The Stag & The Owl (Destined #4)

Chapter 1

The Spyglass

Roark placed the thick, concave glass lens

into the end of the leather tube, wiped it clean with the hem of

his tunic, and set the spyglass to his eye. He focused on the

shoreline and took in the bustling docks where two small boats were

tied to The Rover, the trade ship he’d sailed in on

from the Green Isles to the port of Sea Ridge. The ship was being

loaded with the goods his laird’s son, Leif, had traded for with

their prized Highland wool. He moved his gaze west to where six

warships were docked at their own pier with two guards at the gate.

Warships he’d learned Sea Ridge’s King Jerrik kept ready to sail at

a moment’s notice.

He moved the glass to the left and found the

road leading from town to the king’s compound of long houses built

on the last flat expanse of ground before the mountain jutted up

behind it. He trained the glass to follow the winding path. Halfway

up the road, he spied a horse and rider accompanied by a huge,

shaggy brown hound coming down from the palace.

The horse was a dark, leggy roan with a black

mane and stockings. As they got closer, he saw the rider was a

young woman and was intrigued as she turned the horse off the road

and cut across an open field, abutting a beach west of the

warships.

To his amazement, she pulled off her boots

and tied them to her saddle. Then she tucked her skirts up under

her seat, exposing a pair of long, lean legs. She urged the horse,

a mare, into an easy gallop up the deserted beach away from the

ships and docks, and then she gave the horse its head and leaned

forward in the saddle, racing in a full gallop along the shoreline,

her mass of waist-length earthen brown hair streaming behind

her.

He admired the line of her legs from her slim

calves to her shapely thighs, and the way her hair flew about her

like a living creature. He was in awe at the ease with which she

and the mare moved as one. After a few laps along the beach, she

tucked her skirts higher and rode the mare belly deep into the

water. Raising her arms high above her head, she arched her back,

her face to the sky, and smiled as the last sun of winter started

to set over the western horizon.

“Damnation.” Roark lowered the spyglass, only

to lift it back up, finding her bare legs first and slowly raising

his sights from her wet skirts tucked under her seat to her slim

waist and up to where her damp tunic clung to the swell of her

breasts. “Double damn.” He lifted the glass to her face. She was

far enough away to make her features blurry, yet close enough to

see she was looking straight at him. “Bollocks.”

He raised his hand and waved, and after a

moment she lifted a hand and held it up to him. She cupped both

hands and made like she was looking through a spyglass. Roark held

the glass up and grinned as she tilted her head first one way and

then the other, like a curious little owl. She waved and then

turned her mount around, untucking her hems from her waist belt and

letting her skirts drop down around her legs while returning to

shore.

Roark groaned.

The knock of a small boat coming alongside

the ship brought him back to where he was and why, and he stood at

the ship’s rail as Leif climbed up the ladder and stepped on

deck.

Roark nodded down at the small boats full of

furs, spices, and bolts of worm weave, a rare, pricey cloth that

the merchants of Sea Ridge were known for, along with several

barrels of oils and wines. “Looks like a successful day at the

trade market,” he said.

“It was.” Leif clapped Roark on the shoulder,

grinning from ear to ear. “I met the king’s eldest son, Anders, who

invited us to sup with his family tomorrow noon whilst telling me

all about the feasting and revelry to follow in celebration of

Spring’s Eve.”

“And?”

“And the entire royal family will be at the

festival, including Princess Alina.”

“Will there be masks?” Roark asked.

“There will,” Leif said.

“Good.” Roark nodded. “Our plan is falling

into place.”

“You mean yours and my father’s plan,” Leif

huffed, apparently forgetting how Roark had been coerced into

helping form and execute these plans.

Roark and Leif had both sat in on the

meetings with Laird Roger and his spies, but where Leif had been

more interested in flirting with the serving maid, Roark had paid

attention, which was why he’d insisted on bringing masks and

headdresses for the spring festival.

“It was you who got us our invitation to sup

with the king’s family,” Roark said, smoothing Leif’s ruffled fur.

“An invitation that will get us close to the princess.”

“True.” Leif puffed out his chest, and then

turned his attention to the crew as they brought up the bounty to

stow in the ship’s hold. “Put the dry goods in the aft of the

hold,” he ordered them, though they were all experienced seamen

who’d been sailing and trading on The Rover for years while

this was his first voyage. “The furs and cloths go in the

fore.”

“Aye, yer lairdship,” Roy, one of the older

seamen said, and then looked to Murtaugh, the captain of the ship

as soon as Leif turned his back.

