Page 18 of The Pirate's Stolen Bride
Uncle Monty would be staying with the viscount. It would be an easy thing for Rémy to set her on the path once they got close. He could continue on his way to wherever his companions had stashed theSpectre,and forget all about her.
“How much farther is it?” she panted, which led straight into a hacking cough. Walking for miles through the rainy Cornish countryside couldn’t possibly be helping her fever.
“Ten miles or so.” He trudged onward through the field without meeting her eye. “Give or take.”
“Is that counting the elevation of the hills?” she asked acerbically.
“You’re the one who insisted on being here, chérie,” he said.
A wry smile touched her lips at the memory. “I didn’t think I was brave enough to leap off a roof.”
Or climb a ladder into a ship. Or resist being kidnapped by a pirate, for that matter. Not that she had resisted very hard, in retrospect. Rémy hadn’t exactly held a pistol to her temple.
“Why did you follow me?” he asked conversationally. Whether this was an improvement upon the strained silence that had marked the first hour of their trek, Harriet wasn’t sure. Another coughing fit prevented her from replying immediately.
“I told you. I didn’t want to be abandoned at a roadside inn with strangers.”
“You would have been safer to stay. More comfortable, too, than trudging through the hilly Cornish countryside.”
“I’d rather be with you than abandoned.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her over his shoulder. “That is twice you said that word.”
“Which word?”
“Abandon.”
The cold and fatigue were getting to her. “My own mother barely acknowledges my existence. If not for Uncle Monty, she might have left me at an orphanage. I’m a living reminder of her mistakes. I suppose that’s taken a toll upon my psyche.”
“Apart from this uncle of yours, your entire family abandoned you. A little girl.”
“I’m not little anymore.”
“No. Definitely not. But you were when every adult who should have protected you failed to do more than the bare minimum.”
Harriet peered at him in consternation. The pirate studiously ignored her. “Your English is excellent, when you drop the act,” she said, changing the subject.
“It is no act, chérie. I am French through and through.”
Prideful man. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “You could pass as an Englishman if you tried.”
“Why would I want to feign being English?” he said crossly.
“I don’t know. To escape capture, for instance.”
“I do not fear being captured. Fear is for fools. It clouds one’s thinking. I am a man of action. I see the path forward and I take it.” He gestured down the road and avoided her eye.
“What if that path closes?”
“Then I forge a new path.”
Forge a new path.What a novel concept. She had been letting others chart the course of her life until the moment he snatched her away from everything she knew. Yet she’d run away from the chance she’d been given to return to her old life. She was forging a new path, even if she couldn’t see where it was headed other than the next puddle in this potholed pathway.
The next several minutes required climbing a steep hill. She gathered her wet skirts and ignored the fire in her lungs. At the top, Rémy halted abruptly.
“There is a shelter up ahead.” He pointed at what looked like an abandoned cottage. “Let’s get out of the weather for a while?”
She nodded. They slammed into the shack and leaned with their backs against the door as if pursuers were about to break it down. Her stomach grumbled. “I wish we had something to eat.”
