Moon Dreams Read Online Free PDF

worth it. “That’s
something I suspect you would know better than I.”
    Alyson jumped nervously at this murmur so near her ear. She glanced
at the woman across from them, but she had leaned back and begun to snore
again. Guiltily Alyson looked at the empty place across from her. Apparently
the spinster had been traveling alone.
    “I don’t know.”
This rather odious man had saved her, Alyson realized. She didn’t know how to
thank him.
    That he had guessed she was the one the villains were after
did not puzzle her. She had long ago accepted that other people understood
things that she didn’t, while she saw things that made people look at her
strangely. That was the way her world was.
    “He’ll be furious, but I shouldn’t think he would harm a
stranger,” she said more to herself than to her listener.
    Her companion crossed his arms over his chest. “Who will be
furious? Who wanted you abducted?”
    Alyson sighed and sat back against the seat. There was
little enough she could do now. The coach rattled and jerked faster to make up
lost time. Her words lurched with the horses’ gait. “My . . . cousin.
He meant . . . for us . . . to be married.”
    Her filthy companion hummed but merely asked, “I don’t
suppose you would have a bite or two of something edible left in that basket,
would ye, lass? It looks as if we’ll not be makin’ the inn for supper.”
    Startled, Alyson glanced at the stranger who had rescued
her, however ungallantly. In this dusk she could discern little, but her sight
was enhanced by the impressions she had received throughout the day. He was
taller than she, but not frighteningly so, not so tall as Alan or her cousin.
He seemed very sturdily built, certainly not the skinny scarecrow one would
expect beneath those rags. Remembering the muscular strength of the arm that
had restrained her, she stirred uneasily. He was not so big as Cranville,
perhaps, but he had to be as strong. That arm had been sheer iron.
    His face was something of a problem. Covered in a week’s
growth of beard, it appeared formidable, as square and sturdily made as the
rest of him. His russet hair was tied in a queue, but since he kept it covered
with a hat, she could tell little more. She suspected she should be afraid of
him, but she had felt him as a congenial presence from the very first, more so
than the ladies, and she trusted her instincts.
    She reached for the basket. “You certainly have many voices,
don’t you? Are you an actor?” The change from his ignorant accent with the
highwaymen to a hint of a Scots burr had not escaped her notice.
    “‘All the world’s a stage, and men and women merely players . . .’”
he quoted mockingly. “I fancy you’re not quite what you seem either, milady.”
    “Do you enjoy Shakespeare, Mr. . . .” She
glanced up in surprise, realizing she was conversing with a man whose name she
didn’t know.
    “Rory Douglas Maclean, at your service, milady.” He swept
off his hat and made the half-bow the coach’s limited interior allowed him. “Might
I have the honor of yours, milady?”
    The soft, lilting roll of his R’s enchanted her, and Alyson
smiled. “You sound just like my grandmother. I didn’t realize how much I’d
missed that accent until now.” She produced a linen napkin with a variety of
selections from the cook’s generous basket. “I hope some of these will suit
your appetite.”
    She had not responded to his calling her lady. She had not offered him a name.
She had merely offered him all the food she carried.
    Rory accepted the offering without looking at it, wondering
if he’d finally found the flaw in all this perfection. What a shame it would be
to have a witless angel. Their conversation seemed to be carried on two levels:
he would ask questions and she would talk about Shakespeare and accents and
grandmothers, which would be fine if that was what he had asked her.
    But how many witless ladies could even read Shakespeare,