The Pretender Read Online Free PDF Page A

called out to the coachman as she pushed back the lopsided brim of her straw bergère. “Higgins, are you there? Why have we run off the road?”
    “ ’Twere a sheep standin’ in the middle of the road, my lady. I had to turn us off the road to keep from hitting him, but it looks like we’ve gotten stuck now. Might’ve broken a wheel, too.”
    “Oh, goodness!” said Isabella, lifting her head to peer out the window. “You didn’t hit him, did you, Higgins?”
    “Who?”
    “The sheep, poor thing . . .”
    “Bother the sheep, Isabella! We could have all been killed!”
    “But he does not realize that, Elizabeth. . . .”
    “Oh, he’s a’right, Lady Isabella. Still standing in the very same spot.”
    Elizabeth glanced out the window to where, indeed, a shag-haired sheep stood watching them from the middle of the roadway. When he saw her glaring at him, he bleated.
    Entertaining thoughts of mutton stew and leg of lamb, Elizabeth reached for the latch on the door. Outside, the back wheels of the carriage were hopelessly mired in what appeared to be a substantial stretch of bog. Higgins was on the ground, standing a space away and scratching his balding head beneath his hat.
    “Do you think you can repair it?” she asked him.
    “Aye, if I can get to it to fix it, that is. It looks mightily stuck.”
    The duke’s two men-at-arms, Manfred and Titus, circled around from the other side of the lopsided coach. “We best get you ladies out of there and see what we can do to push the coach free.”
    But when Manfred took the first step toward the coach, he immediately plunged ankle deep in the mire. He moved to pull his foot free, slipping clean out of his boot instead, his toes wiggling through the hole in his stocking.
    “Gaw, it’s like molasses, it is,” he said struggling to get his foot back inside his boot. He twisted his bulk, stretching back awkwardly, lost his balance and fell facefirst with a howl, flailing as he went over like a tree. When he gained his feet several moments later, the front of him—his hands, his face, his paunchy girth—was hopelessly covered with mud.
    Titus was laughing behind him. “Didn’t you know ye’re supposed to take your coat off before you lay it down for the ladies to walk upon?”
    Manfred delivered his comrade a lethal glare as he removed his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the mud dripping off his face. “I think I’ll be steadier if I were t’ carry you on me back, my lady, ’stead of in me arms. D’you think you can wrap your arms ’round me neck?”
    “I believe so, yes.”
    Elizabeth reached for the doorway of the coach and pulled herself to stand at the edge, reaching out for where the man had doubled over and was waiting.
    It was just as she was bent over Manfred’s back, her feet dangling behind her in a most indelicate piggyback pose, that she heard an unexpected and unfamiliar voice coming from behind them.
    “ Och, but you English lassies do have a peculiar way of showing a fancy for the lads, you do.”
    Manfred turned about—with Elizabeth still draped over his shoulders—to see a stranger who had come unnoticed upon the scene.
    He was dressed in Highland fashion, in a belted plaid that left his legs exposed beneath a loose flowing cambric shirt that he hadn’t bothered to tie at the neck. His hair was as dark as soot and hung below his neck, tied in a queue beneath a Scottish blue bonnet decorated with a sprig of heather. He carried a broadsword at his side anda peculiar studded shield strapped to his back. It made him look downright primordial. His cocksure grin, however, and his obvious amusement at their situation touched a raw nerve with Elizabeth.
    “I suppose you have a better idea?” she said, mustering as much dignity as she could while trying not to think of how ridiculous she must look hanging as she was over Manfred’s backside.
    “Aye, I do.” He glanced at Manfred then, ignoring her altogether. “Put the