Tempting Fate by Alissa Johnson

not wait for you.”
    “I—” Miss Heins gave Mirabelle and Whit an embarrassed smile. “It was kind of you to let me join you this morning. I wish…well…it was kind of you.”
    “Why don’t you stay,” Mirabelle suggested gently. “After the curve, this trail’s actually quite a bit nicer than the other. Not that they need to know.”
    “It’s very kind of you to offer, but I—”
    “I’d only be kind,” Whit pointed out, “if your company wasn’t genuinely desired, and I assure you, it is.”
    “Oh…oh.” She turned a charming shade of pink and ducked her head.
    “Do say you’ll come along,” Mirabelle pleaded.
    Miss Heins looked toward the trail where the others, having kept their word and not waited for her, had disappeared. “I suppose, perhaps. They might wonder what happened to me.”
    Mirabelle sincerely doubted they’d give it a single thought, but didn’t have the heart to voice the opinion. “Why don’t you run ahead and let them know where you’ll be? Whit and I will wait.”
    “Well…all right.” A smile bloomed on her face. “Yes, all right. I’ll only be a moment.”
    Mirabelle watched her scamper down the path.
    “She’s like a lost kitten,” she murmured, and grimaced at her own words. “I didn’t mean that to sound insulting. There’s just something so endearing and helpless about her.”
    “There is, isn’t there?” Whit agreed. “And that makes it all the more unforgivable for someone to kick at her.”
    “I wonder why she keeps company with Miss Willory and her group?” Mirabelle asked as she wandered to the edge to look out over the water.
    “I couldn’t say. I make a point not to involve myself in the social peculiarities of females. Perhaps there’s some sort of family friendship.”
    “Well, her family could do better,” she grumbled, pacing a bit in her agitation. “Butter wouldn’t melt in Miss Willory’s mouth.”
    “No,” he agreed. “But it might sour.”
    That drew a laugh from her and had the knots in her belly easing. “ Can butter sour?”
    “I’ve no idea,” he admitted. “Shall we test it and see? You fetch the butter. I’ll hold her down.”
    “Oh, Lord,” she gasped on another laugh. “Can you imagine? I wonder if we’d be lauded as heroes or villains.”
    “Lunatics, would be my guess.”
    “It might be worth it, just to—”
    Her words cut off as she felt her heel sink, then slip in mud. If she hadn’t been so distracted, she might have noticed how close she’d been walking to the edge. She certainly would have taken care in how she righted her stumble, and where she put her next step.
    Because where it landed, was in the air.

Eight
    T o a bystander, the act of falling off a hill might seem to be a very sudden thing. One moment a person is standing there, and the next moment she’s not, ergo—sudden.
    But for the unfortunate individual actually engaged in the act of falling, it is an event that takes an inordinate amount of time—at least initially.
    Mirabelle had the opportunity to remember the box she’d watched drop slowly to the sidewalk the day before, and she had the time to think she really—really and truly—ought tobe able to grab hold of a branch or a bush before it was too late. But even as her fingers reached out, the long hill rushed up before her.
    After that, things moved along at a very brisk pace, indeed.
    She hit, she rolled, she bumped and slid. Sky and ground raced past in a dizzying circle. She slid to a stop a good fifty yards from the top, and still a distance from the water. For one terrible second she couldn’t feel her limbs and feared she might have lost them sometime during the tumble.
    Then the pain came—stings and burns mostly, that niggled more than truly hurt. Her ankle, on the other hand, positively screamed, and had her bolting up to grab hold of her leg.
    “Oooh, ow! Ow…ow…ow!” Between each exclamation of pain, Mirabelle mentally injected the list of invectives