“That was smart, but I'm sorry you were robbed.”
“Here I thought I was doing so well for traveling alone, that I was prepared to handle whatever may come.”
“No one can adequately prepare for being kidnapped by highwaymen. You should have been protected by the coachman and the groom.”
She suddenly stopped and covered her face.
“What did I say wrong?” he asked with remorse.
She shook her head and sniffed, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. “The groom—he was…” She took a shaky breath. “They shot him, and they knocked the coachman unconscious.”
“I'm sorry you had to see that,” he said.
“When I return home, I'll never do something this stupid again.”
He took her hand in his. “I promise I will get you home.”
She gave him half smile. “Promise me you'll live and don't worry about getting me home. I can do it on my own. You’ve done enough.”
He didn't feel the same, but he let the matter drop. “So what do we do now?” he asked.
“We need to find a village. I don't know how, but we must leave this cottage. You need a doctor. I wasn't even sure you'd wake up this morning.”
“I wasn't either,” he quipped.
“Don't make light of this.”
“I'm sorry,” he said. “Help me sit up, and we’ll get on our way. We need all the daylight we can. We won’t be moving fast.”
“Is it too much to hope we’re merely on the outskirts of a prosperous village with a stage and doctor and preferably one of my relatives who can escort us back to London?”
“Of course not. But it is too much to hope that I can make this journey in any sort of haste,” he admitted grudgingly.
“I know that. We will go as slow as you need to.”
He hated that he couldn't protect her. That he needed her to help him just to walk. This time, he tried to push himself to a sitting position under his own strength. While his head felt like a solid brick, and his brain rattled around inside his skull, he did manage to sit up with only minimal throbbing as long as he didn't move too quickly. He dropped his feet to the floor and heaved forward off the bed, but then his balance betrayed him and he stumbled to the door, catching himself and nearly taking it out with him. She squeaked and jumped to her feet, setting her hands on his shoulders as if she could take on all his weight.
“You have to be careful,” she said, ducking under his arm and wrapping one around him. He found his balance once more, but he had to lean on her, which was not entirely unpleasant. He looked down at her, wishing this blasted helmet to Hades. Perhaps he was a lord with a gentlemen's education if he could recall the names of Greek gods. Was she his Persephone?
She maneuvered him to the chair, and he sat while she tucked away the implements she’d used and tidied the cot. She hung the pitcher on the wall and then they were ready to leave.
Chapter 11
It was only a quarter-mile trudge before they came across another road. By the looks of it, not a well-used one, but it led them to two fields. In the distance, she saw tenants working. She tried to wave to them, but they did not see or hear her. They had to be close to some form of civilization, so they kept walking.
Willa grew quite accustomed to having her side pressed to a man. There was something rather comfortable about Lord Knightly, the way his arm fit around her and hers around him. Their steps seemed to create their own rhythm together. A steady pace. Not swift, but not dragging, either.
She filled the silence, not expecting him to reply much when talking took such effort for him, but he nodded or grunted an answer when it was needed. But even the silences that stretched between them were not awkward and she would be mad to admit it, but… She was enjoying it. His company and the moment.
Even though she could feel a blister forming on her heel, and her feet might scream profanities when she next removed her boots. She never could have dreamed she might find herself on an empty lane with a man with a knight’s helmet stuck to his head.
She would giggle at such a sorry story and deem it written for entertainment. Something in a silly romance novel that she might catch Bernie reading, but here she was, tucked tightly under his arm, feeling his every breath against hers, and quite comfortable.
Who was he? She knew he was not from the stagecoach. She would've been hard-pressed to ignore a man of his size and vitality. Even encumbered by his wound, he still radiated strength, and she could feel it in him as he moved, the muscles shifting under her hand beneath the layers of his coat, waistcoat, and shirt.
He was most assuredly a gentleman. One of means, given the size of the purse in his coat. He would not have needed to travel by stage, he would've had a private carriage or ridden. Perhaps that's how he came upon her stagecoach? Maybe he'd seen the bandits take her and came to her rescue?
“I think you were riding a horse,” she blurted.
