Hannah Howell

by Highland Hearts

  As he closed his eyes, Revan made another promise to himself. He would, somehow, gain both coin and land on his own merit. One day, and he prayed that it would be soon, he would have a fortune equal to Tessa’s. Then no one could accuse him of living off his wife’s largesse.

  Tess eased her body out from beneath her blanket. Hardly breathing at all, she began to creep toward the door. If she could speak to Revan, tell him that he was freed of his promise to wed her, then his family and Simon could help him get away. As she edged around the people sleeping on the floor, she silently practiced her speech for Revan. When a bony hand suddenly clamped down on her arm she barely stopped herself from screeching.

  “Just where do ye think ye are creeping away to, lassie?” whispered her captor.

  “Isabella?” Tess peered at the person gripping her arm. “Is that you?”

  “Well, it isna King James, ye great idiot.”

  Lying down next to the old woman so that she could speak even more softly, Tess whispered, “Let me go. I think ye can guess what I am trying to do.”

  “Well, for a moment there I thought ye might be sneaking away to have a quick rut with your man.”

  “Cousin Isabella!”

  “But I then recalled that talk we had just before the men returned. Sorry, lassie, but tonight isna the chance ye are looking for.”

  “His kinsmen are here. They could help him get away.”

  “Tessa, I doubt that ye would even make it out the door. Your kinsmen nearly cover this floor. There are more outside, in the stables, and even in the cow byre. We are knee-deep in Comyns and Delgados. One of them is certain to catch you or that pretty lad of yours. And ye can be sure that they will lock ye and him up very tightly after that. Ye will have to wait, lass.”

  “Aye. I suppose ye are right.”

  “I am. Ye would have to crawl through Silvio to get out the door.”

  “Uncle is sleeping by the door?”

  “Right in front of it.”

  It was hard, but Tess had to accept defeat. She got back up on her hands and knees to return to her pallet. Tess had barely begun to inch along the floor when Isabella hissed her name.

  “What is it?” she asked, now anxious to return to her bed before she was seen.

  “If ye ever need anything, lassie, anything at all, ye come to me.”

  “Thank ye, Cousin. That is a comfort. Good sleep to you.”

  “And to you, Contessa.”

  When Tess finally reached her pallet, she crawled beneath her blanket and sighed. She was disappointed that the ordeal of sending Revan away was still ahead of her yet relieved that he would still be near at hand. She hoped that she would be able to conquer her contradictory emotions. If they lingered after Revan was gone, she feared she would never be able to overcome the pain of losing him.

  CHAPTER 22

  “What exactly did he call this place?” Revan asked as they rode into the bailey of Thurkettle’s keep.

  Tess grimaced as Revan dismounted, then moved to help her down from her horse. Just as she had feared, the king had granted her Thurkettle’s lands and money. Revan had not taken the news very well. His mood had been faintly surly for the whole journey. She knew he was now making an effort to be conciliatory, but after four days of enduring his moods, she was not sure she felt particularly interested in his effort. Inwardly she sighed and looked at him, stung by the hint of anger still clouding his blue-gray eyes.

  “Simply Thurkettle’s Tower.” She shrugged when he scowled with distaste. “Ye can change it.”

  “ ’Tis yours. ’Tis your place to rename.” His tone was less harsh when he added, “As ye well know, I canna even think of a name for my horse. Ye were going to think of one, remember?”

  “Aye, I remember, and I finally thought of one as we traveled here, but I didna think ye were in the mood to discuss it.”

  “Nay. Mayhaps not.” He knew he ought to apologize, that he had treated her badly, but he could not get the words past the knot of resentment clogging his throat. “What name did ye decide on then?”

  She moved closer to his gelding and stroked the horse’s nose. “I thought of two actually. Ye can decide which one of them ye favor. Amigo or Compadre.”

  “I like the sounds of the words. Spanish?”

  “Aye.”

  “What do they mean?”

