Adrian (6 page)

He heard the screech and slosh of wood through water too late to brace himself as the chair caught him behind the knees, forcing his legs to bend and his arse to fall into the seat as his stomach was pushed into the table. The knife clattered away from his flailing hands.

“An impossibility, is it?” she asked calmly, one burnished eyebrow raised. “Why is that? Because you demand that it's impossible?”

Adrian's stomach felt as though it was little more than the opening to a gaping pit. How had the ship moved so that the chair slid beneath him with such force but he hadn't felt the sudden listing himself? And why had Maisie Lindsey failed to even wobble atop her perch?

“It's simply a matter of physics,” he said, noticing that his voice was much calmer now, despite the anxiety he felt in his middle. “Melk is six hundred miles to the North Sea, depending on the route you take and the weather. Even in a nimble vessel such as this, that trip could take no less that a fortnight.”

“And yet here we are,” Maisie mused, eyeing him.

“Facts are facts,” Adrian insisted. “You must have poisoned me so that I slept through the first portion of the journey. Although why you would do such a thing, I cannot fathom.”

“I didna poison you,” she said calmly. “I have nae knowledge of the distance we are travelling, and that suits my purpose. I must return with you to Wyldonna in two days' time.”

“Two days?” Adrian repeated. “But it will take at least—”

“Nay!” Maisie shouted, holding her palm toward him. “Nay, doona say anything. I doona wish to know how long you
think
it should take us. We shall arrive in two days, unless you insist upon opening the hatch again and sinking us. I can only do so much.”

Adrian felt the blood leave his face. “You mean I'm trapped in here for at least two days?”

Maisie shrugged. “I suppose you could swim back, if you choose.”

“Swim the North Sea in an ice storm,” he clarified.

The corners of her mouth turned down slightly as she considered. “I wouldna be so confident that the North Sea is our exact location.” She looked at him keenly for a moment. “I will tell you, though, that once we've arrived at Wyldonna, you willna be free to go until you've fulfilled your reason for being there.”

Adrian felt his own eyebrows raise. “Really? And who is charged with holding me captive? You? I can promise you I've been liberated from more formidable captors than a female member of the lesser nobility.”

Maisie Lindsey shook her head and her red curls bounced, although her eyes flashed with anger. “The island herself willna let you go.”

“That's an old wives' tale,” Adrian scoffed. “If the island even exists.”

She continued to hold his gaze, as if debating whether to tell him something he might or might not want to know. In the end, though, she only shrugged again.

“Facts are facts, are they nae?”

“Y
ou'd best change out of those wet things before you catch your death,” Maisie said to him after she had finished the cider in her cup. She needed to clean up the cabin a bit after Adrian's stubborn insistence in opening the hatch, and the way things had gone thus far that morning, it would be better if he hid himself away behind his curtain whilst she did. “I assume you brought another suit of clothes with you.”

“Just my robes from the abbey,” he said tightly, and she couldn't help but notice the way his hands were clenching rhythmically on the tabletop. He refused to meet her gaze.

Maisie set her cup down and gathered her skirts into her fists before lowering her feet into the icy water still flowing about the cabin.

“That's better than naught, I suppose,” she said as she waded through ankle-high seawater to her provisions trunk. “I am a bit surprised that a man of your station only claims one simple shirt and chausses, though, even if he is pretending at being a monk.”

“What do you mean?” he asked in a guarded tone as she pulled out the jug of mead from the night before. Luckily, nothing bit her this time.

“You're from a noble family,” she said, rising and coming back to the table to set the jug before him. “Or am I mistaken?”

“No,” he said slowly, eyeing the mead suspiciously. Apparently he'd decided the drink wasn't poisoned after all—or perhaps he was hoping that it was—for he reached for the neck of the jug and poured a healthy measure into the cup he'd abandoned hours ago. “I can claim a courtesy title, although I don't use it. My older brother is lord.”

Maisie paused to look at him closely. The skin around his lips was white, as if he was exerting tremendous self-control by only sitting there. “You wish it was you?”

He glanced up at her over the rim of his cup. “Wish I were lord?” She nodded, and he gave a frown. “God, no. Why on earth would I wish to be saddled with the running of a keep and preserving the livelihood of all who live under my rule?” He took a drink, hiding his gaze for a moment.

