“I could look for something,” she offered helpfully. “There might be nuts left, or early greens—”
“Nae.” The denial came swiftly, sharp enough that he softened it at once. “Nae,” he repeated, more evenly. “I want ye where I ken exactly where ye are. These slopes are nae place for foraging, and I’ll nae have ye wandering when I canna see ye. I dinna want us both outside, separated.”
Her mouth opened as though to argue, but he continued before she could. “I can move faster alone. Quieter. And I’ll be watching as I go—for tracks, for sign of pursuit. I dinna expect them this high, but I’ll nae assume anything where Englishmen are concerned.”
He glanced toward the cave mouth, where darkness had fully claimed the mountainside. “Ye’ll be safer here. Warm. Out of sight.”
The firmness in his voice left little room for debate—not command, but certainty born of long habit. He reached for the pack, already thinking ahead, already measuring distance and light and time.
“I’ll nae be long,” he added, though he did not promise more than he could give. “Get settled. Stay back past the bend,” he said quietly. “Keep to the wider chamber. If ye hear anything—anything at all—ye scream first, loud as ye can, and head further, toward that other exit.
Elena nodded. “I will.”
He studied her a moment longer, assuring she was all right with this arrangement. She stood there, wrapped in in his plaid, hair tumbling around her shoulders, eyes bright with fatigue and something else he couldn’t fathom. She appeared more weary than alarmed.
Hunting while on the march, on campaign, was as natural to him as supping at home at Blackwood, but required more patience than thought.
Habit carried him forward—placing his feet, reading the ground, looking for telltale critter signs. But this was mechanical, this business, so that his mind wandered where it had no business straying.
Back to that moment when Elena had stared so profoundly at his naked chest.
Unable to help himself, he found himself circling back, again and again, to the moment near the burn when Elena had regarded him, the rawness of it still vivid as if it were but moments ago. He had known the gaze of women, in every permutation: a fleeting glance over a market stall, a calculated smile just shy of a dare, the brazen appraisal that sometimes made men fools. But this morning, as he’d shed his bloody tunic, Elena had stared so intently, so nakedly, that the gesture stripped him bare in a way no amount of undressing ever could.
He might take it all the way to his grave, the memory of that first startled intake of breath as she beheld the map of old wounds and muscle stretched tight across his chest. There had been no attempt at decorum, no flicker of dissembling; only theunguarded, reverent scrutiny of a girl who had possibly never before seen a man so up close and personal.
He remembered clearly that her cheeks had turned a shade that put fire’s embers to shame. He could almost feel her gaze on his skin even now. And yet, what unsettled him most was the innocence of it.
The memory tightened something low and dangerous in him. Not pride—he had never been given to that—but awareness. Sharp and sudden and unwelcome. It had taken every scrap of discipline he possessed not to turn then, not to close the distance she herself had not known she’d crossed with only her gaze, not to reach for her.
Jacob moved higher along the slope, scanning for signs of small prey, his jaw clenching though the ground here seemed promising.
Because wanting her—noticingher—was a dangerous indulgence. One he could not afford. Not with her depending on him. Not with pursuit still a possibility, however faint.
Jesu, that was the last bluidy thing this adventure needed!
The slope below the cave was broken with stone and brush—good ground for small game. Jacob moved quietly, watching for the twitch of ears, the sudden stillness that betrayed a rabbit pressed low against the earth. With only his dagger at his belt, he kept close to the rock, favoring patience over distance, and still, the hunt took longer than expected.
He finally find prey, caught it near a stand of scrub pine, quick and clean, the work done before the animal could cry out. It wasn’t enough, but would have to do.
THE CAVE GREW VERYquiet after Jacob left.
Elena remained where he had placed her, just past the bend where the space widened and the ceiling lifted enough that shecould stand without stooping. The darkness settled gradually, not all at once—first the mouth of the cave dimming to a dull gray, then the western cleft losing its last trace of twilight, until the stone around her seemed to drink what little light remained. She did not move deeper, nor did she venture closer to either opening. He had been clear, and she trusted him.
Still, the waiting unsettled her.
She told herself he would not have gone far. That he knew the mountain, that he would not risk leaving her longer than necessary. And yet the silence pressed in, made larger by the absence of his presence. Every small sound—the faint scuff of the horse shifting her weight, the distant sigh of wind moving along the rock face—took on shape and meaning in the dark.
Elena burrowed deeper into Jacob’s plaid and sat, knees pulled in, back to the stone. The cave smelled of earth and mineral damp, clean but unfamiliar. She focused on steadying her breath, on listening without letting her imagination wander too far ahead of reason. He would return, nothing bad would happen to him out there. Certainly, if he came upon someone with ill-intent, she’d clearly been shown that Jacob knew how to handle himself.
Time stretched, long enough that she began to chew her nails, her mother not here to softly push her hand away from her mouth.
Elena did not know how long she waited there in the dark, wrapped in Jacob’s plaid, time measured not by the light of the sun but by the slow, methodical dripping of condensation from the cave’s ceiling somewhere beyond her line of sight. It wasn’t long before her mind began to wander, at first in tight, logical circles: If Jacob did not return, she would simply wait until daybreak, use the horse, and move cautiously, continuing south before she headed west.
The sharp clatter of what sounded like a pebble falling to the ground came from somewhere near the cave’s mouth. Her heart lunged. She stood and pressed her back against the stone wall, straining to listen. At first, she heard nothing save a silence so thick she wondered if she had imagined the sound. Then, the tiniest suggestion of movement—not the wind, not the horse, but something two-footed and cautious, a measured shifting of weight on loose gravel. Her breath caught and she counted the seconds. Then, as if in a dream, she heard it again, closer this time: a slow scrape, a deliberate tread. The cave’s acoustics distorted the direction, so that she could not tell whether the sound came from the lower entrance or the narrow western cleft. Her fear ran wild, conjuring every possible horror, including the hard, cold hands of an Englishman come to drag her away.
The steps paused. A heartbeat, two, three. Elena pressed herself further into the darkness, sidling along the wall deeper into the pitch-black cave, wishing she could disappear entirely.
Then, the sound resumed, this time more purposeful. The scrape of a boot, a small grunt as someone ducked beneath the low ceiling, and—oh God—an unmistakable human cough. Jacob. Relief rushed through her so quickly that she nearly collapsed. She did not trust it, not at first, and waited as the footsteps approached, steady and unhurried now, until at last she made out the silhouette of a man—taller than any of the Englishmen who had abducted her, she was certain, moving casually, not malevolently.
