Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] (12 page)

Meeting his piercing gaze, she told him the truth. “I was just seeking brief freedom, my lord. I did not consider the danger or the distance.”

“My horse stands a quarter of a mile that way,” he said as if he had never lost his temper. “We’ll have to fetch him, but I’ll put you up to ride the rest of the way.”

She did not think he was being kind. One did not think of Simon Murray as a kind man. She was not certain now that he really
had
lost his temper.

He had spoken that first sentence loudly, doubtless to frighten her. But what had followed had been frosty displeasure quite unlike her father’s fiery rants.

However, Simon did not care about her as Sir Malcolm did. Simon was just angry that she had defied him.

They walked for a time before he said in the even tone he had used since she had begun dressing, “How did you get out of the castle?”

She knew it had been foolish to hope he would not ask. But she had hoped anyway, because she had no sensible reply and dared not tell him the truth.

Were the truth to expose only herself, she would tell him. But she could not tell him how she’d found the tunnel without revealing her visit to the bakehouse with Tetsy, or that a look on Tetsy’s face had told her that a secret existed.

“Well?” he said.

“I walked, of course.”

“How did you get past the guards at the gate?”

Not above a white lie or even a gray one in a good cause, she said glibly, “The gate stood open and I walked out, of course. No one saw me.”

“I see. That is too bad.”

Recognizing bait when she heard it, she grimaced as she asked him why.

“Because I must now hang the men responsible for such neglect.”

Sibylla’s temper ignited. “You can’t do that!”

“Of course I can. I have the power of the pit and the gallows, just as your father has at Akermoor. In times like these, when even a truce cannot protect us from raiders, I
must
hang careless guards.”

“If you do such a thing, you will be guilty of a great wrong, because those men were not at fault. No one is but me. I promise you that, on my word of honor.”

“Women have small understanding of honor,” he said. “I understand it,” she said. “I got out by myself, sir. I shan’t tell you how, but I will swear on anything you like that your men had no part in it.”

“Is that supposed to impress me?” His tone was icy enough now to stir more goose bumps on her skin. “You lied to me at least once in claiming that the gate was open. You cannot expect me to believe you now.”

“I don’t suppose I can,” she admitted. “What I say is nonetheless true.”

He did not speak again, and they reached his horse a short time later.

“I can walk,” she said. “The ground is soft, and the exercise warms me.”

“We’ll go faster if you ride,” he said. Allowing no further discussion, he put his hands at her waist and lifted her to his saddle.

It was as well, she thought, that he had done it quickly and without comment, because she could still feel the pressure of his hands on her waist and ribs. She was able to think about little else until the gate came into view.

As she had expected, a chill had enveloped her body soon after she stopped walking. But as they approached the gate and saw it swing open to receive them, one look at Simon’s grim expression set her heart pounding. She kept silent.

He made no comment either, merely nodding when the two guards gaped in surprise at her as they greeted him.

She stared straight ahead, but her sense of humor stirred when she recalled that it was the second time the guards at Elishaw had seen her arrive on Simon’s horse, wrapped in his cloak, with wet, tangled hair.

Whether he liked it or not, if they had recognized her, word would spread.

In the bailey, a lad ran to take the horse, and Simon lifted her down as effortlessly as he had put her up. Then, with a hand at the small of her back, he guided her past the main entrance and around the stable to a narrow walkway that opened between the outer wall and the rear of the keep.

She murmured, “I trust you won’t cast me into your dungeon.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he said. “The entrance to the dungeons is from the bailey, however. We are going to the kitchen, where one of the fires will still be going, so you can dry your hair. You should not go to bed with it wet.”

Sibylla’s breath stopped in her throat. Having small reason to trust such thoughtfulness, she felt sure he must have realized how she had slipped outside.

Even so, she did not tell him that she often went to bed with damp hair.

Simon’s thoughts had returned to the men at the gate. Their expressions had told him more plainly than Sibylla’s promise had that they had not known she was outside the wall. Had they let her out, they’d have looked to him when they saw her, to judge how angry he was at having found her outside the gate.

