Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue by Stephanie Laurens

Author:Stephanie Laurens
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 2011-08-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

They bade farewell to Mrs. Croft soon after the sun had sailed into the blue sky. Heather had woken in the ghostly light of predawn to find the bed beside her empty. Almost immediately she’d heard the distinctive thunk of a log being split outside.

By the time she’d risen, washed, and dressed, made the bed and packed their satchels, then finally gone downstairs, Mrs. Croft had been busy in the kitchen, tending pans on her stove, and Breckenridge had been perched on the kitchen stool, sipping from a steaming mug of coffee.

With a cheery good morning, Heather had slipped into the second kitchen chair and had promptly been regaled with a catalogue of Breckenridge’s virtues, from which she’d gathered he’d cut enough wood to last Mrs. Croft into the next week.

They’d parted from the widow on excellent terms. Heather had approved of the sizeable tip Breckenridge had left on the washstand upstairs.

They set out from Craigdarroch, striding easily into a morning that looked set to be fine, although mist still clung about the nearby peaks and shrouded their way up ahead.

Breckenridge had taken her hand again; she’d refrained from pointing out that the lane was relatively even and she was unlikely to trip.

Truth be told, she wasn’t sure why he insisted, albeit wordlessly, on holding on to her, but she wasn’t about to eschew the contact. Even as they strode along, it was pleasant to feel the connection, the implied closeness.

A hundred yards further on, it occurred to her that his hold on her hand might be read as possessive, as indicating some degree of possession . . . she was immediately distracted by her response to the thought, to the possibility—which, in her experience, with a man of his ilk was quite high—that his action, whether unthinking or deliberate, was a sign that he saw her, in that typical, inherently male way, as his.

Some part of her wasn’t at all bothered by the notion of him seeing her as his.

Given her aversion to possessively protective, ergo arrogantly high-handed males—such as her brothers and cousins—that lack of antagonism struck her as strange.

Strange, but somehow comfortable.

Their hearty breakfast of porridge and honey stood them in good stead as they marched steadily on. As Breckenridge had predicted, the lane rose for several miles, wending around the flanks of hills and through a large stretch of forest. But then they climbed a rise and, halting on the crest, saw the land and the lane gently fall away into a green valley. Beyond, in the distance, another line of hills marched in a hazy purple line across the horizon.

Heather pointed. “Those are the hills at the back of the Vale.” Lowering her arm, she searched the far side of the valley, then pointed again. “And that’s about where the Vale itself lies, but we can’t see the manor from here.”

Breckenridge nodded. While Heather looked ahead, trying to pick out familiar landmarks, he glanced back along their trail—and froze.

From where they stood, he couldn’t

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