Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) by Ruth Warburton

Author:Ruth Warburton [Warburton, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Love & Romance, Fantasy & Magic, Historical, General
ISBN: 9781444914498
Google: sIVwAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00JZVKTVA
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2014-06-04T23:00:00+00:00

She did not know where they crossed the border, but they must have, for it seemed at last they were in Scotland – and the purple-heathered hills were crested with snow.

‘Langholm five miles,’ Luke said as they passed the signpost. ‘We must have done it. God knows we’ve been going long enough. And we’ve done it!’

‘We’ve twenty-one days yet,’ she reminded him, and she felt him smile. She did not need to turn around. Day after day of walking and riding beside him and she knew his silence, his quiet shifts of mood, from the tenseness of his arms and the muscles of his chest against her spine.

‘Come on, let’s stop,’ he said. ‘Celebrate with a bite.’

She pulled up Brimstone and he slid from the saddle and helped her dismount. Two hairpins fell to the road and she felt the weight of her hair against her neck. She was down to only half a dozen pins, not nearly enough to restrain the great coiled weight.

‘I said we should have cropped me for a boy,’ she grumbled as she pinned up the loose coils, the escaped strands blowing across her face in the soft, cold wind.

Luke smiled again, the dimple just showing beneath his deep beard, as he reached out to tuck a stray curl behind her ear.

‘You’re no boy. Look, it’s coming back red. So much for that dye. If the shop weren’t three hundred miles away I’d be asking for my shilling back.’

‘I could dye it again. They must sell dye in Scotland.’

‘No. Don’t. I like it. And we’re safe now, right?’

‘Yes, we’re safe.’ She smiled back, finding her lips curving to follow his irresistibly. Why did he smile so little, when a smile like that could break your heart? If she had lips that curved like that and a dimple as deep as your little finger, she would have smiled all day and all night just to have her own way.

She hugged her knees as they sat on the verge beside the signpost and took the chunk of bread and cheese that Luke held out. The grass was frosty and crackled beneath Luke’s boots as he sat beside her, but the sun was shining, the scudding clouds making shifting shadows on the far-off hill.

They chewed in companionable silence and then both spoke into the same pause.

‘You know—’

‘I was thinking—’

Luke stopped and laughed.

‘You go first,’ Rosa said.

‘No, it’s all right.’ Luke bit off another mouthful. ‘You first.’

‘I was only going to say, do you know what day it is today?’

‘No, what?’

‘The shortest day. The winter solstice.’

‘And the longest night. John Leadingham always used to say . . .’

He stopped.

‘What?’ Rosa asked.

‘Nothing.’ Luke’s face shuttered again, the smile gone as if it had never been.

‘No, what?’ She leant forward. ‘Come on, Luke, you know I don’t blame you for what’s past.’

Luke swallowed his mouthful, the muscles in his jaw and throat working beneath the beard. Then he sighed.

‘All right. He said as witches love darkness, it was when their magic waxed highest, like a candle flame that flares brightest in the dark.

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