He had never seen a woman like her before. A true lady. As beautiful covered in stains in the sickroom as she was at a masque.
“Brogan?” she said. “What news?”
“Found out a lot, mistress,” he said cheerfully. “Yon fellow has a swing on him like you wouldn't have seen afore.” He grinned at Rufus, who raised a brow sardonically. “He finished the man,” he explained succinctly.
“And you had a good look at the corpse?” Rufus asked.
Amabel gave him a look of disgust and he grinned, shrugging.
“Someone has to,” he continued. “We need to find out who he is. What he's doing here. Blighter tried to kill us,” he added with a sudden stab of anger.
Amabel sighed. “He did. Though I reckon he was just a harmless vagabond.”
“He was, milady,” Brogan said, gaping at her in awe as if she had just foretold his future.
Just you wait until she does, youth. Rufus chuckled. Then let's see how surprised you look. He smiled. It seemed there wasn't end to her surprises. She surprised him with something new each day.
“So what else was there to learn?” Amabel was asking him thoughtfully.
“Not a lot,” the boy said with a grin and a lift of one shoulder, as if to suggest this was all expected. “He was carrying sixpence, though. And I found this.” He drew out a pewter object. Rufus took it. He stared.
“Is this what it looks like?” he said to Amabel. She went even paler, eyes stark in her white-skinned face.
“The clan sign of the duke,” she said. “He's of Clan McDonahue.”
Brogan stared at her. “By! So he is.”
Rufus almost dropped the brooch he held into the leaves in shock. He stared at it, the hawk's head somehow tainted now. He passed it wordlessly to Brogan.
“Keep it,” he said. “But put it somewhere safe. We'll need that,” he added.
“We must show my father,” Amabel agreed firmly.
“Yes,” Rufus nodded. “We must.”
“We must hurry,” Amabel said, voicing his own thoughts as he went hurriedly to his horse.
“Yes. We must. Brogan?”
“Yes, milord?”
“Put the brooch in my saddle pack. No, actually. Lady Amabel?”
“Yes, sir?” she looked at him, lips slightly apart. He felt his loins swell with wanting. He wished he could push his tongue into that gap, sample her tastiness. However, he couldn't. They had to hurry. Brogan was staring at him again. He sighed.
“I think you should have it,” he decided, letting out his breath in a long sigh.
“But, sir,” Amabel countered. “We'll go together...”
“No,” he said. He looked at his hands, feeling wretched. “I should stay away. Best if you meet your father alone. Don't want me along. Besides,” he added with a raised brow in the direction of Brogan, “he and I have things to do. We'll be better use to each other if we're in the town. We will,” he added, trying to convince himself more than her.
Amabel looked confused a moment and he wished again that he could hold her to him and wet her face with his lips. Nevertheless, he couldn't. Her expression lightened. “I think you're right,” she said tightly.
He heard the tension in her voice and wanted to weep. He was amazed that she seemed as reluctant as he was himself to separate now. Still, it made more sense for them to part here. He sighed.
“We'll get to the gate together. Then you can go in, and we'll go round to the traders' gateway. Round the back. We can be ironmongers or something, eh?” he asked the boy. He chuckled.
“We can be message riders more like, sir,” he said candidly. “We don't got anything to trade.”
Rufus rolled his eyes heavenward. “Oh, for...very well. If you say so, we are...”
“Not messengers.” Amabel spoke loudly. He stared at her.
“What..?” he asked softly.
“No message carriers,” she said firmly. “Choose another identity. I think I know what's happening here. And if I turn out to be right, the last thing you want to be known as is men with word from the capital. Trust me.”
Rufus felt his eyes widen in surprise, but he nodded. “Yes, milady.”
Amabel sighed. “I hope we find out more,” she added softly. “I might be wrong but...be careful?”
Rufus felt his heart ache. “I will,” he said softly. “You have my word.”
She smiled at him.
“Well, then,” she said. “Now we have some idea of what's chasing us, we'd better ride.” she grinned, a grin that fizzed with tension and made his spine shiver. “If we don't want whoever it is to catch us.”
