“What?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure if he meant “What is waiting for us?” or “What are you talking about?” I waved the book again. “You need to read this.” 252/356
He halted his horse, and I rode to his side. He took the book and looked at the picture. “Love the dress. You really know how to travel in style.”
“Read it.”
He did, then flipped the page just as I had. “So what’s the surprise?”
“It doesn’t say.” I glanced around, wishing we hadn’t stopped.
Anything could be hiding in the forest.
Hudson shut the book and handed it back to me. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. Besides, it doesn’t say the surprise is something bad.”
I slipped the book into the saddlebag. “Oh, it’s going to be bad.
Surprises in stories are always bad. Robin Hood will ambush us or a troll will be waiting under the bridge. Something like that.” Hudson flicked his reins, but his horse had found a patch of grass by the path, and she didn’t seem in any hurry to move. Hudson let her eat. “Surprises aren’t always bad. It could be the surprise of …” His broad shoulders shrugged. “ ‘She found a patch of wild strawberries and got to eat something besides stale bread.’ ” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Have you ever actually read a book?” He tilted his head at the question. “Have you?”
“Of course I have.” My horse wandered a few steps off the path, chomping leaves from a nearby bush. There didn’t seem to be a point in pulling her away since Hudson’s horse was eating too.
Hudson was still surveying me. “Nick told me you refuse to read books as a way to tick off your dad.”
“Well, I used to read a lot, and I distinctly remember that all the surprises in books were bad. This is clearly a problem.”
“Clearly,” he said with a teasing lift in his voice. He directed his horse farther off the path. She went willingly, stepping over to the next 253/356
patch of grass. “The horses are tired and hungry, and so am I. We might as well find a place to set up camp for the night.” I didn’t move my horse. “That’s the last thing we should do. We should keep riding until we’re safe.” Hudson dismounted and walked his horse farther away from the path. The mare went, pulling up clumps of grass and chomping them as she went. “We have to set up camp sooner or later,” Hudson said.
“We might as well do it while it’s light. If something is going to surprise us, I’d rather have it happen when I have a fire going.” I groaned but dismounted too. He was right. We couldn’t ride until we were safe. No place was safe until we knew what the surprise was.
My legs ached so badly I could only take tiny, awkward steps in Hudson’s direction. Eventually he found a spot he liked and turned back to check on me.
He watched my mincing progress. “Saddle sore?”
“Aren’t you?”
He took a section of rope and tied his horse to a tree. “I told you, my grandparents have horses. You’ll get used to it after a few days.” If my legs didn’t break off by then. Hudson walked over and took my horse’s reins, murmuring things to her as he led her to a tree. By the time I had winced my way over to help him, he’d already untied our provisions, put them in a pile, and was hefting off his horse’s saddle. I hadn’t even thought about the saddles and probably would have left them on all night.
I watched him effortlessly swing my saddle off my horse and place it on the ground. “Maybe the moral is ‘If you’re going to get stuck in the Middle Ages, make sure you bring along a country boy.’ They know how to build fires, take care of horses, escape from castles—really, is there anything you can’t do?”
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“Lots of things.” An emotion flashed across his expression that I recognized but didn’t understand. Self-recrimination. Some memory of a time he had failed had surfaced in his mind.
We gathered wood, set out our blankets, and made a small fire that crackled against the growing cold. We sat beside it and ate apples, cheese, and stiff bread. I tried not to keep checking over my shoulder for a surprise. Hudson ate without speaking. Whatever memory I’d brought up, it was still bothering him.
This was the Hudson the girls had told me about at school. The sullen one.
Finally, I got tired of the silence, of the undercurrent of pain that swirled between us. I put my hand on his knee, trying to console him.
“Your mom wouldn’t want you to be sad about her for this long.” He ripped a piece of bread from his loaf. “She’s off the list, Tansy.”