  “Amigo means ‘friend’ and compadre means ‘companion. ’ ‘Friend,’ too, I think. Canna be certain. My Spanish has been sadly weakened by not speaking it for five years. Thurkettle wouldna allow it. It enraged him.”

  “A great deal enraged that man. I suspect when he awoke to find his toes roasting over Satan’s coals, he was a wee bit enraged.” He smiled faintly when Tess giggled, then lightly swatted him on the arm.

  “Hush. Ye shouldna jest about the dead. Ye wouldna want old Fergus coming back to haunt ye.”

  “God have mercy on us.”

  Silvio and Tomas walked up at that moment, and Tess nearly cursed. That was the first reasonably pleasant conversation she and Revan had had in the last four days. She was annoyed to have her kinsmen put an end to it.

  All concern over talking to Revan fled her mind when Silvio and Tomas each grabbed Revan by an arm and hurried him toward the keep. “What are ye doing?” she asked as she ran after them.

  “Since your wedding is on the morrow,” replied Silvio, “we feel it best if your lad is very well secured. Ye dinna mind, do ye, Revan?”

  “I dinna suppose it would matter much if I did,” Revan murmured.

  “Nay, I fear not.”

  Tess cursed as she followed them into the keep and toward the steps that led down to the dungeons. “Are ye just going to toss him into a cell for the night, drag him out come the morning, and then wed us?”

  “Aye. I ken it isna the best of ceremonies, lass, but we havena got the time for anything fancy or even for your aunts and female cousins to come here. We wouldna even have traveled this far except that there is a priest in the village. The one at Donnbraigh died about a year past. ’Twas just as easy to come here where we ken one is than to run hither and yon trying to find one.”

  “That wasna what I was meaning, and well ye ken it,” she snapped as she stumbled after them, down the narrow, shadowed steps into the dungeons. “I mean that ye canna lock a man up on the eve of his wedding.”

  “Hold the lad, Tomas.” Silvio got the keys and unlocked the cell door. “If ye are worried over his mood on the wedding night, lass, I shouldna be. A man can forgive most anything when he finds himself abed with a pretty lass.”

  “I wasna worried about the wedding night. Revan, why dinna ye hit them or something?” she demanded even as Silvio nudged Revan into the cell and locked the door.

  “I dinna think that would be the proper way to treat one’s future kinsmen, Tessa.” Revan found it curious that he was not angry, did in fact have difficulty not laughing.

  “These future kinsmen ought to be hanged. Give me those keys.” She tried to snatch them from her uncle’s hand, but he hung them back on the hook, which was out of her reach. “Will ye let him out of there?”

  “Nay. Canna do it, lass. Now, the two of you have been very accepting of this marriage we have demanded. But ’tis the eve of saying your vows to each other. ’Tis the time when ye can grow very resentful, get nervous, and think of bolting, and when ye start to have doubts. Now, be honest, Contessa, I suspect ye have a doubt or two.”

  “Oh, aye, I have a doubt or two—about your sanity. Now, cease this mad game and set him free.”

  “ ’Tis no game, my Wee Countess, but common sense.”

  Tess gave a soft screech of surprise when Silvio suddenly picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. “Put me down!”

  “I will as soon as we get ye into your chamber.” He started toward the stairs, ignoring the way she pounded on his back with her small fists. “We will send ye down a hot bath, lad,” he called back to Revan. “Aye, and a hearty meal and clean clothes for y
our wedding day. If ye think ye are in need of clean linen for that bed, just ask the lad who brings ye down your bath.”

  “I believe I will be fine.”

  The moment Tess and her kinsmen were gone, Revan sat down on the narrow cot and laughed. He knew he ought to be enraged, but he was not, and that struck him as being funny as well. After a moment he sighed and sprawled on his back on the bed, idly noticing that it was new and not the rat-chewed cot that had been in the cell before. He was full of contradictory emotions concerning his approaching marriage. A little more time to sort himself and his feelings out would probably be for the best, but there was no time left. He prayed he would not hurt Tessa too much as he battled his own vagaries and confusion.