He saw she was smiling, that smile that said she was as drunk on the danger as he himself. He felt his heart beat faster, senses quickening. He felt, he thought, as a hunting hound must feel, the moment the hunt starts. Alert, eager. Waiting for something.
Amabel swung up on the stirrup and turned her horse. Together, they all rode east. Heading for her father's ancestral hall and information.
As they rode, Rufus found his nerves fraying with concerns. What would happen when they reached her family's hall? She would be taken in, united with her father. Then what? Would he rebuke her, send her off to marry this man who, for all they knew, would have them killed out here in the woods? Would he be angry with her for her time alone with Rufus? Would he forbid them to ever meet up?
If she rides through that archway, she might not return.
He closed his eyes. He didn't want to think of that. They had known each other two weeks, or thereabouts, but already it felt to him as if the sun would cease to shine, were she taken.
“Come on, fool,” he whispered to himself. He was angry. How could he let himself be like this? He had to surrender her to her family's care. Anything else was secondary.
“Sir?” Brogan asked. Rufus clenched his fingers on the reins, a stab of irritation passing through him.
“Nothing, Brogan,” he said hoarsely. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Oh.” Brogan sounded surprised, as if the concept was utterly foreign. Then he sighed. Rufus felt him relax where he sat behind him, holding onto the saddle with both hands. “Well, that's fine, then. At least one of us is thinkin', sir. I'm just clingin' on for dear life here. Trying not tae fall.”
Rufus didn't want to be amused but he couldn't help laughing. “Hang on tight, then,” he said with a laugh. “We're going uphill awhile.”
“Wonderful,” Brogan countered glumly. “Just what I like. Me bollocks already feel like as they're sawn in half. A bit more jarring and I'll be laid out in agony, sir. So's you ken.”
Rufus laughed again. “Brogan?” he said.
“What, sir?”
“Remind me not to tell you about my plans. I see you'll always have something to complain of.”
“Always, sir,” Brogan agreed. “Allus complainin', so I am. Me granddad used to say me tongue could wind all the clocks in Edinburgh. Never seen one meself...not close to, like. So how that's s'posed to work, I've no idea. Ever seen one, sir?”
“What?”
“A clock, sir. Those things as tell the time.” Brogan said succinctly.
Rufus snorted. “Those things. Seen one once,” he said. “Though that was far away, in Constantinople.”
“Where's that?”
“Across the sea,” Brogan explained. “Past Rome. Past France. Out to the shores of the Ottoman lands.”
He heard the boy draw in a long breath. “By! That's far, I reckon.” Rufus smiled, pleased that he had managed to temporarily surprise him. He might hold his silence long enough for him to think. It seemed to work, for the youth stayed quiet for quite some time.
“You went to France?” Amabel. Rufus blinked. He hadn't realized she had moved alongside.
“I did, once,” Rufus agreed softly. “For the knightly tuition. They have the grand hospitals of all the orders there. I was there with our grand master.”
“Oh?” Amabel was looking at him with those bright
blue eyes on him. He felt his heart lift as he saw her evident interest.
Biting back his desire to embellish, he told her the facts only. “I joined the order as a lad of fourteen,” he explained. “Reckoned I'd had enough of my father by then. Ran away and acted as a squire to a fellow called Sir Angus Blainford. Stayed with him in France awhile. Then went to Rome. Then after being admitted to the order, headed to the Holy Land. Stayed there a while.”
“You have seen Jerusalem.”
“I've been in Jerusalem,” he agreed. “Hot. Dry. Indescribably sacred.”
Amabel was staring at him with big eyes. “Oh, how wonderful,” she whispered. “I would love to travel far one day. What a remarkable life you've had.”
He chuckled. “Don't seem all that remarkable to me.” He smiled. “I suppose that's 'cos I saw all the wild misjudgments and errors I made along the way. You'd have laughed.”
“No,” she smiled. “Try me.”
