At the same time another man did.
*
Oh, thank goodness!Preston! She knew he’d be here in the area. Whenever they had squabbled in the past, they would meet here the next day. He’d come. He did care. She was about to call out to him when she sawhim. Investigator Pendridge. Her watchdog. He’d tracked her down. No. No, she hadn’t left a trail. How did he know which direction to take from the mill? Someone must have told him! When he saw Preston, he rode toward him slowly, like a dark wolf on the prowl. He looked at her and cocked his brow ever so slightly.
What was that supposed to mean? Was he judging Preston on his stature? His appearance? She wasn’t sure, for an instant later his expression went blank and detached.
Preston pulled his pistol from his belt and pointed it at Pendridge. “Whoever you are, if you want to see another sunset, you better kick that horse and get running.”
“Is this how you greet everyone you come across on the road?” the detective asked calmly, but she knew Preston’s freedom depended on his answer.
“Old friend,” Charlotte interrupted and smiled at Preston before he opened his mouth. “This is Investigator Pendridge. He is from York and is here under my father’s order.”
Preston’s tirade came to a halt. He cast her an angry glare instead. “Why have you led him here?”
“He followed me,” she defended, tired of having to do so.
He rolled his eyes and sighed toward heaven as if she were the biggest fool ever to be born.
“What do you want?” Preston turned back to the investigator.
“Her.”
Charlotte didn’t know why his claim, spoken somewhere on a deep murmur and a throaty command, went straight through to her bones, her veins, her blood. But she wanted to obey. She almost went to him.
“Well, you cannot have her,” Preston defended, pointing his pistol, “and if you put your hands to her, I will—”
A shot rang out. It came from a pistol the investigator held, produced from someplace behind his back. He shot Preston! Preston! She leaped from her saddle and ran to him. He was alive. Shot in the leg!
“Why did you shoot him?” she demanded, reaching Preston.
“I don’t like being threatened, especially when there’s a gun being waved in my face.”
“He shot me, Charlotte!” Preston looked down at his bloody leg and appeared a bit queasy. He looked up and glared at Pendridge. “I’m going to have your head for this, you peasant!”
“Do you really want to threaten me again?” the investigator asked, riding up to Preston’s horse and snatching Preston’s pistol from his hand. “Next time I shoot, it won’t be your leg.”
“Come, Preston, let me take you home.” Charlotte hurried back to her horse, but the investigator’s fingers closing around her wrist stopped her.
“You’re coming with me, Miss Whimsey.”
“Get your hand off me!” She tried to yank her wrist away, to no avail. “You have no right!”
“I have every right. Your father paid me.”
When she cursed her father, he wanted to let her go. He wasn’t sure he wanted to work for a guy who paid a stranger, a potentially crazy stranger to watch his daughter. A guy whose daughter hated him enough to curse him.
He expected her to slap him or claw at his eyes. But she did neither. “Detective, I have to help Preston. You must let me go.”
“He can ride by himself.”
She shook her head. “I will not leave him.”
“Charlotte, do not let him talk you out of staying by my side,” Preston cried from his horse. “I feel faint!”
“I must care for him. Tell my father you never found me. Please.”
She wasn’t trying to sway him with tear-filled eyes. She didn’t think there was any way of getting away from him other than perhaps appealing to his kinder, gentler side. If he had one.
