He moved to his own mount without so much as a backward glance at her.
“Well?” she asked when it became completely obvious that he had no intention of returning to her side.
He looked at her blankly as if he had no idea what she wanted from him. “Well, what?”
How dense could the man be? Surely, he had more common decency than this?
“Are you not going to help me mount?” she asked.
“Can you not do it yourself?”
She was aghast. Did the man not have a mother? A sister? Anyone around him who was female? “Well, no. I need your help.”
He used his reins to scratch his bearded cheek as he stared at her speculatively. “Need my help... what?”
“To mount. The horse is too tall for me.” Unlike him, she wasn’t the size of a tree.
He snorted at that. Dropping the reins, he folded his arms over his chest and pierced her with those icy eyes of his. “If you be needing my help to mount, it seems, my lady, that you are forgetting the one important word in that sentence.”
Nora was stunned by his demand. The bear who lived in a cave was lecturing her on manners?
Was this some kind of jest?
“I’m waiting,” he said.
She glared at him and that arrogant stance that demanded manners from her and yet required none from him.
“Fine then,” she said stubbornly, refusing to give him the satisfaction of correcting her, “I shall do it myself.”
Or so she thought.
What she quickly learned after trying to mount was that her mare was wont to move away every time she started to climb onto the horse’s back.
She tried several times and several times the horse danced away from her.
“Ow!” Nora snapped as her foot was wrenched by the stirrup and she again found herself standing by the horse’s side while the cursed beast stared at her with mirthful eyes.
“Having a wee bit of a problem there?” Ewan asked.
“Nay,” she hastened to assure him as she gathered her skirt around her to prepare for another try. “No problem at all.”
If she could just get the beast to hold still.
Nora tried again.
This time, her horse stepped away at the worst possible moment.
Unbalanced, she fell sprawling into the dust with her skirts flying up high over her legs.
Ewan bolted to her side, and forced her prancing mare away from her. “Are you harmed, lass?”
“Nothing more than my dignity, I assure you.”
To her surprise, he helped her to her feet and gently brushed the dirt from her skirts.
“I didn’t mean for my ill humor to cause you hurt, Nora. Here...” He picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all, and set her on the back of her horse.
Completely dumbstruck by the turnaround of his actions, she watched in silence as he walked to his own horse. He slung one long leg over his mount with an ease that truly made her envious. Without a single care, he positioned himself on the horse’s back and leaned forward to take the dangling reins.
