Chapter 3
Ash
Dawn brought with it a clear, bright sky. Ash peered out across his father’s lands through the chamber window. He could see across the whole valley on days like this. He pulled the shutters closed, disappearing back into the shadows.
Today, he would leave his father’s keep and head even further north to meet the woman who – by their best estimations – would become his wife.
Cool dread prickled the back of his mind. He forced it down, sinking into the comforting nothingness he usually felt.
They had decided that Raff would remain at Dunlyn.
It was the more practical choice, especially when the death of their father was causing ripples in the previously still waters of the Barden family’s lands.
He would be the only Barden present: Lily and Jo were returning to Oxfordshire that morning.
The brewery would not run itself. Ash did not begrudge them that: he, too, would have rather left than endure courting and a wedding.
Ash would not be alone, at least. He was travelling with a small retinue: his steward, Michael, a handful of guards and servants, and Litillwitte.
Should the woman he was meeting prove entirely unsuitable or, more likely, a dreadful bore, he could at least take the beast out on the hunt.
Litillwitte, of course, was the only one among their numbers whom he would truly relish spending any time with, but it was better than floundering in a stranger’s keep alone.
He was lucky that the journey was an easy one.
It would take perhaps a week or so to reach la Cleve Castle, along well-used and well-tended roads, and the visit itself would be brief.
Most courting periods were: a scant few days to ensure they did not entirely loathe each other and hammer out the legal details of merging their two houses.
If all went well, Agnes would be returning with Ash to Dunlyn where they would be wed as soon as the banns were read.
It was strange, considering the haste with which it would be carried out. But necessary: Ash needed to do the right thing, for once.
He headed outside to where the carts were being readied. He greeted and said goodbye to Lily and Jo, then found his horse and began to prepare it for the journey. He wasn’t sure when Raff and Penn arrived, but could sense them lingering behind him.
Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer.
‘Are you going to follow me to la Cleve, too?’ he snapped, spinning around. ‘Or will I manage to shake you off by then?’
To his annoyance, they both appeared nonplussed by his outburst.
‘We only wish to say goodbye,’ Raff said, infuriatingly placidly.
‘To make sure I really do go?’ Ash spat. ‘Worried I will follow in your footsteps’ – he nodded towards Penn – ‘and ruin the match before it’s even begun?’
Penn raised a single eyebrow at him. That, apparently, was all the response Ash was going to get.
‘Is it unwarranted to wish to say goodbye to my brother?’ Raff continued, ‘Especially in such circumstances?’
Ash wanted to tell him it was, in fact, unwarranted. But he relented.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Fine. But stop staring at me like that. It is not as if I am—’
He cut that thought before it reached his tongue. He didn’t want to think about it. He went to mount his horse, but was stopped by Raff’s hand on his shoulder.
‘Ash.’ He pulled him into a hug. ‘Good luck.’
Reluctantly, Ash hugged him back. ‘I fear I will need it.’
Raff chuckled in his grip, then let him go. To Ash’s surprise, Penn stepped swiftly forward and took Raff’s place, wrapping his arms around Ash’s shoulders.
‘Do not insult her too greatly,’ he said. ‘Perhaps … just a little, though, or she will be horrified once you return and she sees your true nature.’
Ash shot him a half-smile. ‘What sound advice.’
Penn grinned at him as he mounted the horse. Ash thought again on his words after the funeral.
It would be good for you to be friends.
Ash found himself growing more anxious the nearer they got to la Cleve Castle. Each step was drawing him closer towards something he didn’t want, yet couldn’t escape.
The road had been easy, quiet and entirely bereft of bandits and vagabonds. It appeared that nothing deigned to stand between Ash and his own future. They had made better time than they had dared to hope, and Ash felt like a few days of freedom had been snatched from him.
They were riding through managed woodland split with yellow gorse and fields.
He had let his mind go carefully blank for most of the journey.
But now, so close, the marriage – the idea of the marriage – poked at his thoughts, barbed and dangerous.
He had sworn that he would never exchange vows with another person.
Yet here he was, each step taking him closer to betrayal.
It couldn’t be a true betrayal, he tried to remind himself. The man he had vowed himself to was dead. Hundreds of people retook vows. Agnes herself measured amongst their numbers: she had taken vows with her late husband, and if they saw this match through, she would take them again with him.
But that was other people. That was people he did not know, people’s opinions he did not care for.
