Читать книгу Montana Royalty - B.J. Daniels - Страница 8

Rory Buchanan hunkered down in the dark beside the stables as six royal guards trooped past, all toting semiautomatic rifles.

To say she was in deep doo was an understatement. Not only was it now completely dark, but a storm had blown in. She felt the chill on the wind only moments before the first stinging drops of rain began to fall.

Shivering, she checked her watch. Earlier, she’d left her ranch with only a lightweight jacket, planning to return long before dark. The sky had been clear and blue, not a cloud in sight. But this was Montana, where it could snow—and did—in any month of the year.

According to her calculations the next set of guards wouldn’t come past for another three minutes. Fortunately, most of the grooms and trainers had left the stables, but she could still hear someone inside with the horses.

Rory waited until the guards disappeared into the dark before she made a run for the woods.

She’d never done anything like this in her life and hated to think what her parents would have said had they still been alive. But Rory doubted her new neighbors would be trying to take her ranch if her father were around.

A duke and duchess or prince and princess—she didn’t know or care which and wouldn’t know a duke from a drug lord and doubted anyone else in Montana would either—had bought up all the ranches around hers.

An emissary for the royals had been trying to buy her ranch, putting pressure on her to sell. Clearly they were rich and powerful and had built a palace with all its trapping just miles from her ranch.

Rory had turned down the first few offers, saying her ranch wasn’t for sale at any price. But the offers had kept coming, and just that morning she’d seen tracks again where someone had been snooping around her place.

The footprints in the dust definitely weren’t hers, and since she hadn’t had any male visitors for so long she couldn’t remember…

She didn’t even want to think about that.

Her mare was where she’d left her, hidden in the ponderosas. Retrieving her horse, Rory swung up into the saddle thinking maybe she would try to outrun the worst of the storm.

But she hadn’t gone fifty yards when the sky above the pines splintered in a blinding flash of lightning followed in a heartbeat by a boom of thunder. From over by the stables, she thought for a moment she saw a dark figure standing in the shadows watching her.

Her horse shied and she had to rein in the mare to keep her seat and the mare from taking off for home. When Rory looked toward the stables again, the figure was gone. Had the person gone back inside to call the guards?

With a shudder of both cold and fear, she pulled down her cowboy hat to the storm and took off at a gallop, praying she hadn’t been seen—and could get away.

Rain ran off the brim of her hat as she spurred her horse, racing toward her ranch. She regretted that she hadn’t even had the sense to grab a slicker earlier. It had been one of those beautiful fall Montana days, the stands of aspens glowing red-gold in the sunlight and the air smelling of the fallen leaves, while over the tops of the ponderosa pines, clouds floated in a sea of blue.

Lightning lit the western horizon ahead of her. She tightened the reins as thunder exploded so close it made the hair on her neck stand up. Glancing back, she could see the lights of Stanwood, a blur in the pouring rain, disappear. If she was being followed, she couldn’t tell.

Suddenly being caught by armed foreign soldiers didn’t seem as dangerous as trying to get to the ranch in this storm.

Better Safe Than Sorry had never been Rory Buchanan’s motto. But in this case, trying to get home in the storm and darkness was crazier than even she was normally. Especially when there was an old line shack just up the mountain in a grove of aspens.

The fact that the line shack was on royal property gave her a little pause. But she valued her neck and her horse’s more than she feared her neighbors at the moment. Not only was the line shack much closer than her ranch house, but also there was an old lean-to that would provide some shelter for her horse and get her out of the weather, as well.

She doubted the royal owners even knew the shack was there given the enormous amount of property they’d bought up around her. Just the thought forced a curse from her as she rode through the drowning rain and darkness to the shack.

Rory’s head was still swimming with the excessiveness she’d seen only miles from her century-old ranch house. The new owners had built a palace that would rival Montana’s capital. Behind it was a private airstrip, stables with an arena and a colony of small cottages and a dormitory that could house a small army—and apparently did given the number of armed soldiers she’d seen on the grounds.

Of course what had caught her eye were the horses. She’d watched a dozen grooms at least exercising the most beautiful horses she’d ever seen. She hated to think what even one of those horses might cost.

All that wealth and all these armed soldiers had her even more worried that her royal neighbors wouldn’t stop until they forced her off her ranch. That and the fact that someone had definitely been snooping around her place.

She’d always felt safe on the ranch.

Until recently.

Another burst of lightning splintered the dark horizon. Thunder ricocheted through the pines. A blinding flash of lightning exposed the line shack in eerie two-dimensional relief. Rory braced herself for the thunderous boom that wasn’t far behind. She hated storms worse than even the idea of spending a cold rainy night in a line shack. Her baby sister Brittany had disappeared on a night like this and just four years ago Rory’s parents had been killed in a blizzard on their way back to the ranch. It had come right after she’d graduated from college and had left her with no family and a ranch to run alone.

Dismounting, she hurriedly unsaddled her horse, hobbling the mare under the lean-to and out of the downpour.

Soaked to the skin, she carried her saddle and blanket into the shack, stomping her feet on the tiny wooden porch to make sure any critters living inside would know she was coming and hopefully evacuate the premises.

The shack was about ten feet by twelve and smelled musty, but as she stepped in out of the rain, she was glad to see that there didn’t seem to be anything else sharing the space with her.

It was warmer and drier inside, and she was thankful for both as she put down her saddle and slipped the still-dry horse blanket from under her arm to drop it on a worn spot on the floor next to the wall that appeared to have the least amount of dust.

