“I was young and foolish.”
“And you’re so much older and wiser now.”
“I wouldn’t say so much older, but wiser, yes.” The glitter of anger in her eyes speckled to a softer green. “I didn’t choose the King over Markus. I wanted him to choose me over the High Chancellor. I waited for him to change his mind, to choose me. I waited, and waited, and when I eventually admitted I’d broken my own heart on foolish pride, it was too late. My mistake had lost me the love of my life.”
I stopped pacing to look at her. Either she’d just spun a yarn taller than the shield above us, or she’d bared her heart to me. I should’ve been able to tell, but I couldn’t. Amelia had a flair for theatrics, after all.
“I won’t make that mistake again.” Her gaze slid up to me. “I won’t let our divided loyalties prevent me from doing the right thing. Markus doesn’t deserve to die.”
“No, he doesn’t.” I crossed to the window, gazed thoughtfully into the hazy blue of sky until my mind settled. “It’s a lovely day for a ride, don’t you think?”
She released a heartfelt sigh of relief—or victory, who could say? Not me. That much I knew for certain.
Outside my bedroom, Liam waited at the turn in the passage. At the sounds of us exiting, he stepped forward. He inclined his head, eyes on me, a wordless message passed in that brief exchange.
“Go on ahead,” I said to Amelia. “I’ll catch up to you on the stairs.”
She only hesitated a moment before continuing.
As soon as she was out of hearing, Liam said in a low, urgent voice, “David has returned. I told him to make himself scarce and came directly here to inform you his mission was successful, but you had company.” A scowl grooved his forehead as he looked at me. “I’m not an invalid, Rose.”
“David was there and I had to act quickly,” I said. “I didn’t intentionally keep you out of the loop.”
“The snip of a boy refused to tell me where Markus is.”
“I warned him not to breathe a word, Liam. So far as I know, Markus is hiding in the marshes.”
“What now?”
“I’m going riding with Lady Hunt,” I said.
His scowl grooved deeper as he put two and two together. “You’re taking her to Markus?”
“I’m not sure yet, we’ll see.”
“I’ll ride with you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to draw unnecessary attention.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” he growled. “Sit on my thumbs all day?”
“Keep your ear to the ground, Liam. Join one of the search parties if they’ll let you. If they’re closing in on Markus, I want to know sooner rather than later.”
“Fair enough.” He placed a callused hand on my shoulder, bent his head to square a look on me. “They’re searching on foot and horseback, but the hounds will slow them down.”
“Small mercies, huh?” I smiled and turned to go, determined not to think too hard on where this day would end.
The area around the barracks and stables teemed with activity, but no one harassed me as I saddled and mounted Arandite. I didn’t know if that meant I was above suspicion or merely above harassment. Amelia joined me on her horse at the castle gates and we trotted off single file in the direction of the river.
The sun peaked to its midday high, then fell off to the west as we criss-crossed in and out of the forest, flirting with the River Grodden and its subsidiaries and the many miles of craggy slopes that surrounded the valley basin. We only encountered two of the search parties, once along the river, then again at the caves of our old mountain home.
Every now and then I’d rein us to a halt, spend long minutes waiting, listening and watching. Partly to ensure we hadn’t picked up a tail along the way, as I told Amelia when she’d asked, partly to leave a trail of decoys.
We’d dismounted to stretch our legs on the edge of the forest along the eastern reaches of the kingdom when Amelia confronted me.
“You’re leading me on a merry goose chase.” She glared up the slope of scrub in front of us, then turned that glare of me. “I spilled my heart to you, and you didn’t believe a word.”
“I believed you,” I sighed. “But that was a long time ago and you’re married to James now. I don’t know, Amelia, I honestly don’t know if you have it in you to betray Nathanial.”
“For the love of all that is holy!” She threw her hands out in a dramatic gesture of frustration and spun away from me. “So this seriously is just a damned goose chase.”
