A Knight's Pledge, page 14
Gooseflesh raced over Effie’s arms. She felt strangely weak in her legs now and was glad she was sitting. She forced herself to speak. “You mean you…I…we won’t force him back to London, as the king wishes.”
“I did that once,” Lucan allowed. “I was wrong. But, no, I don’t think either of us will need force him to do anything.”
“Are you worried about my son at all, Lucan?”
“George will be safe with Henry, Effie. He’ll be safe with his uncles.” He paused. “I wouldn’t have left him otherwise.”
She knew her eyes widened with surprise, because Lucan grinned and it made her heart flutter.
What was wrong with her tonight?
“We’ll be there soon. You’ll see. I know you don’t trust me—”
“Gorman does,” Effie interrupted.
“And I trust Gorman,” Lucan finished. “So perhaps there is hope for the two of us yet.”
The way he’d lumped the pair of them together as ‘two of us’ caused Effie’s heart to flutter again.
“Perhaps there is,” she allowed.
“If you don’t shoot me again.”
Effie smiled, despite the tumultuous feelings swirling like a cyclone inside her. She leaned a bit closer and caught the warm masculine scent of him.
“Don’t tempt me.”
She stood and walked away from him, feeling his gaze on her back the whole of the way.
And still her heart raced.
Chapter 12
Lucan couldn’t stop watching her now.
He knew he was a fool for it, but since the night three days past when Effie Annesley had sat with him around the fire, Lucan seemed to have developed a sixth sense about her proximity to him. He knew what her hair smelled like now, the way the skin on her forehead creased when she worried, the elegant fan of lines at the corners of her eyes when she smiled, the flush of her cheeks when she laughed. He couldn’t recall noticing any of those things on their journeys to and from London, but now, it was as if she’d cast a spell over him.
Or perhaps it was Winnie who’d cast the spell, with those blasted, smelly herbs.
Regardless, Lucan was beginning to wonder if being so long on the road in such dreadful weather was starting to affect his sanity—he now felt a flare of jealousy whenever Gorman touched Effie’s arm, or when Effie leaned in close to Gorman to speak something low in his ear. At night, while the band slept around the dying fire, Lucan couldn’t seem to close his eyes even when it wasn’t his turn to keep watch; he lay there thinking of the years of memories Effie shared with Gorman, how they had made a child and were raising him. How they had gathered such a group about them as to be closer than any family Lucan had ever known, now traipsing across the countryside on a potentially deadly mission and giving little care for the laws of the land. The family had their own laws.
And Lucan wasn’t part of them, not really.
He couldn’t help his mind from going to the After. After they had found Tommy; after they had returned to London. After whatever judgement was handed down. If Lucan was free, who would surround him? Who would be his family? Iris, his closest blood relative, was married now. He had no other—no cousins, aunts, uncles—with whom he could claim a familiar relationship. Even his friend Ulric would be busy with his duties to the king, and they’d never had that sort of close acquaintance any matter. Perhaps he should return to France and seek out his extended relation. If Henry kept Castle Dare from him, it may be his only option.
Start over. Alone.
He’d been so consumed all his life with finding the truth that would lead to his revenge, he’d never stopped to think what his life might look like in the case of success. Who would he rebuild Castle Dare for? What would be left of Northumberland when the dust settled?
He grew more maudlin as the afternoon wore on, and his rocking rear in the saddle caused his lower back to tighten. Clouds gathered overhead, and Lucan thought there would be rain later that night. He would be glad to reach the small village and pass the night there—hopefully in his own chamber where he wouldn’t be forced to watch or hear Effie and Gorman as they carried on with their easy interactions. Edinburgh and then the Firth of Forth lay just beyond the fresh breeze that teased them. Two more days, at most, and Tower Roscraig would be in sight.
