DARE THE WILD WIND Read Free

past the turning to their cave, Brenna prayed she still had enough of a lead.  Then she galloped around the notch in the trail, and plunged down into the small rushing stream.
    Barely the stride of a tall man across, even in its spring freshet it was a simple matter to ford.  But Brenna wheeled Gypsy upstream along its bed.  Icy water boiled to the chestnut's hocks and splashed on Brenna's skirts and booted feet, but the current wasn't too strong for Gypsy to breast.  Only a few more yards, and they would reach the first jog in the small swift burn, out of sight of the trail and the horseman who pursued them.
    Brenna kicked the lathered Gypsy forward, to round the crook in the stream with only seconds to spare.  Despite the muffling din of the rushing water, Brenna made out the hard clatter of hooves as the Englishman's animal left the low bank of the brook.  With relief, she heard his horse land on the opposite side in one jump and bound ahead up the empty trail.
    Reluctantly, Brenna drove Gypsy forward.  They had to be out of earshot once her pursuer discovered he could no longer hear any sound of flight on the track in front of him.  By then, Brenna hoped he would have little clue to which of the forks in the trail she had taken.  And memory hadn't betrayed her. 
    Only a little way upstream, the trail Brenna recalled dipped to cross the burn they followed.  Guiding her horse up onto solid ground again, she turned toward the cave, keeping Gypsy to a walk that would grant her merciful rest.  And, on the carpet of needles on this long unused trail, it was a pace that would carry Brenna in near silence past the hearing of anyone who pursued her. 
    A small waterfall curtained the haven of her childhood.  Gypsy had cooled and recovered her wind, and dismounting, she let the mare drink and then led her along the narrow shelf of rock that ran between the rushing torrent of water and the smooth worn wall of the cliff.  Gypsy followed without balking.  Centuries of churning water had hollowed the cave into the fissured rock and ground and laid a bed of sand at its mouth.  Beyond it, bare damp stone slanted to the roof of the cave, but there was space to spare to hobble more than one horse inside.
    How often all three of them had done exactly that.  Nearly from the time Brenna could trail after the other two, they had built small fires in the cave, roasting squirrels and rabbits they had snared.  And sworn never to reveal their secret place. 
    They had never found any signs of habitation in the cave but theirs.  With brands of wood as torches, they had discovered simple scratchings, crude drawings of animals far different from the roe and red deer and grouse they saw in the forest and on the moors.  But no dead ashes from fires someone else had built warned them one day they might be evicted from their childish lair.
    Brenna paced on the sand, her stomach twisting with worry for Iain.  He had risked his life for her.  And he could have lingered too long in reach of the English dragoons. 
    She blessed his caution in watching for her from the trees instead of the abbey.  Inside its walls, he almost certainly would have been trapped.  From the spot in the forest where he laid his ambush, he at least had some chance of escape. 
    He knew the forest above Lochmarnoch Castle even better than Brenna, but she couldn't be sure he had slipped safely away.  If the dragoons had fired scattershot into the forest, Iain could have been wounded, even killed.  She couldn't bear to think it.  She could never live with her guilt if the teasing, high spirited Iain had sacrificed himself to keep her from the hands of English soldiers.
    Then a welcome voice made her whirl with a rush of relief.
    "I see Gypsy is still the fastest horse between Inverness and Loch Rannoch."
    He came leading his own mount, a bay ridden harder even than she had driven Gypsy, lather still clinging in patches to his shaggy winter coat.  And Brenna