Thomas put his hands on his hips and looked down at his feet before fixing an irritating glare on Nathaniel. “Does she return your... affections?”
Nathaniel stiffened and laughed toward the stars. “If you’re asking if she returned my kiss, then yes, Thomas, she did.” He leaned forward and glared, wanting to strip that smirk off Thomas’s face with a description of how she’d returned his passion as only a woman could, but he pressed his mouth shut.
The muscles in Thomas’s jaw flicked. “Do you love her?”
Nathaniel blinked, jaw slack and eyes wide, shocked that such a question would dare hang between them. “I do not.” A kiss was simply that, not a declaration of a lifetime of devotion.
Thomas stepped forward. “Eliza feared this might happen, should the sparks betwe
en you two become too much to suppress, that you and Kitty would test the bounds of your affection...” He looked away quickly, then back again. “You’ve likely broken her heart beyond repair.”
The regret that had continued to prick Nathaniel from the moment Kitty ran from him, crashed into the tender center of his conscience. Not regret for having tasted her, not regret for succumbing to a desire to hold one so full of strength and beauty in both heart and mind, but regret for the way her eyes welled with tears and how she fled as if he would have stolen her very innocence.
Nathaniel slowed his words, answering rough and low. “I do regret it immensely, but there’s no taking it back now.”
Thomas opened his mouth, but Nathaniel kept on.
“Do not lecture me of love, Thomas. I recall you struggled in your courtship with Eliza before all was made right.”
Thomas didn’t respond to the bait of accusation. “You see yourself in a courtship with Kitty?”
Nathaniel scoffed. “Of course not.”
Thomas’s interrogating glower darkened, and his voice grew deep. “I can assure you Kitty does.”
“I can assure you she does not. She ran from me as if I were ready to carry her into hell.”
Thomas’s face scrunched and he opened his mouth to speak, but another voice crashed against them through the night air.
“Doctor Smith!”
The heavy pounding of horse hooves drummed against the hard dirt and in seconds a large, unfamiliar man on horseback stopped before them, straining at the reins of the animal that continued to stomp wildly at the ground.
Nathaniel frowned. “I am Doctor Smith. Who are you?”
“There’s been a terrible accident out at Gray’s farm.”
Gray? That was some distance away. Who was this fellow and who had sent him?
From the deep lines of worry on the man’s sturdy face Nathaniel determined now wasn’t a time for questions.
“I’ll come.” Nathaniel nodded to Thomas before charging the last few yards toward home. He called over his shoulder to the stranger. “I’ll retrieve my medical bag and follow promptly.”
“I’ll meet you there.” The stranger dashed away as Nathaniel raced up the road toward his barn.
He grabbed his bag and leapt onto his mount, kicking Astor into a full run. The stars whizzed above him and the trees blurred as he raced to the scene of some accident or illness that was most certainly grave.
The road made a sharp curve. Nathaniel pulled hard on the reins when a thick shadow in the center of the road halted his speed. His pulse pounded, but he clicked his tongue and nudged Astor on at a slower pace. Nathaniel scanned the shadow and breathed harder when the silhouetted figures of mounted men grew clear in the moonlight. Was the injured person among them?
Three large men on horseback sat shoulder to shoulder, blocking the road.
Nathaniel clung to the reins with one hand, and pulled Astor to a stop as he casually reached for the pistol at his side with the other. He grit his teeth. No weapon.
Nathaniel sat higher. “Let me pass.” His voice boomed through the trees.
The riders shifted on their mounts, not a sound spoken from them, when a realization that should have nudged Nathaniel earlier crashed like a falling tree.
No one was injured. No one needed him at Gray’s...