  Tess laid on her back on the bed, exactly where she had been tossed by Silvio before he had run out of the bedchamber, locking the door behind him. She found it all very hard to believe. While she and Revan had been virtual prisoners since they had sought refuge with her uncle Silvio, it had been a captivity easily ignored. This was not. She did not understand why Revan had not been as enraged as she was. In fact, he had looked amused by the whole business.

  She was still nursing her anger and puzzling over Revan’s curious attitude when the servants arrived with a hot meal and a hot bath. It was very tempting to make a bid for freedom, if only to prove a point, but she resisted the urge. Instead, she sat on the bed silently glaring at them. They hurried through their chores and fled the room. She hoped they went straight to her kinsmen and reported on her fury, then cursed. Silvio would probably find her bad temper a source of great amusement.

  After indulging in a long, hot bath and feasting upon her meal, she felt sleepy but fought the temptation to lie down and close her eyes. She could not go to sleep now. It was far too risky. She could easily sleep straight through until morning and lose all chance of giving Revan his freedom. The way he had acted when she had been awarded all Thurkettle had forfeited only made her more certain of the need to let him go.

  The second time she caught herself dozing, Tess knew she could wait no longer to act. Since she was in Brenda’s old bedchamber, she did not need to worry about the door her kinsmen had locked. She walked over to the huge wardrobe against the wall, pushed Brenda’s many gowns out of the way, stepped inside, and opened the door at the back. It let her into the next bedchamber, the one Brenda had always put the handsomest male guests in.

  Cautiously Tess eased into the hall. Although careful to keep an eye out for anyone who might sound an alarm, she hurried outside. There were a few things she needed to do before she could go to Revan.

  “She has put our guard to sleep and tied up the stable lad.”

  Silvio stared at the grinning Tomas for a moment, then laughed. “She is her father’s daughter. No question of it. I wonder how she put the guard to sleep.”

  “She tipped some small vial of liquid into the water bucket just before the lad took it round to give each man a drink. A sleep draft. Probably Brenda’s. As for the poor stable lad, she just tiptoed up behind him, tapped him with a lump of wood, then tied and gagged him.”

  “Has she finally made her way to that lover of hers?”

  “Aye, she went in through the tunnel. Mayhaps ye shouldna have had it cleared. Made it too cursed easy for her.” Tomas moved to the large bed in the center of Silvio’s bedchamber and lay down on it. “Are ye still certain we should let her do this? She will be no maid yet no wife.”

  “I ken it.” Silvio lightly drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair he sat in. “I dinna like the thought of that at all. But, Kirsten swears to me that this is the right thing to do. Didna your Meghan say the same?”

  “Aye, she did.”

  “And they are both right, as is that old corbie, Isabella, who fair bent my ear ere we left to come here. Ye saw how the lad acted when she got word that she now owned all of this as well. When she tells him about her fortune, he willna be able to live with it. I canna believe the women fully understand how deep a man’s pride runs, how much a part of him it is, but they do ken what can happen if ye strip a man of that pride.”

  Tomas grimaced and nodded. “He isna a cruel man, but he could easily destroy our Tess. She loves him.”

  “Aye,” Silvio agreed in a soft voice. “More than I had guessed. It takes a very deep love to do what she is doing. She is going to let go of the one she values most in this world because she canna bear to chance that the marriage could destroy him.”

  “I canna understand how the man can be so blind. He cares for her. I am certain of it.”

  “Oh, aye, he does, the young idiot. The man was half-mad with worry when she was in Thurkettle’s hands.”

  “Yet he will leave her.”

  “Sometimes, lad, a man has to be faced with losing something ere he realizes how much it means to him.”

  For a moment Tomas stared at his uncle, then his eyes widened, and he started to laugh. “Ye are a sly one. Ye dinna believe he will go very far at all, do ye.”

