“Inverness? Why?” he asked with surprise. He turned his eyes down to the parchment, seeing the sum they were offering for this woman had now doubled.
In the name of the wee man…her father really is desperate to find her again to offer such an astonishin’ sum.
“She knew someone here,” the soldier explained, just as Erskine’s eyes dropped to the sketch of the woman.
It was in black and white, recreated by a printing press, but a coldness washed over him at the sight of it. He knew that face. Though the figure had longer hair in this sketch, he knew the way the hair could curl around that chin, he knew the full lips, and he knew those eyes…he had stared at them often enough recently, wishing they belonged on a woman’s face rather than on a boy.
Erskine’s fingers clenched tightly around the parchment, nearly ripping it in two.
Billie actually is a woman.
Chapter Ten
“Have you seen her, sir? Around town perhaps?” The soldier’s words shook Erskine from his shock, though he was not recovering quickly.
I bloody well knew Billie was too feminine to be a boy!
Now he knew, and it all seemed so foolish. He wondered why he had ever believed Billie was a boy at all.
Because she was wearin’ a man’s clothes and purported to be a boy!
“Sir?” the soldier urged, his suspicions clearly raising.
“Sorry, I was just takin’ me time lookin’ at the sketch,” Erskine raised his head again. As the soldier went to take back the parchment, Erskine refused to let go.
“So, have you seen her, sir?”
He could say yes; he knew he could, but then he remembered the man he had met in the gambling halls in London. Earl Moore, the disgusting excuse for a gentleman who wished to make Billie—he meant, Laura—his wife.
Nay. I cannae let that happen.
His eyes slid of their own accord toward the woodland.
“Have you, sir?”
“Nay,” the reply came easily enough as Erskine returned his gaze to the soldier. The parchment was nearly torn from his hand again, but he held tightly to it. “May I keep this?” he asked, affecting a nonchalant manner. “Just in case I come across her in me travels.”
“Of course, good day to you, sir.” The soldier nodded his head and moved on, talking to someone else in the street.
Erskine’s eyes dropped down to the parchment in his hands, tracing the lines of Billie’s face in the sketch.
Nay wonder he, I mean, she, ran so quickly away.
He had been duped by her. Utterly deceived. For days she had ridden on the back of his saddle, tormenting him, making him believe she was a man. He scrunched the parchment in his hand, creasing the picture with anger.
Not only was he angry at her deception, but for another reason entirely. He had been so confused for weeks. He had suffered Dearg’s teasing about his connection to the boy, and after all of that, Erskine was actually drawn to a woman! There was relief mixed in there too, but the outweighing emotion was the anger.
He turned his eyes in the direction of the woodland, feeling the anger ripple through him with such ferocity that his hands practically shook. He looked around. Once he was sure the soldiers were not staring his way, he sprinted back toward the churchyard, vaulting the two walls just as Laura had done, and chased after her into the woodland.
* * *
Laura found a small clearing in the woodland. It was not big, but it was large enough for her to pace up and down, listening to her boots squelching in the wet moss. She had practically pulled her hat over her face now and was scrunching the material of her trousers with so much stress, she thought she might rip them.
She could not just walk back into the town, not now. Surely someone would recognize her. With her sketch being pushed under every nose the soldiers found, it was inevitable.
That’s when she heard it. Twigs and branches being trodden underfoot, fast and relentless. She lifted her hat a little and turned to peer through the Douglas firs, fearing a soldier had followed her, but it was no English soldier.
Erskine’s face appeared through the branches, and when he caught sight of her, he directed his run toward her. Laura backed up. Seeing such anger in his face made her suddenly desperate to be away.