After their mother had died, his father had never remarried.
When he was young, Ash had thought it showed a certain kind of nobility.
After he’d returned from France, he understood.
His father had carried those vows with him, lodged in his heart, until he too died and returned to be with their mother.
Ash wished he too could remain faithful. People questioned why he was not married, whereas they had been happy to allow his father’s grief. This was something he had to do. He had no choice in it: just as he had no choice in becoming earl.
Forgive me, he thought. Please, forgive me.
The wind picked up, catching the leaves around his horse’s hooves. They passed under the shade of the trees. Bathed in darkness, Ash shivered.
He was apologising to a ghost. And yet he could still feel Oliver beside him – his presence, the heat of him, the trill of his laugh upon the sound of the wind.
He pulled the horse up short, coming to a halt. He was shaking. He could not risk another attack – not so close to Lady Agnes’s keep, certainly not in her presence.
‘My Lord?’ Michael turned in the saddle.
‘I need to clear my head.’ Ash swung himself down. It was good to have his feet on solid ground. ‘Ride ahead. Here.’ He passed the reins to the nearest guard. ‘I shall meet you at the keep.’
‘My Lord—’
I am the earl. Ash didn’t say it out loud. He gave Michael a curt nod, lips tight shut, and walked away.
Ash crashed through the undergrowth, stamping through piles of leaves. He hated forests. He hated the dirt and the grabbing branches and the endless brambles snagging on his clothes.
He had intended to clear his head. But the shrubbery and cloying soil was doing very little to calm his spirits. Each step only made him more frustrated, his mind more tangled. The soft silence of nature wasn’t a soothing balm, but an echoing cavern that loudened his already turbulent thoughts.
He was making his way back towards the road when there was a scuffle ahead of him. Unperturbed, he strode onwards, and suddenly a great bird burst from the bush beside him in a cacophony of feathers and flapping.
Ash leapt back out of the creature’s way, heart pounding.
‘What are you doing?’
A man emerged around a sharp bend in the path.
He was dressed in hunting gear: a padded gambeson with a cap pulled tight around his head.
Ash could see wisps of bright red hair peeking from the edge of the fabric, framing the hunter’s brown eyes.
His face was long and pointed, with a mole on the height of his cheekbone below his right eye.
At his hip was a quiver of arrows, in his hand a well-made bow.
He could almost have been described as pretty, were it not for the fact that the bow was notched, arrow aimed directly at Ash’s chest.
Ash immediately raised his hands in surrender. Even he could not deny that he looked more like a bandit than an earl.
‘Do not shoot!’ he cried. ‘I am not a poacher.’
The man looked unconvinced. ‘Oh aye?’ he said, in a thick Scottish accent. ‘Then who are you, sneaking around in our lands?’
Ash clenched his jaw. The man readied the bow. He was a good head shorter than Ash, but no amount of strength could win against an arrow through the heart.
‘Ash Barden,’ he said, quickly. ‘I am—’
Now the bow lowered. ‘The earl?’
Ash watched as the man’s eyes searched his face, settling on the scar. Even in a keep full of strangers, he would be recognisable by that alone.
‘It is dangerous to explore alone here if you are unfamiliar with these lands.’
Ash did not appreciate being chastised. ‘Is that not true of all lands?’
The man looked unimpressed. ‘True,’ he said, ‘but our lands are full of deer traps. You best tread more carefully, my Lord.’
Ash scowled at him. The hunter was too young to be speaking to him in such a way.
‘Then I shall watch my path,’ he drawled. ‘Now move.’
He went to push past. The man followed. ‘I must insist—’
‘Insist? Need I remind you that I am an earl?’ Ash did not stop or turn back. ‘Run back to your mistress and inform her I have arrived.’
‘I do not think—’
‘That much is immediately clear.’
‘My Lord—’
Ash walked faster, better to get away from the irritating man. He kicked his way through a sharp gorse bush, and then—
For an instant, he was suspended. Then he was falling, branches and stones scraping horribly down his back, scratching at his face. He landed with a thud.
Ash stared up. Leaves gently fluttered down around him.
A deer trap. He’d run right into it. The hunter’s face appeared over the edge of the hole.
‘I did warn you, my Lord.’
The man’s expression betrayed what sort of person he thought would be stupid enough to fall into a deer trap. Ash’s patience, already worn thin, snapped entirely.