Page 38 of Beyond Dreams

“Sure,” she said easily. “As long as you don’t do any galloping.”

“Unless one is being pursued, only a fool would risk his own neck or his steed’s with a hard run over this terrain.”

“Great. Since you don’t strike me as a fool who would be so careless with his horse, off we go.”

Whether hewantedto take her to the field of flowers or not would remain unknown unless Holly decided to question him, which she did not, deciding not to look the gift horse in the mouth as the horse beneath them began to move once more, urged by Duncan flexing his knees and snapping the reins.

They went down the hill, further inland with Thallane growing smaller and smaller behind them and Holly soon understood what Duncan had meant by being careful with the speed of the horse. The ground beneath their feet was rarely level, was sometimes rocky, and much of it glistened with moisture.

“Did it rain last night?” She asked, finding it hard to believe she’d have missed that since she’d slept so poorly.

“Nae,” he answered, “but there was a heavy fog, which dinna creep away until the morning light came.”

“This area probably sees a lot of fog,” she mused. She wasn’t sure of the science behind it but had some idea that mountainous regions generally saw more fog than plains and areas of flatter consideration.

“More abundantly in winter and spring,” he advised.

It seemed they rode fairly straight from that ridge they’d paused upon, going further and further into the valley—glensthey were here in Scotland, Holly recalled—between several majestic mountains. As they crested one final smaller hill and the colorful valley came into view, Holly laid her hand over her heart, awed by the sight. Flowers of every color peppered the earth, most of them close to the ground. She recognized heather, of course, and the creeping wood sorrel, but not any of the other flowers. But it didn’t matter. The picture before her was stunning, making her wish she had her phone and camera.

When they’d gone almost twenty feet into the wild garden, Duncan brought the horse to a stop and dismounted, helping Holly alight as well. For once she wasn’t staring at Duncan, couldn’t have said what expression he wore, her gaze so rapt upon the scenery. The patch of wildflowers stretched out for a hundred yards at least, filling the basin of the valley and then climbing a bit of the sides of the hills before the pines grew in such abundance that flowers could not.

She began plucking flowers right away, gathering a bouquet of various colors.

“Do you know what these flowers are?” She asked Duncan, turning and holding out a brown-stalked stem that contained a bunch of small white flowers with yellow centers.

He remained with the horse, loosely holding the reins, twenty feet behind her. She realized she’d probably just shown him plenty of her backside, each time she’d bent and picked a flower.

“Looks like the common scurvy grass,” he said.

“Ew.” Holly grimaced and dropped the flower, wiping her hands on her skirt.

“They dinna bite,” Duncan said, the tiniest hint of a grin detected.

Transfixed by the flicker of a smile, by the very idea that hecouldsmile, Holly stared at his handsome face, sorry that that fleeting grin was gone already and hadn’t quite reached his eyes. She’d previously decided that both his eyes and his lips looked like he seldom smiled.

“Well, where I come from, scurvy is a disease,” she told him, distractedly.

Ah, and the world as she knew it righted itself—Duncan’s frown returned.

“You come from just beyond the mountain, lass,” he reminded her.

“Oh, well, yes, of course,” she stammered. A lie came easily. “I meant at the convent, they mentioned a disease called scurvy.”

He shook his head at this, as if now unamused by her casting off the offending flower, or her reason for doing so.

Holly blew out a sigh and returned to flower-picking, bending, plucking, and straightening to arrange a small and not particularly pretty red flower in the bunch. She paused again, her gaze drawn to Duncan and what he was about, talking to his horse.

He stood in profile now, rubbing the horse’s long nose with some affection, murmuring something to the big animal, words given too quietly for her to hear. He moved his hand down and scratched at the horse’s jaw, as one might scratch between a dog’s ears. Holly was bemused, and more than a little surprised by the tender moment.

She’d often thought so much could be learned about a person by the way they treated animals.

Until her parents retired to Arizona and Holly had gotten her own apartment, she’d never been without a pet. Her mother adored cats and her father loved dogs. She couldn’t recall a time when there was less than three or four kitties and mutts scrambling around the three bedroom ranch in Erie, PA. She’d been raised and truly believed that you could judge a person’s character simply by observing their interactions with animals. Never in her life would she have entertained a relationship with a person if she’d known them to be abusive toward either dogs or cats.

As she watched Duncan behave so fondly and solicitously with his big war horse, she supposed the same might be said of a guy and his horse. It was a small moment but spoke volumes to Holly about the character of her fourteenth century husband.

When he was done speaking to his horse and began to turn toward her, Holly averted her gaze and bent again and plucked another bloom, pretending she hadn’t been mesmerized by the sweet interaction. When she stood tall once more, arranging her growing bouquet more to her liking, dispersing the small red blooms evenly throughout, she sent another glance to Duncan, who was now watching her.

She smiled slightly at him, but wasn’t sure what she meant for the grin to say to him. A bit embarrassed then, she snapped off another flower, tucking this one behind her ear with some of her hair. She faced the east again, wanting one more glimpse at the still and silent beauty of this wonderland.

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