A caravan approached them on the road—a wide, tall-sided wagon bracketed by a retinue of rough-looking characters. They took up the whole of the track and so the band divided and eased their mounts off into the rough on either side while they passed. Eight riders—no, ten perhaps. Lucan only paid them passing heed until he realized the rest of his party was watching the travelers with much closer attention.
Lucan glanced at the wagon, draped to cover whatever cargo was contained within. A corner flapped, a flash of pale around a board, a glint in the shadows. The wagon rolled past, and Lucan looked more closely at the men riding behind. They were dirty and mean of face, and made no pretense of acknowledging the courtesy the band had shown them. One man glared openly at Lucan, holding his gaze as they passed, even turning his head to do so as if in challenge.
Lucan turned his gaze toward Effie, stopped only a few feet from him, but she was looking at Gorman through the swirling dust over the road.
Gorman nodded at her as if in answer to an unasked question, and then called out, “Kit Katey, James; with me to the fore.” Gorman kicked his mount and the three sped away up the rough into the trees, in the direction in which the strange, dark caravan had now disappeared.
“Gilboe and Winnie,” Effie commanded, “wait for us here with Sir Lucan.”
The remainder of the band—Bob, Dana, and Chumley—at once turned their horses’ heads back the way they had come.
“What are you doing?”
Effie only glanced at him. “Business. If we’re not back in an hour, follow.”
“I’ll follow now, thank you,” he said, urging Agrios after the blonde.
“Lucan,” she snipped. “You don’t want any part of this.”
“Another robbery, you mean.”
“I don’t have time to explain it to you.”
“I’m a quick study—I’m certain I already have it figured out.”
“Stay out of the way, or a wounded foot will be the least of your troubles,” she tossed over her shoulder with a glare. “Hah!”
In moments they were back in the woods, and Lucan could hear shouting ahead even over the pounding hooves. The caravan was stopped, and the riders to the rear were dismounting in a hurry. The next events seemed to happen in half-time, and yet everything at once. Lucan caught sight of Effie reaching over her shoulder into her quiver, her horse still galloping toward the group. Her bow raised—
Effie, no, Lucan wanted to say.
She fired.
The rider who had glared at Lucan fell to the road with a scream even as Effie reached for another arrow.
Bob swung his leg over his saddle and crouched, his reins in his hands. He neared one of the dark clad riders and leapt from his horse, flattening the man to the ground. A blade flashed, a gurgling scream was cut short.
Dana singled out the only rider still mounted, and the pair raced toward each other astride. The rider’s swinging flail was easily evaded, and Dana pulled the man from his saddle by the front of his tunic and dashed him to the road before leaping down upon him beyond the wagon, out of Lucan’s sight.
Chumley rode straight toward the wagon, so fast that Lucan thought the man was going to collide with it, but Chumley, too, leapt from his saddle onto the wooden structure, his boots turning under him like mill wheels as he scaled the side and reached the pinnacle. The driver appeared over the crest and Chumley delivered two swift blows to the man’s face before picking him up and throwing him from the wagon. The driver landed on his head with a sickening crunch and crumpled to a stop. He did not move again.
Lucan swerved around the wagon where Gorman, Kit Katey, and James were surrounded in the road by the other four riders, swords drawn. The trio stood in the center, their backs to one another’s; James and Gorman wielded long swords, Kit a pair of short blades decorated with streaming red ribbons at the handles. Two men already lay dead at the side of the road.
An arrow whizzed through the air and one of the riders staggered, the projectile finding purchase in his upper arm like the spindly branch of a winter tree. The injured man staggered and folded in half, but in the next instant swung his sword wide, ready to swipe at Effie as she thundered toward him, too late in re-knocking her next arrow. She would be upon him before she could fire.
Lucan swerved around, drawing his own short sword and guiding Agrios with his knees. A swift thrust at the back of the man’s neck and he fell dead beneath Agrios’s hooves, the well-trained mount leaping and kicking his way free from the body. Lucan pulled around and halted the beast in time to see the trio in the center of the road spring into action.
