"What's the matter?" Drawing rein a few feet away, she asked the question breathlessly.
Richard fought down an urge to roar. "I was looking for you." The words were clipped and steely. "Where the devil have you been?"
"Praying, of course."
Taking in her heavy cloak and the thick leggings she wore beneath her skirts, rucked up as she was riding astride, he caught her mount's bridle as she kicked free of the stirrups. "You pray outside? In this weather?"
"In all weathers." Lifting one leg over the chestnut's neck, she prepared to slide down-stifling a curse, he reached up and lifted her to the ground.
And held her before him, trapped between his hands. "Where?"
Her gaze locked on his, she hesitated, then tilted her chin. "There's a circle at the head of the vale."
"A circle?"
Whisking free of his grasp she nodded and caught the mare's reins.
Suppressing a curse, he reached out and tugged them from her, then gestured for her to precede him. She did-nose in the air, hips swaying provocatively.
For her sake Richard prayed there were no convenient piles of hay lying loose about the stable. Teeth gritted, he followed her into the warm dark. "Do you go to pray often? Disappear like this, before dawn?" Before he'd woken?
"At least once every week-sometimes more often. But not every day."
Richard gave thanks for small mercies. Her Lady obviously had some understanding of the needs of mortal men. Securing the mare in the stall Catriona had led him to, he turned to find her tugging the girths free. Then she reached for the saddle.
"Here-let me." He grasped the saddle and lifted it from her and set it atop the stall wall. Turning back, he found her with a currying brush in her hand-he took that, too. And fell to blushing the mare's thick coat.
By the light of a sharp green glare.
"I'm perfectly capable of caring for my own horse."
"I daresay. You might not, however, care for the alternative to letting me care for your horse in this instance."
Wariness muted her glare. "Alternative?"
Richard kept his eyes on the mare's hairy hide. "As there's no loose straw about, it'll have to be the wall." Without looking, he gestured with his head. "The corner by the trough might be wise-you could balance with one foot on the edge."
She actually looked-the expression on her face nearly had him throwing the brush aside.
"Then again"-he gripped the brush tightly and put all his pent-up energy into every stroke-"this mangy beast looks like she bites-which doesn't beat thinking of."
Drawing herself up to her full, less-than-adequate height, she stalked around the mare so she could glare at him directly, with the horse a safe bolster between them.
"Why are you so…"-she gestured wildly-"whatever it is you are?"
Lips compressed, Richard flicked her a hard stare and brushed on.
Catriona folded her arms and tilted her chin. "Because I went to pray and didn't ask your permission?"
She waited; gradually, the violence behind his brushing abated. His face like stone, he glanced at her over the mare's back. "Not permission-but I need to know where you are, where you go I can hardly protect you if I don't know where you are."
"I don't need protection while praying-no one in the vale would dare go into the circle. It's hallowed ground."
"Do people from outside the vale know that?"
"I'm as sate within the circle as an archbishop in his cathedral."
"Thomas a Becket was slain before the altar at Canterbury."