The Knight's Broken Promise

by Nicole Locke

  She pressed her fingers under her eyes. It could not be his feelings, but her own making her heart ache. It had to be. He had no feelings, while she was rapidly losing control of hers—losing control of her pride, too. But she’d gladly beg if it would get him to move.

  ‘You inding shirrow weevil, can’t you see I wouldn’t ask if I dinna have to? You’re our only hope!’

  To think she had been glad when he arrived. He had barely helped her before and now he wasn’t even answering her request.

  ‘Auntie Gaira! I saved you some rabbit!’

  Alec, his wild hair flying behind him, bounded towards her. Her heart lifted at the sight of his skips and jumps. Despite everything, children were resilient. And in that, she knew they’d make it. If only the children had a chance.

  Stepping away from Robert, she crouched in readiness for Alec to join her. It was so natural, so easy. And there was her answer. They did have a chance. They had her. And with that, she stopped her doubting. Feeling as wild as his hair, she grabbed Alec’s loose hand. Alec squealed and tried to get away.

  ‘Oh, you saved me some rabbit, did you? Is this the rabbit you saved me? It looks so succulent.’

  ‘Nae, not me, Auntie Gaira. I’m not the rabbit!’

  She poked at him, pretending she was testing his fatness. ‘Oh, you’re a tasty morsel, you are.’

  She began to smack her lips and Alec screamed louder. His eyes widened with delight and mock fear.

  She could feel Robert watching her, but didn’t spare him a glance. Instead she tossed her plaits and pulled Alec behind her as they ran towards the camp.

  * * *

  The camp was quiet, except for the slight crackle of the fire and the few insects and nocturnal creatures that scattered and rustled the leaves and twigs around them.

  Gaira wrapped her arms tighter around her and watched as the fire’s flames dimmed. She could not sleep. Her thoughts wouldn’t let her alone. And they, just like the fire, dimmed and scattered in different directions.

  She thought of the children, now fast asleep, and how she was getting them to her clan. She thought of what was to become of them and her if they were caught by her betrothed.

  She thought of Robert, who hadn’t said a word since Alec had interrupted them. But she had been aware of him watching her, watching the children. Watching her.

  She had no idea what his thoughts were when she returned to camp and had played with Maisie, combed Flora’s hair and made sure Creighton ate enough rabbit to fill his growing body.

  She tried not to care about his thoughts as she cleaned up dinner, banked the fire and wrapped the children in her shawl to keep them warm in the night’s chill.

  She no longer felt frustrated at him or even hurt. She just felt confused. He acted and behaved like no man she had ever known.

  He had seemed almost angry at her asking. Not angry because her request was an inconvenience, but angry because her request had brought him pain. But instead of giving her reasons, he had watched her all evening.

  Even though he was on the other side of the fire, she still felt Robert watching her, which meant, he, too, was not asleep. That knowledge, probably more than anything, was why she still couldn’t get to sleep.

  Restless, she sat and began to unplait her hair. It had been cleaned before she had carefully plaited it, but the plaits pulled at her head and she wanted to be free from their confinement.

  She had not heard him move, but rather she felt him move. It was as if he had sat up, his watchful eyes now intent, focused.

  On her.

  Suddenly uncoordinated, she unwound her hair with uneven tugs until it was loose enough to comb.

  With trembling fingers she massaged her scalp to relieve the sharp prickles. But Robert was watching her and the prickles spread, tingled across her sensitive shoulders and lower through her body and legs.

  Shaking, she grabbed her comb. Raising it, she stroked the comb through her thick hair to unravel the coils.

  She heard Robert stand and move behind her. But he did not speak and neither did she.

  The air around her grew warm, thick, and her heart began to beat in an unfamiliar rhythm. She stroked the comb through her hair again, letting the teeth bite from her scalp through the ends and out.

  He inhaled sharply.

  For a moment, she held the comb suspended, then, lowering it, she whispered, ‘I’m sorry I woke you.’

  ‘I have questions.’

  His response was such a direct contrast to what she was feeling. She waited, but he didn’t say anything more and he didn’t return to his side of the fire.

  Unsure what else to do, she slid the comb through the rest of her hair, setting the coils free. But it wasn’t enough to loosen the tension and she massaged her scalp, fingering her way through the heavy curls. Her hair felt wilder somehow, her fingers noticing textures she’d never felt before. Just as she’d never felt a man’s gaze as she felt Robert’s gaze. Just as she’d never felt her breath quicken as if she’d burned herself and kept her hand in the fire nonetheless. She felt like her hair, freed but still coiled.

  ‘How did you find the children?’ Robert’s voice was hoarse, unfocused.

  Unbalanced, it took all her concentration to understand the question. He wanted to know about the children. Not this...unknown breathlessness.

  She could talk about the children. He had helped her bury the dead and hunt more food. Her breath returned to normal. He deserved some of the truth.

  ‘I arrived maybe only a few hours after the English left,’ she replied.

  He sat down beside her, his legs bent, his arms and hands hanging loosely between his knees. He was not touching or facing her, but it did not matter. She felt him beside her.