Maisie felt a bit small after his sensible explanation, but thankfully he was not interested in her motives enough to question her. He set his cup down but picked up the jug as he moved around the table toward his curtained partition, gesturing toward her with the mead. “You don't mind, do you?”

“Nay. Toss your clothes out and I will hang them up near the cauldron to dry,” she offered. “Your boots might take a while longer.”

His reply was the hush of brass rings as he jerked the curtain shut after him.

Maisie raised an eyebrow at the curtain but then quickly turned toward the cabin to begin her tasks. She didn't know how long she would have.

First things first: the water situation.

She had no choice but to drop the hem of her skirts as she brought both palms together in front of her waist and then moved them away from each other in a sweeping motion as she splashed toward the cauldron. Her toes were already numb. She patted the rim twice as the sound of gurgling water echoed in the wooden cabin, and soon flames leapt above the metal bowl, replacing the flickering glow that had warmed the cabin through the night. Little rivulets of water tickled the arches of her feet inside her slippers as the floor seemed to suck up the moisture, and so she balanced precariously on one foot, then the other, as she slipped them off. The boards beneath her feet were scratchy and damp.

What a bothersome man he was turning out to be.

As if turning her thoughts toward him again had roused him, Adrian called from behind the curtain. “What of you? Have you any family?”

“I've a brother. We're twins, actually,” Maisie supplied, although she was rather surprised at how readily she answered him. She waved her slippers over the flames in the cauldron in turn.

“Twins? You must be close.”

“Nae of late,” she replied, pausing to bend down and slip the toasty warm shoes onto her frozen feet. “He . . . doesna approve of my new role.”

“Not an admirer of the queen, is he?”

“Of her actions, rather.”

Adrian grunted from behind the curtain. “I must say that I share his opinion from the little I've been told.” The brass rings tinkled as a bundle of dripping clothes was thrust through the narrow opening between the curtain and the wall.

Maisie crossed the cabin with a frown. “What have you been told?” She reached out to take the clothes and caught a glimpse of Adrian Hailsworth's wrist and forearm—the latter crosshatched with dark black markings.

Her stomach did a neat flip in her abdomen.

But before she could study the shapes, he pulled his arm back in.

“That she instigated a coup against the king and has now found herself in a quandary of her own making. One that she needs my help to extricate herself from. Isn't that the gist of it?” His boots thunked to the floor, one after the other.

Maisie shook herself from the shock the sight of his arm had given her. She had likely only imagined what she saw any matter.

“There's more to it than that. You shouldna judge her so harshly before you know the whole of it.” She reluctantly picked up the worn leather boots, feeling the rumblings of new anger grow as she saw herself in the role of laundress for this particularly arrogant Englishman. “She is a good woman.”

He harrumphed.

“She is,” Maisie insisted, turning away from the curtain before she did or said something she would very soon after regret. She tried not to think of the purpose for Adrian Hailsworth's journey to Wyldonna. “You'll see. She meant nae harm to the king or her people. Quite the opposite.”

“Any who aligns himself with the likes of Glayer Felsteppe cannot have selfless motivations. He is a liar and a murderer and a traitor.”

Maisie dropped the boots to the floor and felt her cheeks heat, and not only from the flames in the cauldron as she reached up high to hang Adrian's clothes from the hooks in the ceiling.

“I'm certain she didna ken his full character when first they met.”

“I'm certain she was only interested in whatever he promised her when they did,” he shot back from behind the curtain.

Maisie spun to face the embroidered cloth. “It's easy to see why it was your brother who was made lord and nae you.”

“Yes, it's called primogeniture,” he said with a sigh, and Maisie could picture him stretching out on the narrow bunk. “Had I the misfortune to have been born first, I assure you that I would have gladly forfeited the title.”

“Rather disrespectful to your father's legacy.” She sniffed, lifting her nose into the air and admittedly feeling quite superior.

“It would have been more disrespectful to have taken on a role for which I am ill-equipped,” Adrian Hailsworth said blithely. “I've never had any desire to rule or to manage. I want only to read and think and learn and build. To be left alone, really.”

Maisie blinked at the curtain. For a moment she wondered what it would be like to be so very certain of your own person, your dreams and talents and desires. To be certain of them, and to have the means to act upon them without fear of the consequences.

