Her mood remained sunny through breakfast, taken with the Cartwrights and Breckenridge, who’d appeared from outside when Mrs. Cartwright had called. Apparently he’d been chopping wood to help the old couple. With the extra coins he insisted they take on top of payment for room and board, Heather felt they were leaving the old couple happier and better off for their stay.
They left the cottage with the sun climbing higher into the morning sky, walking out of Gribton hand in hand, their satchels on their shoulders. When they regained the lane, their route to Dunscore and Kirkland beyond, Breckenridge, whose face had remained unreadable throughout the morning, halted and pulled out his fob watch.
He consulted it, grunted, then tucked it back in his pocket. “Just nine o’clock.” Looking ahead, he grasped her hand more firmly and started walking. “I had another look at the map. We might reach the Vale, or at least be close enough to it by nightfall to risk going on without halting, but, more likely, the way will become more mountainous the further we go, which will slow us considerably.” He glanced at her. “We’ll probably have to find somewhere to spend one more night.”
Still smiling, she blithely nodded. “There’ll be somewhere — a hamlet or a farmhouse. Just like last night.”
His only reply was another grunt.
Her smile deepened. They walked on in companionable silence as the sun slowly rose and beamed down upon them. It was a glorious spring day, with birds singing and bees buzzing in the undergrowth bordering the lane. The sky gradually lightened to a cerulean blue. Everything seemed fresh, dew-sparkling, filled with intrinsic promise. She drank it all in, felt her heart swell and overflow with a similar brightness.
She felt like skipping or dancing along, but in deference to the grunter beside her, kept striding evenly by his side. He’d long ago mastered the need to adjust his pace to hers. They progressed toward the hills rising ahead of them at a steady rate.
It was impossible, of course, to keep her mind from revisiting the events of the night. The feelings, the physical sensations. The intimacy, that indefinable heart-to-heart, body-to-body connection, the power of the moment, the bliss-filled aftermath.
Thanks to him, her eyes had been well and truly opened. She couldn’t believe she’d been willingly avoiding, and therefore missing the benefits of, the activity for all these years.
Then again, she seriously doubted any other man would have lived, or could now live, up to her expectations, not those she’d previously had, and even less those she now possessed.
The truth was, if she’d known how it would be, she would have waylaid Breckenridge years ago.
The notion made her smile, yet brought her thoughts circling back to them, to the inevitable. Despite the indescribable pleasure, she knew to her bones that her path hadn’t changed. She would never accept a socially coerced husband, no matter how incredible a lover he was. The events of the night might have further shaded her evolving view of him, and she could but hope that he’d revised his view of her, yet in terms of their separate future paths nothing had truly changed.
What had perhaps altered was their immediate future. Their next days.
She glanced at him. Quite aside from her losing her virginity, something between them had subtly shifted. Perhaps it was a change that always happened when a man and a woman were intimate. She couldn’t tell, but she did feel both closer to Breckenridge and a lot more easy in his company. On many levels.
What exactly that might lead to. . she considered the prospects as they marched on.
From the corner of his eye, Breckenridge watched her. Took in her serene, yet pensive, expression. He would give a great deal to know what she was thinking. Experienced as he was with women, he’d long ago learned not to try to predict how their minds might work; they inevitably surprised him, and he was sure she’d be no different in that respect.
She might even be worse, God help him.
Worse because he actually wanted — possibly needed — to know what she thought.
To his mind, seducing her had shored up his right to, once they reached the end of this journey, claim her hand. Even if she hadn’t yet realized it, being intimate had tipped the scales between them. Irreversibly.
It had changed other things, too. Just the thought was enough to stir one of those other things.
Fighting not to grip her hand tighter, he willed the possessiveness that after the night had only grown more powerful to subside. To lie quiet and not unnecessarily attract her attention.
She was a Cynster female; if she got a clear view of how he now regarded her, she would guess his plan and cease cooperating. Keeping his true feelings for her — feelings and emotions he found unsettlingly intense — concealed, at least from her, was therefore essential.
He walked along, steady and sure, a part of his awareness constantly scanning their surroundings, watching for any danger, while inside he grappled with the changes the night had wrought.
In opening the door and stepping over the threshold into intimacy, he hadn’t expected anything he hadn’t encountered a thousand times before. Instead. . all he could remember, all that was blazoned on his mind, was the shocking intensity, the unsettling vibrancy, of the moment. And the wave of emotions that had crashed through him in its wake.
Powerful emotions connected to sexual congress were an entirely novel experience for him.
Unsettling enough, but the not-so-subtle vulnerability that now ran beneath all else made him. . nervous. That was the only word that adequately described what he now felt.
Regardless, last night had set his path in stone; she was the lady he would have as his wife. . and if joining with her was an experience beyond anything he’d experienced with any of his previous many lovers, that might well be because in his mind he’d already decided she was his.
She was special; she was to be his wife. Understandable if he now saw her as more precious to him, and that the need to wed her now possessed a very sharp, very definite edge. Having her as his bride was now, to him, an absolute imperative; after last night, there was no other possible way forward.
They came to a section where the lane had been almost washed away by a gushing streamlet. Logs had been placed to one side of the lane to help those on foot cross the quagmire. He stepped up first, balancing, then holding Heather’s hand more tightly, sidestepped along. Holding up her skirts with her other hand, she shuffled after him. He seized the moment while she was concentrating on her feet to search her face, her expression.
Stepping off the logs onto firm ground once more, he steadied her, then assisted her off and onto the thick, damp grass. Looked again at her face, briefly met her eyes.
Then he turned, and, her hand still comfortably locked in one of his, they set out walking once more.
He couldn’t guess what, exactly, she was thinking, but that little smile that flirted about her lips, the still pleasured, pleasant, encouraging light he’d glimpsed when her eyes had met his. . all suggested that she wouldn’t be averse to a repeat of their previous night’s engagement.
Given he was committed to having her as his wife, and as he seriously doubted she’d yet changed her mind about the future direction of her life, then patently he had more ground to make up, more work to do on that front. Clearly it behooved him to do everything possible, to use every opportunity that came his way, to both change her stubborn mind and to tie her to him as securely as he could with passion, pleasure, and desire.
The prospect was intriguing, challenging, and, given their past history, held considerable appeal.
Considering his possible options, he walked steadily on.
In the fullness of the morning, the man calling himself McKinsey rode out of Dumfries and headed north up the Glasgow Road.
He was confident of finding the Cynster chit and her escort; within a few hours at most, he should have them in his sights. Once he did. .
He’d spent a good few hours of the night considering the best way to proceed. Given that he was increasingly sure that the man with her was no solicitor’s clerk, nor had ever been one, he’d decided that observation first would be the wisest course.
The road contained many long, open stretches; once he located them, watching them from a distance while they remained unaware of him would be easy enough.
Once he’d studied how they interacted and gained some notion of the nature of their connection, he would know what to do. It might be possible to use what had happened to his advantage; the situation might yet advance his cause, or be rejigged, redefined, to do so.
His mind awhirl with possibilities, he rode steadily on, the sun warming his back, the regular tattoo of
