Page 63 of Rogue with a Brogue
Mary was fairly certain he was lying, but she nodded. “We’ll need you at your very best tonight, Howard,” she added.
“So you think you can charm me into cooperating, eh?” the driver muttered. “I suppose you can.” He shoved down on the brake handle. “You certain you can drive a team, Mr. my lord Fox?”
“Aye. And I told ye to call me Arran.”
The driver and Peter climbed to the ground. “I’m not grand enough to be calling lords and ladies by their Christian names. Now let’s tie up those mounts of yours before I curl up here on the grass.”
Arran swung down and walked over to hold his arms up to Mary. She took a moment to look down at him. If everything went as they hoped, in a very few days this man would be her husband. Heat simmered beneath her skin. He would look at her in just that same fond, amused way every day. She would fall asleep in his arms and wake in them in the morning.
“Ye keep smiling at me like that, Mary, and I’m like to burst into song,” he murmured. “Come here.”
She leaned into his arms, and he lowered her to the ground, bending his head to kiss her before he released his grip on her waist. “I’ll ride up top with you,” she decided.
“Aye. I doubt ye’d get any rest with those two inside, snoring.” He flashed her a grin. “Besides, having ye with me will improve the view.”
Peter tied their mounts behind the coach, and then he and Howard climbed into the coach, shut the door, and pulled the curtains closed. With no perceivable effort Arran lifted Mary to the top right front wheel, and from there she pulled herself up to the high, narrow seat. He moved around the front, checking the horses’ traces, then hiked himself up easily onto the seat beside her.
“Canyou drive a coach?” she whispered.
“Aye. Or a wagon, more like.” Arran gathered up the ribbons, released the brake lever, and clucked to the team. With a creak the coach lurched into motion. “When I imagined sweeping in to rescue ye,” he drawled, “this was nae what I had in mind.”
“You imagined rescuing me?”
“I’m here, nae?”
“But you imagined it first. How? What did you imagine?”
His jaw clenched, and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer. The MacLawrys were a strong, wild, manly set, after all. If they had romantic hearts, they likely didn’t make that known.
“It was more of a dream, I suppose,” he said finally, clear reluctance in his deep brogue. “I rode up, stole ye from Calder while the priest and yer family stood with mouths agape, lifted ye up into the saddle in front of me, and we rode north faster than a flash of lightning. I found an abandoned castle overlooking a loch, and ye were mine and I was yers, and we lived happily ever after.”
“I like your dream.”
“So do I. We had naught to do with broken-down inns or badly sprung coaches, and our clans let us be.”
She leaned against his shoulder. “Perhaps other than the part with the inns and the coaches, it can still come true.”
Briefly he rested his cheek against her hair. “That’s why we’re here, isnae?”
“Yes, it is.” And that was why they had to find somewhere safe and hidden from both the MacLawrys and the Campbells. Neither clan could see beyond the lines they’d drawn on the ground, and so neither of them could be allowed to find her or Arran.
He must have been at least as exhausted as the two men presently snoring below them, but Arran showed no sign of it as he drove them along at the fastest pace the broken-down coach and horses could manage. Even though her father at best was still hours behind them, Mary couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder every mile or two all through the lengthening shadows of the afternoon.
Once again that was all she could do. One of her cousins—George Gerdens-Daily, as she recalled—had once taught her to drive a curricle, but she’d only been ten or eleven at the time and had run it into a hedge. So as much as she wanted to take the reins and tell Arran to try to get some rest, she knew quite well that that would likely lead to disaster. The best she could do, then, was to help keep watch and talk to him.
“So your oldest brother is Ran, Munro is Bear, and Rowena is Winnie,” she said. “Why don’t you have a family nickname?”
“Fer a time Bear tried calling me Book, I suppose because I like to read. But I gave Winnie a button every time she refused to call me that, and eventually he gave it up.”
“You didn’t want to be called Book?”
Arran shrugged. “It’s nae a proper nickname if yer ownbràthairtakes a fortnight to decide what it should be. It either comes to ye naturally, or ye shouldnae be using it.”
“How many buttons did it cost you?”
“I cut ’em off Bear’s coats and trousers, so it didnae cost me anything.”
Mary laughed. “That makes me wish I had brothers and sisters.”
