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“All right. You help Miss Haddon get ready, and I’ll go to the stables and get my men to pole up the horses.” Kendrick started for the door.
Donella held up a hand. “No, wait.”
He paused in the doorway, impatient. “Yes?”
“If we rush off, they’ll just come after us, like they did at the Perth Bridge. They know where we’re going, after all. They’re bound to catch up with us at some point.”
He rubbed a hand over his head in clear frustration, pulling open the edges of his vest and exposing more muscle, liberally dusted with black hair. Donella had grown up in a family of brawny men, but Kendrick was even more formidably masculine than they were.
“We don’t have all night, Miss Haddon,” he growled. “If you have another suggestion, let’s hear it.”
She peeled her gaze from his chest. “We split up. Send Foster and Davey south to Dunblane, on the regular route to Blairgal. Our pursuers will follow the carriage. We take another route, away from Blairgal. There are less travelled ways to get to my uncle’s castle. Once we throw them off our scent, we can take one of those.”
Donella already had a very good idea of which way to go, but she had no intention of sharing it with Mrs. Murray.
Kendrick’s gaze flicked to the innkeeper for a moment. Then he crossed his arms over his chest, frowning at the floor as he thought it through.
Donella quelled her impatience. He was a typically stubborn and overly protective Highland male. She could practically see him sifting through the objections in his mind, concerned not for himself but for those in his care.
“What happens when the blackguards catch up with the carriage?” he said. “Your grandfather won’t be best pleased if they’re hurt.”
Mrs. Murray shook her head. “They’ll no be hurtin’ them if the lass isn’t with them. I’m certain of it. She’s the one they want.”
Kendrick’s suspicious gaze shifted between the two women. “Yes, and I wish like hell I knew why.”
Blast.Why couldn’t he let it go?
“As Mrs. Murray points out,” Donella said firmly, “Davey and Foster have a better chance of getting back to Blairgal unharmed without us. Once they do, Uncle Riddick can send help.”
“This is ridiculous,” he exclaimed. “I’m tempted to stay here and confront the bastards myself. It’s the Nineteenth Century, for God’s sake. One simply cannot go around abducting women.”
Argh.
“Mr. Kendrick, there isverybad blood between some of the Murray clan and my family. Surely you haven’t forgotten how deeply resentment can run between clans, even nowadays.”
“She’s right, sir,” Mrs. Murray said. “They won’t hurt yer servants, but they will hurt ye, if ye stand in their way.”
He waved a dismissive hand at that notion.
“I could get hurt if there’s a fight,” Donella pointed out.
His eyes narrowed to wintery-blue slits. “I don’t like being manipulated, lass.”
When she simply gave him a smile in reply, he cracked a grudging laugh. “All right, we’ll try it your way.” He glanced at Mrs. Murray. “I’m assuming you can provide Miss Haddon and me with horses?”
The woman shook her head. “I’ve just one, sir. The others are jobbed out.”
“Is it a sturdy animal?” Donella asked. “Could it carry both of us?”
“Aye, miss. It’s a draft horse, and strong enough to carry ye both. Ye can hire a second horse once ye reach another inn, I ken.”
“Goddammit,” Kendrick muttered, as if he’d just remembered something.
Donella frowned. “Sir, that language is—”
“Do you know how bad this will look if we’re recognized?” he interrupted. “Before, we at least had Davey and Foster to lend us a measure of respectability. Now we’ll be travelling alone, on the same horse no less.”
“Oh, dear,” she weakly said.
