Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 231

Chapter 231: Fleeing in the night
Ford stood very still and let Mia remove the wooden splint the doctor had applied for the first time almost a month and a half ago.

Surely this was fine. And since he would be on a horse, he wouldn’t be walking on it. Anything that made them move faster would be good. Wouldn’t it?

The girl knelt and quickly undid the straps holding it in place.

“How’s that feel?” She looked up at him with a hopefully smile.

“Fine,” He said without hesitation. “Let’s go.”

If her father, grandfather, or uncle discovered that the two were running away together in the middle of the night, he was very sure they would get the wrong idea and want to pummel him or string him up the nearest tree. Fear was building in him as he realized just how much danger this whole endeavor was.

Why had he thought this idea would go so smoothly?

“You haven’t put any weight on it,” Mia stood and looked him in the eyes. The difference between the two of them struck Ford more than ever before.

Not just their backgrounds, but everything. He was pale, and she looked healthy and sunkissed. His eyes and hair were as dark as the mines he came from, and her loose curls and blue eyes looked made for the surface.

She was beautiful, and not nearly as worthy of his hatred as he had tried to convince himself.

“Just get me on the horse, we’ll figure the rest out later,” He told her sourly.

Mia nodded, and ran to lead a horse closer to him. Glancing around, she dragged a box up next to the beast, presumably for Ford to climb up on and use as a step for mounting.

With Mia’s and the crutch’s help, he managed awkwardly to get first on top of the crate, and then settled on the horse, which snorted in apparent displeasure.

“Stop whining, I’m not as big as any of the other men who’ve probably ridden you,” Ford griped at the beast.

“Hold the reins like this,” Mia put them in his hands. “Pull left and right to steer the horse, pull back to stop. When we’re ready to go, you’ll touch your heels into her sides.”

“All right.” The instructions seemed simple enough, but the animal was very large, and obviously very strong. If it wanted to disobey Ford, there was probably not much he could do about it. “Wait, I thought you said his name was Henry?”

“My horse is gentler, so you’re on her. Harper is her name. Even if you can’t steer her well, she should follow my voice since she’s loyal to me,” Mia explained, and Ford felt slightly emasculated as the woman tied his crutch to the back of his saddle with his bag.

Then again, he was still injured, and had never even been this high up before, so her concerns about his abilities were not unfounded. He watched with fascination as she easily mounted the other horse.

To see her go from the ground to the top of its back so quickly was impressive, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. He looked away as she arranged her skirt modestly, embarrassed for the second time that night.

“We’ll go slow until we’re too far away from the house to be heard easily,” Mia whispered. Ford nodded, and maintained the self control not to cry out in surprise and mild pain as his horse set out forward.

Mia led the way, and as she predicted, the horse he rode followed obediently behind with little to no input from him. He’d never spent much time around animals and wondered what one did to gain their loyalty.

They turned onto the road for only a short time before Mia turned off and through an unplowed field. Ford’s leg was sore, but not unbearably so. The muscles were crying out from not being used, and he wondered if the doctor had actually been good at his job or not.

Glancing over his shoulder, Ford breathed a little easier when the farmhouse was fully out of sight. It had to be the absolute dead of night, and he wondered how many hours there were until sunrise.

In the mines, you simply worked until the whistle sounded the shift change. The hours dragged by with no sun or mood to mark the time. Ford’s internal clock was better than most of the other miners, but he did wonder sometimes if the whistle was delayed because the boss wanted them to work longer.

It certainly seemed like it.

Mia led onward, and eventually nudged her horse into a quicker pace. Ford winced at the speed, but kept himself quiet. He would rather suffer some pain now than be caught by her father later.

Who knew what would happen then?

The direction they were headed was loosely where the map had indicated, even though he hadn’t told her anything from the sheet of now-destroyed paper. It seemed either her memories had come back in fuller force than he expected, or she was using her gift to navigate.

Was it exhausting, like when Martin had used his gift?

That was a puzzle he had yet to figure out. Mia’s description of the man as an evil kidnapper didn’t really fit with any of his memories of the grumpy old man who’d saved his life.

In the quiet, he pondered what change could have occurred in the intervening years. In Ford’s experience, people never changed, so he couldn’t account for the anomaly at all. He wanted to ask Mia more about it, but for the time being, she was very focused on the path ahead.

If he wanted to find the cave, it was best that he not interrupt her methods at all.

Ford turned his attention to the sky. His first night, when he fled the mine’s sickhouse with the map, he’d watched the stars. Someone told him long ago that you could navigate using them, but he’d never learned how. He went by landmarks, not the heavens.

He knew nothing at all about them, and had never had occasion to ask someone who did, so the words slipped out before he could think through them.

“How many are there?”