Chilled, she had just started to strip off her soaked jean jacket when a flash of lightning shot through a crack in the chinking between several of the logs of the line shack, making her jump.

Outside, her horse whinnied as thunder rumbled across the mountaintop. She froze at the sound of an answering whinny from another horse nearby.

Drawing her wet jacket around her, she opened the door a crack and peered out.

A beautiful white horse with leopard spots stood in the trees below the shack. Rory caught the flash of silver from the expensive tack and saddle as lightning sliced through the darkened sky. The horse started, then bolted, taking off into the trees back the way Rory knew it had come.

She recognized the horse from earlier. A Knabstrup. She’d only read about the horses before she’d seen the groomers working with them at her royal neighbors’. Not surprising since the horses were originally from Germany—the Knabstrup breed having always been a symbol of the decadence of the aristocracy in Europe.

But where was the rider?

Rory swore as she turned back inside the shack to button her jacket and grab her hat, knowing even before she stepped into the pounding rain that the rider of the horse had been thrown and was probably lying in a puddle on the ground with his fool neck broken.

As much as she disliked storms—and the kind of neighbors who’d bought up half the county to build a palace in the middle of good pasture land that they wouldn’t live in for more than a few weeks a year, if that—Rory couldn’t let another human die just outside her door.

The temperature had dropped at an alarming rate, signaling an early snowstorm. Anyone left out in it was sure to freeze to death before morning.

“It would serve the danged fool right,” she muttered to herself as she stomped down the mountainside to where she’d seen the horse. “Who with any common sense would go out in this kind of weather?” Unless they were trespassing on their royal neighbors’ property, of course.

In a flash of lightning, she spotted the man lying in an open spot between the trees, surrounded by a bed of soft brown pine needles and a thick clump of huckleberry bushes, both of which, she hoped, had broken his fall.

She heard a groan as she neared, relieved he was alive. As he tried to sit up, she saw the blood on his forehead before the rain washed it down onto the white shirt and riding britches that he wore. He saw her and tried to struggle to his feet and failed.

“Easy,” she said as she dropped down next to him on the ground.

A lock of wet black hair had tumbled over his forehead. She brushed it back to check the source of the blood and found a small cut over his left eye. There was also a goose egg rising on his temple.

Neither looked fatal.

He turned his face up to her and blinked into the driving rain. His dark hair fell back and she saw the dazed look in his very dark blue eyes. His lips turned up in a ridiculous grin as those eyes locked with hers.

“A beautiful forest sprite has come to save me?”

A forest sprite?

Clearly he was either drunk or delirious. Maybe he’d hit his head harder than she thought. He had that odd accent like the others she’d seen at her royal neighbors’. As she leaned down to gaze into his eyes, lightning flashed around them and she was able to rule out a concussion.

“It is my lucky day, is it not?” From the smell of brandy on his warm breath and that goofy grin on his face, she’d say the man was tipsy.

Now that she saw he wasn’t badly hurt and was apparently intoxicated, she took some satisfaction in the fact that he’d been thrown from his fancy mount and immediately felt guilty for the uncharitable thought.

Her teeth chattered as she glanced around for his horse, wanting nothing more than to get out of the cold and rain. His horse had apparently hightailed it back to its expensive heated stables. She couldn’t blame it. She would have loved a heated stable herself just then.

A horse whinnied nearby, startling her. Not his horse. She’d seen the way it had bolted, and she doubted the horse had doubled back for the groom. Was it possible he hadn’t been out riding alone? More than possible, she realized. One of the other grooms must have been with him.

“Hello?” she called through the rain and the thick darkness of the pines and descending nightfall. “You’ve got a groom down over here.”

No answer.

She looked at the groom at her feet. He was still grinning up at her. She might have found him cute and charming and this whole incident humorous under other circumstances. Or not.

Her horse whinnied from the lean-to. This time the answering whinny was farther away. If he had been riding with someone else, they had turned back toward home, leaving him to fend for himself.

She was almost tempted to do the same thing given that the man was clearly inebriated and would now have to share her shack.

“Come on,” she said cursing under her breath as she bent down to help him up. “Let’s get you on your feet.”

Like her, he was underdressed for this type of storm, soaking wet and shivering. She had no choice. Given his condition, he would never be able to find his way back.

“Take me to your palace beautiful forest sprite,” he said and attempted a bow.

“Palace, indeed,” she muttered.

Unsteady on his feet he plainly wasn’t going far under his own power. He slung an arm over her shoulder. As they started up the mountainside, she wondered if he had any idea of how much trouble he was in.

He was bound to get fired for taking such an expensive horse out while drunk. He’d better hope that horse made it back to the barn safely. She’d bet that animal was worth more than this groom made in a year.

Lucky for him that he would be able to sleep it off before he had to face his boss—the duke or prince or whatever. As long as the horse returned unharmed, he might be spared being returned to his country to face a firing squad.

He shifted against her. “You are too kind, fair forest sprite.”

“Aren’t I, though,” she grumbled. Lucky for him she couldn’t let him die of hypothermia or wander off a cliff in the dark.

Lightning illuminated the landscape, the line shack appearing for an instant out of the rain and darkness. She stumbled toward the structure, staggering under the man’s drunken weight as thunder boomed overhead.

“I owe you a great debt,” he said as she shoved open the line shack door. “How shall I ever repay you?”