Chapter 4
“I refuse to listen to a holy man lie to me.”
Ruark turned to face the man standing in front of the window.
The curtains were partly drawn, but the sun had set and shadows obscured most of the room.
One candle burned on the desk. Tucker was a tall man but not big, yet he had always seemed larger to Ruark.
He still wore his brown robes, dusty from his journey.
A cap covered his short, clipped hair. Ruark had been at the abbey when Tucker returned.
Ruark had arrived only to find Loki gone and Rose with him.
Impatience brought Ruark to the window to see what had grabbed Tucker’s attention but he saw nothing.
“I can’t help you, my lord.”
Ruark stepped in his path, his cloak swirling around his calves with the agitated movement.
He had not removed the sword or other weaponry upon entering the abbey.
The message itself said he had not come as a friend.
But it said more. He had come willing to fight for his prize.
“Do you think I have been sitting on my arse enjoying my grand homecoming while my brother rots in one of Hereford’s hellholes?
” he demanded. “Probably to spend the rest of his life imprisoned if I cannot find a way to secure his release.”
“I told you, I can’t help you,” Tucker persisted. “I have no idea what you are talking about!”
Ruark’s thoughts crowded around him like brooding buzzards as he focused on Tucker.
“I asked you if you knew Countess Hereford. She was from Redesdale. You are from Redesdale. As is the uncle you just buried from Redesdale. Except you have no uncle.” He withdrew from his cloak a packet.
“My man of affairs has been in Carlisle these past weeks mining for information on Hereford’s past. It seems the widow of the man you went to Redesdale to bury is an ungrateful blatherskite with greasy palms and an intent to blackmail you.
We found Lady Hereford’s maid. She and the child never got on the ship to France. ”
“Move aside, Roxburghe. Or I will forget we were ever friends.”
Ruark grabbed Tucker’s wrist and forced the package into his hand. “Your father was a vicar living at Kirkland Park for twenty years. Lady Elena’s father was his patron. You grew up with her. When she needed help she came to you.”
“Nay.” The word came out in a desperate rush.
“Is Rose Lady Roselyn Lancaster? Is she?”
“She is like my own bairn’, my lord. You can no’ have her!”
The revelation struck him like a punch in the gut. He had not known positively until this moment that the daughter lived, that the rumors might be true or that he could feel so betrayed by a man he had considered his friend.
Ruark could not think clearly. “Christ . . . Tucker. How could any man have kept such a secret for seventeen years? Does she know Hereford is her father?”
“Aye, she does.” Tucker grabbed Ruark’s sleeve. “Wait!”
Ruark had never laid his hands on a woman or child or a man of cloth, but by God, he was tempted to do so now.
She knew! He’d talked to her less than a month ago in this very abbey.
She’d known about his brother, all along knowing ’twas her own sire that held him imprisoned, and he damned himself now for wasting precious time in finding her. He realized the rage he felt. Rage because of who she was or something else . . .
“You don’t understand,” Tucker whispered.
Ruark’s voice lowered to a rasp. “What I understand is Rose Lancaster is alive. Hereford must know she is alive or he would not still be at Kirkland Park.”
“Wed her and Kirkland Park will be yours.”
Ruark laughed. Incredulous. “I would not join Kerr and Lancaster blood if we were the last two beings on this earth. She is valuable to me as a hostage.”
Tucker grabbed his arm. “I have known you to be an honorable man—”
“Damn you.” He shrugged off Tucker’s grip. “Do not throw that word in my face. There is no bloody thing as honor when fighting a man who has none.” Christ, he had learned that much from his own father.
Tucker stepped around Ruark to block him from reaching the door.
“She is more valuable than you know. Hereford can’t touch her inheritance.
Everything is in trust. If something happened to Rose before her twenty-first year, Kirkland Park, her great-grandfather fixed it so that everything goes to the church, which is why Hereford never declared his daughter dead.
But upon Rose’s marriage, everything goes to her husband. That man can be you, Ruark.
“You’ve seen Rose. You’ve met her. She is beautiful and vibrant. She would make a fine wife to any man worthy enough to hold on to her.”
Someone pounded on the door. Tucker nearly leapt away.
Colum called from the other side and Ruark opened the door. “The girl returned with your stallion a half hour ago,” Colum said. “But no one can find her.”
