Despite their situation, she sensed the leap of his response, like a hungry hound, one he quickly releashed and drew back.

Inwardly smiling, she broke the kiss; opening her eyes, she lowered her hands.

He frowned down at her. “What was that for?”

She let her smile show. “Just a thank-you.” Retaking his hand, she started on down the lane.

In two steps he was by her side again. He stared at her face — she felt his gaze — but then he humphed and looked forward.

Resettling his hand once more around hers, he strode on.

Inwardly delighted, still smiling, she set herself to keeping pace.

They reached the first landslide a mile or so on. From the crest of the rise, the lane had descended more steeply than on the way up, its surface increasingly gouged and eroded by the runoff from the thaw and the spring rains.

“Careful.” Halting Heather, Breckenridge eyed the loose shingle, a load of scree that had come loose from further up the hillside to slide over the lane, burying it. He’d crossed scree before while walking in the Peak District; he knew what to do. “Follow as closely as you can in my footsteps.”

Still holding Heather’s hand, he picked his way across.

Despite a small slip or two, they reached the other side without serious incident.

Blowing out a breath, Heather looked back over the unstable patch. “That’ll slow a horse, won’t it?”

He nodded. “He’ll have to be extremely careful, but it’s not so deep a horse won’t be able to negotiate it. The horse just won’t want to, so it depends on how good the rider is, and how well the horse knows him.”

“If the horse trusts him.” Settling her hand in his, Heather waved ahead. “Onward.”

The second landslide was a half a mile further on, another stretch of scree, rather more extensive than the last.

Breckenridge felt a lot more confident once they were across it. “If he’s still following, that will definitely slow him down.”

They set off again. The sun rose ever higher as they swung along. If anything, the surface of the lane deteriorated even further, until it was unlikely the rider would be able to ride, not if he valued his horse.

About them, spring seemed determined to take hold, to wrest the land from winter’s drab grip. Swallows and larks swooped high above; a cuckoo called from deep in the woods that formed a solid green barrier ahead.

The lane led straight on between the trees. Bushes grew thick, increasingly tall as they descended from the more desolate heights. Breckenridge glanced back several times, but the lay of the land, the twists in the lane, hid any pursuer from his sight.

They reached an intersection. A wider lane ran to both left and right. They paused and looked both ways. The tree-and bush-lined lane looked identical in both directions.

“Right, I think,” Heather said. “If I remember correctly, there’ll be a small loch on the other side of the lane just a little way along.”

Hauling out his map, Breckenridge consulted it, then nodded. “Right.”

They’d kept up a good pace, and the lane, unrideable in some places, would have slowed the rider if he was still on their trail. Nevertheless, Breckenridge felt his instincts stir as they turned onto the wider, and much better surfaced, lane.

The loch Heather remembered was soon visible through the trees on their left. Long and thin, it followed the lane, or rather the lane followed its shore, steadily heading northwest.

He had to quash the urge to keep looking behind. He would hear a rider approaching from a good distance away; he’d have enough warning to take cover, and with the bushes lining the lane now so plentiful and thick, they’d be able to find a decent hiding place.

Although he had no idea if the rider was still following, and hadn’t instead turned off along the way, his instincts kept flickering. He’d never felt so on edge, so. . protectively aware. And while the wiser part of him understood that his acute reaction was due to the fact that it was Heather walking beside him, that it was she — the lady he’d all but formally claimed as his bride — who was at risk, most of his conscious mind didn’t want to dwell on any concomitant implications.

He just wanted her safe in the Vale.

Heather walked steadily beside Breckenridge, at the fastest pace she could manage. She wondered if he thought she was oblivious of the tension gripping him, that all but hummed through him. His face, unreadable though it remained, had taken on a graven cast, the lines of the austere planes more harsh and honed.

He was totally and completely focused on the danger that potentially followed in their wake.

She, meanwhile, felt none of the fear she certainly would have felt had she been fleeing alone. She wasn’t unaware of the danger, yet with Breckenridge beside her, her mind remained clear. If danger did indeed catch up with them, she would need her wits about her — not least to ensure they both got free and he didn’t do anything recklessly and possibly unnecessarily brave.

That he might — that, if the situation to his mind called for it, he would — she had not the slightest doubt.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. As they marched on through a golden afternoon, she remembered perfectly clearly what had taken her to Lady Herford’s salon on that fateful night over a week ago.

She’d been looking for a hero.

And she’d found one.

He definitely wasn’t the hero she’d imagined finding, but he was a hero nonetheless.

Not that he was her hero, the one she’d been seeking. He was hers only temporarily, not hers for life. Once she was safe in the Vale, they would part, and the connection they now had would come to an end.

Regardless, in the current circumstances, she would appreciate the hero she had.

The long, narrow loch eventually ended. They walked on in silence. The lane emerged from the trees to cross an open stretch, then a wood closed in on the lane from the left. The lane was leveling out. Just ahead, a roof appeared through the trees, then another roof became visible on the other side of the lane.

“That must be Knockgray.” She picked up her pace, conscious of an impulse to rush ahead. “Once we reach it, the entrance to the Vale is close.”

