Somehow we made it through the pass without incident, though my heart had been pounding in my ears the entire time, certain an ambush was imminent. Over a rise and down into another valley we trailed the sorrel mare, always keeping her in sight, driven on by the striking cadence of her hooves against the earth. The wind was sharp, stinging my face and slicing into my lungs with each breath I took, leaving a slight metallic taste in my mouth. At the fork in the path where we had argued which direction to take the last time we’d followed the mare, we could now easily see she turned left. At least we had been right about something.
The loose downhill terrain in this area forced us to check our horses’ speed again, or risk breaking our necks or our horses’ legs in a fall, but somehow the mare continued on unimpeded. Perhaps it was the extra weight of us humans on our horses’ backs that made them clumsier in the descent, or maybe the sorrel mare simply knew the path that much better. Whatever it was, the mare was steadily pulling away from us.
Dixon and Davy picked up speed again as we reached a more hard-packed surface, and we followed the horse correctly through two more forks in the path. But no matter how hard we dared to push our horses, the mare still continued to gain ground, carrying her farther and farther ahead of us.
By the time we encountered a series of forks through the twists and turns in a boggier area, we knew we’d lost her. Dixon was able to deduce which fork the horse most likely took twice, but at the third, he declared he was stumped.
Gage’s gelding danced to the left and then the right, telling me how aggravated his rider was. I could almost hear the string of curses running through his head.
“Then let’s split up,” he declared. “I’m not stopping now that we’re so close.”
The rest of us agreed. There would still be three of us to face whatever was at the end, a fair number. If we failed to recover the mare’s track, we would meet back at this spot.
Gage ordered Dixon to lead Trevor and me to the right, while he, Davy, and Anderley took the fork to the left. I felt a quiver of alarm at being separated from Gage, but before I could even murmur a complaint, his trio had ridden off. There was nothing for me to do but follow his instructions.
Even so, my mind was with the other party as we wound our way deeper into the hills, stopping periodically while Dixon tried to pick up the mare’s trail. The scrub in this part of the Cheviots was denser on the ground, casting strange shadows across the landscape and cloaking the paths. Without Dixon, I suspected Trevor and I would have quickly become lost, even in the bright moonlight.
Finally, after a mile or more of painstakingly searching, Dixon grunted and declared the trail to be cold. “’Tis likely she went the other way. But I had teh be sure,” he told us in his deep brogue.
I only hoped he was right.
We picked our way back to the fork in the path where Gage, Anderley, and Davy had split off from us, but there was no sign of the trio, or anyone in pursuit of us. I told myself this was a good sign, that this was what we’d hoped for. But as the minutes passed, stretching into a quarter of an hour, and then a half, and then nearly an entire hour with no sign of them, my already taut nerves began to fray.
Something was wrong. I could feel it in every fiber of my being. And in my heart, I knew something had happened to Gage.
I pleaded with Trevor and Dixon, trying to convince them that we should go after them, but they pointed out, rightly, that we had no idea exactly where they’d gone. We might be able to tell which forks in the path they’d taken farther along, and we might not. If they needed us, they would return here to find us.
I turned away, scanning the shadowy, barren landscape surrounding us and tried to control the sick feeling swirling in my gut.
If only Gage and I had had a moment alone before the letter from Lord Fleming arrived. I could have told him I loved him, that I would be overjoyed to marry him. Instead, he still believed I’d rejected him, that I thought him a monster like my late husband, that I didn’t care, when nothing was further from the truth.
I scowled fiercely, forbidding the tears building at the back of my eyes from falling. If . . . when I saw Gage again, I would tell him the truth, regardless of who heard me.
The sharp thud of hoofbeats in the distance made me sit straighter in my saddle, as I narrowed my eyes to peer into the darkness. My heart began to thump faster, in time to the horse’s rhythm. Soon enough a single rider came into view, and then two, but when a third failed to materialize out of the black night, I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.
Trevor moved his horse between me and the riders, an instinctive act of protection. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he told me, correctly reading my thoughts. “Perhaps one of them stayed behind to monitor the mare or the thieves. Maybe these two are returning for reinforcements.”
But then why hadn’t two stayed behind and one ridden for us? That would have made more sense. I didn’t say it, knowing my brother had already thought it. His voice had not been confident enough to convince me otherwise.
As the riders approached, it swiftly became apparent that it was Gage who was missing, even though I’d already known it in my heart. Davy and Anderley reined in at the top of the rise, both out of breath. I could see that Anderley was bleeding from a gash in his forehead.