Chapter 26
“A ride, Kassandra? It looks as if it might storm this morning,” Isabel murmured doubtfully, her hand falling from the lace curtain at one of the tall windows flanking the front entranceway.
“I can’t imagine you would even consider climbing atop a horse.
I’m so stiff and sore, I can barely walk without cringing.
” Truly, Isabel thought, it was taking her much longer to mend from that carriage accident last week than she had imagined.
Kassandra pulled on her riding gloves, then glanced up at Isabel.
“I’m feeling much better today, Isabel, really,” she insisted.
“And it’s the first morning it hasn’t been raining for weeks now.
I’ll only be gone for a short while.” She smiled away the footman and opened the door for herself.
“Now go and sit down. The physician said you must rest as much as possible.”
Isabel sighed. “Very well, but if it begins to storm, you will come back at once?”
Kassandra nodded, a reassuring smile upon her lips. “Rest, Isabel,” she admonished gently. “Father will be most displeased to find you still limping about—”
“All right, I’m convinced,” Isabel interjected with a laugh. As she watched Kassandra walk down the front steps, a sudden thought struck her. “I know it’s only the first day of April, so it might still be too early, but if you see any wildflowers, you must bring me some,” she called out.
Kassandra waved and set out along the muddy path leading to the stable, swinging her arms. It felt so good to be outdoors!
She took in great breaths of the moist air, tinged with the fresh scent of green grass and damp, musty earth. The water-soaked ground squished under her boots, and birds trilled gaily in the budding trees, sounds that delighted her. They meant the coming of spring, her favorite time of year.
Yet this year was different, she reminded herself. Spring also meant her father’s imminent arrival, hastening the wretched marriage that loomed before her like an inescapable trap.
No! She would not think about it, at least not this morning. She walked determinedly toward the stable, smiling once again as Hans, the stableboy who saw to her mare, rushed out to greet her. He was nearly a full head taller, and she marveled anew at how much he had grown over the long winter.
“Good morning to ye, milady,” he exclaimed, doffing his cap. He ran his hand self-consciously through his unruly light brown hair, a blush burning his freckled cheeks. “Shall I saddle yer fine mare?”
“Yes, Hans, if it will be no trouble for you,” she murmured, noting with faint amusement how he stared at her with guileless admiration.
“No trouble at all, milady,” he replied eagerly, dashing into the stable. “I’ll bring her out to ye.”
Kassandra leaned against a fence post, humming a tune while she absently smoothed the light woolen skirt of her riding habit. It seemed only a few moments passed before Hans was leading the spirited mare into the stable yard.
“She’s a beauty, that she is,” Hans said soothingly, running his hand along the mare’s glistening white flank.
The animal nickered, tossing its head and flipping its long, silky tail.
One front hoof dug impatiently into the damp earth.
“But a spitfire, to be sure. She bit poor Penn in the seat of his breeches t’other day, whilst he was shoveling feed into her trough. ”
Kassandra gasped. “Is he all right?” she asked, barely suppressing a giggle behind her gloved hand as she envisioned the awkward scene.
“Oh, aye, milady, he’s fine,” Hans said, “except for sittin’ down.
” He laughed and held the mare steady while Kassandra hoisted herself into the sidesaddle, and then handed her the reins.
“Best to hold her back for a ways, milady, before ye give her full rein,” he cautioned.
“She may be a bit skittish this morning. Remember, she’s not been rid since last month, only set free to run in the paddock every day. ”
“I’ll heed your advice, Hans,” Kassandra said, drawing up the reins. Her tone grew serious. “How’s Zoltan faring?”
“He’s better, milady, though his leg will take a good while to mend, or so the physician says. It was a bad fall.”
“Yes, it was,” Kassandra agreed, shuddering at the memory of that day. “Well, give him my fond greetings,” she murmured. “And tell him if there is anything he needs, he must send word at once to the Countess or myself.”
“Aye, milady.” Hans bobbed his head as Kassandra nudged the mare with her boot, and they set out at a trot across the stable yard. “Enjoy yer ride,” he called, waving his cap.
Kassandra steered the mare out onto the road leading from the estate, but it was nothing more than a rutted mire. She decided to ride out across the unplowed fields instead, where the short grasses had hopefully absorbed the worst of the recent rainfall.
