“We are going to have to abandon the carriage. The snow is too high, the horses cannae pull the weight of the carriage through the snow.”
“But the horses?”
“Paterson and Ewen are taking the harnesses off now. We will have to lead the horses. Paterson had already turned the carriage down a drive that he thinks leads to a house. We will hope that we’ll find someplace warm soon. We will have to leave all the luggage, but ye may bring yer little reticule.”
“Yes,” she said.
Arabella already felt very cold within the confines of the carriage. Alasdair must have sensed that because he reached out and took from her neck the brown scarf. He then rewrapped it around her so that it covered her entire lower face and went up over her bonnet. He made a snug knot.
“Hold fast to my hand,” he said. “’Tis hard to see.”
And he opened the carriage door and went out and then turned and handed her down. She stepped out into the wind and snow.
The drift she was in was up over her knees. Her hand in his, they picked their way to the front of the carriage. Paterson and Ewen had almost finished unharnessing the four horses.
Alasdair spoke to Paterson and once the horses were unharnessed, they started moving forward.
She had not known that walking could be so difficult. The snow clung to her dress so even as she lifted each leg as high as she could to make forward movement, she was pulled down. Only half-a-dozen steps and she was tired.
And so very cold, of course. The wind was cutting and fierce.
But she was not wet. The insulation provided by her thick wool stockings kept the snow that clung there from melting with her body heat. The wetness would come afterward, when they got somewhere warm.
It was hard to believe that there might be somewhere in the world that was warm.
Everything was very white. The air seemed solid at times, there was so much snow in it. She could not see where they were going but that did not bother her as much as it should have. She only had the energy to focus on each individual step. She held her reticule in one hand and kept her other hand in Alasdair’s and his other hand was on the bridle of one of the horses. She knew Paterson and Ewen—each holding a horse’s bridle with one hand and sharing the bridle of the lead horse between them—were ahead of them because sometimes she managed to step into Ewen’s leg holes in the snow and that helped her.
Alasdair turned to her every third step or so. She assumed he was checking on her, making sure she was all right. At first, she had tried to smile at him to reassure him, but then she realized he couldn’t see her smile through the scarf. So she just tried to keep up with him and not tug at his arm.
Her legs were very, very tired.
Alasdair cursed his stupidity.
Why had he not thought of this earlier? He stopped walking forward and took a step toward Arabella and let go of her hand. Still holding the reins attached to the bridle, he put his arms around her waist and picked her up. He put his mouth to the side of her head, where he thought her ear might be, under the scarf and the bonnet.
“I’m going to put ye on the horse!” he shouted.
She nodded.
And then he lifted and she reached her arms up and he boosted and she was astride, the top half of her body lying flat on the horse’s back, her free arm clutching the horse’s flanks.
The horse did not seem bothered.
Alisdair put his hand on her stockinged calf then, through her dress. With no saddle, with her so exhausted already, he must make sure she did not fall from the horse.
And was it so very wrong of him to take note of the fact that his hold on her leg constituted new territory?
He stepped forward and the horse stepped forward with him.
After what seemed to be hours but might have only been an hour, he saw a light ahead. And he could see that Ewen MacEwen and Paterson—or at least he assumed it was they—and the three horses were stopped. He came up behind them and recognized that they were at a lodge or a gatehouse of some kind and there was another man with a lantern, taking the bridle of one of the horses and leading Paterson and the other two horses away. Ewen, relieved of his horse, pushed his way to Alasdair.
“Ye are to take Miss Lovelock into the lodge, Doctor! We will get the horses to the stable!”
“Where are we?”
“’Tis the house of a lord!”
Ewen put his hand out and Alasdair nodded and handed him the reins of the horse he had been leading. He turned now to the flank of the horse and put his hands under Arabella’s arms and slid her off. Her eyes were open above the scarf and looking at him and she linked her arms around his neck and he was able to get one arm under her knees and the other under her back. He began trudging through the snow toward the lit windows he could see in front of them.
