Chapter 4 #2
“Yeah, yeah.” Leif let Roark guide him to the
hatch. “Sleep sounds good. Not much else to do on this stinking
barge.”
Roark helped Leif down the ladder and Alina
made her way over to the crew. She knew Roy spoke the Northern
tongue, and she addressed herself to him. “I’m Alina,” she said.
“May I know your names?”
The two who could be brothers and the cook
looked to Roy, who spoke for them. “I’m Roy,” he said. “This is
Dwyer, and Kerry and Kerwin.”
“Roy, Dwyer, Kerry, Kerwin,” Alina nodded to
each man in turn, and then looked from Kerry to Kerwin. “Brothers?”
she asked. Roy nodded. “Twins?”
“Close enough,” Roy said. “They were born
only ten moons apart. Kerry here,” he pointed to the stockier
brother, “be the oldest, and Kerwin be his baby brother.”
The brothers, knowing they were being talked
about, grinned and jostled each other.
“I have brothers,” Alina told Roy. “My twin,
and two younger brothers.” She thought of what they must be going
through, how worried they must be for her, especially Aleksi, who
tried to hide his soft heart behind a tough exterior. “I miss
them,” she sniffed and did nothing to stop the sudden welling of
tears in her eyes. Better to let these men see her as a person, a
sister and a daughter who’d been ripped from her family.
Roy translated what she’d said and the
brothers nodded in sympathy. Alina glanced around. There was nobody
else topside.
“Whatever Laird Roger is paying you to take
me to him,” she said, “my father will pay you double.” She held up
two fingers. “If you turn around and take me back.”
“First ’a all,” Roy said, “Roger isn’t our
laird.” Alina widened her eyes as if this was news to her.
“Secondly, your father’s more likely to kill us for taking you than
he would be to reward us for bringing you back.”
“Not if I told him I promised your safety,”
Alina swore.
Roy translated what she said for the others,
and Alina heard the name Roger spoken as the men whispered among
themselves with plenty of curses and hand gestures.
“Despite our personal wishes,” Roy told her,
“the decision is Captain Murtaugh’s.”
“And the captain will not go back on his deal
with Roger,” Roark said from behind her in the Northern tongue. “No
matter how much your father might pay him.” He stepped up and stood
beside her. “To help you do what you’re asking them, they would not
only have to mutiny against their captain, which could get them
killed, but what if they did manage to get you back to your father?
Even if he didn’t kill them, what do you think Roger would do to
them and their families?”
***
Roark steered Alina away from the men as Roy
explained what he’d said to her.
“I hadn’t thought of the consequences to
their families,” she said, sounding contrite. They stopped at the
rail to the bow. “You understand I had to try?”
“I do,” Roark told her. “In truth, I would’ve
been disappointed if you hadn’t.”
Alina tilted her head. “Why?”
Roark grinned. “I thought an owl’s favorite
word was who,” he said. Alina tilted her head the other way and
Roark’s grin grew wider. “One of the first things I noticed about
you, other than your legs,” he said, and was gratified to see her
cheeks pinken, “was that you’re not a woman of faint heart or timid
manners. You have a certain boldness and infinite curiosity.”
“Most men I’ve met don’t consider those to be
good things,” she said.
“Most men are idiots. Have you ever
considered that?”
“I have,” she said with a wry grin. “Many
times.”
Roark laughed, quick and short, and wished
for about the thousandth time since he’d spied her on the beach
that they could have met under different circumstances. However,
things were what they were. He was her kidnapper, taking her to
Roger, a man who may have lied about his reasons for having her
abducted, if not his family’s entire history for the past twenty
years. All so Roark could keep the peace between their families and
marry Roger’s daughter, a spoilt brat of a girl who cared even less
for him than he did for her. He ran a hand through his hair and
toed the deck with his boot. He was an idiot.
“Tell me of this place you’re taking me to,
this North Shore Keep,” Alina said. “Tell me about this Laird
Roger.”
Roark leaned his back against the rail and
gazed westward. “North Shore Keep is the manor and the lands Roger
inherited from his uncle, Ronald, not long after he arrived in the
Green Isles. The town of North Shore is a small port on the
northwestern shore of the Long Firth, which you would call an inlet
or a bay. The ships sail in and out of the firth and trade up and
down the coasts of the Green Isles and across the North Sea to the
shores of your Northlands and on occasion south to the lands along
the Mid-Earth Sea.”
“The land?”
“Is rich and arable enough, though not so
rich and arable as the land of Thorn Bush Keep, my family’s home,
which is farther northwest and inland up the Long River.” He
smiled, thinking of his days as a young lad, fishing and hunting
with Logan, the gamekeeper, of swimming in the river and running
through the woods, of riding over green fields.