Ruark’s eyes narrowed on Tucker as he spoke to Colum. “Is everyone else in the dining hall?” Ruark asked.
“Except for the boy, Jack.”
Ruark looked past Tucker to the window where the friar had been standing. Tucker had not moved, but Ruark recognized the truth on his round face. He had sent the boy to wait for Rose’s return and warn her. How much time had Ruark given her by remaining here with Tucker?
Ruark pulled on his gloves. “If you see Hereford before I do, give him my regards.”
“Sweet Mary, I’m protecting my own.”
“And I am trying to save mine.”
Ruark removed the key from the door as Tucker grasped his forearm. “If you give her to Hereford, you commit an abomination against that girl. I am sorry I ever knew you.”
Tucker was not the first to utter those words. Ruark doubted he would be the last. “I know.”
He stepped into the corridor and turned the key in the lock. The door was English oak. The good friar would not be getting out of this room anytime soon.
Ruark turned on his heel. “Unless Lady Roselyn plans to swim across the river, she went into the woods. She is familiar with this area. We are not.”
Colum kept pace with him. “I think I might know someone who is equally familiar and will help.”
“And who might that be?”
“We met up with a rather talkative mountebank takin’ a piss on the riverbank about fifteen minutes ago. He was drunk and rather affable in his desire to sell us his wares. He asked if we were bounty hunters. Seems Hereford put a rather sizable bounty on your head.”
That Hereford would put a bounty on his head was not news to Ruark.
“He said if we wanted to know about the goings-on around Castleton, for a coin or two, he could tell us anything.” Colum shrugged.
“What is a coin or two for a good cause? So I told him we were indeed bounty hunters and paid him. He said he’d heard you’d been to the abbey some weeks ago but not the why of it until he saw a rather fine stallion today, which he himself reported seeing ridden by a flame-haired hoyden he knew to be a thief and a blackmailer.
He was quite pleased to offer an extra coin if we might by chance do away with her as well. ”
“Why is that do you suppose?” Ruark asked with interest as he reached the stairs.
“Seems she threatened to cut the bollocks off one of his best customers. Apparently, this hoyden was under the impression the mountebank had stolen a coin from a young boy living at the abbey, and if he did not hand over his profits to her the other man would be flayed. That flame-haired hoyden wouldn’t by chance be your heiress, would she? ”
“Will Lord Roxburghe leave now that he has his horse?” Jack’s question broke the silence.
Rose leaned with her hand against the thick trunk of a dying oak. Her other hand on Jack’s shoulder kept the boy from walking into the field. Behind her, a mile of towering conifers stood as barrier between her and the abbey. “Aye, he will have no reason to stay. He has his horse.”
She didn’t know if the words rang hollow to her ears because of the tension inside her or because they were true. Or for something else entirely.
The realization that she had run away from the abbey like a long-eared hare and left Friar Tucker to Roxburghe grated on her like a hot rake.
When Jack had met her at the stable, he had told her only that Lord Roxburghe was at the abbey for his horse and Friar Tucker had also arrived.
He’d given Jack a message for her: Go. Now. I will find you at the cemetery.
Why? Had he been so worried for her safety because she had ridden the stallion without permission? She doubted it.
She should go back.
All these thoughts tumbled through her mind as she took a step backward and leaned against the tree, her heart pounding like the steadily increasing thump of a Gypsy’s tabor. Her gut told her something was terribly wrong.
Go, Roselyn. Her mother’s long-ago words. I will find you. I promise.
She had not come back for Roselyn. She had died.
Jack dropped to the ground. “I’m hungry.”
Attempting to quiet her inner turmoil, she sat and tweaked Jack’s nose as if that would dissuade her from fear. “You need not worry about supper. Sister Nessa always saves you a plate.”
The breeze stirred the grass, and turning her head, she listened to the distant, lonely bark of a fox.
All that lay out here among the sod and the sheep was an abandoned cemetery, unmarked graves of fallen English who had died fighting Scots, men on both sides of the border who never made it home to their families.
She saw no sign of another’s presence, no shadow lurking in the moonlight, and breathing easier, she reached into her pocket and removed the coin she had put there. “Look what I found today,” she said.
Excitement banished the worry from his eyes. “Where?”
“Near the crossroads. The mountebank must have dropped it.”
Jack laughed and gave her a hug. “Thank you, Miss Rose.”