Shana Abe (7 page)

And that had marked the beginning of her silence. She had not broken it once since emerging from that room in the plain bliaut of brown and green. Without a word, she had even accepted the sidesaddle he had managed to purchase for her; there was merely a slight lifting of her brows, as if such a thing surprised her.

No doubt riding bareback she was as lovely as a sylph, and she must have been doing it for Lord knew how long. But he couldn’t see bringing her to London like that. Henry would not approve.

Even now she could have been a druid, emerging from the woods for the first time, as alien to this world of soldiers and sweat and pain as anything could be. Hair of molten flame, skin so pure in cast she looked almost like a statue of alabaster, and those eyes—strange, enchanting eyes, like sunlight through thunderclouds. He had no idea how she had survived the wild. It was surely a miracle, except that she seemed such a natural part of the wilderness, anyway. Silent, wary sprite, out of her element now.

Every so often Roland saw her reach a hand out and stroke the neck of the great beast she rode, but that seemed to be the extent of her animation. You’d think she was being led to her execution.

Of course, she probably thought she was.

Roland couldn’t blame her for not trusting him. There was no reason on earth for her to do so. Indeed, he might even have thought less of her if she had. It would have implied a gullibility that defied reason in the face of all that had occurred between them.

But no, she was not gullible. She must have plenty of good solid reason in her, to survive on her own for the past weeks
as she made her way out of Scotland to him. Plenty of reason, and plenty of reasons to despise him.

It was a shame, he thought, and then didn’t know why. It was not logical of him to care one way or the other what she thought of him. She didn’t have to like him in order for him to save her. He had a duty to discharge, a duty of honor, and if she couldn’t understand that, so be it. It would not change his course.

Roland Strathmore had never let things like emotions get in the way of whatever he truly wanted. Emotions, all in all, were rather tedious things that tended to befuddle his life whenever they were allowed to. He had no use for them.

The only emotion he had never been able to fully control was his sense of humor. As always, he could see the irony of this, and it brought forth the crooked smile that so many men had learned to fear. He had to concede that his humors were odd, but constant. A small corner of him held on to this notion, unwilling to abandon the last traces of feeling that he could still muster.

But it was easier to feel nothing. He liked feeling nothing.

Feeling nothing had allowed him to conquer his past and climb triumphantly into his present position. He had always thought the term Hound of Hell wasn’t really suited to him, for surely a demon hound would feel some anger, some devilish fury. But such things hardly ever affected Roland. Hardly ever.

Those few black times in his adulthood when the fury had come he preferred not to think about. There were not many things that could set it off. And fortunately, the few things that could were now dead and gone.

Concepts like honor, justice, revenge, these were things he understood intimately. These qualities had none of the disturbing, blurred undercurrents that emotions carried. The precepts he lived by were sharply defined. He liked that, liked their easy clarity.

It suited him well. It allowed him to do the things he needed to do to serve his sovereign, and to protect his own self-rule at Lorlreau. He would finish this business with Kyla
Warwick, and then Henry would allow him to retire to his family castle. That was the agreement. Roland was willing to do just about anything to see it fulfilled.

The fact that Lady Kyla had eyes that could pierce him with a glance should mean nothing to him. That her hair was even more lustrous than he would have believed last night, shining with autumn richness under the sun, was merely a mildly interesting side note. If she was anything to him, she represented a certain phantom voice in his head, a slight qualm in his heart, that last bit of living emotion, begging him to right a wrong.

So, he supposed he would. He would speak to Henry for her. He would send some people to do a more in-depth investigation of the murders of Gloushire and Baroness Rosemead—discreetly, of course. That was all he could do. It was more than anyone expected of him. It was enough.

As for Kyla herself, why, she would not be required to pay for the sins of her father. Although she had steadfastly refused to answer any of his questions regarding the murders or the subsequent escape of her father, her brother, and herself, she would answer to Henry. And then she would be the king’s problem.

Not his. No longer. Lorlreau called.

Lady Kyla would fare well enough, Roland was certain. A young woman as fair and wealthy as she was would have no shortage of suitors at court. Even though her family stood in disgrace. Even though she might spend the next few months in a room in the Tower, awaiting Henry’s pleasure.…

But that was not his problem.

At lunch she sat alone, chewing pensively at the mincemeat pie he had handed her. She had stayed near her stallion, who hovered over her and every now and then blew in her hair. Roland watched her reach up and feed the horse an apple she had on her lap. The horse grunted approvingly.

Kyla watched the stallion crunch the apple to pieces. She supposed she should think of a name for him. Malcolm had not called him anything that she had ever heard, so it was at her discretion now.

“A fine name for you, my friend,” she whispered to him, tilting her head back. “What would you like?”

The men had not quit staring at her since this morning, when she had walked out of the inn and guided them to her carefully concealed horse. The morning was long past and now she was more than a little weary of the looks. Never before in her life had she been subjected to such open appraisal from the opposite sex, and certainly not from such a rude lot. If anything, she had been treated with a sort of familiar respect by the men in her father’s circle, and had never noted anything more out of the ordinary than a few of the nobles in court staring at her from behind their fans and ornate handkerchiefs. That had been rather amusing.

But this boldness from these soldiers was startling; it made her want to wrap her cape up around her body and duck her head in embarrassment.

