With a grudging thank-you to her horse-loving parents, Magda hauled herself onto his back. She might kill herself trying this, she thought, but it beat anything that Campbell had in store for her.
The horse pranced, his muscles coiled, tense with ready energy. “Oh, yeah,” Magda purred, remembering what it was like to ride a horse of this caliber.
She wove the reins lightly around her fingers, and he responded with a nervous side step, his mouth sensitive to her every move. A slight tensing of her thighs and he was off like a shot. Magda had to swallow her cry of joy, feeling this animal beneath her, imagining her freedom just over the fence.
She kicked him into a gallop, and he began to hesitate at the last moment, the fence higher than it had seemed from the far end of the pasture. Magda pulled her knees as high as she could, gripping tightly with her legs. She girded herself; without stirrups to stand from, the horse’s leap over the fence would slam her into the hard ridge of his withers.
She loosened the reins to give the horse as much of his head as he’d need to clear the fence. Tangling her fingers high and tight into his mane, Magda shrieked, “Heeya!” and with one last crush of her knees into his sides, they flew over the fence, and galloped away.
“Nay, nay, I’d ken the Marquis of Montrose anywhere,” the man said. He walked next to James, his wife bobbing her head at his side.
“I’m not the marquis,” James said evenly.
James, Rollo, and Sibbald had been on the road for ten days, and the going had gotten increasingly dangerous. Crossing the southern border into Scotland brought them onto roads littered with broken men and Covenanter patrols. James refused to trade his horse for an animal more suited to his disguise, and they’d been getting more skeptical looks the farther north they rode. So much so that James was considering traveling by night instead, at least until they reached the safer Highland territory.
“But whyever are you dressed so, m’lord?” The villager looked back and forth between the well-dressed men and James, clothed as a groom in threadbare trews and bonnet, riding ten paces behind Rollo and Sibbald.
“I’m not the marquis, good man.” His voice was steady and slow. “Although, I am certain the marquis would be touched by your loyalty.” James nodded sagely to the villager, allowing himself a small smile at the man’s joy at this last bit of information.
Giving a wink to the man’s wife, James kicked his horse into a trot to catch up to his companions. His smile broadened to hear the woman’s gasp behind him, scandalized by the familiar gesture.
“We approach Dumfries,” Sibbald said. “A cup of ale and a proper bed at the Globe Inn has much to recommend it.”
“And sleep the night in a Covenanting burgh?” Rollo asked.
“Aye,” James jested, “you could buy your bed with that king’s commission sewn into your saddle, and awaken to the sight of some of those red-coated Parliament soldiers.”
“We press on then,” Sibbald grumbled. “And easy it will be for you, lad. You’ve a younger arse than I.”
“Don’t fear, old man, if your arse can hold you just an hour or so longer, I know of a hunter’s bothy on Maxwell land. I can’t promise ale, but we’ll spend the night dry at least.”
A small farmhouse appeared to their left, the shutters slamming closed at their passing. James and Rollo exchanged a silent look.
“I’d push as far as we can every day now,” James added. “It grieves me to see our country torn so.”
“Is Clan Maxwell Royalist or Covenanter?” Rollo asked.
“Let’s hope we’ll not have the opportunity to ask, aye?” James replied, and spurred his horse into an easy canter.
Chapter 20
She’d stopped just once. Sweat had slicked her horse the color of burnt sienna, foamy ropes of saliva hung from the corners of his mouth, and Magda worried she would lame the animal. But she hadn’t rested fifteen minutes before she heard the distant rumble of hooves, and she hopped back on, ignoring the agony between her legs and the streak of blood on the saddle blanket.
Still triumphing after landing the initial jump out of the paddock, she hadn’t been completely prepared for the low stone wall surrounding Campbell lands. Castle Gloom sat higher than she’d realized, the ground sloping sharply down outside the castle perimeter. Her horse had landed the jump over the outer wall solidly, but Magda had slammed down hard onto his back with the unexpected shock of a missed step. She’d felt the dampness a moment later, though she’d guessed instantly that her pubic bone had sliced through her skin with the impact.
“Shit!” she hissed, spotting the water as she emerged from the trees, and she slammed sloppy kicks into the animal’s sides. She heard shouts now, distant but closing in.
Panic squeezed Magda’s chest. Her body trembled violently, as all rational thought was subsumed by primitive terror.
A large lake blocked her way. The choppy surface was a tempest of deep blues and blacks under the sunless sky. She tugged her reins, regretful of the pain she knew she was inflicting, but she had to pull her horse’s head away from the shore. She bar-raged her horse with kicks now, wringing every last bit of energy out of him, hoping to ride around the lake.
She was being hunted, tracked easily from Campbell lands. Magda realized she’d galloped off, unthinking, leaving deep tracks across soft glens and scraping hard lines down gravelly hills. The trail she’d left must have been nothing short of an engraved map to her current location.
Horror dawned on her that there was no way to outrun the men who hunted her. She was trapped. It was impossible to return the way she came— even now she imagined she heard the rustling of riders through trees—and yet the lake filled the horizon, no visible curve to indicate land on the other side, simply water as far as she could see.
Magda pulled her horse to a halt, her heart thundering in her chest. She instinctively patted the animal on the neck, an apology for brutalizing him, and for the bruising she’d given his mouth with all of her tugging.
She needed to gather her wits. She dared not think what would happen if she were captured. Campbell would not forgive a second escape attempt. Magda knew she couldn’t outrun these men, but if she’d only get ahold of herself, she might be able to outthink them.
