The Rogue’s Stolen Bride

Chapter Twelve: The Long Hour

Kaida

I had not thought this part through.

I had thought through the disguise, the money, the cover story, the fake k.idnapping, the destination. I had lain awake for two nights thinking through every detail of this plan with the focused desperation of a woman with nothing left to lose. And somehow, in all of that meticulous planning, I had failed to account for the fact that there was only one horse and I was going to have to sit on it with him. In a formal wool dress with a skirt that was not made for sitting astride a horse.

“Why don’t we just shift and run?” Maggie said, with the cheerful practicality of someone who was feeling quite sensible about everything. “It would be faster.”

Jace looked at her. Then he looked at me.

“Wolves leave a scent trail,” he said. “Anyone tracking us could follow it for miles.” He swung up into the saddle and looked down at me with an expression that was carefully neutral. “We ride.”

Maggie pursed her lips. “It was just a suggestion.”

She allowed Cutter to help her up behind him with the expression of a woman making the best of a bad situation, settling herself on the horse’s rump with her carpet bag across her knees and her chin at its customary angle.

My wolf, who had been unusually restless and alert since the moment Jace had pulled open the carriage door, seemed all too happy with the situation. I could feel her straining toward him internally, and it only added to my frustration. Now was not the time for her to indulge in some puppy love crush toward the most inappropriate man.

I looked at his horse. It was a strong black gelding that could easily carry both of us. I looked at him already settled in the saddle looking down at me with that carefully neutral expression.

Before I could work out the logistics, he leaned over and his hands closed around my waist and he simply lifted me, clean and effortless, and settled me in the saddle in front of him as though I weighed nothing at all.

For a moment I couldn’t speak.

“Comfortable?” he said, close to my ear.

“Fine,” I said.

I was not fine. I struggled to tuck my skirt around my legs.

The horse moved beneath us and every step shifted our weight together. His arms were on either side of me, held carefully wide, the reins loose in his hands. If I sat very straight and very still I could maintain a dignified sliver of space between his chest and my back.

I sat very straight and very still.

“You can relax,” he said. “I’m not going to bite.”

“I’m perfectly relaxed,” I said.

A pause. “You’re sitting like a fence post.”

“That is simply how I sit.”

Another pause, longer this time. I had the distinct impression he was trying not to smile.

From behind us I could hear Maggie making quiet conversation with Cutter, who was responding in monosyllables. That did not appear to discourage her. Nothing discouraged Maggie.

We rode hard, and rode in silence for a while. The forest path wound deeper into the trees, dappled light moving across the ground as the branches shifted overhead. The only sounds were birdsong and the steady rhythm of hooves on soft earth and the creak of leather.

And then, gradually, almost imperceptibly, his arms dropped.

Not all at once. Just by degrees, the careful tension going out of them as the miles accumulated and his muscles tired of holding themselves deliberately away from me. His elbows came down first. Then his forearms settled against my waist and hips with every rolling step of the horse — light and rhythmic, casual and inevitable.

The saddle cradled us both and there was simply nowhere else for him to be. The warmth of him spread all along my back. His breath stirred my hair. His forearms moved against my sides with every step, and the slow rocking of the horse did the rest.

I lasted another ten minutes.

Then I reached forward and took the reins out of his hands. I knew how to ride, I didn’t need him to guide the horse.

He let me have them without a word. Which was either tactful or infuriating. Probably both. He let his arms drop and rested his now useless hands against his thighs.

From behind us Maggie made a sound that was not quite a cough and not quite a laugh and which I was going to address with her later at considerable length.

We rode on.

We rode for another hour before Jace raised his hand and the group slowed to a stop at a place where the forest thinned and a narrow track branched off to the east.

“This is where we part ways,” he said, to Cutter, Pike and Bram.

Cutter nodded. Pike said nothing, as was his custom. Bram looked faintly relieved, which I suspected had something to do with Maggie and her carpet bag.

Maggie slid down from Cutter’s horse with considerable grace and retrieved her bag. She looked up at Cutter with the expression of a woman who had endured something and survived it.

“Thank you,” she said, with great formality.

Cutter dipped his chin. Almost a bow. I had the impression he wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to him over the last two hours but that he had a certain respect for it.

Jace swung down from the saddle and walked to where Bram was sitting slumped on his horse, still occasionally touching the side of his head with a mournful expression.

“I need your horse,” Jace said.

Bram looked at him. “My horse?”

“I’ll pay you for it.”

“It’s my horse,” Bram said, with the tone of a man to whom very few things in life belonged and who felt strongly about the ones that did.

Jace reached into his coat and produced a coin. Then, after a look at Bram’s expression, a second coin. He held them up.

Bram looked at the coins. He looked at his horse. He looked at the coins again.

He got off the horse.

“Pleasure doing business,” Jace said.

Bram pocketed the coins, collected his saddle bag, and trudged off after Cutter and Pike without another word. The three of them disappeared around the bend in the track and then there was nothing but the sound of fading hoofbeats and the wind in the branches overhead.

And then there were three.

I slid down from Jace’s horse before he could mount up behind me again and crossed to where Bram’s horse stood patiently waiting. I ran my hand down its neck, felt the big bay settle under my touch, and swung up into the saddle. I looked across at Maggie and offered her my hand.

Maggie, although not a confident rider, had accompanied me on many adventures, and was used to riding double with me. She took my hand, found her seat, and settled herself behind me with her carpet bag and her dignity both intact.

“Better?” I said.

“Marginally,” she said.

I gathered the reins and felt something in my chest loosen that I hadn’t realized had been tight. My own horse. My own space. My own breathing. And with every step, another yard between me and Lord Vance’s keep. Another yard further from the fate my father had arranged for me like a business transaction. Every hoofbeat a small quiet victory.

I glanced across at Jace. He was already mounted, watching me with those dark eyes and that expression I couldn’t read, the one that gave nothing away and somehow said everything.

“Eleven days,” I said.

“Eleven days,” he agreed.

He clicked his tongue at his horse and moved off down the path. I fell in behind him, with Maggie’s hands resting lightly on my hips, and the forest closed around us and the road stretched ahead and somewhere behind us, growing smaller with every hoofbeat, was everything I had ever known.

I touched my fingers to Stella’s necklace.