“Not quite.” I stood in the open, surveying the magnificent ridge gorged with deep crevices and overhanging shadows. “I’m leaving the decision up to Markus. If he trusts you, he will show himself.”
“I don’t understand.” She came to stand beside me, followed my gaze across the craggy cliffs, and then she did. “All those places we stopped?”
“Any one of them,” I said, “and the ones to come. Markus will be vigilant. He’ll hear and see us coming, I assure you. If he doesn’t show himself, then both you and I have our answers.”
“We don’t have time for this.” She didn’t argue further. She unwound her horse’s reins from the low branch and mounted. “So we’d best be getting on with it.”
I gave a dry laugh and did the same.
We cantered neck-and-neck in the track of long grass along the base of the ridge for a short while before she slowed to a trot.
“You are not altogether wrong, you know.” She sent me a sideways look. “If it came to choosing between Markus and Nathanial, I would let honour rule my heart. That’s the code Markus followed when he fled to the mountains with your father. He was a loyal solider, up until the old King went mad and incarcerated your mother in the tower. He never did give a fig about the divine right of Kings.”
I squinted at her in the midday sun. “And what does that code of honour tell you to do about Markus now?”
“There was no justifiable cause for him to draw his sword on Nathanial. The time for that had come and gone long before last night.” She looked forward. “Markus is in the wrong.”
A fist closed around my lungs. This was a trick. Nathanial did send her to me.
Amelia saw straight through to the inner workings of me. “Hear me out before you gallop off in that burst of outrage.”
I jerked Arandite to a halt, not about to lead us any closer to the marshes.
She turned her horse about to face me. “When I learnt Markus had escaped the dungeon, I guessed at once you’d been fundamental in the plan and I’ve known you for a handful of weeks. Do you not think Nathanial knows you slightly better than me?”
I frowned at her. “Of course he knows I’m involved. That is why he sent you.”
“He knew you’d hatch an escape plan the moment he ordered Markus marched off to the dungeon. And what did he do?” She arched a brow at me. “What did he do when you got home last night?”
I bit my tongue, said nothing.
Amelia rolled her eyes. “I’m not asking for the sordid details of your bedroom antics. He could have made sure you didn’t get the opportunity to rescue Markus, but he didn’t. Obviously.”
“He left me on the threshold of my room and went to bed,” I said slowly, thinking it through.
“He knew you’d attempt to rescue Markus and he did nothing to stop you,” Amelia said softly. “Nathanial didn’t send me to get information out of you. He doesn’t know I’m here and I’m not betraying him, either. I’m only doing what he cannot do. He doesn’t want to see Markus hanged any more than you do.”
“That doesn’t make sense! He could have pardoned Markus and he refused.”
“Did you know there was an attempt on Nathanial’s life?” Amelia said.
Jarvis and Lennard. “I know.”
“And did you know the man was a soldier?” Amelia went on. “Jacob Elliot. Fifty-three years of age. He served in the army since he was a boy of sixteen. He was well-known and well-liked by all
the men. He was a family friend of General Sunderland.”
That I hadn’t known. “Why did he turn?”
“Most of the men who followed your father were King’s soldiers who’d turned.” Amelia shrugged. “Jacob stayed, but his loyalties lay elsewhere.”
“A traitor inside the ranks,” I breathed out.
“And he was publically executed for it while the men he’d lived amongst stood and watched,” Amelia said. “How could Nathanial pardon an outsider, a mountain rebel who’d killed our own and defied the King for a decade? Do you truly think he could have done that, even if he wanted to?”
He could have, although I had a new appreciation of the full the extent of his dilemma. My head cautioned this could still be a trick. My gut urged me to take a leap of faith and stop dithering. I pressed my knees to Arandite’s flank and sent us off into a gallop toward the marshlands.