He chuckled. “Trust me. You will laugh at my tales of knightship. And my misadventures.”
“Tell me one?” Amabel asked inquisitively.
He laughed. Told her the story of how he'd been in a city at the time that it was attacked and, as he ran for his sword, he'd got his feet caught in his scabbard that fell down, having been badly fastened. He'd tripped and sprawled, and almost risked the ultimate indignity of his trews coming down.
“So there I was,” he chuckled. “Scabbard on my feet, pants falling off, flat on my belly.” He was breathless with laughter and Amabel was giggling helplessly. “I was gripping my sword and shouting out all sorts of nonsense. I don't know why. Hoping to threaten people, I reckon. Though if anyone had found me then, the worst I could have done was make them laugh so hard they ran out of breath and died coughing.”
They were all helpless with giggles, he most of all, recalling the scene, when they came to the rise of a summit.
“Gate's in those trees,” Amabel confirmed informatively as he looked with a question. Her voice was tight and it sounded as if she spoke around a lump that had formed, quite suddenly, in her throat. Rufus nodded, swallowing and feeling a similar lump had formed in his.
“We'll go as far as the gate, then,” he said hoarsely.
He looked at her and she looked back. Her eyes, he noticed with some amazement, were misty with tears.
“I'll see you soon,” he murmured.
She swallowed hard and nodded. “I'll see you soon.” Her voice was tight with tears.
He smiled and blinked rapidly. She smiled back, nodding breathlessly.
Together they rode out of the clearing. There they stopped. He and Brogan went right, and she went straight ahead. As they rode, Rufus watched over his shoulder, letting the slip of a figure on the horse get smaller and smaller in his vision until they together, figure and horse, trotting, disappeared from sight.
A CONFUSING PLACE
The stone arch of the gate soared up from the closely growing trees. Amabel looked up, the sky suddenly dazzling and powdery blue above her head. She swallowed hard, struggling to breathe.
“State your name and business!” A sentry shouted harshly. “What do you here in Buccleigh?”
Amabel stiffened. She looked at the sentry flatly. “I am the lady of Buccleigh,” she said thinly, but in a voice that brooked no fuss. “Amabel Blackheath. I am here to see my father with news of an urgent nature. Kindly convey word of my presence to him. He'll want to know I was admitted as soon as I arrived.”
The sentry gulped, seeming suddenly to run out of fresh air. “Yes, milady.”
He shouted orders briskly and she heard a high squealing creak as the gate was drawn up.
She rode through, her horses' feet clopping loudly in the space below the arch. She directed him to her right along the cobbles, heading through the town and up towards the fortress.
I am going to settle this. Then I will leave. I will see Rufus again.
She was surprised by how much, as she rode through the closely pressed wattle houses with their thatch, the stone walls and the churches, she missed his presence. She found herself looking over as if half-expecting him to appear there on her right, as he always did, with some quirky witticism.
I miss him so.
She sighed. She was being silly. She had known him two weeks. She couldn't feel this strongly. It made no sense.
I love him. That is all the sense I need to make of it.
Her heart stilled as she made herself focus on her immediate surroundings. The walls, the cobbles, the sound of her horse's hoof beats on stone. She passed several townspeople and they stood back, letting her canter past. She felt their eyes on her and realized she must look quite an unusual spectacle.
Here I am, with my hair loose, in a white robe and a blue shawl, riding unaccompanied in the road, a lady alone.
It was something unheard of.
She reached the gates of the castle, heart thumping.
“My lady!” a voice, astonished, called down.
“Greer,” she called up urgently. “Open the gate.”
“Yes, milady.”
She saw the man-at-arms – one of the handful of those she knew from her visits to Buccleigh throughout her childhood – bend to the crank that would wind the gate open. Then she heard the soft oiled squeal of metal sliding on oiled metal.
She was in.
She rode urgently across the cobbled courtyard to the stables.
“See that he's well-tended,” she called succinctly to the stable hand. The man caught the reins as she jumped down, staring at her in a mix of wonder and terror. She walked past smoothly, feeling her heart suddenly go stiff with strain as she neared the pointed arched doors that would admit her to the hall.