“You miss your home.”
“I do.” Nobody at North Shore Keep had ever
realized this about him, or if they had, they’d never mentioned it
to him or shown him any empathy. Somehow, it didn’t surprise him
Alina had. “It’s a land of running rivers, rolling hills, green
fields, and dense forests,” he told her. “Beautiful, bountiful
country, rich with woods and game.” Her bright eyes were as green
as those fields and her smile as gentle as the hills.
“Unfortunately, we have no trading port and North Shore has little
farmland or woods for lumber, so our clans, our families, sealed an
alliance to benefit both places.”
“Your betrothal to Gwyneth.”
“My betrothal to Gwyneth.” He gripped the
bow’s rail. “As a second son, it was deemed the best use of
me.”
Alina laid her hand over his and gave it a
gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry for you then,” she said. She removed her
hand, and Roark felt the absence of her touch. “Almost as sorry as
I am for myself. The difference being, you’re being used by your
family while I’m being used against mine.”
“Your parents,” he said, “they haven’t, they
didn’t… I mean as a princess your marriage would be valuable
politically.”
Alina shrugged and gazed out across the vast
distance of the sea. “They knew arranging a marriage for me would
never work.” She looked at Roark and gave him a rueful grin. “The
women in my family have a long history of marrying the man they
fall in love with at first sight.”
“Like your mother did your father.”
She nodded. “Kingdoms have fallen and risen
because of their marriages,” she said. “My great-grandparents’ love
story is legend in much of the world. My great-grandmother,
Oona—”
“Your great-grandmother was Oona the
Swan?”
Alina tilted her head. “You’ve heard of
her?”
“The story of Oona the Swan and Asad the Lion
is known throughout the High Lands,” he said, still trying to
register Alina was their great-granddaughter, yet somehow not
surprised. It certainly explained her otherworldly green eyes, and
how drawn he was to her, like a moth to flame. “It’s quite a love
story.”
“So it is. So is my mother’s and my
grandmother’s.”
“I’d like to hear them someday,” he told her.
“To learn about the women in your family and how they fall in love
at first sight.”
“I’d like to tell you them, someday,” she
said with the faintest of smiles. “But for now, tell me of Roger.
Is he like his son, Leif?”
“Only in looks and arrogance,” Roark said
with a wag of his brows, and Alina’s smile widened. “Where Leif’s
arrogance is a result of being the only son of a laird, born with
fair looks and charm that run skin deep, Roger’s is born of a
natural shrewdness and cunning and a propensity to use both for
what he wants without any consideration for how it affects
others.”
Alina’s smile flattened and grew grim, and
Roark stared hard into her attentive eyes, wanting her to
understand this about Roger. To fear him. For her own sake.
“And what he wants more than anything else in
this world,” he told her, “is revenge against your father and
mother.”
***
Dressed in the stable boy’s trousers and
tunic, her hair braided and stuffed up under a woolen cap to keep
her identity a secret from any onlookers, Alina stood on the bow of
The Rover as it sailed into North Shore port. The firth
they’d sailed west through, the Long Firth, was an inlet close in
size to the bay at Sea Ridge, with rolling hills, sparse woodlands,
and small towns along the shoreline, unlike the jutting mountains
and dense forests of her homeland. Unlike the large, thriving port
of Sea Ridge, the port town they pulled into was small and shabby
with only one dock and no obvious warehouse, its most distinct
feature a large, wooden-framed, cross-beamed gallows with three
ropes hanging from it in the middle of the town square that opened
onto the dock.
The wind had blown westward the entire voyage
and The Rover had made its home port in four days, two days
earlier than expected. Even so, they were greeted by a full
contingent of the laird’s household waiting on the dock, including
a tall, lanky grey beard dressed in a richly embroidered linen
tunic, leather vest and trousers, which were called breeches here,
and a short cloak of red fox. The man shaded his eyes with his
hand, searching the deck and stopping at Alina.
Leif bounded down the gangplank almost as
soon as it was lowered and embraced the man.
“Welcome home, son,” the man said, breaking
Leif’s embrace. “I see your journey was successful.”
“That it was,” Leif said with a huge grin. He
signaled imperiously at Roark, who took Alina by the elbow, giving
it a gentle squeeze as she clutched the sack that held her tattered
gown and the lynx pelt Roark had gifted her. She reached for the
pearl that normally hung at her throat, her only other personal
belonging, but found only air. Roark had taken it from her
yesterday, claiming that he would keep it safe for her.
He’d told her of the MacKinnons, and so she