Judith E. French Read Online Free PDF Page A

of the bitter night were beginning to take their toll. Fiona had ceased to shiver, and her eyelids felt weighted with lead. She’d never been exposed to such harsh weather in Ireland, but she remembered reading the symptoms of patients who had. She knew that she had to remain alert and that she must keep the blood circulating in her hands and feet.
    She tried to wiggle her toes and realized with a sinking feeling that her legs were numb from the knees down. Her fingers were stiff with cold, but she’d folded her arms across her chest under the blanket, and tucked her hands under her armpits.
    It was snowing so hard now that she couldn’t see Karl or Nigel. The rump of Nigel’s mule was a moving white mound just beyond her own mount’s flicking ears. She didn’t know where Karl was—if he was riding behind her or ahead. If she was last in line, she wondered if she could just rein in her mule and stop. How long would it take before the trappers missed her?
    Would she just sit on her mule in the middle of this endless woods until she and the animal froze to death? And if they did, would it be an easier death than what awaited her at the end of the journey?
    Quitter!
    Fiona’s eyes snapped open, and she stared around her, expecting to see James Patrick O’Neal’s scowling face materialize out of the darkness. Grandfather’s dead, she told herself firmly. If I’m hearing his voice, it’s only my mind playing tricks on me.
    Quitter. It was her grandfather’s voice, all right. Weak stock on your father’s side. What more can I expect of an Englishman’s bastard?
    “Scot,” Fiona murmured through cold, cracked lips. “He wasn’t English-he was a Scot.”
    Same thing. A gentleman. Her grandfather’s withering sarcasm cut deep, as it always had. Weak stock, weak blood. Any farmer knows interbreeding makes worthless livestock. No O’Neal was ever a quitter. Your mother had more gumption than you when she was half your age.
    Nigel’s harsh voice intruded on Fiona’s dreaming. “Hold yer blathering tongue, slut.”
    “He was a Scot,” she repeated stubbornly, barely loud enough for her own ears to hear.
    Her grandsire had always forced her into the position of defending her father . . . defending a man she hated. It wasn’t fair, but it was James Patrick O’Neal’s way, and nothing short of God or the devil would change it.
    Whenever the dusty Latin texts were too hard for her, or she couldn’t figure out the handwritten recipe for mixing a medicinal formula, her grandfather would goad her to try again and to keep trying until she succeeded. He never laid a hand on her in anger. But if she sickened at the sight of bedsores on a dying man, or blanched at the cries of a woman giving birth, he would taunt her until she found the strength to face what appalled her.
    “I guess you made me tough, Grandfather,” Fiona whispered into the wind, “but it never made me love you.”
    The mule stopped short, and Fiona fell forward over the animal’s neck, barely catching herself from tumbling into the snow.
    “We’re here,” Karl said. “Get down offen thet mule.”
    Seconds later, before Fiona could force her stiffened limbs to obey, he cuffed her sharply alongside the head. The blow brought her fully awake. She slid her leg over the mule’s back and kicked free of the stirrup, then let herself drop. Her knees folded under her, and she landed facedown on the ground, under the animal’s belly.
    Excruciating pain shot through her as pins and needles of sensation seized both feet. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, crawled from under the mule, and used the saddle leathers to pull herself up to a standing position.
    Nigel’s hand clamped over Fiona’s shoulder, and he dragged her several yards to a crude log structure. “Home sweet home,” he said, throwing his shoulder against the door and dragging her inside.
    She shuddered and shrank away from him. He smelled worse inside out of the wind, and the stink