What if her father wasn't even here? What would she do? How would she explain to her grandfather that she had simply arrived here, alone and unchaperoned, on some wild errand? She breathed out. In her pocket was the brooch. She had to convince herself she had reason enough to be here. She patted it. It was enough.
She continued up the stairs to the door.
“Open it,” she ordered the guards. The one on her left stiffened, but the one on her right did what she asked hurriedly, perhaps too shocked by the order coming from a woman – unusual and terrifying, no doubt, she thought grimly – to obey.
She walked quickly and lightly into the gray darkness.
The door shut behind her.
Inside, Amabel looked across the gray flagstone-paved entrance-hall. She felt her heart thudding slowly in her chest and breathed deeply to compose herself. She reached up and straightened her hair, wishing she had a comb to fix it properly.
Can't be helped. I need to find my father. At once.
She chose to head to the solar, and walked briskly up the steps.
“Milady.” A guard recognized her, staring at her in surprise. He stood to attention smartly though and Amabel could almost hear him wondering how she'd got there so fast and whether her father had somehow summoned her here. She strode to the arched doors on her right, passing through the pooled sunlight on the floor of the upper colonnade.
“Father,” she said, striding in through the doors. She stopped. Stared.
“My lady,” a man said. He stood. He was not her father, though he had a vague resemblance to him, something about the set of his body and his jaw more than his face, which was longer than her father's, bearded and with pale blue eyes, slightly bulbous, that were nothing like the deep-set brown gaze of her father.
“Sir?” she asked. He was wearing a black robe and she guessed he might be a priest of some sort.
“Amabel.”
Amabel turned and smiled, relieved, at the voice on her left.
“Greetings, grandfather,” she said formally. She went to the old man, who was a shorter, broader-muscled version of her father with a craggier, older face. “How fares my grandfather?”
“Well, daughter,” he said with a soft voice. “How come you to be here in my hall all of a sudden? W
hen my son's departed?”
“Departed.”
“Oh, yes,” the older man said, frowning and then softening as if in memory. “Yes, he left two days prior. And please. Meet Sir Jacques Prolegnac. He is an envoy from France.”
“Oh.” Amabel curtsied to the man. He bowed. He pressed his lips dryly to her hand and Amabel shivered. There was something she decided she did not like about the man, though she had no reason for the feeling other than that he was here, now, where she had expected to find someone else, namely her father. “Enchanted, good sir.”
“I am honored, mademoiselle.”
Amabel turned from him as soon as it was polite to do so, returning to her grandfather.
“Grandfather?” she asked quickly. “When did my father go? Where is he? I have news I must deliver to him personally.”
Her grandfather took her hand. “Dougal's gone off to Avermarsh, young lady,” he said lightly. “He'll be a day or two there – had to organize some iron from the trade there. I understand he means to head directly back. I apologize if we have ruined your visit,” he said with a rueful smile. “I'm afraid your father would have returned to you much sooner had our friend Prolegnac not arrived the day before he intended departing.”
“Oh.” Amabel let out a long out-breath. She felt weak, suddenly. It was with relief. “Oh, grandfather...” she sighed. She let herself lean on his arm a moment. “Apologies,” she added. “But when he didn't come to the castle I had reason to believe he might be endangered...” She shook her head.
“Why did you think that?” the envoy asked softly. “You encountered trouble on the road, madame?”
Amabel felt her brow lift sharply. Why was he asking her that? Had he? Or, worse, did he know of trouble on the road for some more sinister purpose..?
“I saw no trouble,” she said firmly. “Some brigands, mayhap, but none to trouble me.” She tilted her chin, watching his expression change. She fancied she saw his eyes widen fractionally, as if he were surprised by that, and then clear. She bit her lip.
I might be imagining all that. I just don't like him. Something about him sits uneasily.
She shook her head. Probably just tired, she thought.
Adventures of a Highlander Page 35