Instead, they had gaped at her as if they could not imagine how she came to be with him—or as if they did not even know who she was.

He recalled then that although guards the previous day had seen him carry her in, the hood of the cloak in which he and Hodge had wrapped her might well have prevented a clear view of her face.

In any event, the guards tonight had not looked at him with the fearful expressions he’d expect to see had they had any responsibility for her escape.

His sister Amalie had said Sibylla often seemed to know things that others did not. Indeed, she had assured him that Sibylla was
not
a witch, although admitting that some had called her so. Sibylla simply gathered information where she found it, Amalie had explained, and put it to good use.

He wondered with a touch of dry amusement if Amalie might have underestimated Sibylla’s powers.

As he descended with her to the kitchen, his mind continued to seek an answer that fit with what he knew of her and of Elishaw. He found it impossible to believe that she had donned a disguise clever enough to slip past his guards without their having questioned her. Moreover, the blue-green kirtle was the same one she had worn earlier. If she had donned a disguise, where was it?

She had not even worn a cloak. He’d had to provide one again. Gratitude for that act alone ought to have loosened her tongue, but she had barely said thank you.

Having given her the cloak out of courtesy and
not
because her shivering had disturbed him, he assured himself that letting her dry her hair was more of the same.

She clearly spared no thought for such practicalities, but he did hope she might note his civility and decide she owed him an explanation.

Sibylla’s apprehension grew with each step they took toward the kitchen. As Simon guided her through it to the bakehouse chamber, she felt as if it were harder to breathe. Jack was asleep on his pallet but woke when Simon prodded him gently with the toe of his boot.

Dismayed, the boy darted a glance at the fire, then looked at his master.

“Go up to the hall, Jack,” Simon said. “I’ll fetch you when we’ve finished here. Meantime, I’ll take good care not to let your fire go out.”

Jack looked relieved, but Sibylla’s tension increased tenfold.

Deciding not to allow Simon to continue whatever game he was playing, she said as the boy’s footsteps faded in the distance, “Why did you send him so far? He could easily have dragged his pallet into the kitchen.”

“I wanted him beyond earshot whilst we talk,” he said.

She swallowed. The chamber seemed smaller than it had the previous night.

It dawned on her with horror that the door to the tunnel was still ajar.

She dared not look, but she recalled that the alcove was shadowy. The flour bin and lard barrel surely blocked any view the ambient, flickering firelight might throw on so narrow an opening. But he’d have only to put a hand to the door to discover she had left it off the latch.

“Have you a comb?” he asked.

“Nay,” she admitted. Then, forcing a smile, she added, “It won’t be the first time I’ve used my fingers.”

“Wait here,” he said, striding back into the kitchen.

Crossing quickly to the alcove, she pulled the tunnel door to, taking care to hold the latch open, lest it make a noise loud enough for him to hear as it tripped over its catch and fell into place. Then, instead of moving from the alcove to the fire, she stepped toward the archway and met him as he returned.

“I should have known you wouldn’t wait as I told you to,” he said.

“Curiosity is my besetting sin, sir. But you’ve found a comb!”

“And a brush,” he said, showing her. “My sisters keep them down here for drying their hair. I was not certain I’d find them, but I did.”

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the implements. “You may leave me to dry my hair if you like. I can easily find my way back to my bedchamber.”

“It does not suit my notion of courtesy to leave a female guest to wander the halls of this castle alone any more than to let her traipse about the forest at night. And I still have more to say to you.”

Words flowed from him as she pulled a stool to the fire and began to brush her hair. She listened as politely as she could, given the irritation she felt at his continued attempt to command her and a waning hope that he would not mention the tunnel.

Yearning to have the matter over and done, she nearly spoke of it herself at one point. But she held her tongue, and when he pressed her harder to tell him how she had got out, she let her temper show.

“I have said I will not tell you, sir. I meant that.”

