“Only one of them was seriously wounded. I’m not at all sure they won’t get down the road a bit, assess their damages, and decide that they would be better off ridding the world of the witnesses to their crime.”
“You’re right. We’d best go.” Damaris ran to pick up her little pistol and stuff it back in her reticule, then retrieved Alec’s as well. “Oh, look, here is another gun. The man you wounded must have dropped it.”
She went over to get the other gun, and, turning back,
she saw that Alec was leaning against his horse, one arm on the animal’s neck, his head resting against that arm, his eyes closed. Her heart clenched inside her and she hurried back. Alec straightened at her approach and gave her a reassuring smile, but Damaris was not fooled. There was still a dazed look in his eyes that did not bode well.
“You’ll have to ride in front of me. Erebos won’t like it, but he’ll manage.” He bent and cupped his hands to vault Damaris into the saddle, but she shook her head.
“No, there’s a stump over there. Let’s use it. There is no need for you to lift me.”
“Are you saying I haven’t the strength?” He slanted a look down at her in his familiar arrogant way, which, she realized with a start, was beginning to seem rather endearing.
Damaris grimaced. “Clearly that knock on the head took away some of your sense.” She started toward the stump without glancing back to see if he followed. She took it as a sign of his feeling weak that he did so without any more protest.
Even with the added height of the stump, Damaris had some difficulty getting on Alec’s horse. Not only was Erebos tall, but he was also skittish at the idea of her climbing into his saddle. It did not help that she was not dressed for riding. Alec held the stallion’s head, talking soothingly to him and stroking his nose, and finally, on the third try, Damaris was able to squirm her way onto the horse’s back. Scooting up as far as she could, she decided to damn propriety and ride astride, even though her skirts did not completely cover her
legs. Alec, too, used the stump to mount, confirming Damaris’s suspicions regarding his weakness.
His arms went around her to hold the reins. Damaris’s back was pressed against his front, and she found herself relaxing into him. It was impossible not to feel safer with his strength wrapped around her like this. She felt the movement of his arms and thighs as he turned Erebos and started across the road, and she could not deny that something stirred in her in response. It occurred to her that she must indeed be shallow to be so aware of the intimacy of their physical situation. Alec was injured. They were fleeing dangerous men. And she was thinking about the breadth of his chest and the heat of his body. Sternly she tried to pull her thoughts onto more appropriate matters.
“Are you not taking the road back?” she asked, surprised, as he struck out across the land.
“If they come looking and find us gone, that would be the obvious direction we would have taken. Strong as Erebos is, I have ridden him hard this afternoon, and he’s carrying double now, so we cannot travel fast. They could catch us on the road. Better to stay off it. Beyond that meadow, the trees look fairly thick. With luck we should lose any pursuers.”
Their pace through the meadow was quick. Alec kept glancing back at the road for any sign of their attackers, and when they reached the stand of trees, they both let out a sigh of relief. They picked their way through the woods at a much slower pace, heading generally east as the sun dropped lower in the sky behind them.
When they came to a shallow stream, Damaris insisted that they stop to clean Alec’s wound. He protested for a moment, but gave in. As he dismounted, Damaris saw him waver, so she hastily slid off the horse before he could reach up to help her. Soaking her handkerchief in the clear stream, she began to carefully wash the blood and dirt from his face.
Alec sat on a rock, level with her, watching her as she worked on him. Damaris found it faintly unnerving to stand this close to him, looking into his eyes. She put her fingers on his chin to hold his head steady as she worked, and she was tinglingly aware of the sensation of his skin beneath her fingers, the faint scratch of the beginnings of his beard. It did curious things to her insides, and she felt jumpy and strangely unsure of herself, as if she might suddenly do something over which she had no control.
He drew in a quick, hissing breath as she drew closer to his wound.
“I’m sorry.” Her hand stilled.
“No, go ahead. We have to find a place to spend the night, and the less I look like a vagabond, the better.”
She resumed her cleansing, and after a few more minutes, she had cleared away the blood and dirt from his hair, revealing a small cut, thankfully no longer bleeding.
“It’s not as bad as I thought,” she said with relief.
“Scalp wounds always bleed a great deal,” he said casually.
Damaris let out an indelicate snort. “You, obviously, are accustomed to being knocked on the head with rocks.”
“It’s more ordinarily fists, though once Gabe and I got into
a mill with some chaps at school, and one of them threw a tankard at me.”
“Good thing you have a hard head.”
“Aye. ’Tis the border blood.” He adopted the thick, faintly lilting Northumbrian accent.
She chuckled, the twinkle in his eyes warming her. She was aware of a strong—and very inadvisable—desire to lean in and plant a swift kiss on his lips. She also thought of kissing that sharp jut of cheekbone… or the strong line of his jaw… and how would the tender skin above his eye feel beneath her lips? Indeed, she wanted to hold Alec’s face between her hands and kiss him all over. Heat and danger fizzed up in her, and her breath caught in her throat. She was, she realized, feeling a bit wobbly herself.
She told herself that it was just gratitude she felt, and a lingering excitement. The aftermath of fear and anger were fueling her outrageous, licentious urges. She could not allow herself to give in to them. She would be appalled and embarrassed later, when she was herself again.
With an effort, Damaris took a step backward. “I—um, I haven’t a clean handkerchief to dry your wound and bandage it.”
“Don’t worry, it will dry. And at least I won’t look the fool with a great strip of white wrapped around my head.”
“No, wait, I have an idea. I don’t suppose you are still carrying that knife of yours?”
He cast her a smug look and reached down to his boot
to pull the hidden knife from the sheath strapped to his calf. His gesture was somewhat spoiled by the fact that the sudden movement made him sway and he had to grip the edge of the rock upon which he sat.
