Amabel chuckled. “Thank you, Brogan. I was taught by the verderers from when I was your age, mayhap sooner.”
“Well, you got a head start on me there,” he said cheerfully. “Though I should learn more. Do you think Alisdair would teach me?”
Amabel frowned. She guessed Alisdair to be the chief verderer, the man who managed the royal hunting park.
“I'm sure he would,” she said, nodding. “Verderer would make a good trade.”
“It would.” The boy nodded. “Then I'd be able to settle down one day. Have a cottage of me own. Leave the castle and mucking out behind.”
Amabel nodded. “You are right to dream of more,” she said absently. The boy frowned at her, puzzled, and she guessed he didn't really know what she meant. She sighed. What did she mean?
I suppose I speak more to myself than to him. I want to dream of more than my father would give me. His narrow world does not suit my needs.
She was surprised at herself for such bold thoughts. However, she was not ever going to be ordinary. Papa should have had a daughter like one of those two serpents who told her this news! They would have been happy to marry a duke and gain status even if they lost their freedom. They weren't the sort who used their freedom anyway.
“Up there on the hill!” Brogan called, pointing up. “Look! We can see the castle properly now.”
Amabel looked back. From this distance, the castle looked like a grim prison. The walls rose up on the crag, cast from the stone that supported them. She shivered. Brooding and gray, it dominated the walled city.
I am glad to be free of it.
As the wind ruffled her hair, Amabel felt her spirits lifting. The day had brightened now, and the sun shone on her shoulders, providing some warmth. She drew her velvet cloak close around her, feeling chilled. The evening would soon be settling in.
“We are heading through the night?”
“Yes,” Amabel replied levelly. She shivered as she saw his own misgiving.
The woods are dangerous at night, a place of outlaws and bandits. I should not go into them now. What choice did she have though? It was worth settling at once, before she had a chance to let her anger dampen. She was furious with her father, a cold, white fury that should be unleashed. She smiled at the younger man, feigning a lightheartedness she did not truly feel.
“We'll go through and we'll be out before we know we were in,” she said with a big grin. “I'll even race you.”
“Milady!” He looked utterly amazed. “You know how risky that is, aye?”
Amabel chuckled. “Ever raced downhill?”
He whistled. That was possibly even more dangerous than racing in a forest. However, racing in a forest at night was easily one of the crazier things a person could do.
Amabel smiled to herself. If he was focusing on beating her, they might get through the forest fast enough to stay alive. That was their best hope.
“We can race there, too.” Brogan offered. Without further ado, he shot off.
Amabel laughed. “You little imp!”
She was laughing, shouting banter and trying to breathe as they galloped, and she barely noticed that the day was already darkening, the shadows lengthening along the ground like precursors of night, as they entered the trees.
Silence. Dense and enveloping, it cloaked them. Amabel rode with a sudden sense that everything should be hushed. The only noise was the rustle of leaves and the hollow note of their horses' foot-fall on the ground beneath. She was silent.
“Milady?” Brogan whispered to her. “Do you think we should stay?”
“Hush,” Amabel said, authoritative. The boy hushed. They rode silently a long way.
“Milady?” Brogan asked. It was pale dusk now. “I wondered if we shouldn't have gone left?”
Amabel shook her head. “I know the way, Brogan. Ahead will be shorter. It's a harder path, but it takes us straight to the road onward.”
“Yes, milady,” Brogan replied. It seemed as if he, too, knew that. The thought of taking the more immediate path was somehow scary.
“I know it's not as safe,” Amabel countered. “But it's fast.”
“Yes, milady.” He looked miserable, though, Amabel noticed. She sighed. The light was leaving them, the faintest powder blue among the tree trunks.
Within a few minutes it will be dark here.
“Stay on my right. Stick to the path. If you hear a noise, Freeze. Don't bolt. If your horse goes off the path, you'll find yourself astray.”
Amabel gave the boy the advice Alec, the chief woodsman, had given her when she was fourteen and learning first. He was older than she had been and should have known that, but she advised him nonetheless. He needs to know.
It was darker now, the woods hushed and eerie. She tensed, hearing a twig crack.
What might be in these woods at night? Outlaws and villains, refugees from justice. She knew very well who dwelt here and what they would do were they to find her here. She and Brogan would be pleased were they to end up quickly dead.
She shivered.
“Come on,” she whispered. “I can see the trees thinning. We'll be out in about two hands' worth of minutes...”
“Yes, milady.” The boy's voice was a thin thread and Amabel sighed. He was jumpy. So was she. However there was no use in resigning themselves to that fate just yet. They still had twenty minutes.
Soon we will be in the castle. We'll be in the great hall eating stew and bread rolls and thinking how grateful we are for warmth and fire and companions.
At that moment, another twig cracked. Amabel felt her hair rise suddenly. She has been aware of some rustling in the bushes. She had hoped it was just birds, settling to their perches, or a fox, foraging inquisitively.
That was no bird. No fox. It was too large.
She audited the dangers. Boar. Bear. Wolf. Man.
“Milady...”
She held up a hand. The darkness was absolute but he must have caught the motion, for he stopped.
