The Outrider (Redbourne Series #5 - Will's Story) Read Free Page A

shoes,
and a shawl, then headed out to the edge of the front lawn with Caspar at her
side.
    The coonhound barked again and ran back into the
house.
    “Caspar!” Elizabeth yelled, the gesture like a
burning match against the back of her throat. Why would she go back into the
house?
    A loud crack focused her attention to the spot
where her dog had disappeared inside the building.
    Crash!
    The greater portion of the roof over the living
area caved.
    “Yelp!” the dog cried out in pain.
    Then…nothing.
    Elizabeth set the basket on the ground and leapt
toward the house, but the heat from the fire was too great. She waited, her
hands twisting in front of her as she listened for any sign that her only
friend may have survived the collapsed roof.
    Still nothing.
    Elizabeth dropped to her knees, unable to hold
herself up any longer as the building she’d worked day and night to turn into a
beautiful place she could call home was now consumed in flames. The heat from
the fire stretched the skin of her face. Her arms, covered in soot and grime,
her hands red and blistered, folded in her lap. She sat back onto the heels of her
feet and dropped her head, squeezing her eyes shut, pushing the tears that had
welled there to slip down her cheeks.
    Caspar! she grieved silently.
    Her shoulders shook as sadness racked through her
at the tremendous loss before her. Her home. Her loyal companion and friend.
She opened her eyes and lifted her chin, staring helplessly into the rage of
devastation as it rose into the darkness of the night sky, etching her pain on
the black canvas with a pulsing orange haze.
    Lord, help me. What am I going to do now?
    She’d spent most of the money she’d brought with
her from England in buying supplies and materials to fix up the house and make
it her own, and the rest was now going up in flames, hidden inside a small box
of her mother’s with all evidence of her life in England. Everything she had in
the world would soon be nothing but embers on a plot of land in the middle of
nowhere.
    A horse neighed nervously in the fire-lit night
air.
    Luckily, the barn was far enough away from the
house that the animals would be safe. At least she’d have the buckboard that
she could sell in town. But, other than the few books she’d been able to
salvage, everything else she owned was in that house. She lay down against the
earth on her side, watching the flames from the fire burn her home until the
weight of her lids could no longer bear to remain open.
    Voices soon filled her head and Elizabeth fought
to distinguish whether they were part of a dream or reality and strained to listen
to what was being said. Someone lifted her from the ground and she willed her
eyes open. A light fog blurred her vision, but in her exhaustion she saw the
impossible. The face of William Redbourne.
    “Wi— ” she tried, but she could not get his name to
sound through her scratchy, dry throat.
    “She needs water,” a woman’s voice finally broke
the haze of Elizabeth’s exhaustion. “Lie her down here.”
    Elizabeth didn’t want to leave the comfort of
Will’s embrace. His strength. And she clung to him as best she could, but to no
avail.
    “It’ll be all right,” he assured with a voice a
little deeper than she remembered. He gently laid her down against a wagon’s
hard wood back, his sudden absence causing a chill to pass over her.
    Elizabeth’s lashes fluttered open again and she
looked up into the kindest green eyes she’d seen in a long time. She tried to
sit up.
    “Welcome back,” a young woman said as she placed
a hand behind Elizabeth’s back to help. “I’m Grace.” She appeared to be about Elizabeth’s
age, her nightshift peering out from beneath her thick woolen coat. She wrapped
a large, heavy blanket around Elizabeth’s shoulders and sat down next to her in
the back of the buckboard.
    Elizabeth glanced around, but it seemed that
Will’s face had been nothing but a mirage, a vision of her past catching