Ceana regarded him for a bit. It was obvious that she thought to herself that he bluffed. That look only challenged Torcall even more, to take her riding with him up the hills. He knew she would not have ridden those parts, for she was a woman, and it would have been dangerous for her to get lost or wounded.
“I shall take ye up on yer offer,” she decided. She turned to her little friends, told them goodbyes, and gave hugs before allowing Torcall to help her onto his horse. She settled.
“Ye should hold on tight to me if ye wish to be safe,” he told her, but she only shrugged. She still thought him a bluff.
“Do ye ride swiftly?” He asked her.
“I bet I ride faster than ye do,” she replied him with a smile that said more than her words had intended. She was flirting with him again, he decided. It wasn’t a thing he wished her to stop, for he liked it even.
“Hold on tight,” he told her again before he kicked at his horse.
Ceana yelped the moment the horse took off, and they were barely out of the crowded market before she knew she had been wrong. The gentle morning breeze rushed at her, for they had pestered it. Her hands wrapped around Torcall to steady herself lest she felt off the horse. She held him so tightly that she feared he would complain, but he did not, for he must have also known that she held on for her dear life.
Beneath her fingers, she could feel his raising heart even though his body barely showed it. He was broad, so broad that she realized he could easily have made her disappear if he had hugged her, or worse, he could have crushed her if he was on top of her. She scolded herself for such thoughts and tried not to focus on the fact that his hard barrel chest was beneath her fingers.
Soon, they were out of the populated areas, and they burst out into the fields. There were only fields of green grasses, trees flagging them and a hill ahead of them for miles. The air was different, and the morning light seemed only truly beautiful there.
Torcall knew she would love the view as he had always done when he had come riding out there to clear his head. It was the first time he had come riding with someone. There was a fallen tree just ahead of them, and Torcall pulled his horse in that direction.
“Nay, nay!” She screamed and clutched onto him tighter. He felt her face press against his back as she hid her eyes and awaited their demise. Torcall kicked faster at his horse, willing the stead to gallop faster as they approached the log, and before they reached it, it leaped in the air.
The feeling of weightlessness and flight made him close his eyes to relish everything about him, the feel of the hands of a beautiful woman wrapped around him, her eyes closed and pressed against his back in a gesture that made her vulnerable to him at that moment, and flight. They were both off the ground together until they landed again.
Torcall reined his horse so he and Ceana could catch their breaths.
“Ye said somethin’ about ridin’,” he teased her.
She did not raise her head immediately, and neither did she let go of him until she could breathe again. When she did, she slapped his back.
“Did ye wish to kill me?” She asked him with a frown on her face.
“Nay, it was to make ye smile,” he replied her. And at that moment, her face brightened up in a smile and seeing that he could not see it, not well enough, she leaned in and hugged him tightly again.
“It did make me smile.” Torcall’s heart warmed to her words. “Ye should take me home now, but slower,” she told him.
Torcall nodded, and they turned back to the town. As they rode, Torcall thought to ask her a question he had wanted to since he had left the house that morning, but he feared she would say no.
“Say it,” she suddenly said to him.
“Say what?”
“The thin’ that burdens yer chest. I can feel it in me hands,” she told him.
“Would ye come to a play with me tomorrow?” He asked her.
“Aye,” she answered.
Torcall brought her home, but she had him wait at a distance as she promised to go in and ask her mother’s permission before returning to give him a signal. Torcall waited by a tree, watching her house for her. He hoped that her mother would let her come with him, as he wanted to see her again, and oddly, he found that he wanted to be as close to her as he had been for most of the morning.
He looked up when he heard a whistle. Ceana was in front of her house waving a white piece of clothing. Her mother had agreed. Their date was set. With a smile on his face, he waved back at her and rode away.
I shall see her again.It was the only good thing in his life at that moment.
Chapter Seven
From noon till the morning of the day after, Torcall could not stop thinking about Ceana. She was as beautiful as she was graceful. She was the bravest woman he had ever seen. Living amongst men of war, men who seemed to have done everything there was to do in life, he had heard stories of women on fast horses, and they were never pretty, even though the men laughed.
“Oh! If I could just get me a lass who could ride a horse the way I ride it, oh- what joy it would be,” one of the older men had sung on one of the many nights that they sat about fire and drank liquor.
