Folly's Reward by Jean R. Ewing Read Free Book Online

curve of his naked shoulder disappeared under the sheet. It seemed a dishonorable and underhanded thing, even to check on him, but thank God he still slept!
    Prudence went back to the recalcitrant animal and took it firmly by the bit. Like the morning rooster shattering the dawn, the horse whinnied. An answering chorus of equine leave-taking rang from the stable. Oh, God! Everyone would wake up. Mrs. MacEwen would try to stop her. Who could really believe that a marquess would be prepared to murder a child for his inheritance? Mr. MacEwen would insist that she stay, the daughter of his old friend. He would think he could protect her.
    With frantic tugging and pulling, Prudence eventually forced the horse to leave the yard. She closed the gate behind her, climbed onto the box, and took up the whip. Now that it had met with a stronger will and left its companions, the horse went amiably enough down the lane.
    Prudence turned its head south. Toward England.
    The night shone clear and crisp with a high sailing moon, the road frosted and hard. But the day’s ruts had become treacherous traps for the wheels. She had gone perhaps five miles and was close to the stone bridge across the frozen burn, when she realized that the horse had begun to limp. This could be disaster.
    She climbed from the cart and ran her hand down the horse’s legs, just as the moon disappeared behind some great fist of cloud. Black silence streamed about her, the only sound the animal’s hot breathing, the only motion the little puffs of steam from its nostrils. She picked up its forefoot. And heard, as chilling as the clutch of stranger’s hand in a dark room, a rustle in the willows beside the road and the distinct sound of footsteps coming her way.
    * * *
    Hal jerked awake as the horses whinnied. A rush of images raced through his mind. Dear God, he had been dreaming again! A confused jumble of scenes, echoing with broken snatches of rhyme and a far-off sound of screaming. There was a young fellow who kissed / Madame in her shift, but he missed . . .
    Ragged glimpses of a small courtyard with a trellis covered in white roses; a blur of gaming tables and empty wine bottles and men shouting; a building burning fiercely, its timbers crashing down in sheets of flame; the shadowy faces of women. Some of them seemed very young, barely more than children, some bold-eyed and flirtatious.
    Only one entangled his emotions in a way that filled him with a longing he couldn’t understand. A beautiful face, calm and clear-eyed, graced by its frame of bright blond hair. She had been saying, “But I don’t think I can so easily forgive you,” before her features dissolved into the dream.
    Hal sat up in the bed and ran his hands through his hair. Who the devil was he? Why in Hades couldn’t he remember? And what the hell was he doing washed up on a beach in Scotland?
    A horse clopped from the courtyard into the lane. He sprang naked from the bed and crossed to the window. Moonlight cast its cold light over a slender figure climbing onto the seat of a governess cart. Miss Drake had just shut the gate behind her.
    Now, where the devil was she going?
    Without hesitation, he flung on his clothes: the old shirt that Mr. MacEwen had given him; the serge trousers and reefer jacket he had been wearing on the beach; his boots, shining now with the daily application of polish.
    The clothes were as much a mystery to him as the face in the mirror when he shaved in the morning—with a borrowed razor into a stranger’s basin. He left the jacket Mr. MacEwen had loaned him, and with a borrowed pen on Mr. MacEwen’s paper wrote a short note to his host.
    Hal strode out into the yard and glanced up at the moon. He owned nothing in the world, not even a name.
    * * *
    Prudence set down the horse’s foot and stared into the willows. She could see only blackness among the shifting, duplicitous stalks and treacherous leaves. She could hear nothing but the hammering of her own heart.