Chapter twenty-seven
I pressed my head against the cold glass of the window in my bedchamber and stared across the horizon, over the rolling hills and into the descending darkness of night, as I had for the last two days.
I held my breath and my hope, then released both with a mournful sob when I was, yet again, greeted by a picture devoid of James.
All the hoping and praying to the gods I had done for two days had been useless. He was not coming for me, and there was no time left to wait. The priest Alex had called to Renfrewshire would arrive tomorrow, so I had to flee tonight.
A pounding at my door startled me, and I swung around just as Alec shoved the door open. His dark gaze met mine, and he scowled. “The guards tell me ye’re ill and do nae want to come to supper.”
I swallowed the knot of fear in my throat as I forced myself to push away from the window and walk to him.
I had to appear glad to see him if I wanted him to believe my lies.
I crossed the distance across my bedchamber as my heart pounded so loudly I feared it would give me away.
Once I stood directly in front of him, I looked up and met his gaze.
“I fear it’s my time of the month,” I said, biting my lip to show embarrassment and looking away from him.
He frowned. “Ye will be done with that tomorrow for our wedding night.”
The man was a clot-heid. As if a woman had the power to control her flow, but I merely nodded and said, “Aye.”
He gave a curt nod. “Rest then, and I will see ye in the morning.”
If things had gone according to my plan, I’d never see him again, so conjuring a real smile at that thought did not take much effort.
He turned, slamming my door behind him, and I suddenly felt more overwhelmed than I had thought possible.
I pressed my back to the door and slid down it until I sat on the floor.
I would wait long enough for supper to truly start, and then I would make my way to the secret tunnel that had been shown to all of us children years before, so that if we ever needed to escape, we could.
It had taken me two days to find the tunnel door, as my memory was hazy about which room it was in.
In the end, I’d found it in the nursery, behind a tapestry depicting one of the great battles of the Wallace clan.
I had hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, but hope was not for me. Tears filled my eyes, and I did not bother to fight them. Instead, I pulled my knees toward me, let them come, and pressed my forehead to my knees to muffle any sounds I couldn’t swallow.
Sobs racked my body as my tears dampened my skirts.
Why had James not come? I ground my teeth with grief, with fear, and, aye, with anger.
My mind fired off possible answers at me as it had for two days.
Mayhap my letter had never reached him. Perhaps he had read it and thought me mad for claiming I could not age.
Perhaps he had concluded that loving a woman with my affliction was a danger he did not wish to entertain.
Perhaps he had not loved me at all. “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” I muttered, sitting up and swiping at my face. “Perhaps ye are an idiot.”
I shoved the last thought away and stood.
I could not linger to wallow in heartbreak.
I donned my cloak and grabbed my satchel, which I’d stuffed with my medicines, wine, and hunks of bread.
I lit the lone candle that would have to guide me through the secret tunnel out of the stronghold, then moved to the door, thinking over my plan.
I could not return to Gillie and the Summer Walkers.
After careful thought, I concluded it was too dangerous for them and for me.
They would be no match for warriors that might be sent to hunt me.
The men of the Summer Walkers were not trained fighters, like Buchanan men or the king’s guards.
No, I would make my way to Millicent. She had not come, but I had to believe, I chose to believe, she was en route to me and would shelter me, or, if not, she had not gotten the missive for some reason and would shelter me once I explained all.
And then I would renounce my claim to Renfrewshire to her.
I had taken a risk for love. I would give up all I had once foolishly believed I needed to be worthy of a man.
These were the things Morgana had told me I must do to break the curse, and if that were true, if my curse did break, then mayhap I would be able to go somewhere far away with Millicent’s help, across the seas even, and age and live and love.
With all these thoughts in my head, I made my way slowly to my bedchamber door, glanced down the hall, judged it empty, and, closing my door behind me, hurried down the hall to the nursery, where once I had rested blissfully ignorant of men, of feeling less than, and of wishes and curses.
