the weight of her small foot pressed on his, as her gloved fingers gripped his. She was light, but the grip of her hand and the pressure of her foot made that something clasp tight in his chest, and the emotion stayed clenched as her fingers embraced his waist over his greatcoat.
He shifted in the saddle, his groin tightening too. A few more days. Just days. He had been waiting months. As he turned the horse, Ellen’s cheek pressed against his shoulder.
“Did you tell anyone you were leaving? Your sister? Or your maid?”
“No, I did not want them to have to face Papa knowing the truth. He would be able to see they’d lied, and then who knows what he might do.” Paul urged the mare into a trot as Ellen continued. “He made me spend the day on my knees reading the Commandments because I refused to marry the Duke of Argyle.”
“Today?” He wished to look back at her but he could not.
Her father had been diabolical to Paul, sneering as though he was nothing when he’d done the decent thing and offered for her. He could not imagine the way Pembroke treated the girls.
He had to get Ellen to Gretna before her father caught them, so she never had to come back and face his retribution.
He stirred the mare into a canter. Ellen gripped his waist more firmly.
“Yes today,” she said, leaning to his ear. “He came to my room this morning, to ask if I was repentant.”
If she was repentant? She’d done nothing wrong, as far as her father was aware. He’d not told her father they’d been communicating since the summer. He’d expected to be refused, and he’d not wished their pathway of communication closed. All she had been guilty of, as far as her father knew, was that her presence and her company in the summer had attracted a man her father deemed unworthy. She bore no guilt for being beautiful and charming.
God, how had Pembroke brought up this untouched, unscarred girl? “Did you tell him you repented?”
She laughed; a low soft sound he hadn’t heard before. “No.”
He smiled. It had taken him so long to make his offer because he’d wanted to feel sure she could cope as his wife, that she had the strength to follow the drum. She had it. She had a core of iron. She would survive. He would make sure she did; though he didn’t doubt his way of life was going to come as a shock to her. He’d tried to warn her in letters, preparing her, but he could tell from her responses it was all whimsical rather than real. It would become real.
He stopped the horse suddenly, and strained to look over his shoulder, as it restlessly side stepped. “You’re sure of this, Ellen? I mean, if you are not, I can take you back.”
In answer, her fingers slid further about his midriff and gripped him harder. There was a pain in his chest and his groin again. “I am sure.”
I am sure too.
“Then let us hurry.” He kicked his heels and set the horse off at a canter, his mind on the treacherous tracks they were likely to encounter on their journey north. This was a race now.
The ground was hardened by frost, and slippery. The horse’s breath and theirs rose as steam in the air.
They had a few hours lead, but–
“Papa, said I was to have nothing to eat either, at least he played into our hands. I told Pippa not to bring me any food.”
Then perhaps their head start would be twelve hours to a day, but even so it was the wrong time of year for haste. He hoped the cold weather and frost would hold, better that than rain and mud bound routes when carts, horses and men became bogged down. His head had already begun ordering the flight like a bloody military campaign.
“The coach is waiting for us at the inn. It will be ready. I’ve hired a yellow bounder.”
“A coach and four?”
He smiled at the tone of excitement in her voice. “Yes. You sound as if you fancy driving them?”
She laughed again, that low heart-wrenching beautiful sound. “No, I wouldn’t have a clue, but I have never ridden in a fast carriage. It sounds exhilarating.”
Exhilarating? This girl was so wonderfully innocent. But that was another thing that had drawn him to her, her naivety, it was such a contrast to his own knowledge of the world; she knew nothing of the horrors he’d lived through, though he was only a little older than her. She was here to wash his soul clean of war and brutality.
They had to pass through a gate, but he did not dismount, he merely leaned down to open it, and then they were in the woods, where the frost had not yet settled.
Here the darkness reigned. It left him reliant on the eyes of the horse as they kept low to avoid tree branches, and he had to slow and keep the horse at a trot.
When they reached the clearing at the bottom of the ridge on which her father’s tall folly stood, he took a moment to regain his bearings and then set off through the trees again.
Due to the darkness it took half an hour to reach the inn. When she dismounted, his mind counted the minutes passing, aware of her empty bedchamber and the people asleep back at Pembroke’s palatial mansion. At some hour tomorrow they would discover her gone. His heart beat in a steady firm rhythm as he gripped her hand and she slid from the horse.
While she waited on the ground, her arms nervously clasping across her chest, he dropped her bag on to the cobbled yard then slipped his feet from the stirrups, swung his leg over the saddle, and dismounted.
The ice had not yet settled in the enclosed courtyard, but the street beyond was white with cold. He patted the mare’s cheek as it snorted, and whispered a thank you, then looked at the small, yellow painted carriage, and the animals which waited impatiently shaking out their manes and snorting misty breath into the night air.
A groom took the bridle of the hired mare he’d ridden to fetch Ellen and another collected Ellen’s bag to place it in the boot of their carriage.
“Come.” He held out his hand to Ellen and she took it, in complete trust. He was a lucky man.
The inn’s grooms hurried ahead to open the door.
It was strange, holding a woman’s hand. When he’d walked with a woman before, she’d only ever lain her hand on his arm. This was more intimate. She belonged to him. He was responsible for her now; even if it was not yet official.
Paul handed her into the carriage. She climbed the single step then slipped inside. Once her hand left his, he reached into his pocket for a small bag of coins. He looked at the groom beside him and then to the other two who stood in the yard. “For your silence.” He passed it to one to share out among the rest. He could ill afford it and it would be no guarantee, yet he did not want Pembroke warned. He hadn’t said who she was, but she had the distinctive Pembroke colouring and beauty, with her dark hair and very pale blue eyes. She would not be forgotten.
“Thank you, Captain.” The man pulled his forelock and the others bowed their heads as Paul glanced at the postilion rider and the man on the box.
They had two men to keep them going through the night, so one could sleep while the other rode a lead horse.
With