They spread out from each other, each having located their own target, and now they stalked them, testing the distance. Gorman was first to act, rushing forward, meeting steel with steel. Two clanging, ringing thrusts, and his opponent fell.
James Rose was not quite as straightforward, dancing around the rider’s flank, swirling the tip of his sword before the man’s face with his own typical smirk. “Watch out,” he taunted. He flicked the earflap of the man’s leather skull cap, and the severed piece went flying away. “Next is your ear,” he warned in an excited whisper, wiggling his eyebrows.
The rider turned and began to run into the woods.
James dropped his sword down by his leg for a moment, dejected. “Oh, come now; must we run?” He sighed and then sprinted after the fleeing man, his sword held above his head. “Fine! But you’re it next round!”
Only Kit Katey still faced her foe, and none of the others seemed inclined to come to her rescue as the beautiful woman circled her challenger, her slippers rising and falling in a graceful creep, her short swords crossing each other, weaving in the air, their streamers dancing in elegant patterns. The man charged like a rabid dog. A blur of red, like exotic birds’ feathers, swirled in the air before him and Kit Katey stepped back, the swords held juxtaposed before her face, the blades running red.
The man rocked to a halt, his sword fell to the dirt. Red lines, faint at first, bloomed into stripes, then ribbons, and then the man’s jerkin was awash in the color. He lowered his face as if to look down at his front, but then his head fell from his shoulders and thudded to the road in the instant before his body collapsed at Kit Katey’s feet.
Kit Katey made a low bow over the fallen man as birdsong spontaneously returned to the forest.
James came stomping up onto the packed track. “He was a fast one,” the young man gasped, swiping at his eyes with his forearm. “Shit ran me a quarter mile.”
Gorman and Kit Katey were already cutting purses and gathering weapons.
Lucan sat atop Agrios and let his gaze rove over the carnage that lay in the road as reality slowly dawned on him: he’d done this. He’d participated in this slaughter of strangers, no matter that his contribution had been made in order to save Effie Annesley’s life. Lucan Montague, Knight of the Royal Order of the Garter, enamored fool, had just set upon a band of travelers, and now there were nearly a dozen men dead in the dirt.
Dead, and being robbed.
Lucan’s stomach turned.
He looked around for Effie and saw her atop the wagon with Chumley and Dana, pulling back the filthy canvas covering the cargo. A woman’s scream shot through the air, but it didn’t come from either Effie or Kit Katey—and definitely not from Dana. Lucan urged Agrios closer toward the wagon.
His heart stopped. Through the slats, he saw what must have been a dozen women and girls, in various modes of dress—and lack thereof. It seemed that all of them were weeping.
The oldest looking of the women—strawberry blonde and perhaps a score—held her bound, dirty palms up toward where Chumley and Effie were looking down at them.
“Please,” she begged. “Please don’t hurt us.”
“Ah, we’re not going to hurt you, love,” Chumley soothed. He held his hand out toward the woman. “Come on out now.”
But Effie was already climbing down into the melee of bodies, and Lucan could only see slices of her through the wooden slats as she drew her short blade and began cutting bonds, one after another as she made her way from the front of the wagon to the rear.
“There you are,” she said quietly. “Up you go—out of this thing. Careful. Turn ‘round. Is this your mum? Tell me true. Go on, then, and stay close to her. That must smart—we shall have it looked at in a moment.”
Lucan felt as though he were frozen into place on his saddle as the forest around them grew darker with approaching evening and the clouds seemed to lower to the treetops. Around him, Bob and James and Gorman were dragging the bodies of the caravan riders from the road into the deep underbrush. Chumley and Dana were helping the women and girls to the road, where Kit Katey waited to receive them—herding them together with a gentle touch or slow, graceful gesture.
Finally, Effie climbed from the cage of the wagon to the top and stood a moment, looking about the road. She seemed to pause to perhaps count the women gathered with Kit Katey and Dana, then her gaze suddenly swung to Lucan, with the twilight forest behind her.