The plain of water-locked grassland stretched from a strangled border of bush and trees to large slates of rock at the base of the mountain ridge. We rode into view on the flat ground, as close as we could get without sinking into muddy pools. Markus would be able to see us from the trees, from the slopes, even from across the grasslands.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” Amelia looked around. “He couldn’t have gotten this far this quick on foot. If the idiot has a horse tied up in the trees, I’ll turn him over to the sniff hounds myself.”
I shushed her, searching our surroundings for a whisper of movement to indicate Markus watched while he bided his time and deliberated. If I’d come by myself, he would have thrown caution to the wind to find out what emergency had brought me. Amelia’s presence meant this was a social visit, if that’s what one could call it.
A full-leaved branch rustled on the lower slope. A moment later, Markus stepped out from the cover, revealing himself and the depths of his trust in Amelia.
“This way.” I broke into a trot in that direction.
Amelia overtook me at a gallop, swinging into a dismount before her horse had fully stopped.
Markus looked from me to Amelia, drawling, “This is a pleasant surprise.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “You smell like swine.”
“Sewage,” he corrected. “The benefits are subtle.”
He walked around to me as I drew to a halt. “Has he returned?”
“Safely, and everything’s fine,” I said as I slid from Arandite, neither of us mentioning David by name. “Sunderland’s search parties are already out in full.”
“We expected as much.”
“If you stay out in the open, Markus, he will eventually run you to ground,” Amelia joined in. “There’s a cabin in the woods on the Hunt estate that’s never used. The house will be closed up again by this evening and the only staff we keep on is an elderly married couple who live in a cottage near the main lodge. General Sunderland will need permission to enter the grounds to search. I’ll know in advance and move you to the house while they’re there. He has no reason to search inside the lodge and I won’t be expected to allow his men and dogs to invade my privacy.”
“What about this married couple?” asked Markus.
“You’ll have to remain out of sight for a week or so until the worst of the storm blows over,” she told him. “Then I’ll let them know I’ve taken on a groundskeeper. If you shake up your appearance, grow a beard, wear your clothes a little scruffy, they’ll never link you with the handsome young Captain of the Queen’s Guard that the search parties came looking for.”
We picked and plucked at Amelia’s proposition a few more minutes, but it was rather brilliant. Lord and Lady Hunt would be the last people to hide a fugitive from the King.
It wouldn’t be forever, I promised myself.
I would find something, some way to bring Markus back from this.
- 21 -
My spirits were bolstered when I left Markus and Amelia at the gates of the Hunt estate. Amelia was a force of nature to be reckoned with and embracing her as co-conspirator shaved a giant slice of the burden from my shoulders. I pitied the king, man or hound that tried to cross her.
After stabling Arandite, I cut across the clearing to the barracks in search of David or Liam. Despite the late hour of the afternoon, the sliding sun baked the air with stagnant heat that filmed my skin with sticky sweat. Now that the adrenaline was fading, I felt the abuse to my body. My stomach hollowed with hunger. Exhaustion dragged at my heels. Shower. Food. Sleep. In that order. As soon as I’d updated David and Liam on the situation.
The teeming activity around the barracks from this morning had subsided, but there was another kind of energy that filled the space, the kind that rubbed the hairs on the back of my neck. The few remaining men seemed to have migrated to the far end of the long, stone building. I hadn’t noticed Nathanial amongst them until he turned his head and caught my eye. He broke apart and came to meet me, his long strides eating up the distance with purpose.
I stopped walking and waited, preparing myself for the confrontation. He knew exactly what I’d done, of course he did. And Amelia was probably right, last night he must have known I wouldn’t simply climb into bed and go to sleep. I hadn’t really thought about what to make of that. I hadn’t had the time.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded in a low voice strained with irritability but not seething with fury.
“I was out riding,” I said, nerves tightening my shoulders. “I’ve just come from the stables.”
He scrubbed his jaw, studying me in silence. Nothing about where I’d gone riding. Was this it, I wondered. Would Markus become just another scar between us that we didn’t talk about?