  ‘In my hurry down the hill, I hurt my ankle, but I still walked through the valley.’ She did not want to describe what she had seen. He had been to the valley, he knew what was there.

  ‘I heard Maisie before I saw her. She was in the last hut and under some torn blankets and an upturned chest. They were unwashed horse blankets. I guess the English dinna want to bother with them.’

  Even though she had not seen them, she had no doubt it was the English who had destroyed Doonhill. She clenched the comb and let the sharp points press into her palm.

  ‘I grabbed her, held her. She had been my only hope. There was nothing else...salvageable.’ She breathed in raggedly. ‘I went back up the hill to get my spooked horse. He was near a small copse of trees. By then my ankle hurt and I was grateful he had not gone any further.’

  ‘That was when I saw movement in the trees. I was scared—I knew the English had just left. But it was the children. Flora holding Alec’s hand and Creighton standing with his fists at his sides.’

  ‘You did not mention your kin.’

  She shoved the comb back into her satchel. ‘Aye, I was coming to visit my sister, Irvette, her husband and their daughter.’

  ‘Maisie,’ he said, no question in his voice. ‘Maisie is their daughter.’

  ‘Aye.’ There was no need to hide the truth.

  ‘You buried your sister and her husband.’

  She nodded. At night she had buried them and so many others. It was at night she had felt the heavy weight of both the living and the dead depending on her. Only then did she allow herself to feel her grief and her anger.

  ‘I couldn’t leave Irvette like that and I wouldn’t leave her husband, either.’

  ‘You stayed to bury the rest because of the children?’

  ‘Partly, but that’s not all.’ She tried to close out the vision of the night and her long trek down the hill, where the wind did not blow so hard and the moonlight obscured the remains of the village.

  ‘I have nightmares now. Not just because of what I saw, but—’ She stopp
ed. It had been long, gruesome work moving the bodies to the garden. ‘I could hear the dead urging me to dig, you ken? I dug so hard the blisters on my hands broke, but the pain was sharp and dulled the ache in my ankle, allowing me to work faster.

  ‘Yet I couldn’t dig fast enough. Even in the cool of the night, I could smell the bodies and the flies swarmed. I moved, but the flies stayed on me as if they were waiting for me, as well.’

  She shook her head. ‘But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was the sound the bodies made when they thudded into the grave I made.’

  His gaze remained on the fire and she saw only his profile. She didn’t know what he was thinking.

  ‘I couldn’t make the graves deep enough to silence the sound,’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t the only sound they made.’

  His brow furrowed, but he did not stop her speech.

  ‘I know you’ll think me mad, but I heard their voices, faint, coming from some other place, but loud enough for me to hear.’

  She had to say it. ‘They thanked me,’ she confided. These were her most private thoughts, so personal she hadn’t thought she’d tell anyone, but somehow she knew he would understand what she spoke. ‘Thanked me for taking care of their children when they nae longer could.’

  Robert’s hands jerked, but he remained silent. If he wasn’t sitting next to her, she would swear he wasn’t listening. How could he not hear what she was saying? Were her fears so easily dismissed?

  ‘But to what end?’ She gave a sort of hiccupped sob. ‘You’re not even going to help us.’

  She was not mortified that her voice broke. She was beyond any pride. She was desperate. And afraid. And grieving. And he was going to leave her like this.

  He breathed in raggedly. ‘This afternoon, I told you I was not helping you.’

  She did not need reminders of the afternoon’s conversation.

  ‘But Alec came and you played with him,’ he continued. ‘Then you played with Maisie, too, and cared for Creighton and Flora. You smiled at them, gave them affection and yet, I knew you were distressed.’

  ‘Ach, there’s nae sense in self-pity.’ She batted at her cheeks and wished the tell-tale sign of any weakness would go away. ‘I’ve never shirked a chore in my life. And the children mean more than that to me. Much more. I made them a promise and I’m keeping it, with or without your help.’

  ‘I’ll take you to the nearest village.’ His voice was rushed with the release of his breath. It was as if the words escaped before he could stop them. ‘No further,’ he said more firmly. ‘It’ll be enough to get you an extra horse and further supplies.’

  Instead of relief, her heart stabbed and tingled. He had given her some reprieve from her hardship ahead of her, but she knew it had been reluctant. It just added guilt to her already heavy heart. But she was in no position to refuse. She nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands.

  ‘Aye,’ she whispered. ‘Only to the nearest village.’

  He stood and moved as if he would leave, but then he stopped.

  ‘Gaira?’

  She craned her neck to look up at him. His back was almost to her and he was looking over his shoulder. His body was fine and broad. She could see how his tunic stretched taut over the blades of his arm muscles, how his waist tapered to hose that were wrapped around legs sculpted from endurance and strength. The dim flickering fire did not allow her to see all the features of his face, but it did not matter. She felt his eyes, felt the return of the heat in them.

  She felt her own body respond. She felt the sluggish heat of her blood, the shallow breath fill her lungs. Her clothing felt tight and confining.

  It had to be her grief that left her feeing this raw, this open. She felt vulnerable to him, to thoughts he would not say.

  ‘Aye?’ she finally answered.