Crack. Crack.
Amabel closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding wildly now. There was something. Someone.
Suddenly, the bushes rustled. Parted. A face emerged.
“Good evening, sonny. Mistress.”
Amabel screamed. The man grinned, showing peg like teeth.
“On them, Adair!” he shouted.
Men erupted from the bushes. Amabel heard Brogan torn from the saddle and wheeled her horse, rising above the danger, striving to reach him. He was screaming and then went silent.
“You scoundrels!” she shouted. She kicked at them, raked for hair and eyes with her fingers, wheeled her horse and prayed he would trample someone. Then hands were grasping her ankles, someone grabbed her waist and she was torn backward off the horse.
Then there was darkness.
SOMETHING IS AFOOT
“You heard word?”
Rufus sat with Blanchard at the bench. It was dinner and he had just arrived at the castle. He broke bread, chewed and raised a brow at Blanchard.
“What word?”
“Word of the lady,” Blanchard said.
“No.”
Inside, Rufus was a patchwork of sadness, worry and elation. He was glad to be back, his nerves raw with the joyous possibility of seeing Amabel again. Yet he was also sad. She had lied to him. He did not think he would ever forget that. He had thought she felt as he did, and it was a lie. Not that he was going to blame her for that, he'd decided she felt that all on his own, without her ever making mention of that. It wasn't her fault he was wounded. However, it hurt.
I made a fool of myself. She didn't make a fool of me. I'm shameful.
How could he, a worldly, experienced man, let himself weave such tales for himself?
He was worried, too. He wanted to pretend he didn't care, but he had been expecting to see sign of her when they returned – at very least her white horse standing in the stall somewhere. However, he'd seen nothing. He turned to Blanchard, inquiring.
�
�What?”
His friend sighed. “She left the castle.”
“What?” Rufus felt the bannock fall out of his grasp onto his plate. He didn't move from where he sat. His blood had chilled in his veins – or so it seemed. His heart was hard and his heart beat stopped.
Blanchard frowned. “You didn't hear? All the men were saying. Her horse has gone and when they asked Will the chief groom, he said she'd gone.”
“No,” Rufus said again. “She can't have.”
Blanchard shrugged. “Who knows, eh?” His brow rose fractionally towards his hairline. The bandage was off now, the wound a raw, angry mark down his head, ending above his right ear.
“I'm telling you, she won't have gone,” Rufus said stubbornly. “She would have said.”
“Well,” Blanchard sighed. “You could find out.”
Rufus stiffened. “I would never have thought of that without your welcome advice,” he said cuttingly.
Blanchard whistled softly. “No need to stick knives in my skin, old friend,” he said. “Some bloke did that already. Ought to stick a sign on my head – it seems to be a favorite sport round here.”
Rufus grinned, even if a grim one. Trust Blanchard to be able to make him smile, even now.
“No need for that,” he said, jostling his friend's shoulder playfully. “I'll stop being so dreadful and take myself off.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find out more.”
Blanchard looked distressed and Rufus headed abruptly out. He didn't want anyone else telling him that what he was doing was stupid. He knew that part already. He had to at least assure himself the news was true.
She can't have gone. She would have let me know.
He chuckled. She would have no reason to let him know. He was not anything to do with her, not really.
“I'm a pillock.”
He sighed, recriminating himself all the way up the hallway as he pulled his cape around his shoulders, shivering in the sudden nightfall.
How could I have been so foolish. So blind? She would never truly hold any interest in a knight like me.
He headed through the dark corridor and up the stairs, stopping first on his floor to see if Seamus was about. When there was no reply from the man when he knocked at the door of his chamber, he headed on to the next level, to where he had taken Amabel that day when she had collapsed from the demands of the vision she'd had.
Don't remember that – don't think about it.
He clenched his jaw, blotting out the memories of her breasts, her lips, her kiss.
Up in the colonnade he turned right and right again. He found the chamber and stopped outside it. Knocked at the door.
“Hello?”
No answer.
He waited.
“Hello?” he tried again. This time, he thought he heard some movement on the other side, a faint whisper of motion as of someone standing from a chair or bed.
“Yes?”
The door had opened an inch and someone looked out through the gap. A thin-faced woman with wide brown eyes and brown curls just visible round the edges of the door, he recognized her as the maid who'd accompanied Amabel to the battle tent.
“Miss,” he said respectfully. “I'm here to ask after your mistress. She is well?”
“Yes,” the maid nodded. “She's most well.”
Rufus sighed. “Is she recovered from her exertions?” he reached a surreptitious hand to his head wound, which was healing much better, thanks to her own valuable tending.
“Yes, my lord.”
There was something hesitant, almost secretive, about the woman's responses and Rufus found himself wondering what it was.
“May I talk to her?” Rufus asked.
“My lord, alas,” the maid said. “No. I regret to tell you...she's gone.”
“Gone.” Rufus echoed the word, numbly. He couldn't believe it. It was true!
“She went out around four of the clock,” Glenna said. She was almost crying, Rufus noticed and he instinctively reached a hand to her shoulder to comfort her.
“What, Glenna?” he asked gently. “Please, tell me?”