I’d been a bairn, properly aging, cared for and loved by my parents.
The tears started again, hot and stinging, and I swiped at them as I opened the door, closed it, and lifted the heavy tapestry that hung to the floor, back enough to press open the nearly invisible door that swung inward.
I stepped into the tunnel, and stone walls pressed close on either side of me.
When the door shut behind me, my breath caught in the darkness that nearly swallowed me whole, though I’d expected it.
The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and stale tallow smoke, and as I made my way down the narrow passage, cobwebs hit my face, making me shudder.
I shifted my satchel and swung my free hand in front of me to knock the cobwebs out of the way.
The passage sloped downward, and as I descended, the air grew heavy with moisture and the temperature dropped. My heartbeat quickened until all I could hear was the thump in my ears. The passage took a sharp right turn, and down I went over stones carved into the ground, slick with water and moss.
Then the passage weaved to the left, and the ground beneath my feet grew soggy, so that my shoes squelched.
I could barely see past the hand I held out.
My candle’s flame guttered with each breath, threatening to go out entirely, and the shadows danced around me on the rocks.
Even now, as I hurried to escape, and my thoughts should have been on the dangerous journey ahead of me, they turned to James. Why had he not come?
The simple act of questioning it made the ache that had been a constant companion in my chest grow sharper with each step I took, and I thought, for the hundredth time, what I might have said if James had appeared.
I would have told him of the depths of my love for him and of my years of loneliness.
I would have told him of my insecurities that had plagued me and how they had led me to make such a foolish choice as to wish not to age.
When I almost slipped, I braced a hand against the cool, damp stone to my right to steady myself.
The passageway sloped downward again, then leveled out, then began to climb.
My breath came in shallow pulls, the air too thick to fill my lungs.
My free hand went to the small blade I’d taken from the dining hall and hidden in the folds of my skirt, a pathetic weapon but the only one I could find.
“Please,” I whispered into the darkness, though I did not know what I was asking for. Protection? Freedom? James? All of them, perhaps. All of them, and none.
The passageway ended in a heavy wooden door bound with iron.
I set my candle on a small ledge in the wall and braced both hands against the rough wood, pushing with all my strength.
For one terrible moment, it did not move, and panic rose in my throat.
Had it been barred during the years I had been gone?
I gave another hard shove, and then, with a groan of metal and wood, the door swung outward.
Cold night air hit me, carrying the scents of pine and earth and the faint smoke of distant fires.
I stepped out onto the road’s packed dirt, raising my candle to get my bearings.
The moon hung low and fat above the trees to the east, casting enough light to make out the familiar shape of Renfrewshire behind me, its towers dark against the star-pricked sky.
And then I heard something, and fear skittered up my spine. I stilled, breath held, and listened. It started low, like a rumble, and grew louder with each breath I took, until I realized what it was—the thunder of hooves, dozens of them by the sound of it, moving fast along the road from the north.
My candle slipped from my trembling fingers, hit the ground, and guttered out in the mud.
Just as I bent to retrieve it, fire danced in the dark, a line blazing a path straight for me, yet held, quite obviously, by riders.
Dozens of them. Nay, mayhap forty or more.
My brain and feet froze at the same time.
I could not think who it might be. Was it my sister come to save me, or someone sent by the king to drag me back to court to be hanged or worse?
I did not dare hope for James, but then, as the horses were almost upon me and my brain and feet unlocked, allowing me to run, I caught a glimpse of a face, illuminated by the flames, and I cried out in shock, relief, and exploding joy. “James!”
Instantly, he pulled his horse up hard. The animal reared slightly before its hooves struck the ground.
James dismounted in one fluid motion and ran toward me, closing the distance between us in long, ground-eating strides.
He swept me up off my feet, his arms circling me, and my body molded to the length of his, so that his thundering heart beat into me like a frenzied tattoo.