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horse snorted and rolled his eyes at her.
    “Ye didna listen to what I said, did ye?” Rob asked, watching unconcernedly from his seat on the rocks. He took a swig from the flask of whisky, offered it to her, and then popped it back into his sporran when she declined. “I told ye Falin will suffer no one to ride him but me. That was a warning. If ye persist, he’ll do ye damage.”
    “Ungrateful wretch,” she hissed to the stallion as she scrambled to her feet, rubbing her backside. He whickered back at her, laying his ears flat.
    Perhaps the beast did deserve the name of a demon.
    Rob mounted him smoothly, and the horse didn’t so much as swish his long tail. The MacLaren leaned toward her and offered his a hand to help her up.
    She folded her arms across her chest.
    “Perhaps I misjudged the seriousness of that fall on your arse.” He shot her a devilish grin. “Will ye no’ be able to ride astride?”
    “Of course, I can ride,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “I just dinna want to ride with the likes of ye.”
    “Verra well, Mistress Stewart,” he said, nudging Falin into a brisk walk through the narrow boulders and down the slope. “If ye wish to stretch your legs, who am I to gainsay a lady?”
    The rope pulled her after them, and she trotted to keep pace. She stumbled once when her foot found a hole, but managed to keep her feet. They moved briskly along the valley floor, heading north. Every hundred yards or so, Elspeth tore off another bit from her skirt and dropped it behind her.
    “Is this what passes for chivalry to a MacLaren?” she finally asked when her wind was nearly blown and she was reduced to heaving breaths.
    “Oh, aye, my father always told me to give in to a lady’s wishes. A man lives longer that way.”
    “I didna say I wished to run along behind you.”
    “Or maybe my father said it only seems longer,” Rob said, twisting in his saddle to look back at her. He slowed Falin to a sedate walk.
    “My wedding shoes were no’ made for such hard use,” she muttered. Like her dress, whose hem was now hopelessly tattered, her cunning kidskin slippers were probably scuffed beyond redemption. They were so lightly soled, she felt each pebble on the balls of her feet.
    “May I remind ye, my lady, that walking is your choice?”
    “None of this is my choice, MacLaren.” Now that their pace had slowed, she felt the cold more keenly. Wind whistled down the valley, slicing through the wool cloak Rob had let her use as if it were made of thin silk.
    “My father dragged my mother all the way from Ireland,” Mad Rob said, “and I’ll wager she didna complain as much as ye.”
    “Well, I dinna suppose your father stole your mother from her wedding.”
    “Ach, no. He took her from a nunnery, and she didna care to go at first either,” he admitted. “But dinna fret. She came round to his way of thinking in the end, and it was all for the best.”
    “Charming tale,” she said with sarcasm.
    “Aye, I always thought so. If my mother had kept her veil, I wouldna have been born.”
    “What a loss to the world that would’ve been!”
    She’d picked off all the silk piping from her hem. It could be easily explained as an accident of the rough road and his own fault for making her walk.
    When he faced away from her and kept plodding, she untied one of the sleeves from her bodice beneath the cloak and let it drop to the ground. In another fifty paces, she considered undoing the other one as well, but decided against it. She’d likely be able to explain the accidental loss of one sleeve, but not two.
    He reined the stallion to a stop so she could catch up to them. “Ye ride with me now.”
    She looked away, continuing to defy him. If she walked, they’d travel more slowly, and it would be easier for the men tracking them to catch up. She’d picked as much of her hem as she dared, both for modesty sake and because she feared Rob might discover what she’d done. Angering a madman