“Oh, sir!” she sobbed. “She went out so late. I fear for her. She be trying to ride to Buccleigh – a morning's hard ride hence. She'll not make it before sunset.”
Rufus shook his head. “No, she won't.” He was already moving, his blood charged with the need to act, and fast.
“Where are you going?” Glenna called after him.
“I'm going to get her back.”
Before something happened.
He felt as if his heart had well and truly turned to ice when she said that. Of all the things! He knew Amabel. He had not taken her to be so completely ill thought out.
“How could she have done something so daft?” He shook his head, muttering to himself all the way down the hallway to the lower floor and his own bedchamber. “How could she take a risk like that? She must be insane!”
He was still muttering to himself when he reached the door. By then he had calmed down slightly and had realized that, if Amabel had done this, she must have fair reason. What though? Under what circumstance would she choose to risk the woods at night?
“If something here threatened her, by the devil I'll find who it was and I swear I'll wreak such...Seamus?” he called out, banging at the door.
“My lord?”
“Oh! Good. You're back. Can you let me in, please? And get packing. I'm going out.”
“At this hour?” The thin, handsome face of Seamus appeared round the edge of the door. His eyes were wide with surprise.
“No, in a fortnight hence, which is why I'm rousing you now to help me get ready,” he said dolefully. Seamus looked affronted and he sighed.
“Sorry, Seamus,” he said, reaching for his thick outer cloak. It was springtime but still cold out in the evenings. “I'm overwrought. Very.”
“I can see,” Seamus said, a saddle pack in his hands. He was already reaching onto the table, packing things he thought his master might need for the journey. A razor. A knife. A handkerchief. Cash.
“Thanks,” he said when Seamus passed the bag wordlessly across. “You got something clean I can wear in there?” he added with a sheepish look.
Seamus shook his head. “There's a fresh tunic here,” he said, opening a trunk and wordlessly passing it to Rufus. It was the brown wool one and Rufus regretted taking it – it was the best tunic he owned and it had so many memories of her woven into the strands by now. Nevertheless, he shrugged, packing it hastily.
“I'll be back on the morrow,” he promised, changing his boots to his tall, suede leather riding boots as he headed through the door. “If anyone comes with business for me, keep the papers on the desk.”
“I shall, milord.”
“Very good. Thank you, Seamus. And, Seamus?”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Keep an eye on the maid, Glenna? If there is news of my lady, I want to know on return.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Heart thudding in his chest, cloak swirling as he turned down the winding stairwell, still desperate to reach her before any harm did first, Rufus ran.
In the stables, he shouted to the stable boy on duty, a skinny youth who was half asleep, yawning, at his position by the second stall.
“Saddle a horse. A hunting horse. I need to go fast.”
“Yes, my lord.”
In a moment or two the boy was dexterously halfway through, though he chafed impatiently at the time it seemed to take. At any moment, aught could befall Amabel. It was already getting dark.
“Come on,” he hissed. “Hurry. No time to waste.”
“Here, my lord.” The boy gave him a concerned look, as if needing a hunting stallion, fast, at six of the clock at night, was a strange predilection.
“Thank you,” he called. He tossed a coin down to the boy and only realized as he shot off through the gate and down to the town that he may likely have given him a whole
silver piece.
He sighed. At least one family would be happy this night. It could keep them in victuals for months!
He hoped he would be feeling happiness – or relief, at the very least – before dawn.
He had to find her.
It was darkening fast now and he was grateful he had chosen a hunting horse as he sped off, shooting through the nearly deserted streets and out again, heading to the countryside and, up ahead, the forest.
I need to get there soon.
Before it was too late.
In the forest, he had to make guesses. The place was unfamiliar to him and he regretted not having the sense to bring a guide with him. He knew where Buccleigh was – or roughly. It was north and west of Edinburgh. He just had to follow the northern and eastern tracks until he reached somewhere he wanted to get to. Like a main road.
From there it would be easy.
“I can't see where I'm going,” he said aloud. His horse snorted and stamped, footsteps oddly hollow in the chapel-like silence of the trees.
“I know,” he said, patting his horse's neck. “It's scary now.”
He shivered despite himself. The woods were no place for anyone alone. He could curse Amabel for impulsiveness as much as he wished. He had been as foolish as he said she was, heading off here unaccompanied on a minute's thought.
At least she knows where she is! I could get lost in here and never emerge again.
He sighed. It was almost light enough to see the tracks and he decided to rely on his horse's instinct. The horse probably knew the forest tracks better than any human. The fact that he was a hunting horse made it almost sure he'd ridden in these woodlands more times than anyone else did.
“Not too long now, eh?” he asked the horse as they took a right-hand turn, heading west on a route he guessed to be right.
The horse said nothing. Rufus held onto the reins as tightly as he could without spooking the horse, concentrating on his memories of Amabel and blotting out the rising terror that something had happened to her.
I remember her lips on mine, their yielding as I part them with my tongue.
The thought was arousing and, had he not been in the trees, on a borrowed horse, on a frosty night it would have doubtless had effect.
Adventures of a Highlander Page 30