Rescued by Her Highland Soldier by Sarah Mallory

Author:Sarah Mallory [Mallory, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-02-01T18:35:58+00:00

* * *

They set the ponies cantering away as fast as they could go. Maddie knew that without their horses and one man wounded, it would be some time before the soldiers could follow, but that did nothing to stem the panic swelling inside. Her spine tingled with fear as they fled along the rocky track.

She had no idea how far they had travelled before Grant slowed the pace. They were close to a loch and he rode to the water’s edge before coming to a halt. Maddie noted with alarm how pale he was. She threw herself off her pony and ran over, ready to support him as he almost toppled out of the saddle. She helped him to the ground and unbuttoned his jacket.

‘I am sorry if this hurts you, but we must see how bad it is.’

She closed her ears to his muttered curses as she eased the coat from his shoulder. The left shirtsleeve was already blood-red. She drew a small silver dagger from her pocket and hacked off the sleeve.

Despite his obvious pain, Grant laughed. ‘Do you always travel so well prepared?’

‘Of course,’ she told him, using the small amount of unbloodied linen to wipe around the wound. ‘We are fortunate, the bullet has missed the bone and come out the other side of your arm. I will need your neckcloth to bind it up.’

‘Since we used yours to bandage the wounded soldier, I suppose I cannot complain.’

‘It is all my fault,’ she muttered, close to tears. ‘If I had not stopped to tend him, we would have been safe.’

‘Stop that foolishness, do you hear me?’ he barked at her. ‘What’s done is done.’

He was breathing hard, his eyes closed, and she glanced with concern at his grey face.

‘We must find a surgeon for you. Perhaps we should return to Beauly.’

‘No. We go on. There is a house I know. About three miles from here. Take me there.’

Maddie did not argue. This was Grant’s country. She trusted he knew what he was doing and could only hope the family would be in residence. She bandaged the wound tightly, then helped him put his good arm back into its sleeve and fastened the coat about him, holding the injured limb in place across his chest. She knew he must be in pain, but, apart from a sharp intake of breath as she helped him to mount up, he said nothing.

Their progress was necessarily slow, but Grant directed her to move off the main track and they struck out into a narrow glen where the hills rose steeply from either side of a small loch. She glanced behind occasionally, but there was no sign they were being followed.

The route was little more than a sheep track beside the water, but after a mile or so the landscape softened and at the end of the loch there were fertile plains and a pale, turreted house standing tall against a backdrop of thick woodland.

‘Calder House,’ Grant told her. ‘Sir Edmund McBinnie lives there.

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