She didn’t want to face him yet.
Heaven above, she didn’t think she could.
She, who had always prided herself on her cool and level head, had been reduced to a stammering idiot, mut-tering to herself like a bedlamite, terrified to face the one man she quite obviously couldn’t avoid forever.
But if she could avoid him for one day, she told herself, that was something. And as for tomorrow-Well, she could worry about tomorrow some other time. Tomorrow, maybe. For now all she wanted to do was run from her problems.
Courage, she was now quite certain, was a vastly overrated virtue.
She wasn’t sure where she wanted to go; anywhere that could be termed out would probably do, any spot where she could tell herself that the odds of running into Michael were slim indeed.
And then, because she was quite convinced that no higher power was inclined to show her benevolence ever again, it began to rain an hour into her hike, starting first as a light sprinkle but quickly developing into a full-fledged downpour. Francesca huddled under a wide-limbed tree for shelter, resigned to wait out the rain, and then finally, after twenty minutes of shifting her weight from foot to foot, she just sat her bottom down onto the damp earth, cleanliness be hanged.
She was going to be here for some time; she might as well be comfortable, since she wasn’t going to be either warm or dry.
And of course, that was how Michael found her, just short of two hours later.
Good God, it figured he’d look for her. Couldn’t a man be counted on to behave like a cad when it truly mattered?
“Is there room for me under there?” he called out over the rain.
“Not for you and your horse,” she grumbled.
“What was that?”
“No!” she yelled.
He didn’t listen to her, of course, and nudged his mount under the tree, loosely tying the gelding to a low branch after he’d hopped down.
“Jesus, Francesca,” he said without preamble. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
“And good day to you, too,” she muttered.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking for you?”
“About as long as I’ve been huddled under the tree, I imagine,” she retorted. She supposed she should be glad that he’d come to rescue her, and her shivering limbs were just itching to leap onto his horse and ride away, but the rest of her was still in a foul mood and quite willing to be contrary just for the sake of being, well, contrary.
Nothing could put a woman in worse spirits than a nice bout of self-derision.
Although, she thought rather peevishly, he was certainly not blameless in the debacle that was last night. And if he assumed that her litany of panicked, after-the-fact I’m sorrys the night before meant that she’d absolved him of guilt, he was quite mistaken.
“Well, let’s go, then,” he said briskly, nodding toward his mount.
She kept her gaze fixed over his shoulder. “The rain is letting up.”
“In China, perhaps.”
“I’m quite fine,” she lied.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Francesca,” he said in short tones, “hate me all you want, but don’t be an idiot.”
“It’s too late for that,” she said under her breath.
“Maybe so,” he agreed, demonstrating annoyingly superior hearing, “but I’m damned cold, and I want to go home. Believe what you will, but right now I have a far greater desire for a cup of tea than I do for you.”
Which should have reassured her, but instead all she wanted to do was hurl a rock at his head.
But then, perhaps just to prove that her soul wasn’t immediately headed for a toasty locale, the rain did let up, not all the way, but enough to lend a hint of truth to her lie.
“The sun will be out in no time,” she said, motioning to the drizzle. “I’m fine.”
“And do you plan to lie in the middle of the field for six hours until your dress dries off?” he drawled. “Or do you just prefer a slow, lingering case of lung fever?”
She looked him straight in the eye for the first time. “You are a horrible man,” she said.
He laughed. “Now that is the first truthful thing you’ve said all morning.”
“Is it possible you don’t understand that I wish to be alone?” she countered.
“Is it possible you don’t understand that I wish for you not to die of pneumonia? Get on the horse, Francesca,” he ordered, in much the same tone she imagined he’d used on his troops in France. “When we are home you may feel free to lock yourself in your room-for a full two weeks, if it so pleases you-but for now, can we just get the hell out of the rain?”
It was tempting, of course, but even more than that, damned irritating because he was speaking nothing but sense, and the last thing she wanted just now was for him to be right about anything. Especially because she had a sinking feeling she needed more than two weeks to get past what had happened the evening before.
She was going to need a lifetime.
“Michael,” she whispered, hoping she might be able to appeal to whichever side of him took pity on pathetic, quivering females, “I can’t be with you right now.”
“For a twenty-minute ride?” he snapped. And then, before she had the presence of mind to even yelp in irritation, he’d hauled her to her feet, and then off her feet, and then onto his horse.
“Michael!” she shrieked.
“Sadly,” he said in a dry voice, “not said in the same tones I heard from you last night.”
She smacked him.