“Alec!” Damaris reached out to steady him. “I
knew
you were hurt worse than you’d say.”
“Just felt woozy for a bit. I am fine.” He gave her a wicked grin. “Though feel free to hold me up if you’d like.”
Damaris snatched her hand away and grabbed the knife. Ostentatiously turning her back to him, she bent over and raised the front of her skirt to cut through a ruffle of her petticoat. She felt Alec’s hand curve over her buttocks, and she jumped and whirled, her insides a sudden, clanging mix of astonishment, indignation, and pure roaring lust.
“Alec!”
“I could not resist.” The devil-may-care grin on his face had widened. “You were right there in front of me.”
“Well, you had best curb your impulses,” Damaris told him, trying her utmost to sound stern despite the yearning heat that had blazed up deep in her abdomen. She stepped away and ripped the rest of the ruffle from its moorings, then cut the strip into pieces, handing him one. “Here, you can dry your own face if you are going to act like that.”
The truth was, she was not sure she trusted herself to do so without giving in to her own base impulses. It was pure effrontery for him to caress her in that way, and she should be furious. But what she felt was not anger but a rush of excitement.
Foremost in her mind was a thrilling curiosity about exactly how that hand would feel on a number of other parts of her body.
She turned and walked a few feet away as she folded another piece of the strip into a pad, using the time and distance to pull herself under control. Adopting what she hoped was an adequately freezing look, she stalked back to him and pressed the pad to his wound. Alec’s face was once again stamped with its usual undemonstrative expression, but there was an undeniable heat in his eyes, and Damaris could not keep her fingers from trembling slightly.
“Hold this,” she ordered, pleased that at least she sounded crisp instead of the decidedly liquid way she felt inside, and she began to wrap the last strip of cloth around his head to hold the pad in place.
“You are determined to make me appear foolish, I can see.”
“Don’t whine. We can’t have you bleeding on someone’s doorstep if we hope to make a good impression.”
He grasped her wrist and lifted her hand, turning it, to press his lips gently into her palm. Damaris stood, unable to move, scarcely daring to breathe, caught by surprise at the tender gesture. Impulsively she reached out to smooth her other hand over his shock of silver-gold hair. It was soft and fine, like silk beneath her fingers, and she wanted to sink her hand into it. She wanted to pull his head against her breast.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “You are an angel.”
“Far from it,” she retorted shakily. She felt nothing like an angel at this moment. “Come. We should leave.”
It took an effort to step away from him, and if he had resisted, if he had pulled her to him, Damaris was not sure what she would have done. But Alec let go of her hand and rose, his gaze lingering on her face for an instant before moving away.
Alec made no protest this time when Damaris climbed onto the horse by herself, merely guided Erebos to a rock so that she could do so more easily. When he settled in behind her, she could feel the tension in his body. Damaris was even more aware now of his body curving around hers as they rode, of the brush of his breath against her hair and the shift of his thigh muscles as he guided the horse, the tautness of his arms around her, his hands holding the reins, resting against her stomach.
He turned Erebos into the shallow stream, traveling downstream for some distance before crossing to the other side and continuing east. As the afternoon settled into dusk, they wound through the trees and emerged on a track, taking it along the edge of a low stone wall until they ran into a lane. Still there was no sign of a village with an inn where they could take refuge for the night.
Alec had no more familiarity with the area than Damaris, having in the past done no more than pass through it on the main toll road. They had seen a small cottage in the distance when they first set out, but they had stayed away from it, wanting to put more distance between them and the men who had attacked them. As darkness fell, Damaris began to worry that they might be caught outdoors for the night.
Clouds had begun drifting in late in the afternoon, heavy and dark, contributing to the encroaching gloom, and it seemed likely that it might soon start to rain.
It would be exceedingly uncomfortable to spend the night outdoors, Damaris thought, much less in the rain. Worse, she was worried about Alec. He was not at his normal strength, and more than once as they rode, she had felt his body relax against hers until he was leaning against her, his head on hers, and his hands had gone slack on the reins—obviously slipping into unconsciousness until she said his name sharply, snapping him back awake.
The last time he began to drift, she took the reins from his hands, fearful that he would drop them altogether. It was somewhat awkward to guide the horse this way, without her feet in the stirrups and sitting so far forward, and she was afraid that Erebos would recognize the unfamiliar hand on the reins and balk, but he kept moving forward, though once or twice he shook his head as if disturbed. As she felt Alec’s body grow limp behind her once more, she began to fear that he might fall off the horse altogether. She tried not to think of stories she had heard of people striking their heads, then slipping into a slumber from which they never wakened.
Damaris reached down and took Alec’s arm, wrapping her own arm around his and pressing it against her stomach in an effort to keep him steady. He shifted in his sleep, his head slipping to her shoulder, and he wrapped his other arm around her waist as well. Damaris tried to ignore the intimacy of their position. It was, after all, more secure this
way. But the practicality of it was not what her body was responding to; it was the sheer physical pleasure of his close embrace, the touch of his breath upon the sensitive skin of her neck.
Damaris wished more than ever that they would come to a village. Or even a farmhouse. Anywhere they might be able to get off and rest. A hot meal would be wonderful, too. She still had her reticule, and she had enough money in it to pay for a room—though, annoyingly, she had stuck the bulk of the money she had gotten from Mr. Portland into the valise for safekeeping, so it was now resting uselessly in the longgone post chaise.
Thunder rumbled in the heavy clouds, confirming Damaris’s fears of a storm, and within minutes, drops began to fall. Erebos skittered to the side at the sudden noise, and Damaris struggled to control the animal. Alec awoke behind her.
“Good God, did I go to sleep?”
“A little.” Damaris was relieved to have Alec take charge of Erebos, and he nudged the horse to a faster pace.