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

The horse shifted a little and blew through its nostrils.
    The crisp sound of the icy surface giving way beneath boots rang suddenly through the night. Prudence clambered back onto the cart and whipped up the horse. It balked, then lurched forward toward the bridge.
    “Alas,” a voice said merrily. “Your nag is gimpy. Perhaps he’s picked up a stone?”
    Prudence choked back a scream. Bobby woke and began to cry.
    A man stepped out of a gap in the trees, where a footpath from the MacEwens’ house ran up to the road. He caught the horse’s rein near the bit.
    Moonlight streamed out again from between the drifting clouds.
    “Oh, good gracious!” Prudence’s breath was still coming in gasps.
    “The night creates monsters,” Hal said with a grin. “As in fairy tales. Like creatures that shed their fur skin, the better to enchant women. Sorry if I scared you, Miss Drake, but this is rather an odd time to take a jaunt around the countryside, isn’t it?”
    Bobby sat up and wiped his face with his pudgy hand. Then he beamed.
    “Hello, Hal,” he said. “Are you coming with us?”
    Hal smiled at Bobby. “Of course. You didn’t think for a moment that you could leave me behind, did you? And I think you need me to see to your horse.”
    He took a knife from his pocket and efficiently dislodged a stone from the horse’s hoof. “There you are, old fellow,” he said cheerfully.
    Hal patted the animal on the neck. Then he grinned up at Prudence and climbed onto the box beside her. Bobby had dropped back into his nest of blankets and, with the ease possible only in a young child, gone straight back to sleep.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” Prudence asked, choking back her tumult of emotion. For Hal had laid his fingers over hers.
    “I am taking the reins, dear Miss Drake. Otherwise you will have us all in the ditch.”
    She pulled her hands away. “You’ll do no such thing, sir.”
    The horse lurched across the road as he felt the tug at the bit.
    Hal caught the rein and directed him back. “I shall, indeed. For you are going to get into the back with Bobby to make sure he is covered against the cold, and I am going to be your coachman, guard, and ostler.”
    Prudence tugged hard and the horse jerked to a halt. “Let me make this clear, sir. I do not want company, yours least of all. I am in something of a hurry and I would be grateful if you would cease these unwanted attentions this instant.”
    Hal burst out laughing. “Unwanted attentions? Good Lord, angel! I am not trying to kiss you, merely trying to drive the horse.”
    She knew she was blushing uncomfortably. “But I don’t wish it.”
    “Do you really expect that I shall obey such an absurd desire?”
    “A gentleman would,” she said stubbornly.
    “Ah,” Hal said. “And there you are wrong. No gentleman would allow a lady to drive alone and unprotected along what is little more than a track in the dark. It is a gentleman’s duty to be chivalrous, protective, and helpful to ladies. You shan’t deny me the chance to act the knight errant.”
    “But you don’t even know where I’m going.”
    “Well, you would seem to be going south. It lacks only an hour or two to midnight. According to Mrs. MacEwen’s maid, who is a fount of information and has filled me in on every detail of daily life in these parts, this is the road to Glasgow. From which noble city coaches leave every morning on their journey to Carlisle, but whence there are no coaches at all going north. Why on earth you should suddenly want to go to Carlisle in the middle of the night, I have no idea, but it’s not safe that you should do so with no other company than a child’s. Therefore, I am coming, too.”
    “You are not.”
    “You can’t stop me, angel. Besides, what will you do if the horse goes lame again?”
    “But why would you want to come?”
    “Why not? I have nowhere else to go.”
    It wasn’t fair. He was using the appalling circumstance of his shipwreck,