An Auctioned Bride (Highland Heartbeats #4)(17)

Hugh glanced up at the clearing night sky, at the clouds drifting with the breeze, carrying the storm to the southeast. How long had he been unconscious? How far had she gone?

He had warned her about the bogs, but she had ignored him. As he rounded two large boulders and peered into the darkness, he heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the shifting, shadowy hulks. Both the horses were there, his gelding as well as the older mare.

Dalla probably hadn't wanted to take time to search for them, even though she would have known they were close by. She obviously wasn't an experienced horsewoman—she'd preferred to strike out on foot. Foolish, foolish female.

Maybe she had assumed that tracking her on horseback would be easier than tracking her by foot. Even with the rain, the weight of a horse would have tracks deeper than any petite woman. Maybe she wasn't so foolish after all.

He paused, thinking. He was tempted to take his gelding to go in search of her, but the treacherous landscape would be especially dangerous, not only because of the darkness, but because the ground was now soft, many of the peat bogs would look much the same as the ground around them.

For all he knew, she was already at the bottom of one of those bogs. He cursed himself yet again for his foolishness. Some captain of the guards he was, allowing such a little slip of a woman to get the best of him.

With another grunt of frustrated anger, he returned to the cave, reached for his short sword and his leather saddle bag and slinging it over his shoulder. The leather bag held not only sparse amounts of food, but two flints, a short, coiled piece of rope, and a collection of herbs in a smaller leather pouch that Sarah had insisted he take with him in case of injury or illness.

He paused at the cave opening and reached for one of the sticks in the fire, biting back a groan of pain as his head throbbed again. He lifted the stick, its edge glowing red as he passed it just above the ground in front of the cave opening. The rain would have washed away most of her tracks already, but if he could get an indication of her direction, that's where he'd start. Muttering low under his breath, unable to quit cursing himself for his stupidity, and hers, he found one footprint a short distance from the cave opening, headed northeast.

Northeast? She was headed back the way they had come. That confused him. Surely, she knew that no one in the village would provide her aid. She would be recognized—but no, he had given her a spare set of breeches and a tunic. While they had enveloped her diminutive size, she did look much like a ragamuffin in them. She could disguise her features with dirt, tuck that long braid of hers under the shirt, and maybe, with muddy features, she just might pass as a young boy.

In the cities, the site of homeless urchins was nothing unusual. If she got very lucky, she might even be able to talk her way aboard a ship bound for her home country, or perhaps down south to the coast of England or even France.

As he darted away from the cave into the damp and misty night, water still dripping from the boughs of trees overhead, he felt true concern. It wasn't just the money he had spent on her nor the horse. It wasn't even his embarrassment over her ability to overcome him in the cave and escape. It was the land itself, treacherous enough as it was in the daytime, but at night, even more so. The wet, boggy ground, the muddy quagmires, the mist hiding steep gullies, dropping away abruptly from underfoot, not to mention the animals, proved extremely dangerous.

Once in a while, a half-moon peeked from behind clouds skittering across the night sky. He glanced up, gaining his bearings as he found a constellation that told him he was headed in the right direction. Of course, the lass could have changed direction at any time, but he knew that she would be more likely to stick to a certain path, maybe using the shadowy outlines of ragged tors or other landmarks to guide her.

He had no doubt of her intelligence. Throughout their travel during the day, he had gazed back to find her studying the landscape, occasionally looking behind her along the deer path they had followed. Not much of a path really, more like a simple direction.

He nodded with grudging approval. While he hadn't thought of it at the time, he realized that she had not only likely been taking stock of any landmarks she could find as they ventured west away from the coast, but she had enough foresight to glance back behind her, to see what those landmarks looked like from the other direction.

A grudging admiration nudged into his thoughts, but with every step, the jarring pain caused by the injury to his skull reminded him not to be too forgiving. He proceeded onward, his feet carefully picking their way through the marshy, mushy ground. Occasionally, when he smelled the steamy, gaseous odors erupting from a bog nearby, he moved forward more cautiously, carefully placing one foot down before putting his full weight on it. Occasionally, the clumps of grass he stepped on dipped beneath his weight.

He moved slowly, but if she was smart, so too would she. Quagmires dotted this low valley. Dalla could not have picked a worse place to launch an escape attempt. In fact, he would be surprised—

He heard a sound off in the distance.

He froze, cocking his head slightly as if that would help them hear that sound better. A red deer? The cry of a wolf, or possibly the loud grunt of a boar? He waited, creeping softly forward, one hand on the handle of his short sword, tucked into his waistband, waiting for something, anything, that would give him an indication of where—or what - that sound come from. Nothing. Perhaps it had just been the sound of the wind moaning through the valley, or—

He heard it again.