Notorious Angel (Love and Adventure Collection Book 4) by Blake Jennifer

Author:Blake, Jennifer [Blake, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Steel Magnolia Press
Published: 2012-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

14

In the scorching sun of midafternoon they crossed the narrow neck of water which ran between Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua. They swam their horses, as much for coolness as to avoid the ferry further upstream. Soon afterward the land began to rise. The massed vegetation of the lowlands, the grassy savannas, were left behind for the stark green and brown and sandstone red of the pine and hardwood forest.

Eleanora rode with her teeth set in the effort of endurance. Her back ached as though a knife was stuck between her shoulder blades, and she saw the bobbing riders ahead of her through the wavering, dancing light of a heat shimmer. The single bearable moment of the past few hours had been the sighting of a Flame of the Forest tree, a tall, dark evergreen with huge, orange, tulip-shaped blossoms springing from among its leathery leaves. Always at the back of her mind lay the knowledge of what Luis had sacrificed for her. She would have liked to have had his faith in Walker; she could not quite find it within herself. She swung back and forth from hope to despair, from the joy of being free and alive to the depression of guilt. Endlessly on they rode, circling small villages, now and then passing the stick-and-mud houses of isolated Indian farmers who stared after them with flat, incurious faces. The inside of her knee about the horn of her saddle was bruised and there was no feeling in her foot or calf. The glare of the sun spread into her eyes. Beneath the square of a neckerchief she had tied over her hair her skull felt on fire. Her face and arms, every inch of exposed skin was sunburned. Toward sundown she ceased to think or to notice her surroundings. She was a part of her horse. Was there a word for a creature half-woman, half-horse? The male counterpart was a centaur. Surely there was a female—

The sudden scream of a puma grated across her senses. Her horse shied, rearing. Only the quick grip of a strong hand on her bridle prevented her from being unseated. As the horse quieted she saw the cougar, a reddish-tawny streak disappearing over a rise ahead of them. Straightening, she turned to smile her gratitude and found herself staring into the eyes of the Prussian soldier-of-fortune. Thick lids hooded his expression, but she was aware of an intense, measuring quality in the stillness of his face that made her uncomfortable. Her nod was short and lacking in graciousness. Releasing her bridle, he fell back at once, but she was aware of him behind her from that moment until they made camp for the night.

Jean-Paul helped her from the saddle. Leaving him to tend to her horse and hobble it to keep it from wandering too far, she limped away into the trees, following the twists of the small, free-running stream they had elected to stop beside.

When she returned, a fire had been started

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