“It’s no longer safe to stop in the village,” she said to him. “We must put as much distance as we can between these woods and ourselves before these monsters are discovered. God willing, most of the women are from Edinburgh.” She paused, her gaze never leaving his. “Your aim was true.”
She made the sign Lucan had seen Winnie perform a hundred times now. Thank you.
He nodded at her, still unable to speak.
“Let’s gather the horses,” Gorman called out, disrupting the brief moment. “Bob, you drive the wagon. We’ll put the lasses astride and lead them. Look lively, now—let’s clear out before anyone comes across us.”
Lucan swung down from Agrios at once and set to, waving the spooked, hungry-looking beasts back toward the road where Gorman and James caught them. He couldn’t help but liken them to the frightened women and girls Kit Katey had gathered and calmed with her touch and quiet words. They finished quickly and managed to turn the wagon around in the road, seating the mother and child next to Bob. Everyone else was mounted, some of the women wearing borrowed cloaks, some riding two astride, and they set out for where Winnie and Gilboe waited in the road ahead.
It would be a long night, Lucan realized to himself as he fell into the pack behind Effie and Gorman, the stars now hidden by the thick blanket of clouds. He felt a cold drop of rain on his cheek. But he reckoned it would have been a much longer night for the women now under their care had they not passed on the road when they did.
Too long of a night. Too long of a life, likely.
Ahead of him, Lucan saw Gorman reach out his hand toward Effie. She took it and they were joined for a brief moment before their fingertips slid apart. Lucan’s heart clenched in his chest as the rain began to fall in earnest.
Stupid, foolish Lucan Montague.
Chapter 13
They used the canvases as shelter for camp that night when they finally stopped. The rain fell steadily through the bare trees—large, cold drops that cracked on the dripping covering and then ran together in rivulets and ribbons and then streams into the cold mud around the raised fire. No one opted to take shelter in the filthy, shit-smelling wagon, and beneath the canvases was smoky and windy and wet despite their best efforts. Their party now nearly tripled, they had not quite enough food, but Effie was at peace as she looked around at the faces huddled together for warmth, chattering in relieved tones as they were ministered to by Winnie and Kit Katey.
Effie used to lie awake at night and worry over how many were lost forever. How many passing so close to the Warren, smuggled into and out of and through Northumberland that they had missed, and would never know about. But that fate was not for these girls.
Fourteen lives, saved.
Fifteen, if she counted her own life, saved by Lucan Montague.
He was sitting beyond the fire across from her—he always seemed to place himself at the extreme distance from Effie, but still in sight, like the North Star. Effie could tell that Winnie was attempting to coax his boot from his foot, but Lucan seemed to be putting her off in his stilted, polite manner.
She smiled to herself. Foolish man.
Effie made her way around the fire, pushing up on the overlapping, sagging edges of canvas to slough the water off as she went, until she stood before the victim and his perpetrator.
“You might as well just go ahead and take the boot off, Sir Lucan.”
He looked up at her as if hoping for aid. “It will be fine until we reach Roscraig. Good Winnie need not trouble herself this wet night. She should rest.”
Winnie looked up from her crouch at Effie with an exasperated expression, and her hands flew in the firelight.
“Ah, I see,” Effie mused, and then looked back to Lucan with a smirk. “Winnie wants to know if your foot feels warm.”
“Actually, yes,” Lucan said with a triumphant look that he turned toward the old woman as he addressed her. “Yes, it’s quite warm, despite the chill.”
“If the dressing’s not changed,” Effie continued the explanation, “the herbs will burn a hole in your scar and reopen your wound.”
Lucan was still for a moment and then bent toward his boot ties. Effie took a seat at his side, partly to make him uncomfortable, partly to watch Winnie work.
And partly to be near him? a little voice inside her head queried.
