Betrayed Countess (Books We Love Historical Romance) by Diane Scott Lewis

“All right. Slow down.”
    “I will not be invited to sit with men I do not know. Or do not care to know.” Bettina pulled back on the reins, yet urged the horse along the road until Hawthorne trees blocked them from the miners’ sight. She was anxious to keep a semblance of decency in a life that had lost its composition—an unraveling tapestry.
    “Now don’t get your back up, Mamsell. You’ve some airs for one boldly traipsing the world on her own. But if you don’t want to, I won’t ask again.” Kerra stopped squirming and slumped behind her. “Must o’ lived some high life where you come from.”
    “My back is not up, and there is nothing high about my life.” Not anymore , Bettina thought with a heavy sigh. The horse stepped over a dirty stream and a scattering of fragrant meadowsweet with creamy white flowers. Bettina kept glancing over her shoulder. She let out a strained breath. “ Ma foi , it is as you said, you do what you have to.”
     
    * * * *
     
    The Atlantic surged in gray anger on the western coast the next afternoon, waves bashing against jagged cliffs. Bettina dismounted to rest the horse. The sea spray dampened her cheeks, and she tasted salt in a breeze that ruffled her silk skirt around her legs and slapped at her straw hat. “So I have crossed England … and I am that much farther from France.” She stared down the sharp cliffs and had the cutting feeling she should gallop back in the other direction—except the poor horse might not live that long.
    “We still has a few days to go down the coast ,” Kerra grimaced and kicked at the dirt. Bettina saw she was mistaken that her companion had stopped sulking over her missed opportunity for alcohol.
    Riding southwest, they passed splintered slate cliffs and contrasting green hills, like broken pewter ware against jade cloth. Remnants of ancient castles and stonewalls clung to the landscape. Cream-colored sheep grazed peacefully on the slopes. Gulls screeched overhead, as they swept their long winged bodies out to sea. Bettina breathed it all in, trying not to dwell on her precarious future.
    When night closed in, Kerra pointed out a circle of stones off the road. “Let’s make camp there, among them dancing maidens.”
    “What are dancing maidens?” Bettina asked when the fire crackled and they’d eaten their supper. The upright stones cast long shadows over the scrubby grass. The wind twisted at her hair and she nestled in her shawl.
    “Cornish lore. Any standing stones is maidens frozen in place for dancing on Sunday. God don’t like that, so he punished ’em.” Kerra snorted and tossed a twig into the fire.
    “Perhaps you can unfreeze one and ask her to bring me a hot cup of coffee,” Bettina said, and found she liked it when Kerra laughed. She snuggled closer to the flames and appreciated that with Kerra’s company she felt a part of something instead of abandoned. “You speak of your sister. Where are your parents?” She wanted to banish any thoughts of her own, and soothe the other woman’s injured pride.
    “Well, Mamm died when I be born. Guess that made Father sad and fulla spite. ’Course he was one to wander … couldn’t bear to look at us too much. Always searching for a game, Maddie says. Never gave us much money, ’cause he drunk it all. Then he took off for good, not once sending us nothing. But we got by.” Kerra laughed louder, a sound that seemed to swirl the stars poking out above. “Better off without him, most likely.”
    “When this happened, it did not make you upset or angry?” Bettina asked in a reflective voice, tossing another stick on a fire that wriggled in the wind and flickered over the chastised dancers. She listened to every sound around her, praying that no one lurked out there in the dark to take advantage of two unprotected women. The ocean, several yards away, continued to batter the cliffs. The trees, in abundance at the start of their journey, now seemed sparse on this