Annabel landed with a hard bang against the carriage door, which was now serving as the floor. In the sudden stillness, she heard shouts and whinnies. With the instinct of someone raised in the stables, she held her breath and listened for the sound of horses screaming. But no. They were frightened and angry, but not in pain.Then Ewan shouted above the clamor: “Annabel! Annabel, can you hear me? Are you hurt?” There was a clear strain of panic in his voice.
“Ewan!” she called out. She was on her knees, since the seats now stretched vertically into the air. “I’m merely shaken.” Her bonnet was squashed over one ear, so she pulled it off and put it to the side. “What about the horses?”
“Jakes managed to cut them free just before the carriage slid. So all we have to do is get you out.” And then, very close to the carriage wall, “Don’t worry, I’m right here.”
“I’m not worried,” Annabel called back. To be honest, she was tired of traveling in the carriage. Now she would be able to stretch her legs while they mended the vehicle.
“We have to turn over the carriage,” Ewan said. She could still hear an echo of fear in his voice and it gave her a queer pang of pleasure. “It might take me a few minutes to decide how to do it best. I don’t want to jostle you too much in the process, and there’s some water in this ditch that might make it difficult to brace ourselves.”
Annabel had just discovered that herself, since water had started seeping through the doorframe on which she was kneeling. She scrambled up and leaned against the side of the carriage.
“How much water?” she asked with a credible show of calmness. It was pouring in now, swelling around the door and creeping muddily toward her slippers. She reached over and grabbed her squashed bonnet before it was inundated.
“Not enough to drown you. Wet to your ankles at the most.”
Annabel scowled. The window was above her, but she could certainly fit through it.
“Ewan!” she called. “Does the carriage window open?”
“You couldn’t fit through a window,” he said, before shouting something unintelligible up the slope at his men.
“Yes, I could,” Annabel shouted back, a bit indignantly. The water was at her toes now and it was cold as ice and filthy. “But I can’t reach high enough.”
“Wait a moment!” The coach shuddered with Ewan’s weight and a moment later his face appeared in the muddy glass above her. “Hello!” he said, grinning. “Your hair’s a mess.”
She made a face at him and pointed at the black water lapping at her slippers. She saw him look down and frown, and then he said, “Turn around.”
She turned about and hid her face against the coach seat, but no flying glass struck her. Instead she heard the splintering, screaming sound of wood being torn from its moorings. When she turned about again, sunshine was pouring down. Ewan had ripped the entire window frame from the carriage and lifted it into the air. There was a crash as it landed in the ditch. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ll just brace myself….” And then he reappeared, lying down and leaning half through the window with his arms stretched out to her.
“Come on, darling,” he said, “easy as pulling a babe from its crib, I’m thinking.”
“I’m glad you find this amusing,” Annabel said, but she reached up to him. His large hands closed on her hands and then with a powerful, smooth movement, he pulled so hard that she literally flew upward, and his hands closed again on her waist. Then with a grunt he pulled her through the window and sat her down, skirts hanging into the coach’s cavity.
Annabel just stared at him. She had to remind herself to close her gaping mouth. “How in the world did you do that?”
“ ’Twas no trouble at all to lift a featherweight such as yourself.”
Annabel had never wasted any tears over the fact that she had a lush, rounded figure. She’d always liked it, and frankly, men showed every sign of liking it as well. But she was no slender, fragile waif who could be wafted through the air on a breeze.
At some point Ewan had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. His forearms were bulging with muscle, and his shoulders appeared likely to rip through the thin linen of his shirt. Annabel swallowed, thinking of Ewan without his shirt at their picnic. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
“Where do you get all these muscles?” she asked.
“Lifting damsels in distress.” He grinned at her, and there was a slight lurch as he leaped off the carriage and landed with a splash in the ditch.
Then he held up his arms. “Jump!”
Annabel couldn’t help smiling. If that were any normal Englishman standing below her—a normal gentleman of any nationality—she would be afraid that her weight, hurtling off the top of a carriage, would drop him to the ground like a stone. But Ewan…
She pulled her legs out of the destroyed carriage window and stood up. From here she could see miles of dark emerald forest with just a few birds erupting from its depths like flying fish skimming an ocean. The air was cool and crisp and smelled of fir trees, deep, loamy earth and spring.
“Annabel!” Ewan called.
She looked down. He was standing in water, after all. So without a moment’s trepidation, she launched herself from the downed carriage, coming home to his arms with all the security and the pleasure of a child leaping from the second stair.
His arms closed around her and for a moment she felt nothing but the heat of his body. He smelled of soap, and clean sweat, and linens dried in the sun. Dimly she could hear Ewan’s men cheering her recovery. But he was tipping up her chin and looking down at her with those sea-green eyes. “Ask me a question, lass,” he said. “We’re out of kisses.”
“Do you want to put me down now?”
“The answer is no,” he said, covering her mouth with his own. His lips were as hard and as powerful as his body. He looked like a great, innocent farm laborer but he kissed like a sinful lord, a rake who knew her heart’s darkest secrets, desires of which she’d known nothing until his kisses awakened them.
Finally he drew back and she blinked at him, realizing it was a good thing he was still holding her up; her legs had turned liquid and she was trembling all over.
He wasn’t smiling. She liked that.
“My lord,” Mac called from the road. “The man we sent ahead has returned and says there’s a small hamlet three miles down the road. Perhaps you may wish to go there while we work with the carriage. The slower vehicles can’t be more than an hour behind us and I’ll send them on to you directly.”
Ewan held out his hand. Annabel took it and he pulled her up the slope to the road. She glanced back to see their sleek, fine carriage scratched and broken, lying on its side like a bird shot down in midflight.
“Annabel and I will take one of the horses and ride to the village,” Ewan was saying. “Send the other carriages to pick us up, and we’ll continue until we find an inn for the night.”
She shook her head at him, and he said, “We don’t have a sidesaddle, Annabel; you’ll have to ride before me.”
“Those horses aren’t strong enough for the both of us. We’ll take two horses, and I can do quite well without a sidesaddle.”