She bit her lower lip against the pain jolting through her bruised right leg as the mare jumped across a shallow ravine, which made her massage her thigh with one hand while holding the spirited creature to a walk with the other.
Kassandra flinched as she touched a sore spot. Obviously she was not quite as recovered as she had thought. The purplish green bruises had finally faded to a faint brown, but the dull pain still lingered. And if she hurt even this much, she could well imagine how Isabel must feel.
The Countess had borne the brunt of the accident.
She had been sitting on the far side of the carriage when it lost a wheel and toppled down the embankment, and she was thrown against the right door.
Kassandra had escaped worse injury by being shoved roughly into the padded wall next to her seat, bumping her head and bruising the right side of her body.
The physician had marveled that they had escaped with their lives, surmising that Isabel would have suffered far more but for the protection of the stiff whalebone hoopskirt, which had cushioned her fall. One good thing he could say for the preposterous contraptions!
It was all Stefan’s fault, Kassandra thought irritably. If he hadn’t insisted on forcing her into this marriage, they would never have gone to the city that day to look for fabric…for a wedding gown.
She frowned. It had been hard enough to block Stefan from her mind without Isabel talking of wedding preparations all the time, which she had done constantly since his departure for the winter camp. Now Kassandra had this nagging pain to remind her of him.
And the stack of unopened letters lying in the bottom of her drawer, Kassandra amended darkly. Letters she had not allowed herself to read for fear of being swayed by his lies.
She had done her best to harden her heart against him, and had succeeded for the most part.
Until night fell, when she would lie awake in her bed, the heavy silence emanating from his adjoining chamber almost more than she could bear.
It was then she could not deny to herself how much she truly missed him, with a poignant ache deep within her that she could not quash.
It had become almost a nightly ritual. She would leave her bed and walk to her armoire, open the drawer, and pull out the pile of letters, held together by a delicate red ribbon.
She would stand there in the darkness and stare at them for the longest time, wondering what he could possibly have to say to her that would warrant so much correspondence.
Then, with a ragged sigh, she would set them resolutely back in the drawer, seeking once again the solace of her bed.
Sleep would elude her until the early hours of the morning as tormenting thoughts of Stefan, and their last night together, burned like a firebrand into her mind.
Sheer exhaustion was her only release, pulling her at last into dreamless slumber.
Suddenly the mare stopped in her tracks, her sharp, nervous whinny breaking into Kassandra’s disturbing reverie.
“What is it, girl?” she murmured, gazing along the thick line of trees bordering the open field.
She saw nothing, only the branches swaying in the wind, which had picked up slightly.
She turned in the saddle and looked over her shoulder, but again there was nothing, the empty field stretching out behind them, a carpet of velvet green against the clouded sky, the road they had left a tiny black ribbon wending back to the estate.
Kassandra faced forward again and patted the mare’s silken neck. “There now, you see, it’s nothing,” she said reassuringly, but she started when a covey of blackbirds, flapping and cawing, were flushed from a nearby tree. They hovered above them ominously, circling, then flew off across the sky.
Perhaps it was a deer, she thought, willing her body to relax. Or a fox, stalking along the ground for its next meal, or some other harmless forest creature. She clucked her tongue, and they set out once more across the field.
Kassandra nudged the mare’s flank, urging her into a gallop. The pain of her bruises was forgotten as they flew across the fields, her waist-length hair streaming out behind her, her cheeks flushed with exhilaration.
A shaft of sunlight broke through the heavy gray clouds, lending a hazy golden sheen to the scenery. The sheer beauty of it enlivened her spirits, and she laughed.
When they came to the end of the fields, Kassandra plunged the mare into the forest, a netherworld of shadow and light. The hushed stillness was broken only by the crackling of underbrush beneath the mare’s flashing hooves, and her own panting breaths.
They rode on and on, sometimes slowing to a trot as they wound through dense trees, other times at a breakneck pace through wide clearings that opened to the sky.
She had no time to think, only to react. Her hands held the reins with assurance as she ducked low-hanging branches or hugged the mare’s powerful neck as they soared over fallen logs.