Free The Tweedie Passion by Helen Susan Swift Page B

was strengthening as we entered yet within a very few moments it was hard to see where we were going, so close-packed were the trees.
    'Dismount,' Hugh ordered, as if he was the Captain of a troop of the King's Horse and I was one of his soldiers. He watched as I very gingerly lifted my leg over the rump of the horse and slid to the ground. My legs wobbled when my feet touched the thick leaf mould, but it was that other much more prominent part of me that was causing me most grief at that time, and I was disinclined to rub there with a man watching.
    I had no need to worry. Reaching behind him, Hugh furiously massaged his behind. 'I don't know about you,' he said with a grin that I could see even in the shade of the forest, 'but riding bareback really makes me sore.'
    'Me too,' I found it easy to match his grin, 'I don't think I will sit comfortably for a week.'
    There was something very reassuring about being with a man who was open about his weaknesses and I was much more relaxed about rubbing my own tender parts. 'I will wager that I have matching bruises on both sides,' I said more than I intended, and far more than my mother would ever have approved.
    Hugh cut off his laugh. 'I will be the same' he said. Mercifully he did not ask if he could check, as some of the boys of the Lethan would have, nor look the other way in tongue-tied embarrassment as Robert would do.
    'Now,' he cut lengths of grass, tied them together and created effective hobbles for the horses. 'We will let them graze and hope that if they are seen they look like wild beasts rather than Armstrong mounts.' He smiled. 'They were probably stolen from somewhere else in the first place.'
    'I will call mine Kailzie,' I said, 'after a place I know well.'
    'Kailzie she is, now and henceforth,' Hugh agreed solemnly.
    I watched him work. The morning light was strengthening but in the gloom between these thick trees I still had no clear idea about his looks. I wished to see this man who was so ugly that he thought women would only speak to him because they wanted his lands.
    'First things first' he said. 'I have to find a tree and no doubt you will too. I will head right and I suggest you go left.' He moved away, stopping in the shade. 'Watch for the snakes.'
    'Are there snakes here?' I asked.
    'Not many,' Hugh replied quickly. 'The dragons killed them all.' His laugh was short and cheerful.
    There was a small burn running through the forest, chuckling brown and friendly, with small pools and a number of miniature waterfalls. Hugh lay on his face beside one of the pools and slowly inserted his arms. A few moments later he flicked them out, holding a fat trout. He grinned over his shoulder to me.
    'That's a good start, I think.'
    'A very good start,' I agreed as he quickly put the fish out of its misery and slid his arms back into the water. 'Why don't you see if there are any brambles?'
    I obeyed without question, which was highly unusual for me. There were a number of blackberry bushes on the outer fringes of the forest, with those on the southern side heavy with berries. I picked some docken leaves to carry them in, added a few very late and overripe raspberries for good measure and returned to the fishing pool to find the trout already gutted. Hugh was searching for dry wood.
    'I'll start a cooking fire while you prepare the berries,' he said. 'It will only be a small fire in case the smoke alerts the Armstrongs.' He kept his back turned all the time, as if ashamed to show his face in the dappled light.
    'Hugh,' I said at length. 'Face me.'
    There was a long pause as he pretended to concentrate on his sticks.
    'Hugh,' I said softly. 'You can't hide forever.' I felt the beating of my heart, as if I was in the company of some horned monster, or a Veitch, perhaps.
    'As you wish, Jeannie,' he said, eventually, stood up and turned around.
    He was filthy and highly scented, as would anybody be after a long incarceration in a dungeon, and his face was bristled with a