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She was used to the cold indifference in his face, but his eyes had shifted to another level, almost going vacant with only vicious slivers threatening to freeze her to her bones.
Fury balled in her gut, heaving upward with her words. “You rat bastard.”
His body stilled in front of her for a long breath, and then he nodded, ice dripping from his voice. “Get yourself to Seahorn, then.”
He nudged the horse forward.
She scrambled to her knees and then feet, her hands balled into fists as she screamed at his retreating form. “Gladly. I’ll get there on my own,you cantankerous dung heap.”
She stood, heaving breath after breath for several minutes, staring at him until he and his horse disappeared around a bend in the woods they were travelling through.
He had been gone for five minutes before she shook her head, smoothed down her dark blue skirt and started stomping forward along the road.
She would get to Seahorn on her own. Faster, even.
The snow beneath her boots was slick, and other than one set of wagon tracks from earlier in the day and the hoofprints of Rafe’s horse, it was hard to pick her way along the road in the snow that went up almost to the tops of her boots.
At least no one happened upon her. If she remembered correctly, this was a barren part of the countryside. She was usually napping as best she could in this area during the carriage rides to and from Seahorn.
She didn’t want to have to fend off some other rogue man trying to help her. She’d get to thenext village, Wotton, and she’d convince the local stablemaster of who she was and get him to lend her a horse for a few days.
One horse and she could get to Seahorn—she’d ride through the night if that’s what it took.
An hour later, her boots were soaked through with the icy slush that sat under the newly fallen snow. An hour and the arse hadn’t come back for her.
Good.
Good riddance.
She didn’t need him.
One step after another and she’d be home.
She flicked her arms out from under her cloak, pulling the hood up over her head and clutching the wool closer to her body for warmth. The sun from earlier had disappeared under low grey clouds. It wasn’t snowing, but the wind had picked up, sending bitter gusts across her face.
Another half hour and she had come to the conclusion that she would welcome a passing wagon or coach. Preferably with a woman riding in it. That would be safest. A man and a woman in a wagon and she could ride in the back into the upcoming village.
Then she’d get a horse and ride straight to Seahorn without stopping.
A high-pitched whimper caught her ear.
Victoria stopped, pushing the hood off her head and tilting her right ear up into the air.
Another whimper. Small. Pathetic.
But there. Again and again.
Her feet turned toward the whimpers and she followed them off the road into the woods. Four trees in, two trees to the right—and no, the other direction—five trees deeper into the forest and she found the source of the whimpers twenty strides away.
A dog—a puppy—stuck.
Stuck in what, she wasn’t sure. Its back legs and hindquarters disappeared under a layer of snow, its front claws gripping onto the crusted snow in front of it. A little reddish-brown head with a wild streak of white between its ears. Almost the color of a fox, but with the nose and long ears, it was definitely a pup.
A stuck, pathetic pup.
She didn’t have time for this.
Seahorn. Eva. She had to get to Seahorn.
