A Lily on the Heath 4 by Colleen Gleason Page B

horse?”
    Judith’s question snatched Malcolm’s attention abruptly from his private, tortuous musings to the present. “Fall off my horse?” he repeated, sure he hadn’t heard her properly. “By the rood, what nonsense do you speak?”
    She turned to look up at him, her hips sliding mercilessly around his inner thighs. Her hand reached across as she twisted so she could grip the arm he held alongside her. “When you first came into the clearing, you were on your horse. Then you came back without him. I bethought you fell—”
    “Lady Judith,” he interrupted, hardly able to keep his voice from a bellow, “I do not fall off my horse. Ever. I have not fallen from a mount since I was ten summers. And even that ’twas because I took too high a jump.”
    “Oh,” she replied. She was silent for a moment—not nearly long enough, in his estimation—before she said, “Now I understand. You didn’t wish for Alpha—is that his name, then?—to be injured by the dogs. And so you sent him away and came back on foot?”
    “Aye,” he replied tightly.  
    “But how did you get him back? He might have been lost in the forest, and you without a horse.”
    “Alpha—aye, that is his name—is trained to come at my whistle.”
    “I heard a whistle when I was still in the tree, and then a horn, but—”
    Mal drew in a long, Judith-scented breath, then exhaled slowly. Could she not just sit and ride silently, leaving him to his private musings? “If you must know the entire tale, I caught a tree branch and let Alpha run out from beneath me.”
    “You did?” she said, her eyes widening in wonder. “At such a speed?”
    He could not allow himself to indulge in the internal warmth that came with her admiration and responded brusquely, “Aye. Then I whistled a call to Gambert so that he and Nevril would know where I was—they were some distance behind me. He blew the horn to notify de Rigonier, Castendown, and the others, for we had divided ourselves into groups in our search for you. Did not you have this conversation already with de Rigonier?”
    “Nay,” Judith replied, still half-turned on his lap. Her mouth was tantalizingly close. Not to mention the sweet curve of her bottom. Mal forced his attention to the road ahead. “Hugh spent much of the journey thus far assuring himself that I was well, and then lecturing me about riding out with such little protection. I hardly was able to speak at all.”
    “De Rigonier had the right of it,” Mal said sternly. “I dare not ask how you thought to be safe with a single man-at-arms at your side.” Irritation flared, then he reminded himself he had no reason to be overly concerned with her safety. At the least, no more than he would be for any maiden.
    “I have done so many a time,” she retorted flatly. “And as I was dressed thusly, never would I have been mistaken for aught other than a boy riding with his father.”
    Mal gave a derisive snort, but forbore to point out that her long braid—not to mention the not-at-all-hidden curves—would have betrayed her gender in an instant. He was trying valiantly not to think about those curves. Man, you have been without a woman for overlong.
    “We could not have expected the danger we found. How many packs of mad, wild dogs have you encountered in your journeys?” she demanded. “Wild boars, mayhap—and Piall could easily have evaded those lumbering creatures. But wild dogs? And a whole pack?”
    “Not a one but for today,” he admitted. “But one must remember that dangers are never expected, Lady Judith. That is why they are called dangers.”
    She hmphed , jolting in her seat. Then she turned back around toward the front.
    Mal had hardly relaxed when she twisted to face him once more. This time, her breast came even more dangerously close to bumping his arm. And he was not going to think about where the pressure of her hip and bottom was. How close it was to hi—
    “How did you come to find me? How did you