Her betrothed started walking again, keeping her anchored beside him.“I mean no disrespect to your father, but I will check on my horse, all the same.”
When they got to the stable door, Friedrich freed her arm.“You must stay here.Otherwise, we will be together, out of the windows’ view.I can wait until you’re my wife, and then compromise you all I wish.”
He chuckled, and she wondered how she would bear it.“And allyouwish, as well, my Liselotte.”He stroked her cheek with his knuckle before disappearing into the shadowy interior.
Lise had to draw in a breath to keep from shuddering.A ridiculous reaction.She’d known Friedrich all her life.The thought of sharing a marital bed ought to be unremarkable, even comforting.Yet him touching her the way Jonathan had done ...
Dear God, shecouldn’tbear it!Even with all her clothes on, if he kissed her mouth, she would feel stripped and vulnerable.
As vulnerable as Jonathan trapped in the hayloft with no escape should Friedrich climb the ladder.Perhaps she should cry out and feign swooning, to draw him back to her.
“What’s this?”she heard Friedrich exclaim while she was still forming a plan.Immediately, her heart pounded like a galloping horse.What could she do?With a glance toward the house, she followed him into the stable.
He was in the tack room, next to where Jacob slept.And he was looking at Jonathan’s saddle.He lifted a saddle flap, examined the stitching, the wear on the leather, the narrow billets.
“Good tack,” he said mildly.
She couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat.Beside it, the mare’s well-padded pack-saddle had been cleaned and oiled.Luckily, Jonathan had taken his panniers, filled with instruments, up into the loft.
Jacob, popped out from one of the stalls, and Lise quickly shooed him back into it.By then, she’d found her voice.
“Do you like it?”she asked Friedrich, gesturing to the saddle.“It’s a gift.When Henrik returns, my father will give it to him.”
He fixed his dark blue gaze on her.“And the pack-saddle?”
“Of course.My brother is a soldier,” Lise said, as if that explained everything.But when she walked away, feigning disinterest, Friedrich remained behind her.Hazarding a single glance back, she watched him run his thumb over the stitching.She had to get him away from anything belonging to her Englishman.
Hurrying along the stalls, she found Friedrich’s familiar mount.“Your horse is here,” she called to him, standing before his gelding’s gate.“You should examine him now, and then we must return to my parents, in case they take our absence as rudeness.”
Slowly, he followed her, briefly looked at his horse, then peered into the next stall and the next.Jacob startled him by darting out and hurrying past before Friedrich could speak to him.
Good, Lise thought with relief.Jacob had understood her, realizing not answering was better than lying.And then Friedrich looked in at Jonathan’s gelding before sending her a querying glance.
She shrugged, as if all horses were the same to her.“Is there something wrong?”
“Your father keeps more horses than when I was last here.”
“Does he?”she asked, petulantly.Then sighed heavily, as if bored beyond belief.
He frowned.“Is this also a gift for Henrik?”
“Most likely,” she said, realizing if she mentioned it belonged to her father’s friend, that lie could take a bad turn later.If Jonathan were linked to the horses, then that would imply her father was not only acquainted with a spy but on very good terms.
“Come, we must return to the house," she insisted."I would hate for my father to think you disrespectful.”
Still, he looked into the next stall at the mare.He even rested his hand on the ladder as he hesitated.Lise didn’t breathe, knowing herself to be a shell of a woman whose heart had stopped for a second before restarting at double speed.
“Beautiful saddles, new horses.Your brother is a fortunate man.”
She merely shrugged, desperate to get him out of the stable.“I’m leaving,” she announced, sounding not at all like herself, in tone or manner.
“All right, Lise.All right,” Friedrich said finally.“I’m coming.”
Even when she had him away from the stable, she couldn’t relax and the day seemed endless.When Friedrich and her father secreted themselves in her father’s study, she knew the contract would be signed.Strangely, that didn’t bother her as much as her worry over Jonathan being discovered.
When it was dinner time at last, she still fretted, thinking of the mapmaker growing ever hungrier and thirstier.But there was nothing she could do.
Friedrich was treated like an honored guest at the table, just as Jonathan had been.The dinner was interminable due to her mother’s chatter about the wedding.The only thing that pierced Lise’s distracted anxiousness was when her father asked Friedrich questions about the politics of governance, the state of the war, and the KGL.
