their heads out of the stalls.
She chose a small horse, one that looked young and fast. She stroked her hand down its nose. It flared its nostrils and eyed her with defiance before tossing its head.
“You won’t let them catch us, will you?” she asked.
The beast, a dark-brown horse with a white stripe down the length of his nose, huffed as though offended by the question. Letty retrieved a bridle from the peg on his stall and fitted it to the horse. Then she slipped inside and saddled him.
She guided the horse out of the stall and mounted him. The stable door was still wide open, and she didn’t want to take a chance of being grabbed if she walked the horse out before getting on its back.
She leaned over the horse’s neck and whispered, “Run, my darling, run!” She kicked his flanks, and the horse shot through the door and barreled into the woods skirting the road.
13
“There she is!”
Letty hissed a curse that would have made Adam blush. She kicked her heels into her horse’s flanks and bent low over the beast. The road was close, and as soon as she reached it, she gave her horse more rein, allowing him to run even faster. The thunder of pursuing hooves behind her was like the rumble of a distant and terrifying storm. If they caught up with her, all would be lost.
Letty studied the road ahead, afraid that her horse would stumble and roll, but she couldn’t slow now, not for anything.
She chanced one look back and saw at least two men on massive horses behind her. Those brutes could keep up with her on an open road, but perhaps not in the woods. It would be a risk to stray from the path on terrain she wasn’t familiar with, but what choice did she have?
“Hyah!” She slapped the loose reins against the horse’s sides as she veered sharply toward the woods on the right of the road.
The dense Scottish forest offered a dark and dangerous path, but Letty and her horse were small and quick. They dodged clumps of thistle bushes and skirted heavy copses of trees. One of the riders got close, his horse heaving alongside hers. Letty’s horse turned and snapped at the bigger horse’s neck, the sound so vicious that it made an audible snap.
“You little—” The man reached for Letty’s arm, but his horse screamed and pulled away.
There was a crack as something struck her arm. Letty flinched but didn’t take her eyes off the wooded trail.
“Don’t slow,” she told the horse, hoping that somehow he could understand her.
The woods swallowed up the man behind her, but she didn’t slow, didn’t stop, didn’t look back. She sent out a prayer to any magic that might still linger in the woods that she needed help.
Show me the way to Tyburn’s land.
Moonlight seemed to illuminate the path ahead, and Letty swore it must be her terror and exhaustion blending into each other because she strangely trusted the light and let her horse follow it.
The woods eventually thinned and soon stopped altogether. Now it was only open land before her. In the distance, the mighty, dark shape of a mountain was black against the moonlit sky.
It’s Ben Nevis.
Between her and the mountain was a dark stone castle. The horse made it halfway down the drive to the castle before he slowed and stopped. His sides heaved, and foam frothed at his mouth as he struggled to catch his breath. Letty slid out of the saddle. Her numb legs threatened to give out beneath her. She leaned against the horse, tears streaming down her face.
“You did it, my darling thing—you did it.” She hugged his neck, soothing the beast until he began to calm.
“I must go on without you.” She kissed the stripe on his nose before she raised her skirts and ran toward the distant castle.
Her lungs burned, and her feet felt like shards of glass had pierced the bottoms of her boots, but she didn’t stop. She ran up the steps of the castle and pounded her fists against the door.
“Help!” she screamed. “I need help! Please!”
The door opened beneath her fists, and she tumbled inside.
“Ach, what the devil?” the man grumbled. “Some mad Sassenach screaming her bloody head off. Ye’ll be raising the dead next.”
Letty struggled to her feet, her eyes adjusting in the dim light.
“Please . . . my husband. Need Tyburn.”
The tall man with reddish-brown hair stared at her.“Ye need Tyburn?”
She nodded. “Adam