  “Nay. Not more than a mile or two. Come on, lad. We had best take up the watch upon the walls until our men wake up.” Silvio stood up and started out of the door, Tomas quickly falling in behind him. “Just dinna let either of those young idiots catch sight of you. If they think I have stuck my spoon into the pot, they could become very bullheaded.”

  Revan frowned as a light drew nearer to his cell. He sat up in bed when he saw Tess. She smiled faintly, set her lamp on the table, then tugged the stool over and set it beneath the hook the keys dangled from. Revan tugged on his braies and reached the cell door just as she started to unlock it.

  “Thought ye had your own set.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the cool iron bars.

  “I lost them when we first fled from this place.” She opened the cell door and looked at him. “We have to talk.”

  “Now? In the middle of the night?”

  “Aye. Now. Tomorrow will be too late, much too late.”

  She went and sat on his bed after placing her lamp on the small table next to it. Revan hesitantly moved to sit beside her. She was looking so serious, so grave, it began to worry him. He took her hand in his. When he met her gaze, he felt a flicker of alarm. Even in the dim light he could read the sadness in her eyes.

  “Tessa, what is wrong? Is it Silvio? Tomas?”

  “Nay. They are fine. ’Tis me, Revan. I need to tell ye something about me that I dinna think ye will like to hear.”

  He smiled, relieved, for he was sure that there was little Tess could tell him about herself that was as bad as she seemed to think it was. “What about you, Tessa?”

  As she stared down at their entwined fingers, she said, “I lied to you.” She glanced up and noticed that the look of indulgent amusement had left his face. “Well, I didna tell ye the full truth.”

  “The full truth about what?”

  “My fortune.”

  Revan tensed, not liking the turn the conversation had just taken. “What about your fortune?”

  Simply mentioning her inheritance had him tense and wary, anger lurking just below the surface. Tess wanted to weep but fought to maintain her calm. Her money and her lands, things that should be a source of comfort, were going to cost her the one thing she really needed to be truly happy.

  “Do ye remember when we were trying to decide what other reason Thurkettle could have to want to kill me, and ye asked me if I had some money, some fortune, or land?”

  “Aye. Ye said ye had a bit of land here, in Scotland, and a bit in Spain, as well as a few thousand riders. Ye dinna have these things?”

  There was the hint of hope in his voice, and she sighed. “Aye, I have them. Mayhaps I should tell ye about my bit of land.” In a flat voice she described her large, profitable estates in Scotland and in Spain, watching him pale a little more with each detail.

  “And the few thousand riders?” he asked in a tight voice as he released his grip on her hand and stood up.

  She folded her hands in
her lap. “Thirty thousand at last counting.”

  “Sweet Mary.” He ran a hand through his hair as he paced once around the cell. “That accounting doesna include all that Thurkettle has left behind, does it?”

  “Nay. There has been no time to tally that yet.”

  Tess watched him pace for a moment. She could not be sure if it was a sign of agitation or if he sought some solution. Then she decided that it did not really matter. The look of utter horror on his face said all that needed to be said. There was no way that he could live with her fortune, and she knew that giving it all up would not help them, either.

  “Get dressed, Revan,” she said as she stood up.

  “What?” He turned sharply to face her.

  “Get dressed.”

  Still stunned by what she had told him, he simply obeyed her, moving to tug on his clothes. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Ye are. Ye are leaving here. Ye dinna have to wed me in the morning.” She held up her hand to silence him when he started to speak. “Nay. Dinna tell me about duty and honor. They are very fine sentiments, but we both ken that few people will judge ye poorly if ye dinna hold to them now. There will probably be many a man who will think ye are admirably clever.”

  “Mayhaps. However, although ye have opened the cell door for me, how am I to escape?”

  “Through the tunnel, just as ye did before. Uncle had it cleared. But this time I regret to say that ye canna do it with your knife at my throat.”

  He ignored that. “And once I step outside of that tunnel, I shall be swiftly taken up by your kinsmen.”

  “Nay. The way is clear. Ye need but saddle your horse and ride away.”

  “No one is in the stables?”