Julia London - Seduced By A Scot

Nichol exchanged a look with Gavin, who seemed unduly wary, as he if he expected her to start anew here and now and somehow involve him in it. Nichol was glad he wasn’t called upon to assure the lad otherwise—she did seem quite determined.

Her list of complaints against the Garbetts went on for a good quarter hour more, at which point, Miss Darby seemed to have aired all her grievances and had lost her thirst for the airing. She seemed spent, taxed by the work of saying it all aloud, to have God and the world know how she’d been wronged.

She said no more until Nichol signaled Gavin that they would stop for the night, having decided they would not reach an inn before dark. He remembered a hollow they’d passed, where they could make camp, sheltered from wind. And it was on the banks of a creek so the horses could drink. He led them there.

It had stopped snowing, but the sky remained a dull slate gray turning to dark blue. Miss Darby did not hesitate to leap from her perch when Nichol reined to a halt, landing awkwardly on all fours, then disappearing into the woods. Gavin looked at Nichol with alarm, but Nichol shook his head. What would she do, run into dark woods with no place to go? She needed a moment of privacy, that was all.

Nichol was pulling the saddle from his horse when she returned to the small clearing. She looked with confusion at the saddle in his hands. “What are you doing, then?” she demanded.

“We’ll bed here for the night.”

“Here?”

“Aye, here,” he said. “It’s too dark to carry on, aye? I’ll no’ risk injury to one of the horses.”

She looked around her. “But we’re in the middle of nowhere!”

“That is no’ entirely accurate. We are between Aberuthen,” he said, pointing to the north, “and Crieff,” he said, pointing to the south. “No’ as much as a day’s ride to Stirling, aye?” he added, pointing in the direction of Stirling. “We are indeed somewhere, Miss Darby, and this is a good place to water and graze the horses.”

She gaped at him. Then at Gavin, who kept his head down and avoided her gaze. “Has my reputation been so irreparably damaged that you give no thought to it, sir? Am I to be humiliated further?”

“I mean to protect you, Miss Darby, no’ harm you. Necessity demands adaptation, and I rather doubt you will be thought of any less for having slept under a night sky than an inn’s roof.” He unfurled a bedroll and laid his plaid on top of it. He bowed, and gestured grandly to the pallet he’d made. “You may avail yourself of this accommodation.”

Miss Darby lifted her chin. She pulled her cloak tightly around her. “This is hardly accommodation ,” she muttered.

“I am confident you will weather it.”

“Oh, I shall weather it, Mr. Bain. I have weathered much worse.” With a dramatic swirl of her cloak, she fell onto the pallet and rolled to her side, facing away from him.

Nichol gazed down at her, sprawled on his plaid in a snit. She really was quite beautiful in his eyes. Her hair was inky black, and her eyes the color of a robin’s egg. She had a lush figure that, in any other circumstance, would have caused his mouth to water. He thought she would be quite bonny if she ever felt like smiling again. He would like to see that, personally, but rather doubted he would be afforded the pleasure, given the nature of what would be a very short acquaintance. Her situation was not going to miraculously improve overnight and make her suddenly happy.

Nichol glanced at Gavin. The poor lad’s eyes were nearly bulging out of his head. He looked at Nichol, as if expecting him to explain a woman’s scorn. But that was beyond Nichol’s considerable talents, and he shook his head, then instructed Gavin to gather wood for a fire.

CHAPTER FIVE

MAURA WOKE WITH a start, a swell of panic filling her throat as she frantically tried to sort out where she was or what was happening to her. A moment or two of blinking and sputtering against leaves stuck to her lips brought it all back to her—she was asleep on a forest floor. Her bones ached from cold and one arm tingled with a loss of feeling.

How long had she been asleep?

She recalled the surge of annoyance at this unexpected turn of events, then dropping onto the pallet Mr. Bain had made for her, and then...and then her eyes had felt scratchy, her lids heavy and her body so grateful to be off that horse.

She smelled smoke. Maura rolled onto her back, her gaze landing first on the small ring of fire, and then on Mr. Bain sitting beside her, his back against the trunk of a tree. He had one leg bent at the knee, the other stretched before him. He was holding a book.

Maura blinked. The man was reading by the light of the fire, as if this was a lazy summer evening.

Without looking at her, he held out a linen handkerchief.

She looked at the offering.

“You’ve half a forest pressed to your face,” he said matter-of-factly.

Maura took it, then groped about for his arm to pull herself up. She gave him a good once-over, astonished that he could look so relaxed in the same forest with cold settling in. She wiped the dirt from her mouth. “How it pleases me to find the journey has posed no hardship for you, Mr. Bain, and that you are verra much at your leisure.”

“I assure you, I am no’ at my leisure, but merely attempting to pass the time.” He deliberately turned a page.

Maura’s stomach suddenly growled.

“Awake and hungry, then, are you?”

“Aye, famished,” she said, and tossed the handkerchief onto his leg, annoyed that he should look so comfortable when she was freezing.

She looked around their little campsite. It must be quite late—the lad was asleep on the other side of the fire, his body turned toward the warmth of the flames. She could see the horses near the banks of the creek, blankets draped across their backs. “How will you keep the horses from wandering away, then?” she asked curiously.

“They’re hobbled.”

Maura peered at the horses, and could just make out the belt around their front legs.

Mr. Bain put aside his book and dragged a saddlebag onto his lap and began to rummage inside it. Maura glanced at the book, now lying between them. “‘An Enquiry Concerning the Principle of Morals,’” she read aloud. “How interesting. Perhaps your book will hold the answer as to the principle of morals in this particular situation, eh, Mr. Bain?”

He smiled wryly, and handed her a bundle wrapped in cheesecloth. “I’ve some dried beef and hard biscuits,” he said.

Maura gasped with delight—she’d not expected food. She eagerly took the bundle from him and put it in her lap, brushed the tresses of hair from her eyes that had come undone with all her rolling about on the ground and which were apparently hosting a fair amount of leaves. But she paid no heed to her hair—she untied the cheesecloth and surveyed the food. As she had not eaten properly in days, this was a feast. Her stomach growled again.

She picked up a hunk of bread and bit into it, eating heartily, without regard to manners or attempting to conceal the sounds of pleasure she was making.

As she gnawed at a strip of beef, Mr. Bain nudged her and held up a skin. Whatever was in it, she hardly cared—she took it from him with a small grunt of thanks and drank.

Mr. Bain gave a small chuckle.

Ale. Strong ale at that, but she managed to keep from coughing it up and sighed when the warmth of it slid through her veins. When she had drunk what she could, she gave him the skin and resumed her meal.

Mr. Bain watched her with equal parts awe and amusement. “Am I so amusing?” she asked as she licked her fingers. “You’d be famished, too, that you would, had you been in the company of Mr. David Rumpkin. I’ve been desperately hungry—I dared eat scarcely a thing in that house.”