After the third time around without any sign of a sheep they paused, and the men bent their heads over the map. Juliana stayed a little apart, half-listening to the four of them argue about which direction to take next when a faint noise caught her attention.
They’d stopped near the edge of a small wood, and the noise seemed to be coming from the trees. She stilled, listening, and after a moment she heard it again.
It sounded like…bleating.
Juliana straightened in the saddle, her ears pricked. Yes! It was definitely bleating, but she couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from.
“Did you hear that?” She brought her horse closer to the men, but they were gathered in a tight circle, and they didn’t shift to make space for her. “I heard a sheep or a lamb bleating!”
No one paid her the least bit of attention.
“We’ve already been ’round the south edge three times.” Callum tapped a finger against the map. “They wouldn’t ’a come all this way.”
Logan was shaking his head. “They have before. I say we circle back one more time.”
Juliana raised her voice. “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but I’m quite certain I heard—”
“I say we ’ead back toward the farm.” Robertson scratched his beard, frowning. “They don’t usually wander so far.”
“For pity’s sake, will you listen to me? I tell you, there’s a bleating sheep not five yards from—”
“If they were that close to the farm, they’d ’ave made their way back by now,” Callum insisted.
Juliana looked from one man to the next, but none of them spared her a glance. “Oh, bother this.” She wheeled her horse around and headed in the direction from which she thought the sound had come.
No one tried to stop her, and no one asked where she was going.
By the time they remembered her presence and looked up to find her, she was gone.
Chapter Nine
It was some time before Logan realized Lady Juliana had disappeared.
He and the Robertson brothers had been deep in discussion about which direction their search should take when Callum Robertson, who’d dismounted and wandered off to take care of his personal business, sauntered out of the wood, looked around, and asked, “What’s happened to yer wee English lass, Blair?”
“Nothing’s happened to her. She’s right…”
But she wasn’t right there. Lady Juliana had been a few paces behind him, prattling some nonsense about bleating lambs, but she and her horse had vanished. Logan glanced around, shading his eyes from the sun. There was no sign of either of them.
Lady Juliana was gone.
Now he’d noticed her absence, he suddenly became aware at least ten minutes had passed since she’d ceased blathering in his ear. He peered around again, uneasiness tightening his stomach.
There was no telling how much trouble Lady Juliana could get into in ten short minutes. Her father had lost track of her for only a few weeks, and she’d made it all the way to Scotland.
“She’s wee, but she’s hearty.” Brice, the eldest of the Robertson brothers, nodded at Logan. “She’s that look about ’er like a brisk wind could blow ’er off ’er horse, but she’s sturdy like. Wee, but stronger than she looks.”
This was high praise indeed coming from Brice Robertson, but Logan wasn’t interested in Brice’s philosophical musings about women. “She may be small, but she’s not small enough to disappear. Come on, then. She can’t have gone far. We’ll have to go find her, and then we can carry on searching for the sheep.”
Logan kicked Fingal into a trot and headed for the woods, and the other men fell in behind him. When they found Lady Juliana, he was going to wring her delicate white neck. What did she mean, running off like that without a word to anyone? It had already been a grueling day, and it promised to become more so before it was over. They’d been riding for hours without any sign of the missing sheep, and now they were obliged to halt their search to chase after a troublesome chit who was too foolish to know better than not to scamper about the Highlands by herself.
He should never have let her come with him today. As soon as he noticed she was following him, he should have taken her right back to—
“That lass don’t carry on much,” Callum Robertson offered suddenly, as if he’d been considering the matter for some time. “She looks like the sort who would, ye ken. English sorts do, especially the smallish women.” He nodded wisely. “But that lass never moaned once all day, not even when Brice’s horse kicked that cloud of dust in ’er face.”
His brothers nodded their agreement. Logan kept quiet, but he silently admitted to himself it was nothing but the truth. By midday he could see the rough terrain and the relentless pace were wearing her down, but she hadn’t uttered a single word of protest all day. She’d listened to his instructions, and though she’d struggled at times, she’d kept pace with four men three times her size.
“Aye, she seems a good lass. Bonnie, too.” Dougal, who was the second youngest of the brothers and a favorite with the ladies, winked at Logan. “Just as well she came out today. I’d rather look at ’er than any of you.”
