Page 14 of Blood of the Thistle

Annoyance flared through her misery. The man ahead of her moved through the wet woods as if the mud and rain didn’t exist. He never slowed his long-legged stride, never glanced back to see if she was still there. He simply walked on, expecting her to keep up. He was a good ten yards ahead of her, picking his way purposefully through the trees and thick brush.

Why am I following him? She wondered, not for the first time.

Her previous answers had all boiled down to only two things: he seemed to know where he was going inside the forest, and he hadn’t yet caused her harm. Not exactly a rousing endorsement, but with what had happened to her—which she still struggled to make sense of—she was feeling particularly vulnerable. She wasn’t easily frightened, she knew, but then, there had been little in her life that had ever caused her to be afraid. Until now.

Anna quickened her pace, trying to close some of the distance between her and the guy with the shackles, even as she still wasn’t sure what compelled her to follow him. She’d barely sped up before her foot landed on a patch of muddy grass and shot forward without warning. Her other foot slid backward at the same time, her legs scissoring out from under her until she collapsed into the mud. A strangled cry burst from her as she flung both arms out, desperately trying to regain her balance, but the rain-soaked ground offered no purchase whatsoever. Her feet continued slipping in opposite directions until she surrendered altogether, allowing herself to collapse sideways into the mud with an undignified thump, one leg stretched awkwardly before her and the other folded beneath her.

She pulled her hand from the ground at her side, where she’d plunged it to keep herself from tipping over, and shook off the mud with the lethargy of misery.

“Ah, the hell with it,” she said, giving up.

Her shoulders sagged beneath the weight of exhaustion, and she lowered her head, finally allowing the tears she’d fought so hard to keep at bay to spill over.

“What am I doing?” she asked herself, her voice cracking. She closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing, tried to rein in the want to cry good and hard for all that she didn’t understand. She then rubbed the heels of her hands over her brows, praying that when she opened her eyes, this was not happening, that she’d find herself back outside the little bookstore, Ryan looking at her with that crooked smile, asking if she’d have dinner with him.

She opened her eyes, and found a pair of large, bare feet planted firmly in the mud not two feet away.

A defeated little groan escaped her.

Her gaze traveled upward, over powerful calves streaked with drying mud, to the odd woolen pants that ended below his knees, then higher still to the long, rain-soaked shirt stretched across broad shoulders and chest, a shirt that looked as though it had once belonged to a man considerably better fed than the one standing before her now. Finally, her eyes reached his face, lingering for just a moment upon the thick black beard and the sharp planes of his cheeks before meeting the same hard blue eyes that had regarded her with equal parts suspicion and impatience since the moment they’d met.

Once again, he reached out his hand toward her.

Anna swatted at it with frustration. She meant to knock his hand away, but her own missed entirely, passing uselessly beneath it.

“Leave me alone,” she cried. “I’ve had enough. I’m done.”

He regarded her for a long moment, his expression revealing not one ounce of sympathy.

“Ye’re nae done,” he said quietly.

She stared at him in disbelief.

“We’re nae safe yet.”

Something inside her snapped.

“Then tell me what’s going on!” she demanded, smacking her hands down into the muck at her sides. “Who are you? Who were those horsemen? Why are you wearing handcuffs? How did I get here? I was standing outside a bookstore in York only this morning and...” she stopped and drew in a deep breath. “Are you an escaped convict or an...?”—she couldn’t quite bring herself to say escaped lunatic.

“Aye, I’ve escaped,” he finally acknowledged. “From a transport meant for York and the gallows.”

The gallows? Holy hell! What was going on?

“What did you do?” she asked at last, forcing the question past the lump in her throat.

“I fought for Scotland.”

Anna stared at him, waiting for the rest of the explanation, but none came. She supposed she ought to feel relieved that he hadn’t confessed to murder or some equally horrific crime, but his answer only left her with twice as many questions as before.

While she stared at him, no less dumbfounded or frustrated, he asked her, “Why did ye run with me?”

She shook her head, her mouth hanging open. At length, she answered pitifully, “I have no idea, except that you seemed about as desperate as I felt at the moment.”

“Aye, and as we remain,” he said. “We’ll want to put more distance yet between us and the English.”

Her brow knit—further than it had been for the last several hours. “The English?”

A shadow of greater displeasure crossed his face. “Aye. Trust me in this, lass: they’ll be nae more kind to ye simply because ye are English as well.”