And would that be so bad? Nathanial looked almost as wrung out as I felt. Shadows clung to him, sharpened the angles of his face, darkened the edges of his steady gaze. It was all bound to erupt at some point, our scars would bleed—no need to rush it.
A hush fell over the gathered men and I looked past Nathanial. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing that will interest—” He cut himself off, followed my line of sight, then looked at me again. “Actually, you should see this...but not from amongst the men.”
See what? Before I could ask, he had me by the arm, propelling me toward the black-tarred door of the barracks. I stumbled along, throwing glances over my shoulder. What the blazes is going on now?
The barracks corridor was narrow and punched with closed doors on both sides, the ceiling low, the stone walls too thick for the heat to penetrate from outside. The smell of ripe leather boots teased my nostrils. We went up a flight of wood-slatted stairs to a junction on the second floor where the corridor folded back on itself.
Nathanial steered me to the deep-set window looking over a square of packed dirt and the straggly semi-circle of men below. The attraction that had drawn them was a man kneeling on the ground with his bared back to me, head hung forward and arms spread, his hands tied to a horizontal beam.
Another man stalked closer, one end of a long whip curled into his hand.
My gaze flitted wildly from one man to the next—General Sunderland stood slightly apart, shoulders straight, watching—and my mouth soured with distaste. I’d never seen a flogging, but I knew what this was.
Then the kneeling man brought his head up and around to track the movement and the shock of red hair gripped my throat.
“Tremaine,” I gasped, spinning away from the window. “I have to stop this.”
“It’s too late.” Nathanial snatched me back to his side, his fingers locked around my wrist like an iron manacle. “You can’t stop this now.”
“You don’t understand!” I twisted within his grip, my boots sliding on the floor as I pulled toward the stairs. “Tremaine didn’t do anything. I won’t allow him to be whipped for something he didn’t do.”
I couldn’t budge Nathanial. “What did you think would happen?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “A slap on the wrist? A month on latrine duty?”
“Really?”
There it was. In the sober gaze boring into me. The quiet lash of his tongue. I’d helped a prisoner escape the dungeon and I’d wronged an innocent. The blame landed on my feet with a dull thud.
“No.” I swallowed hard. “I knew there’d be consequences for Tremaine.”
“He failed in his duty,” Nathanial said. “He unlocked the cell, passed out with drink while the prisoner escaped.”
“He didn’t pass out from drinking too much. I drugged the whiskey. He didn’t even want it.”
“You didn’t draw a sword across his throat and force his mouth open.”
“I wouldn’t take no for an answer and he didn’t dare refuse.”
“Sunderland is well aware of the subtle complications of this situation.”
“As are you.” I tugged again, pulled, glared at Nathanial. “Which of you decided that Tremaine should be punished as guilty anyway?”
“Sunderland commands my army with respect and he does it well. He couldn’t do that with one hand strapped behind his back.”
“So it was his decision,” I snorted. “And you won’t interfere.”
“Someone has to be held accountable, Rose, and you gave us Tremaine. Pointing fingers and blabbering, ‘he or she made me do it,’ doesn’t wash away the guilt. That just opens a door to corruption and bribery. Our soldiers are trained to know better. There are no excuses.”
“It’s not fair.”
“It isn’t fair,” he agreed. “That is why when you and I wield our power, it should be done with care and conscience, and acceptance of the repercussions.”
I stopped struggling, both physically and mentally. What should I have done? Let Markus hang?
That was never an option.
I’d been prepared to let Tremaine take the fall last night. Protesting now, shifting my bad conscience to Nathanial or even Sunderland, was spineless and hypocritical. I’d made a choice and an innocent man suffered for it. It didn’t get more black and white than that. As I’d once told Nathanial…The truth is always simple. It’s the lies and deceit that are complicated.
The Traitor's Daughter Page 20
