Read Online Tracie Peterson by Bridal Blessings - Free Book Online Page B

back to sleep. It seemed only moments later when someone was shouting her into consciousness and a loud clanging refused to allow her to ease back into her dreams.
    “Breakfast in ten minutes!” Logan was shouting. “Roll up your gear and have it ready to go before you eat. Chamberlain, you will assist in taking down the tents.”
    Amelia rolled over and moaned at the soreness in her legs and backside.
Surely we aren’t going to ride as hard today as yesterday.
Pushing back her covers, Amelia began to shiver from the cold of the mountain morning.
Could it have only been yesterday that the heat seemed so unbearable?
Stretching, Amelia decided that nothing could be worse than the days she’d spent on the Colorado prairie.
At least here, the black flies seem to have thinned out. Maybe the higher altitude and cold keeps them at bay.
Amelia squared her shoulders.
Maybe things are getting better.
    But it proved to be much worse. A half-day into the ride, Amelia was fervently wishing she could be swallowed up in one of the craggy ravines that threatened to eat away the narrow path on which she rode. The horse was cantankerous, her sisters were impossible, and Mattersley looked as though he might succumb to exhaustion before they paused for the night.
    When a rock slide prevented them from taking the route Logan had planned on, he reminded the party again of the altitude and the necessity of taking it easy. “We could spend the next day or two trying to clear that path or we can spend an extra day or two on an alternate road into Estes. Since none of you are used to the thinner air, I think taking the other road makes more sense.”
    Logan’s announcement made Amelia instantly self-conscious.
Was he making fun of me because of the attack I suffered last night? Why else would he make such an exaggerated point of the altitude?
    “I do hope the other road is easier,” Lady Gambett said with a questioning glace at her husband.
    “I’m afraid not,” Logan replied. “It climbs higher, in fact, than this one and isn’t traveled nearly as often. For all I know that trail could be in just as bad of shape as this one.”
    “Oh dear,” Lady Gambett moaned.
    “But Mama,” Josephine protested, pushing her small spectacles up on the bridge of her nose, “I cannot possibly breathe air any thinner than this. I will simply perish.”
    Logan suppressed a snort of laughter and Amelia caught his eye in the process. His expression seemed to say “See, I told you so” and Amelia couldn’t bear it. She turned quickly to Lady Gambett.
    “Perhaps Josephine would be better off back in Longmont,” Amelia suggested.
    “Oh, gracious, perhaps we all would be,” Lady Gambett replied.
    “But I want to go on, Mama,” the plumper Henrietta whined. “I’m having a capital time of it.”
    “We’re all going ahead.” Lord Gambett spoke firmly with a tone that told his women that he would brook no more nonsense.
    “Are we settled and agreed then?” Logan asked from atop his horse.
    “We are, sir,” Gambett replied with a harsh look of reprimand in Josephine’s direction.
    Amelia tried to fade into the scenery behind Margaret’s robust, but lethargic, palomino. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was to have to face Logan. She was determined to avoid him at any cost. Something inside her seemed to come apart whenever he was near. It would never do to have him believing her incapable of handling her emotions and to respond with anything but cool reservation would surely give him the wrong idea.
    Logan was pushing them forward again. He was a harsh taskmaster and no one dared to question his choices—except for the times when Jeffery would occasionally put in a doubtful appraisal. Logan usually quieted him with a scowl or a raised eyebrow and always it caught Amelia’s attention.
    But she didn’t want Logan Reed to capture her attention. She tried to focus on the beauty around her. Ragged rock walls surrounded them on one