Instead she let the cape flow free around her and kept her head high constantly, concentrating on staring icily ahead, or else meeting those insolent stares with an unflinching gaze of her own. She would show them she was immune to their brutish ways, that she thought no more of them than she would an insignificant fly buzzing around her.

Kyla stood up, brushing her skirts into place, still ignoring the others. She turned to the stallion and began to stroke his fine nose.

“Adonis, mayhap? What think you of that?” The stallion nuzzled her hand. “No? Well, then, how about Apollo? Priam? Zeus?”

“Auster,” said a deep voice over her shoulder. “Call him Auster.”

The stallion nodded.

Kyla didn’t bother to look at the man who had walked up next to her. “It is commonly considered impolite, Lord Strathmore, to eavesdrop on a lady’s conversation.”

“Even a lady’s conversation with a horse?” he inquired innocently.

She threw him a frigid look. “Any conversation. But of
course, I could not expect that you would understand anything about courtesy.”

“He likes Auster,” said Roland, running his hand down the thick black neck. “It’s a good name for him.”

Kyla frowned. “Auster,” she said experimentally, and the stallion turned his head to look at her. “Oh, very well,” she grumbled.

Roland couldn’t help but think it was a pleasure to hear her speak at last, even when she was obviously so displeased. Her voice had a particular husky resonance that drew him, conveying in smoky tones things she could not possibly know anything about.

Not yet.

“Auster, because he’ll run like the wind,” he said to distract himself, trying not to think of the unspoken promises in the sound of her voice.

“Yes. He does.” Kyla had plenty of proof of that.

The one glorious memory of the past weeks was when they had encountered a smooth valley between the mountains, a valley that was invitingly dry and free of stones, with fringes of wild heather decorating the edges in a moving sea of green and pink and purple. She had let the stallion have his head then and he had burst forth in full glory, floating above the ground with her clinging to his back, tears in her eyes, laughing, watching the world streak by.

“Are you so fond of pagan mythology, my lady?”

Kyla turned and found Roland studying her. She ducked around under the horse’s head and pretended to check his bit. “I am fond of knowledge in general, Lord Strathmore. But history has many lessons for us.”

“Indeed.”

He didn’t appear to have anything more to say, just kept looking at her in that fixed manner, much like his men. Since there had been nothing wrong with the bit in the first place, Kyla sighed and faced him boldly. A tickling breeze blew a few strands of hair in her eyes, and she pushed them back impatiently.

“Are we ready to leave, my lord? I find myself bored of this journey and would wish it to end as soon as may be.”

His mouth tightened. “Aye, my lady.” He bowed low and walked away. She heard him give the order to the soldiers to prepare to mount up.

I
t was too fine a day to be thinking about death, but Kyla was. They were traveling at a leisurely pace; apparently now that she was captured there was no good reason to push the horses to rush back to London. For now, she couldn’t help but be glad for that.

As they traveled farther south the small patches of woods grew more and more frequent, turning into great lengths of ash and pine and birch, beautiful old trees that were budding with spring leaves. Birds sang from high above in the green boughs. Speckles of sunlight littered the ground like last year’s leaves as they came and went through the clouds and branches.

Kyla found herself lulled by the steady rhythm of the ride, to the point where her thoughts flowed freely from one to the next, random but smooth. Her eyes half closed. Her chin sank just a little.

She didn’t think Henry would kill her. She was not the one, after all, accused of the crime. All she had done was run away with her father, and if it came down to it, she could always say she had been persuaded against her better judgment.

Of course, she would never say that. She would not lie, not to the king, not to anyone, not even to save herself. Her loyalty was unequivocally to her family, no matter what the repercussions might be. The true story was just the opposite of what Henry believed. She would throw that in his face, let him consider that.

No, she didn’t think Henry would kill her, and the reason was as simple as that he had liked her. But he had liked her father as well, she reminded herself bitterly.

She had met the monarch on more than a few occasions, and every time he had gone out of his way to converse with her, to hold her hand—even, of late, to compliment her. It had to have been one of the reasons she had been getting those long looks from the courtiers, she was sure of it. Henry didn’t treat her the way he did most of the young women at court, she had seen that with her own eyes. At the time she had supposed it was because of her father, or perhaps her mother, who had once been a favorite lady-in-waiting for Queen Matilda.

Whatever the reason, she didn’t think the king would be so harsh as to kill a woman he had often referred to as “Our most-prized ruby” merely for fleeing.

So what would her punishment be? She would not admit her father’s guilt. She would not apologize for running away. She could not forgive Henry for pursuing her family to the point of destruction, and she was not sure, in all honesty, if she would be able to keep her contempt for him from showing.

Henry was an intelligent man, a just man, she had heard, but like all kings, a very proud one. He could not afford to lose face in front of everyone when she appeared. But he might grant her a private audience. That might help. He might be more forgiving then.

A bleakness swept her, a terrible sense of isolation and foreboding. Whatever else her future would be, it would always include the shadow of her disgrace and the disgrace of her father, unless she could manage to clear his name. And there was hardly any chance of that now. Lord Strathmore had seen to that.

The announcement of her betrothal last year to the man riding beside her had been unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome. She had been sharing the household duties with her mother for some time, at first a reluctant apprentice and then, eventually, taking over certain aspects that interested her most. Her mother had been patient and kind with her, as always, and although they were careful never to mention it, the
happy flow of months into years made it quite apparent to both of them that it was almost past the time for Kyla to wed.