her struggles or her progress as they climbed more steeply into the hills.
Yet a quarter hour later, when he heard another muffled exclamation followed by the unmistakable sound of someone sliding several feet downhill, he turned at last.
She clung to a young pine, her face lifted to his in the afternoon light, and the sight struck him like a blow.
This was no village girl’s simple health.
Her skin glowed pale as clouded milk, flushed from exertion, and her lips were parted in breathless irritation.
He could not look long at her eyes—the green and brown so electric it seemed lit from within with challenge.
Even streaked with mud, hers was a face men would kill for.
Her hair, pale as winter grass, escaped its bindings in a wild array, darkened by rain to the color of wet sand.
She was entirely out of place: her strange clothing torn, her hands trembling on the sapling, yet she met his gaze with such defiance it made his jaw clench.
If we encounter men of low character, she will draw their eye like a beacon.
He did not choose the thought. It arrived on its own.
She was trouble wrapped in soft skin and defiance, and he resented her for it—for the distraction she represented, for the vulnerability she forced upon him simply by existing in this hard country as she was.
She lifted her bright eyes to him and made no effort to disguise her frustration.
“Seriously? You couldn’t have chosen an easier path?” she challenged.
The cords in her neck stood out while she tried to progress upward, pushing off from the tree, yanking on the spindly hazel twig.
Sighing for the inconvenience that she was, Bram retraced his steps toward her, taking hold of a low pine bough to secure his own footing while he reached down and offered his hand.
She glanced between her own hand and his, a foot away, as close as he could make it without sacrificing his solid position, before releasing the hazel branch and slapping her hand into his.
“Why didn’t we go around the mountain?” she grumbled as he drew her toward him.
He frowned at her characterization of the small beinn. “?Tis nae a mountain.”
The look she gave him then, just as she managed to draw up level with him on the incline, suggested she distrusted his ability to judge. Still, holding his hand, she looked from the steep hillside towering above them to the valley disappearing below.
“Looks like a mountain to me.”
Bram ignored the remark, released her hand, and resumed climbing.
“Why didn’t we stay down there?” she asked after a moment. “It’s flatter—nothing but grass—and considerably easier than this... hike.”
“Were ye hunting me, where would ye look?” He countered.
“I... don’t know. I’m not a hunter.”
“They’ll search the roads, the fields, every village, the streams.” His gaze shifted toward the broken ground stretching above them. “They will nae choose the hard road—and will hope I have nae.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding as if she understood. “Okay, that makes sense—it sucks, climbing this thing that isn’t a mountain, but I get it.”
“I’ve little interest in being found.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do.”
As the sun began its slow descent, the hillside gave way to rough escarpments.
Bram scanned the slabs of stone jutting from the earth, his eyes searching for cover.
He dismissed a fissure too exposed to the wind, a hollow too damp.
And then he saw a broad shelf of stone tucked beneath an overhang, deep enough to grant shelter from the rain and a clear view of the valley below. That would serve.
Bram stood at the precipice overlooking the valley and scanned the entire area, pleased to find it quiet and still, and for the first time since his escape, he allowed his shoulders to relax.
“We’ll remain here.”
The lass arrived only a few moments later and scanned the rocky spot. “Here?”
He frowned at her. “‘Tis dry.”
She opened her mouth, seemingly prepared to object, then closed it again. With what sounded like a forlorn sigh, she lifted the strap of her bag over her head and let it drop to the ground, and then stayed unmoving for a moment, staring out over the same vista he considered.
“I assume going down will be easier than climbing up,” she said a moment later as she sat, tucking herself deep against the rock wall beneath the overhanging ledge, pulling her bag into her lap.
He chose not to tell her that going down was not always the easier part. Climbing required more stamina, but descending often required more controlled strength, to keep from losing footing, and slipping and sliding all the way down.
He spent another minute surveying the land below and when he was satisfied, he finally allowed himself to sit.
He ducked his head and lowered himself against the stone wall next to her, with considerably less dignity than he’d intended, the effort of simply bending his knees seeming to awaken every ache in his body he’d ignored throughout the day.
The moment he stopped, exhaustion descended like a shroud. All day, the need to keep moving had held it at bay. Now, it settled deep in his bones, a leaden weight that made even the drawing of a breath feel like labor. He let his head fall back against the cool rock and closed his eyes.
“I have water and granola bars, but not much else,” she said at his side, not more than a foot away, all the space the tight spot allowed.
He was, frankly, too exhausted to even drink water and he didn’t know what a granola bar was—and she hadn’t offered it specifically to him—so that Bram kept his eyes closed, expecting sleep to come quickly.
But then she tapped his arm, forcing him to open his eyes and turn his face toward her.
“Do you want one?” she asked, holding a shiny, multi-colored item in her hand, the one she’d used to rouse him.
Bram frowned at the curious little parcel she held toward him.
It was wrapped in a smooth, brightly colored skin unlike leather or parchment, its surface gleaming oddly in the fading light.
Strange markings, surely meant to be words, covered one side, though the lettering bore little resemblance to any hand he knew.
He looked from the thing to her expectant face. “What is it?”
“A granola bar,” she said, her tone suggesting he should be familiar with it.