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Leaving Kirkmere Abbey had been the best choice. Her only choice after that scene in the dining hall. His mouth on hers. His strength around her.
Dangerous. All of it dangerous to her very sanity.
Better to distance herself from him now—this very eve—before everything became so complicated there was no way to untangle her heart from him again.
Karta lifted her hand, rubbing the tip of her cold nose with her leather riding glove. It scratched rough against her skin, the leather still not worn soft again after being soaked by the snow when she had walked to the abbey.
From high on the horse she had borrowed from the Kirkmere stables, Karta’s gaze fell to the dark of the trees that lined the side of the Leviton dower house. The moon reflected bright off the white landscape and sent long black shadows of tree branches to snake along the smooth white snow.
Shadows that taunted her, aching to pull her back into the exile of the Leviton dower house.
Her look moved upward, setting straight ahead to the stable behind the dower house. It had been right to leave the abbey. The doctor had agreed to stay with Maggie until she was well. With luck, Maggie would rejoin her at the dower house in a few days. And then Karta could attempt to pretend the last day and a half had never happened.
She nodded to herself. She would be fine on her own for a few days. It would give her silent time when she could work on purging from her mind the fact that Domnall was now living directly across the glen from her.
The horse nickered, snorting as it stepped through the deep snow up the short hill to the stable.
Her eyes scanned the front of the barn as they approached it. Damn. The snow was still drifted in front of the doors leading into the stable. Even higher than before.
Karta halted the horse, staring for a long moment at the heavy black iron latch holding the doors closed. She exhaled a long sigh, then leaned forward, patting the mare on the side of her neck. “Don’t worry, girl. I’ll get you into the warmth.”
She nudged the horse forward another four steps and then dismounted, dropping with a thud into a drift of snow.
Her fingers were already cold, but there was nothing for it. She couldn’t leave the magnificent beast standing in the freezing cold, nor could she let her own horses go any longer without food and water.
She trudged through the snow, the top layer of it now crusted over to a thin sheet of ice that shattered apart against her knees with every step as she pushed against the drifts.
She stopped before the door on the right, kicking at the drift in front of it with her boot, and then she unhinged the latch and grabbed the black handle, pulling as hard as she could.
The door only opened a hand’s width.
She looked over her shoulder at the horse. “No, you’re a bit bigger than that, aren’t you?”
She swiped the bank of snow a few more times with her feet. It didn’t take long to realize she was getting nowhere, and she bent over, scooping clumps of snow about her legs and tossing them behind her.
The snow now cleared in a small triangle about her boots, she yanked on the door again. It moved. Slightly.
She exhaled out a deep breath of air, the puff freezing into moon-lit crystals before her face. The whole damn area in front of the door would have to be cleared.
Stifling a sigh, she dropped to her knees, sweeping her arms across the snow in long strokes, pushing it away from the door.
Fifteen minutes of shoving snow on her hands and knees and she was panting with sweat on her brow. She looked up from the spot she was in. Only a quarter of the way to the hinges of the door.
Her arms screaming with the effort, she tucked her chin into her chest and dug her knees into the cold ground to keep moving, keep clearing.
How was there this much snow in the world?
Her focus stayed on the white mounds of freezing torture until she heard a faint bark. Or what she thought was a bark. It could have been an angry squirrel, irate that all its nuts were lost under the snow.
Another bark, closer, louder, and her horse whinnied, stepping in place, anxious to be out of the cold.
Karta’s head popped up from below the bank of snow and she searched the white landscape, the moon sending it into an eerie glow. A horse and man appeared beside the main house with a deerhound bounding in front of it, barking, leaping in and out of the snow.
A dog she knew.
A man she knew.
She stayed on her knees, watching him approach, her chest lifting high with each heaving breath she took into her lungs.
