“Nasty lot, little boys.” He smiled and reached for a fish. “Did you enact retribution?”
“Tied their lines into hopeless knots,” she confirmed. She tilted her head to study him. He was practically chatty all of a sudden—asking about her family, offering to teach her to fish, initiating conversation. He was bright-eyed, alert, almost cheerful, or as cheerful as she’d ever seen him.
“You’re a morning person.” She hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding quite so much like an accusation, but well, she had a long-standing, deep-rooted suspicion of morning people. It was so unnatural.
“I like the light,” he replied—cryptically, in her opinion.
“I like it too,” she mumbled. “At noon.”
“You sleep until noon?”
“Not unless I want a lecture from Lady Thurston on the pitfalls of sloth. I’m just not fully awake until midday.” She rubbed a hand down her face. “What do you mean, you like the light?”
“It’s softer.”
“Is it?” She glanced to the east and winced. “Seems uncommonly bright to me.”
“Depends on one’s viewpoint.”
“I suppose.” Forgetting to be disgusted, she watched him set aside the first fish and reach for the second. “Something I can do to help?” she asked.
“Build up the fire.”
Evie questioned the wisdom of having her play with fire first thing in the morning, but did as he asked all the same. And in the end, she was able to produce a nice flame from last night’s coals with only a singed bit of sleeve for her trouble. She sighed at the damage to her gown. Her blue travel ensemble had gone from smart and stylish to hopelessly wrinkled, stained, and now burnt. She expected the rest of her looked nearly as frightful, but aside from twisting her hair into a braid she tossed over her shoulder, there was very little she could do about it until they reached someplace where she could make use of some soap and a mirror.
To her disappointment, McAlistair quickly dispelled the idea of stopping at an inn.
“We stay off the road,” he informed her after he’d cooked the fish, handed her half of one, and packed the other away for lunch.
“Couldn’t we stop somewhere?” Evie asked as she ate her miserly portion.
He doused the fire with handfuls of dirt and a few judicious applications of his boots. “Where?”
“A tavern? A farmer’s? A—?”
“No.”
As she had rather suspected that would be his answer, she didn’t bother grousing.
She did, however, indulge in a fair amount of grumbling when she climbed into her saddle to leave. Yesterday’s ride had turned her entire body into an aching mass of muscle and bone, and it had been a mere half-day’s journey. How much worse would a full day in the saddle be?
It wasn’t nearly as awful as Evie had feared. In deference to her comfort, McAlistair made regular stops for her to dismount and stretch. It bruised her pride a little, and her leg continued to ache, but it was far better than the numbness she’d experienced the day before. In turn, she resolved to set aside her discomfort and make the best of the trip. It was an adventure, after all, and not one she’d likely repeat.
Meaningful conversation with McAlistair was out of the question, as he seemed always to be riding ahead, or behind, or off to the side, or…well, just away from her. She preferred to think he was trying to discern if they were being followed, and not just avoiding her, but in either case, she was left to entertain herself.
And that entertainment was not to include lingering over the sight of him galloping along on his horse…even if he did look rather dashing, with his dark locks slipping from their tie to blow across his restless eyes, and the hard muscles of his legs rippling under the fabric of his breeches, and—
She jerked her gaze away from him and pointedly turned her mind to safer subjects, like the study of an unusually large shrub. Mirabelle, she told herself, would want to know all about that shrub. In fact, Whit’s wife, who had a hobbyist’s fascination with plants, would probably enjoy hearing a detailed description of every flower, tree and bush Evie came across.
And considering what she could share or bring her friends from her journey was certainly a happier thought than dwelling on her jumbled emotions. Thinking of them, instead of herself, she began to look around with renewed interest.