The Devil Wears Plaid by Teresa Medeiros Read Free Book Online

the thought of his men driving Emma before them as if she was some sort of helpless woodland creature. They could very well be the ones to spook her over the edge of that cliff.
    Jamie strode to the border of the clearing and swept aside a low-hanging cedar bough. As his practiced eye scanned the underbrush for fallen needlesand broken twigs, a smile slowly curved his lips. It seemed that Miss Marlow had left a trail even a blind man could follow.
    E MMA PLUNGED BLINDLY through the forest, her only thoughts those of escape. She knew she had no chance of making it back down the mountain on her own but if she could get enough of a head start on Sinclair and his gang of ruffians, perhaps she could find some hollow tree or sheltered nook where she could hide until the earl’s men arrived to rescue her. She could tell by the steep slope of the land and the number of times she had stumbled over her own feet that she was at least headed in the right direction—down.
    This forest was nothing like the wood that bordered her father’s lands in Lancashire. She and her sisters had spent many pleasant hours there when they were children, picking wildflowers or gathering mushrooms for their mother’s table while playing at being pirates or fairy princesses. The sheltering branches of elm and oak were spaced widely apart there, inviting in glowing shafts of sunlight. The mossy hollows and gentle glades seemed more like a park than a wood.
    This place resembled the forest in some dark and forbidding fairy tale—a place where time had stood still for centuries and some slavering ogre might spring out at any minute to devour you.
    The thickly laced branches over Emma’s head allowed in only grudging flashes of moonlight. As she scrambled down a slick, mossy bank, the rasp of her own breathing echoed in her ears like the panting of some desperate wild thing.
    She’d yet to stumble across anything even remotely resembling a road or a path, which was probably for the best. The last thing she wanted to do was make it easy for Sinclair and his men to track her.
    Branches lashed at her as she ran, their bony fingers stinging her cheeks and tearing at the fragile silk of her gown. A sob of pain escaped her as her left foot came down squarely on a jagged stone. The thin soles of her kid slippers provided little protection for her tender feet. She might as well have been barefoot. She winced as she splashed through the icy water of a shallow creek, knowing it was only a matter of time before the slippers gave way altogether, leaving her completely exposed to the elements. What she wouldn’t have given for the pair of sturdy old half-boots she’d left tucked beneath her bed at home! Her mother had refused to let her pack them, insisting that the earl would buy her all the elegant slippers she would need once they were wed.
    She glanced behind her. It was impossible to tell if she was being pursued or if the sounds she could hear over the rapid throb of her heart in her ears were simply the echoes of her own clumsy thrashingthrough the underbrush. She wasn’t about to stop long enough to find out.
    She had no desire to find out just exactly how Jamie Sinclair might punish her for refusing to heed his warning. Judging from the icy composure he had demonstrated in the abbey and the authority he exerted over his own men, he wouldn’t take kindly to being defied.
    Doubling her pace, she dared another desperate look over her shoulder. The moon was sinking in the sky and the shadows themselves seemed to be chasing her, the billowing clouds of darkness threatening to swallow her whole, leaving no trace behind.
    She jerked her gaze back to the path ahead of her only to find herself heading straight for the edge of a steep bluff. It was too late to slow her forward momentum. Too late to do anything but make a frantic grab for the slender trunk of the birch tree overhanging the rocky gorge far below.
    The smooth bark slid right through her hands,