She sighed, and said, “The crux of the matter is what I told you before. In particular, my uncle wants to marry me off to a friend of his, who’s about thirty years older than I. You think I’m exaggerating,” Heather accused him, when she saw his wry smile again.
“You truly had no admirers to your taste?” he asked, intently.
“None.” Heather said. “For most of my life, I didn’t think about courtship or marriage at all. I knew that I was due a modest inheritance when I turn twenty-one, so I thought I’d be able to wait to receive that, and then decide about a husband. But my life has been very sheltered since my school days…and only recently did I come to consider just how much my uncle has proscribed my social contacts. I thought it was because he wished to protect me, but…” She shrugged.
“And he has a particular suitor in mind for you.”
“One of his cronies. Not a close friend, but close enough, I suppose, that he’s willing to marry me off to the man.”
“When is your birthday?”
“I’ll be twenty-one in six weeks. First week of October.”
“Hence the hurry.”
“If I hadn’t ripped the wedding dress to strips and got out the window, I’d be a bride already.”
He leaned back. “What did you say? A window?”
“I’d been locked in a room on the highest level of the house,” she explained. “I tried to leave through the front door earlier last week, but I was caught.”
“You’re like a princess in a tower!” He said in astonishment. “Does that make me a knight errant? What century are we in?”
“The nineteenth, sir. But it may as well be the thirteenth, for all the difference it makes to a woman.”
“It can’t be as bad as all that. Soon you’ll be able to claim your little inheritance and be a rabble-rousing suffragette or whatever it is you’re hoping for.”
“Schoolteacher, most likely,” Heather replied. “Anyway, the money wasn’t important, not compared to…” She struggled for the right word.
“Saorsa,” Niall supplied. “Er, that’s liberty…more or less.”
“Liberty, then,” Heather agreed. “I just don’t know how long I can survive on my own. Six weeks feels like a lifetime.” She felt a sense of despair rising in her chest. “I am sorry to heap this story on you.”
“I did ask,” he said slowly, as if thinking.
“Yes, but you were surely hoping for a story more amusing, and less tiresome.”
“On the contrary, I haven’t been this entertained in weeks.”
“Oh, well. I am glad that I have entertained you,” she replied tartly.
“Miss Hayes, you are too sweet for sarcasm. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Excuse me? How would you know what suits me? We are, as I said before, strangers.”
Niall did not reply to that, but the fact that she was essentially sitting in his lap, albeit astride a horse, didn’t exactly help her argument.
Just then, as if to make things worse, thunder rumbled.
Chapter 4
Niall saw Heather’s dismay asshe cast a look at the sky. He hadn’t noticed the change in the weather (being rather distracted by the fugitive bride in his arms), but now he saw that the clouds were gathering quickly.
“Maybe we can avoid it,” he said. “Looks like that storm is tracking east. It might blow past before we’re in its path. I need to slow down anyway. This horse needs a rest.”
“Oh, no. We’re going to be stranded out in the woods during a storm, I just know it.”
“Unlikely. England is packed to the gills—can’t throw a rock without hitting an inn.”
