AT FIRST SIGHT: A Novella(24)
Lips tightened to stop her rattling jaws, she nodded.
At that, he broke his horse into a gallop and she set off in determined pursuit. The frigid wind blew back her cloak’s hood and fretted her hair. His dark flowing hair and cloak flurried behind him like a storm cloud.
Cold, frosty, and muted sunlight broke through the morning mist to reveal a sky the color of pewter. Riding the mare was nothing like sitting astride plodding, stubborn Molly. After only a mere hour of hard jarring, every bone, every tooth, in Evangeline’s body vibrated.
Once, she thought she saw a tobacco plantation in the distance; then nothing but open stump-dotted fields, frost-tipped meadows, and groves of trees that proliferated the farther along the road they galloped.
Just when she was getting ready to protest at the brutal pace, he slowed his mount to a fast trot. Her sorrel’s labored breathing streamed frost from each nostril and puffs of foam limned its mouth. Beneath her thighs, the mare’s barrel was sweaty; its steamy warmth she welcomed. Ahead, in the northwest, deep purple clouds clumped on the forested horizon, a sure sign of snow to come.
Then Adam spurred his chestnut into a gallop again. Refusing to reveal her rapidly waning strength, she pushed her sorrel into catching up with him.
Twenty-something miles at this brutal pace? Surely, he would walk the horses, give them another breather. Could the horses sustain the pace for an entire day – or longer? And more importantly, could she?
Already her fingers, clenched on the reins, had gone numb, like her face and limbs. On both sides of her, the countryside was a blur; only Adam riding furiously at her side and the clattering pounding of hooves existed for her.
There came a point when she knew she could go no farther. She made up her mind she would count sheep in her head to a hundred, ten times, then yell at Adam to stop. And even if he did not, she would. Yet, once she had completed her sheep count, she started over again – and again.
Then, her knees began to lose their grip. She was slipping from the saddle. She grabbed for the pommel but her rigid fingers had lost all feeling – and she went tumbling. First the impact with the hard ground pummeled her shoulder blades and ribs. Next a tree trunk knocked the breath from her. She lay stunned at the side of the road for a minute, then groggily tried to push erect. Not far from her, the sorrel snorted.
“No time for lollygagging,” Adam said a moment later, slipping his arms beneath her battered body and lifting her against his broad chest.
She whimpered at the unexpected pain. “The horses,” she managed to murmur.
“They’re too winded to bolt.”
Their bolting was the least of her concerns at the moment. Her arms dangling, she groaned at the sharp, jabbing pricks of pain with each step he took.
“It’s back into the saddle with you.”
“Every bone in my body is broken,” she protested in a voice that sounded faint even to her ears.
“They’ll mend.” The callous bastard was shoving her onto the back of the sorrel, who had to be as exhausted as she and relieved for the momentary breather.
While she clung, dazed, to her mount’s wind-tangled mane, Adam rapidly untied the blanket at the pommel and deposited its contents in his saddlebags. Then, he was looping and knotting the blanket around both her and the horse’s lathered barrel. Using the blanket as a strap, he bound her securely astride her mount, so that she was thrust forward, her upper torso almost prone against the horse’s neck.
“There, that should hold for another dozen miles or so.”
The bastard. “I . . . I can’t go another mile.”
Taking the mare’s reins, he sprang astride his chestnut and shoved his tall boots into the stirrups. “Hold tight,” he warned, and swatted her sorrel’s rump.
On they galloped. The unbearable jolting . . .at some point, she realized she was weeping from her pain and her fear and her fury and was idiotically blotting her cheeks with the gray’s filthy mane. Surely, this Catamount, whoever he was, and the Swedish militiamen would abandon their chase.
It seemed she went in and out of consciousness. Then, as the afternoon’s wintry sunlight waned, she realized the jouncing had also waned. The horses were cantering along a narrow trail, an Indian warpath hedged on either side and above by a dense primeval forest that blotted out sunlight. Gradually, the cantering slowed to a trot, then a walk that was more like a stumble.
Maybe, another hour passed before Adam mercifully halted the horses and led them off the warpath into the nigh impenetrable foliage. He began untying the blanket’s tight knots, and her sorrel nickered softly its relief.
The release of the blanket’s binding pressure shot excruciating pain across her lower back and shoulders. She gasped. “I hate you, Adam Sutcliff.”
“Good.” When he lifted her from her mount, she winced. He set her on her feet, his hands supporting her waist to keep her from collapsing. “That makes what I have to do later easier.”
She was too fatigued, hurt too much, to bother even asking what he had to do later could possibly be. What could be any worse than the body’s torment she now felt?
She leaned against the rough bark of a nearly denuded tree to keep from slumping to the ground. No warming sun light reached through the heavily branched canopy, and she could not stop quivering with the biting cold. Around her drifted winter’s shriveled leaves.
Shocking her, Adam ran examining hands over her shoulders, along her ribs, over her hips, then down each limb in what was a most outrageously intimate manner. She wanted to slap them away, but the single effort to raise her own hand was the most she could manage. Her hand fell back like a leaden weight. Seeming satisfied, he snatched up the blanket and wrapped her, as snuggly as a cocoon did a caterpillar.