“I mean what I say, too,” he retorted. “However, if you will not tell me, I warrant you will tell your father.”

“My father!”

“Aye, I sent for him this morning to come and fetch you.”

“But I’m going back to Sweethope Hill as soon as I can persuade you to lend me a horse! Isabel’s people must be frantic by now.”

“I sent a messenger to Sweethope as well.”

“Thank you,” she said, feeling both relieved and exceedingly guilty that she had not thought earlier to ask him to do so. “Even so, sir—”

“Mayhap your father will take you there,” he said. “I took the liberty of informing him that Isabel had left you there by yourself. I also suggested that that decision might not have been the wisest one she has made.”

“Did you?” she said grimly, wishing she could snatch him baldheaded. “How very thoughtful.”

“It was, aye,” he said. “Is your hair dry yet?”

“Yes,” she said tartly, although it was still very damp. When he reached to test the truth of her words, she gave him a look that ought to have incinerated him on the spot. It did not, nor did it stay his hand.

He gripped a handful of hair, gave her a look, and said, “We’ll let it dry a little longer, I think.”

He leaned against the nearby wall, silently, his arms folded across his chest. She still felt lingering heat all through her from his just having touched her hair. He was gazing around the chamber as if he had not seen it before. When he peered into the storage alcove, she shifted her own gaze back to the fire.

Setting down the brush a few minutes later, she deftly plaited her hair and said, “It is dry enough now, sir. We can go.”

He made no objection, nor did he feel her hair again. Halfway up the stairs, she realized he could not be certain that she knew of the tunnel. Therefore he could not test the door or ask her about it without revealing its existence to her if she did not know. Now that she had shut it, even if he found the wee sack of walnuts she had put against it, he could not be sure how it got there.

He saw her to her door. Only as she was politely bidding him goodnight did the unlikely chance that he might know nothing about the tunnel occur to her.

She was pondering that thought as she opened the door to the bedchamber and stepped inside. By the light of the guttering candle she had left burning in its dish, she saw Kit asleep on the rag rug in front of the washstand.

Quietly stripping and donning the robe to keep warm, she thought about the evening behind her as she draped the blue-green kirtle over a pair of kists to air.

In sending for Sir Malcolm, Simon had doubtless meant to punish her more. It was annoying, but she could do nothing about it.

What was less understandable was her strong mental and physical reaction to Simon himself, in the woods and afterward. She had enjoyed their verbal sparring from the outset, and she had definitely reacted to his pushing her back on the bed the day before. But she’d felt unusually vulnerable then and had believed her reaction nothing more than that.

More puzzling was the knowledge that she’d have found it hard to reject his touch had he tried to do more that night than feel her hair to see if it was dry.

Deciding she was indulging in foolishness to think such things about a man who didn’t like her, Sibylla gazed affectionately at the sleeping child for a long moment and then returned her attention to preparing for bed.

Chapter 7

A
fter a quiet Sunday, due to Lady Murray’s English insistence on observing the Sabbath, Sir Malcolm Cavers arrived Monday afternoon with a tail of a half dozen men. The Murrays and Sibylla were just finishing their midday meal.

Having given his men orders to inform him if anyone approached, Simon excused himself from the table after a gillie murmured the news in his ear.

Informing the others that guests had arrived, he said, “You will want to linger at the table, madam. Anyone arriving at this hour cannot yet have dined.”

“To be sure, we will stay to welcome them,” Lady Murray said. “But I cannot imagine who has come. It cannot be Cecil Percy, for I told him most particularly that he should come in four weeks’ time.”

“How many have come, Simon?” Rosalie asked when he did not reply to Lady Murray’s less direct approach.

“The lad said seven, mostly men-at-arms,” he said. Catching Sibylla’s eye, he held her gaze briefly but looked away when she wrinkled her nose at him.

Satisfied that she had guessed her father was his chief visitor, he strode from the hall to greet Sir Malcolm. As he crossed the threshold to the stairs, he heard his mother repeat her declaration that she could not imagine who had come.