But then she remembered where she had found Adrian Hailsworth.

“Then why did you agree to come to Wyldonna's aid?” she asked, fearing it was unwise to learn too much about this man's motives and character, but at the same time unable to withstand her curiosity about him.

Silence filled the cabin of the crawler for several heartbeats.

“I don't really know,” he said at last.

And Maisie did not believe him in the least.

“I'll send your clothes through once they've dried,” she offered.

He didn't answer her, and so she turned from the curtain to face Adrian's wet and dripping garments hanging from the ceiling. She could have seen them bone dry in an instant, but she needed some distance from this man, whose firm ideals seemed to take up so much room both on the crawler and in Maisie's head. Glancing over her shoulder to make certain he wasn't spying on her, she reached up and took hold of the hem of each garment in her hands and concentrated.

After a moment, she dropped her hands with a frustrated sigh. They weren't even his clothes, unless he transformed into an aged tailor in the night. Likely they'd been fashioned for him shortly before he'd left Melk.

Then Maisie's gaze fell on the old, worn boots she'd dropped on the floor near the cauldron. One had fallen over onto its side, and although the leather that fashioned the whole of the thing was so worn that it was almost black with age and oil, the boots sported obvious new soles. On the upright shoe, darker splotches punctuated the toe area, as though the stains had not been tended to right away, and had permeated the leather. Maisie crouched down and touched a finger to one of the free-form discolorations. She drew her hand back to her chest in a fist.

Blood. Adrian's blood.

Maisie looked over her shoulder once more, and this time the frown that creased her brow was more quizzical than angry.

How had it come to pass that a man who proclaimed to be a scholar had seen so much of his own blood spilled upon his boots? And although fine footwear was dear to come by regardless of your station, why would he choose to retain boots in which such a tragedy had occurred? Even going so far as to have them resoled?

Maisie could have touched the stains again, learned more about the misfortune that had at one time likely caused Adrian Hailsworth a great deal of pain. But her cheeks heated again and she stood, returning her attention to the straightening of the rest of the cabin. She had no need to know anything further of him. It was none of her affair.

But as she went about her chores a tiny, traitorous voice murmured to her that she didn't want to know only because, if Maisie had her way, Adrian Hailsworth would soon find himself on the receiving end of considerably more misfortune.

 

Adrian stared at the low, planked ceiling above his berth, concentrating on his breathing. In, one, two; out, three, four. After several moments, he had stretched his inhalations and exhalations to a count of eight and didn't feel quite so much like clawing his way out of his own skin.

That is, as long as he kept himself from thinking about the fact that he was trapped inside a tiny, windowless boat, in the middle of an ice storm at sea, with no means of escape whatsoever.

Back to the beginning, then. He raised his head and took a swig from the jug, then lay back down.
In, one, two; out, three, four . . .

Better to turn his mind to the riddle of how he had arrived at his present predicament rather than the what of it. The most likely answer was that he had indeed slept through the first portion of their journey. After all, that was precisely how Valentine Alesander had dealt with his seasick woman on their journey to England. Mary Beckham had slept for days, none the worse for wear. But why would Maisie Lindsey deny it?

In, one, two, three, four; out, one, two, three, four . . .

Adrian reached up with his left hand and rubbed at his jaw. He hadn't shaved in a pair of days before leaving the abbey—much to Victor's dismay, likely—and yet he wasn't sporting a full beard. Like Herne Hailsworth, Adrian could manifest an admirable face of hair in only a handful of days.

In, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight . . .

Adrian turned over the various points both for and against the idea that he'd been poisoned by Maisie Lindsey in his head for the better part of an hour. Each time he'd thought he'd come up with a definitive answer to the question of how long he'd slept since last crawling into the berth, some other bit of reason would rise and defeat it. He was soon forced to accept the only logical conclusion: He had only slept the length of one typical night.

But how, then, had they come to already be at sea?

Snippets of his last conversation with his friends in Melk's secret library flew unbidden through his mind.

Adrian closed his eyes with a self-deprecating grin. He probably really should have a bit to eat before imbibing any more mead. Perhaps there would be another mince pie waiting for him once his clothes were dry.