Page 77 of A Rugged Beauty
A footstep crunched in the dry grasses nearby. "That saddle's nearly bigger than you are."
She whirled before she recognized the voice, scrabbling for some weapon to defend herself. When she realized it was Braddock there in the moonlight, her panic receded.
"What are you doing?" The strong moonlight illuminated his drawn face. She'd passed by his wagon once, seen him sickly, working with one hand pressed against his stomach. He hadn't been immune to the epidemic, but who had been looking after him? He was alone within the larger company.
"I'm riding for help." It was silly to answer him. Surely he could see what she was doing. She fumbled with the buckle again.
"Not alone. Where are your brothers?"
When she kept her shoulder turned to him and didn't answer, he pushed again. "You can't mean to go alone."
She knew the danger. Not long ago, wolves had nearly set on August when he'd been out hunting by himself.
But, "I can't sit helplessly in camp and watch my family die."
The crunch of his footsteps faded away. When she turned her head, he was gone.
Awareness tingled in the lobes of her ears. She fumbled with the buckle, finally slipping the leather through the metal clasp. But the saddle still seemed too loose.
Braddock didn’t have to like it that she was going. Surely, he knew she must. That attempting to argue with her wouldn't change things.
But what if he'd gone back into camp to fetch one of her brothers? She strained her ears for the sound of arguing, remembering Braddock's bruises from days ago when he'd fought with Coop.
Tears smarted in her eyes when the leather and buckle slipped through her fingers. The horse sidestepped with a soft neigh.
Frustration surged. Worry made her almost frantic. She stepped toward the horse again. The sound of approaching hoofbeats, quiet and slow and thudding into the soft ground, made her heart race.
She grabbed the horse's reins and turned to look.
Braddock again, bareheaded. Leading a horse.
He came straight to her, dropping his horse's reins to the ground when he was a few feet away. He moved to the saddle she'd had trouble with after murmuring something low and incomprehensible to the horse, who had no compunction about allowing Braddock to tend to his saddle.
"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded in a whisper.
"Going with you." He said the words so easily, in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Not like how she blurted, "You can't. It isn't appropriate for us to be alone together."
A flush fired in her cheeks.
He finished with the saddle, giving it a tug to ensure it was secure, and then turned to face her in the moonlight.
"Who's going to stop me? No one else in camp has the strength to sit a horse."
"Neither do you." The familiar feeling of battling words with him stole over her so quickly that it stole her breath. It was easy, so easy, to slip back into the verbal sparring that had begun their secret relationship. The first time she'd snapped at him, she'd frozen in place, certain she was going to be fired from her job as maid in his grandfather's household.
She hadn't been fired.
And their arguments had slowly changed into flirtations.
The reminder of all of it stole her breath and made her words sharp. "I don't want you to go. I don't need you."
The moonlight shone bright enough for her to see the change in his demeanor. Something slipped over his expression, as if he withdrew into himself. He was grave when he said, "Whatever you think about me now, it was never my wish to hurt you."
When should we tell your brothers?She could hear his voice in her memory, so clearly. They had sat on the bank of the creek that snaked through his grandfather's estate, fingers interlaced.When should we tell your grandfather?she'd countered.
"I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you," he said quietly.