Breckenridge glanced back, looked hard as they once more passed into shadow. No sound reached him, no telltale drum of hooves, yet his instincts prickled, ruffling and rising in warning.

He could see nothing among the trees back beyond the open stretch. Facing forward, he strode on, senses alert. Just a little way further and she would be safe.

They strode rapidly into the tiny village. A farm worker and a woman in a cottage garden turned their heads and watched their progress, then went back to their toil.

“This way.” Heather pointed left, then led him into a straight, narrow lane that cut directly down an incline. At the bottom of the incline, the lane met a well-paved road.

“There!” Heather pointed.

Lifting his gaze beyond the road, Breckenridge saw what at first glance appeared to be the entrance to another lane directly opposite the one they were in, but once they’d descended the first few yards, he saw that the lane was in fact a drive, the entrance flanked by shoulder-high stone cairns, with drystone walls stretching to either side.

The further they descended, leaving Knockgray behind them, the more obvious it became that the lane opposite was the entrance to a significant private estate; the stone walls stretched unbroken to either side, and the land enclosed looked prosperous and well tended, far more so than any farm they’d yet passed.

“This is the road to Ayr,” Heather almost gaily announced as they reached the intersection. “Carsphairn, the village, is that way”—she pointed to their right—“and Ayr is far beyond it. To the left lies New Galloway.”

Breckenridge nodded, mentally orienting their position on the map. Keeping his hold on her hand, he led her across the road. “How far is the house?” A sense of impending danger still rode him.

“The manor — Casphairn Manor — is about two miles on.” She glanced at him as, pausing in the entrance to the driveway, he glanced back up the lane.

The lane was so straight that he could see all the way to the top, to where it met the lane through Knockgray.

Heather squeezed his hand. “You don’t need to be so worried — we’re here now.”

He met her eyes. “Two miles is still two miles.”

She grinned and started walking. “True, but I can’t imagine, Catriona being who and what she is, that anyone would dare follow us into the Vale — not if they meant to do us harm.”

That gave him pause, and another question. “Catriona — exactly who and what is she?”

Heather’s lips were distinctly curved. “She’s the Lady — the Lady of the Vale. She’s. . well, I suppose those who don’t understand would call her a witch.” She briefly met his eyes. “A very powerful witch.”

“What about those who do understand — what do they say of her?”

“That she’s the Lady, and she keeps the Vale and all its inhabitants safe and prosperous.”

“We’re not inhabitants.”

“I’m family and you’re protecting me — believe me, that puts us under her wing.”

He pulled a face and didn’t argue, but he’d be damned if he dropped his guard because of a witch who might or might not be sitting two miles ahead. And who might, or might not, be watching, let alone be of a mind to assist.

They walked straight on, due west, for a quarter of a mile, then the lane, more a well-graded carriageway, curved around a low hill to the south. Once around the bend, they would be out of sight of anyone pursuing.

Heather strode toward the bend, her gaze fixed eagerly ahead.

Releasing her hand, he halted and turned, letting her walk on while, yielding to instinct, he searched the route they’d followed, scanning their trail all the way back up the lane to the intersection in Knockgray—

And the rider, dark-haired and well-built, sitting his chestnut at the very top of the lane, his gaze trained on them.

Breckenridge didn’t need a closer look to know — beyond question — that the man had indeed followed them; he was the same rider he’d seen before. And now. . the rider’s stance, his focus, positively screamed his interest.

He was almost certainly the mysterious laird behind Heather’s kidnapping.

He fit the bill. Not just in physical parameters but in every other way as well. There was a menace in his stillness, some intangible, primitive quality Breckenridge recognized even across the distance separating them and interpreted without the slightest difficulty.

The man was a warrior — warrior-born, like him. A worthy foe, one no sane man would discount.

Breckenridge stood, watched. Hands rising to his hips, he waited.

But the rider didn’t move, neither forward nor back.

A standoff. Breckenridge finally accepted that.

The man, the laird, whoever he was, wasn’t inclined to venture onto Vale lands.

And while Breckenridge was certain the man was their enemy, he couldn’t — wouldn’t — leave Heather and give chase. Even if he’d had a horse handy, he wasn’t about to leave Heather, even if she was less than two miles from safety.

By the time they reached the manor, even if he and Richard rode out as soon as they could, the rider would be long gone.

For a full minute, he stared at the rider, returning look for look, then, hands falling from his hips, he turned and stalked on, following Heather deeper into the Vale.

The man who wasn’t McKinsey sat his horse at the top of the steep slope and looked down and across the road at the couple retreating around the bend. He watched them disappear around it, saw the man who had stood and stared back at him, warriorlike and challenging, put out a hand to steady the woman. In the last instant before they passed out of his sight, the man’s hand slid down to engulf the woman’s.

Heather Cynster. He didn’t know her, but now he’d laid eyes on her he was faintly relieved that fate had intervened and sent someone else — some other warrior — to rescue her. She looked like she’d be a handful; her confidence even under such circumstances, the proud set of her head, the fluidity of her stride, suggested intelligence, courage, and an independent will.

A termagant would have made his life difficult. Even more difficult than it already was.