  He did not touch her, but he might as well have been caressing her as the fire did. His eyes moved as if they were his hands. Not soft caresses of sight, but rough, consuming strokes of heat.

  ‘While I am with you,’ he spoke, his voice firm, ‘do not unbind your hair again.’

  She hoped the dim fire hid her blush.

  Chapter Nine

  Busby did not quench his feeling of satisfaction. No, in fact, he let his pleasure be known as he flashed the crofter a menacing grin. He couldn’t help it. It was his nature. It was that exact nature that made the crofter give him the information he needed to find his fleeing betrothed.

  It wasn’t as though she could hide from him anyway, even with her wearing lad’s clothing. She was tall and scrawny, but her long red hair was sure to catch someone’s attention, as was her riding a fine horse. A fine horse that was his.

  Busby puffed out his chest and walked to his horse. He knew he cut a strapping figure wherever he went. He was a big man, bigger than most.

  He loved the fear on people’s faces. The few crofter houses along the way were hardly a barrier to his questioning. In fact, the very first hut he knocked on, the resident had let him know a lass had ridden through less than two days ago.

  Foolish wench to run in broad daylight where there could be witnesses. All he had to do was follow her, ask questions and eventually he would retrieve her.

  Because running to her sister’s home and hiding would not dissolve her obligation to marrying him. His keep needed her. His children needed her.

  He swung up on his horse, his lips thinning in disapproval. He probably would have already caught her if he didn’t have such a poor specimen of horseflesh to ride. He swallowed his anger.

  He’d still get her. When he did, he would show her no leniency. If she wanted mercy, she wouldn’t have escaped, wouldn’t have jeopardised his twenty sheep and wouldn’t have taken his good horse.

  * * *

  Gaira woke the next day to no one trying to be quiet. Alec was crying, Flora was choking back sobs, Creighton was taking a log and banging it against a fallen one.

  The racket woke Maisie, who was tightly wrapped in Gaira’s shawl. Loosening it, Gaira picked the young girl up. Maisie’s piercing scream went right into her ear and it took all her will not to add to the din herself.

  It was not hard to spy Robert saddling the horses.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she shouted over the children.

  He did not turn around. ‘Packing our things for the journey.’

  ‘You told them.’ She rocked Maisie back and forth until she quieted.

  ‘Aye, I did. It seemed necessary.’

  Creighton stopped banging on the log, Alec stopped crying and even Flora’s sobs lessened in frequency. She was glad for the temporary quiet, but she didn’t want to have this conversation in front of them. ‘You had nae right. They are my responsibility.’

  Every fibre of her being reverberated with the frustration she was feeling. She wanted to grab Creighton’s log, wanted to scream until her face turned as red as Maisie’s. Instead she took a few quick breaths to calm her heart.

  Even before she had fallen asleep she’d had second thoughts about asking him to accompany them. She did not know him, did not know if he posed an even greater danger to them than the unknown.

  But now he had told the children and there was no going back. By telling the children, he had subtly changed the leadership of their little group. She had asked him to help her on the trip, not to take over. She was still in charge. She didn’t want to be bullied again. She had had enough of overbearing men to last a lifetime.

  ‘Wait! Just wait. I need to take care of Maisie and I’d like to talk to the children myself.’

  He did not seem surprised by her request. He just patted his horse’s neck and walked down towards the lake. She waited to address the children until she couldn’t see him.

  Creighton was looking at her expectantly, Flora was looking at her hands
folded in her lap and Alec seemed content to look for things in the grass.

  She hoped that what she was about to tell them was the truth. There was too much left to chance. It was chance that her brothers would take the children, when they had done everything they could to get rid of their own sister. It was chance that Robert, despite being English, despite being a soldier, was a good man.

  ‘I’ve already told you of my home up north. My brothers are good and they’ll gladly take each of you in.’ She adjusted Maisie and could smell she was more than just wet. There was no time for a full change just yet. ‘But it’s far and there are dangers. I have asked Robert to take us part of the way there.’

  Creighton grabbed the stick again.

  Flora, anguish and surprise all over her face, said, ‘But, Auntie Gaira, he’s...he’s English. You said you’d protect us.’

  Gaira knew that was coming, but to hear gentle Flora say the words still hurt. ‘I’d protect you with my life if necessary, Flora, all of you.’

  ‘But how can we trust him?’ Flora asked. ‘How do we not know if something bad will happen again?’

  She had no answer to that. She didn’t know if something bad would happen again, didn’t know if Robert brought danger with him. But he had helped bury their kin and he had tamed his words for a little boy. It would have to be enough.

  She had known these children for less than a week, but she knew she would do anything she could to take care of them. Anything. Including trusting a man she didn’t know.

  ‘I think the only way we are to trust him is how we’ve trusted each other already—on faith.’

  Creighton banged once on the log. His eyes blazed, his lips thinned. It was not hard to see the man he’d look like with his eyes so full of anger. Her heart went to him. He was too young to be an adult.

  ‘Nae doona be thinking I’m taking this lightly, Creighton, because I’m not. Another horse will get us to shelter faster and having a man who knows how to trap and wield a sword are benefits I cannot just ignore.’

  She went to a nearby tree and got down dry linen to change Maisie.