Devil of the Highlands Page 0,54

there. Only they'd been cantering for more than two hours now without finding their way out of the woods. Obviously, they'd got turned around somehow and headed in the wrong direction, but Evelinde didn't know how that had happened.

Shifting on her mare, she again glanced around the woods surrounding them. It was a sunny day outside the forest, but the trees in here grew so close together, the cover overhead might as well have been a stone wall. Very little sunlight was getting through, and it felt like early evening in the heart of the small forest.

Or perhaps it was early evening, Evelinde thought anxiously, wondering if she'd underestimated the time that had passed as she'd tried to find her way back out of the valley. She hoped not, as Evelinde had no desire to spend the night there.

The crunch of leaves and twigs being trampled underfoot reached her ears, and she glanced sharply to the side as Lady shifted nervously, but there was no one there, and the sound wasn't repeated. Still, both she and Lady had heard something so Evelinde waited, slowly scanning the woods, the skin on the back of her neck creeping all the way down her spine.

It was enough to make her decide she didn't wish to sit there any longer trying to think of a way to resolve the problem. It seemed to her that moving—even in the wrong direction—was better than staying in one place.

Turning Lady away from the direction the sound had seemed to come from, Evelinde urged her forward, resisting the urge to look back.

"It was probably just a rabbit or vole," she said, running a soothing hand down the mare's neck. "Certainly not a wolf or anything of that ilk."

Whether Lady was reassured or not Evelinde didn't know, but she wasn't feeling much better herself. Her back was still creeping, and her body had tensed up, waiting for some ferocious animal or other to leap out at them at any moment.

Trying to ignore the anxiety slipping through her, Evelinde slid her gaze over the way ahead, looking both to the left and the right, hoping to spot a break in the trees that would speak to their nearing the edge of the woods. She just hoped it wouldn't be the wrong side.

That thought made Evelinde rein in again. The ride through the valley the night they'd arrived hadn't seemed to take as long as this ride was. Of course, it could just seem like a long time because she was lost, but…

It would be very upsetting finally to find her way out of the woods only to discover she was on the wrong side of the valley and had to travel back through the woods again to get to the castle side.

If only she could see the castle…

But, of course, she couldn't, the trees were in the way.

Evelinde glanced upward at the foliage overhead. If she were to climb one of the taller trees until the foliage thinned out, she might be able to see the castle. Then she would know which direction she needed to go to get there.

Once the thought had taken hold, nothing could have stopped Evelinde from making the attempt. Patting Lady's neck soothingly, she slid off her mare and dropped to the ground. She then propped her hands on her hips and peered upward as she turned in a slow circle on the spot, trying to judge which tree was the largest and likely to get her high enough to see the castle, yet had branches low enough that she could reach them to start her climb.

After deciding on a tree, Evelinde moved to stand at its base. She paused there, her gaze sliding between the tree and her skirt, then she bent and reached under the front hem to catch the beck hemline of the skirt and draw it forward between her legs and up as she'd done to wade in the river. Recalling the problems it had caused when the skirt had slipped free of her belt the last time, Evelinde put extra care into making sure it was well affixed, then approached the tree she'd chosen.

She'd thought the branches of this tree were low enough to make it easy, but Evelinde had never climbed a tree before and hadn't a clue how hard it would be. Honestly, she'd seen children at d'Aumesbery shinny up with what appeared to be little effort, but it wasn't as easy as they made it look.

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