The shiver inching its way up Clay’s back turned into a fiery flash that all but snapped his spinal cord. “Tarnation,” he muttered, leaping forward to snatch away the floppy hat.
Wet strands of long hair fell in every direction, and squinting eyes full of fire and ice glared at him.
“It’s you!” he declared, as the fire reached his neck.
“Yes, Mr. Hoffman, it’s me,” Katherine Ackerman assured him. She stepped forward and grabbed the blanket from his hand, wrapping it around herself with a quick flip of her wrists. “I’ll probably end up with pneumonia, thanks to you.”
The woman before him looked nothing like the snooty canary he’d met at the station, and gazing at her now, sopping wet, in tattered boy’s clothes, with her mass of wet hair plastered to her head, Clay experienced a humorous rumble erupting. He pinched his lips to hold it in, but it burst from his chest with enough pressure that he had to toss his head back to let the entire bout of laughter out or else choke on it.
“I don’t find anything funny, Mr. Hoffman,” she screeched above his hooting.
“That’s because you’re not seeing what I’m seeing.”
Caught up in laughing, Clay didn’t see her move until it was too late. Pain shot up his shin from where the toe of her boot struck him. He hopped on one foot and grabbed his other leg, applying pressure to stop the stinging.
Knowing that only time would ease the ache, he let go, and turned around to discover her using his other blanket to sop the water from her hair. As she finger-combed the tresses and squeezed the ends with the blanket, he wondered how all that hair had fit under one floppy hat. Furthermore, how had he not noticed he was a she?
“What are you doing out here, Miss Katherine Ackerman from Boston, Massachusetts?”
“You know.” She bent, flipping her hair forward. The tresses almost touched the ground as she wrung them out with her hands and then shook them.
Moving away from the spray of droplets, he walked over to sit on a boulder and empty the water from his boots. “How would I know?”
Her hair made a graceful arch as she flipped her head up and turned to cast him a look—one of those glares that women produced and expected everyone to understand. And if truth were told, hers was quite adorable. Clay frowned at the thought, and went back to dumping water from one boot and then the other.
“You know I’m tracking Samuel Edwards.”
Her smugness, mixed in with that nasally accent, was charming. Clay stiffened and tugged on a boot. There was nothing about her, including her accent, that was charming, pleasant or even likable. She was like every other female gracing this earth—a conniving little imposter. This one even went so far as to dress up as a boy just to get her way.
Clay pulled on the other boot and stood. “Sam. His name’s Sam.” Walking across the grass, he didn’t stop until he stood right before her. “And you, Miss Katherine Ackerman from Boston, Massachusetts, are not tracking him.”
The way she sighed, the way she rolled her eyes, even the way she squared her shoulders irritated the pants off him, but her answer, “Yes, Mr. Hoffman, I am,” downright infuriated him.
“No, you’re not. If there’s anything you want to talk to Sam about, it goes through me.”
After an icy glare, she spun around.
“What do you want with him, anyway?”
She lifted her chin snootily and glanced over one shoulder. “That, Mr. Hoffman, is none of your business.”
He didn’t know if he wanted to insult her by laughing or by paddling her bottom. She deserved both. Instead he went with logic. “Tell me, Miss Ackerman, how do you plan to track him? You’ve lost your horse, have no supplies and …” he pointed a finger from her toes to her nose, wondering how to describe her appearance “… look like a cat caught in a downpour.”
“Thanks to you,” she spat.
“I’ll accept—” he looked her up and down pointedly “—your wet clothes are my fault, but I didn’t have anything to do with your horse.” He leaned closer to whisper, “It was probably the stench that got to him, too.”
“Oh,” she screeched, throwing the blanket off her shoulders.
The humor tickling his insides at her reaction faded. A moment later he wondered if she was being attacked by a swarm of insects, but then assumed, by the way she peered down the front of her shirt, searched the ground and patted her neckline, that she was looking for something.
“It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?” he asked.
“My pouch. It must have fallen off in the water.” She grabbed the blanket off the ground, furiously searching its folds.
Still unaffected, he made a halfhearted effort of glancing around. “What pouch?”
“It was a little bag, about this big.” She held up a thumb and forefinger. “And brown, with little beads on the string pulling it closed.”
“What was in it?” Now, almost wondering if it held the Ackerman family fortune, given the way she searched, he scanned the earth more seriously.
“It must be in the pond.” She spun, shooting past Andrew.
The horse snorted and sidestepped, blocking Clay’s pursuit. He shoved his way around the animal and caught her arm. “You aren’t going to find it in there.”
“I have to. It must have slipped off when I dived for my hat.”
“When you dived for your hat?”
“Yes, it was sinking almost faster than I could swim.”
Clay clutched her arm a bit more firmly. “You dived after your hat?”
Her gaze scoured the water, as if she could see into the depths below. “The pouch must have slipped off my neck then.”
“I thought you were drowning.” Clay wanted to shake her. He twisted her instead, so he could glare straight into her face, upturned nose and all. “I jumped in an ice-cold pond to save you, and you were chasing a sinking hat?”
“You jumped in to save me?”
“Yes,” he all but growled.
“Why?”
“Because I thought you were drowning.” His voice rose with each word.
“That was unnecessary. I’m a perfectly good swimmer,” she replied, as her gaze went back to the pond.
The ire eating inside him was wasted on this woman, as was any more time. He let go of her arm and strode toward Andrew.
“Where are you going?”
Ignoring the urge to reply, he picked up his blankets.
“Aren’t you going to get my pouch?”
Acting calm wasn’t too hard, not when it so obviously irritated her. He folded the blankets in half and then began to roll them up to fit behind the saddle.
“You can’t leave.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “Yes, Miss Katherine Ackerman from Boston, Massachusetts, I can.” He tucked the roll behind his saddle, securing it with the leather straps.
“But—but I can’t stay here, not without my pouch.”
The tremble in her voice had him turning around. Again he questioned, “What was in that pouch?”
She shrugged.
“Why is it so important?”
“Because