Page 54 of Keeping Kate
Chapter 15
“Blast it to hell and back,” Alec ground out, turning around in the inn-yard in the gray light. Lacking a horse, he had little chance of catching a Highland girl running over terrain that was familiar to her. On foot, he would find it slow going in the rugged hills.
Nor did he know which direction she had taken. He glanced all around as a cool wind ruffled his hair, lifted his jacket. He could see no one in the moors and hills beyond. She was gone, but where?
The little wild cat had enchanted him and left him in his sleep again. But he was determined to catch her, determined to never be fooled again. The fever of passion and release in each other’s arms had been intimate and astonishing, but apparently had not changed her mind about honoring her promise to remain in his custody.
He spun on his heel and went to stables to rouse the groom, offering him three times the usual fee to saddle a horse quickly. Within minutes, Alec sat a good bay mare and turned her head to the north. That direction, at least, made the most sense.
And where the hell, he thought then, was Jack? Truly, he hoped the fellow had not come to harm. Now he had two to worry about, possibly in two opposite directions.
On the cobbled road, he paused now and then, hearing the wind, a burble of water, birdsong. Scanning the hills in the lifting darkness, he assessed which way to go. The girl would not keep to the road, he was certain. She was from a staunch Jacobite clan—nor did he know which one. She had been careful not to reveal her surname.
Then he felt sure she would go west, even northwest, into the true Highlands. He guided the horse north and westward, away from the road. In the matter of Katie Hell, his heart seemed to know before his head sorted it out.
As the pale and silvery dawn rose over the hills, Alec could see the landscape more clearly: turf and rock, racing burns, vast blue-gray mountains far off. He had ridden only a few miles over the moorland when he saw a small figure climbing a slope.
She was a distant blur of golden hair and a red skirt. With a sigh of relief more than triumph, he cantered the horse over the moorland toward the hills beyond.
Halting the horse at the foot of the hill, seeing her reach the crest above, he tied the horse’s reins to a tree and took the slope with a long-legged stride.
She walked steadily up the incline, pausing, her skirts billowing, but she had not so far looked downward in his direction. The ride had conserved his energy, and he had spent his youth in the Highlands. He knew how to pace himself on a hill, as she did.
Closer now, he picked his way along a slope rough with stones and tangled heather and gorse. Then Kate glanced back and saw him. Now she ran, hair fanning out like sunrise, her red dress a beacon at the top of the hill. Making up the distance with longer, stronger legs, Alec closed the distance between them.
“Kate!” Reaching her, he took her arm, turning her toward him. She jerked impatiently, but stumbled, and Alec went down to one knee in the dry heather with her. He caught her and rolled, hoping to save her from a bruising fall. “Kate—”
“No!” She spun away, crawling out of his grip on hands and knees. He snatched her by the skirt, ankle, waist, wherever he could find a hold, to pull her back.
She writhed like a kelpie, slippery and clever in his grip, and he lurched with her. An elbow to his stomach made him grunt, but he managed to pin her to the ground, bracing his knees beside her hips. She bucked under him.
“Settle down, lass,” he said breathlessly, pinning her arms.
She twisted. “Get off me!”
”Ease up. I will not hurt you.” He dropped his weight on his hands, pressed them to the earth beside her shoulders, keeping her trapped under him. “You have a legendary charm, my darling, but you and I have other matters to discuss just now,” he bit out.
“Beast!” She glared up at him, breath and bosom heaving, and snarled something in Gaelic—he knew it was no compliment—as she freed an arm and struck upward. Alec grabbed her wrist.
“Wherever did you learn such manners,” he murmured. He got to his feet, hauling her up with him. “Come with me back to the inn.”
“The inn!”
“I need to pay the bill. And I want to decent night’s sleep.”
“I will not go anywhere with you.” She brushed at her skirts.
“Nor do I feel a great whim to chase spoiled young lassies over the hills in the middle of the night.” He pulled her along, and when she stumbled, he braced her.
“It is dawn,” she said. “And I want to go home. Let me be.”
“Tell me where home is and we can both go. I could question your kinsmen.”
“We will not be troubling them with government business.”
He huffed. “Home must be a grand place,” he said as she tramped beside him, her arm rigid in his grasp. “You seem in a fever to get there.”
“It is a good place. But I will not tell you where to find it.”
