Read Online By Winter's Light: A Cynster Novel (Cynster Special Book 2) by Stephanie Laurens - Free Book Online Page A

sled when the girls passed them, of their own volition returning to pick up the rest of the holly.
    Upon reaching the sled, Daniel busied himself with checking and stowing the tools. After a second of indecision, Claire went to the front of the sled. She leaned down and poked and prodded under the branches; Daniel hoped Louisa and Therese had hidden their secret foliage deeper in the sled. “What are you looking for?”
    Claire glanced up at him, then she straightened, drawing a long loop of rope free. “This is a workman’s sled, so I thought there should be a rope for pulling as well—and there is.”
    The girls returned, their arms full of holly. They dumped the branches on top. Daniel loosened the side ropes and looped them over the piled load; with a few quick knots, he secured it. “Girls,” he said, still busy with the last knot, “why don’t you take the lead position with the rope, and Mrs. Meadows and I will push?”
    “Yes!” Juliet rushed to Claire and reached for the rope.
    Knot tightened, Daniel straightened and saw that Claire was reluctant to give up the rope, but the girls swarmed, and she had no real choice.
    Designed to allow the sled to be dragged, the rope at the front was a loop secured at the junctions of the front axle with the two runners. The girls busily lined up inside the loop, holding it at their waists and shuffling forward to tension it.
    A frown in her eyes, Claire walked to join him as he moved to the bar that ran between the rear handles. “You don’t really need my help pushing this along—not with the four of them pulling, as well.”
    “We might not need your help pushing,” he said, taking up position to one side of the bar and grasping one handle, then inviting her with a wave to take her place alongside him, “but we will almost certainly need your assistance to ensure this doesn’t run them down, and also stays on the path.” Facing forward, he nodded at the four girls, all eager to be off. “There’s enough of a gradient that if they pull too hard, the sled might start sliding on its own. And if two of them pull harder than the other two, the sled will slide sideways and might well end up off the path.”
    “Oh.” Her frown deepened a fraction, but then she nodded and, taking a slightly deeper breath, stepped into position alongside him; mimicking his stance, she gripped the back bar with one gloved hand and the handle with her other.
    Their shoulders just touched.
    He was waiting to catch her gaze when she glanced up. He smiled as reassuringly as he could. “Ready?”
    For an instant, she searched his eyes, then she looked forward and nodded. “Indeed.”
    Quelling a smile, he looked at the girls and found them all staring expectantly at him. “All right, girls—off we go!”
    To a chorus of cheers that quickly devolved into soft laughter, punctuated by the occasional feminine shriek, the sled started sliding over the woodland path in the direction of the house.
    Daniel kept the pace at a gentle walk, reproving the girls if they tried to go too fast. Claire walked beside him and found herself mesmerized by her awareness of him—of the warmth of his large body pacing so fluidly beside her, of the muscular strength he deployed in correcting the sled’s trajectory, of the way her shoulder brushed his steely bicep with every second step.
    She told herself she was being unforgivably silly, that such indulgence of her senses was something she would come to regret—the exercise had no purpose and, at best, would only leave her yearning for something she knew she could never have.
    Pointless.
    She should cease enjoying the moment immediately.
    Instead, some reckless piece of her soul she’d thought long dead kept a firm grip on her reins, and she walked on by Daniel’s side and, regardless of what she knew should be, found herself smiling.
     
    * * *
    By their standards, the riding party hadn’t ridden hard, but they’d made good time into the hills, through