Making sure that Leif wasn’t looking,

Murtaugh dipped his head in answer to his man’s unspoken question,

and then met Roark’s gaze with a shrug, knowing he wouldn’t tell

their laird’s son.

Having lived in the laird’s house since he

was ten and two, Roark loved Leif like a brother, but that didn’t

mean he was blind to his faults: arrogance born of breeding and

privilege, and a handsome face and athletic body of which he was

too proud.

He went down into the hold and gathered a

clean tunic and breeches. “I’m going to the bathhouse,” he told

Leif. “You want to come?”

Leif lifted his arm and gave his pit a sniff.

“Nah, I went yesterday. A bowl of water and a washrag’ll do me fine

for a few more days.”

“If all goes as planned, we’ll be sailing

home day after tomorrow,” Roark reminded him.

Leif waved him off. “Another six days without

bathing and I’ll finally fit in with this stinking crew.”

Roark chuffed. “And you wonder why the crew

hasn’t taken to you.”

It being the day before the spring festival,

there was a line for the bathing tubs at the Portside Inn. Roark

spent his time waiting drinking ale, which was called beer here,

and casually questioning Digby, the proprietor, a genial, talkative

man who ran a clean, honest establishment.

“I saw a girl, a young woman, with long brown

hair riding a roan with black stockings along the shoreline today,”

he said. “There was a big, brown hound with them.”

“That’d be Princess Alina on her mare,

Brynja,” Digby said. “The hound’s name be Beast, which is what he

is, and why the princess can ride without escort around the docks

and town.”

“She rides with an escort otherwise?”

Digby nodded. “She and her mother, the queen,

they don’t ride anywhere without a guard or three with them.”

“If the mother looks anything like the

daughter,” Roark said, “I can see why.”

“Aye, they’re both beauties they are,” Digby

said. “The king, he’s a mite protective of them.”

Roark nodded. This was good to know. “What

kind of ruler is King Jerrik?” he asked.

“King Jerrik be fairer than most from what I

hear sailors from other parts say,” Digby continued. “Sea Ridge has

more than prospered under his and the queen’s rule. Our trading’s

ten times what it was before them, which brings all kinds of other

business as well, and there’s no slavery. Here, a person works for

fair pay and pays fair taxes.”

“Which go into the king’s coffers?”

Digby shook his head. “They get put right

back into the community. Which is how we have such good roads,

docks, and warehouses, and why if a family’s having hard times

through no fault of their own, they won’t go cold or hungry.”

“How does the king pay for his household

then?”

Digby grinned and touched the side of nose.

“Three of those ships in the harbor are King Jerrik’s,” he said.

“He has another two at sea. He was a rich trader afore he became

king,

and he’s an even richer trader now.”

“I see.” Roark emptied his cup and pushed it

forward for a refill. “What about the jarls he forced out? The

one’s whose lands and property he took without recompense when he

became king?”

Digby shook his balding head. “Don’t know

nothing ’bout that, unless you be asking ’bout his murderous uncle

and his yellow beards.” He glanced over at the entrance to the

bathhouse where two sailors from southern climes by their looks and

dress, were coming out. “You’re next,” he said.

***

“You’d better get going, missy,” Hamar told

Alina. “Else you’ll be late for supper again.”

She unclasped her apron and tossed it onto

the pile of dirty aprons worn by the stable hands. After her ride

along the shoreline, she’d been helping the stablemaster dose the

yearlings for worms with a paste of hyssop, fennel, and garlic. Her

hands and arms were covered with the paste and horse slobber.

Splashing water over her face and arms, she dried off with a towel

and then wiped her tunic and skirts with it. It would have to do.

She had no time to change.

“Here she is,” her father said, eyeing the

telltale stains of dried seawater on her skirts as Alina slid onto

her seat at the high table to her mother’s left. “You rode along

the bay shore today, I take it?”

“I did. Then I helped Hamar worm the foals,

which is why I was almost late,” she said as the servants laid

trenchers of food on the table.

“We have stable hands for that,” her father

said with an indulgent grin.

“I know.” She grinned back. “But Hamar says

the foals don’t vomit it back up when I dose them.”

Her mother, who never met an animal she

didn’t like other than a snake, smiled and shook her head. “You and

Hamar and your concoctions.”

“One would almost think she was Hamar’s

daughter,” her father teased.

“Still not amusing,” her mother chided,

though her eyes crinkled up at the corners.

Alina grinned at the old jest between her

parents and tucked into her supper of salted cod, boiled beets and

carrots, hard cheese, and rye bread. Glad to have a full, sated

belly, she’d be gladder still when the first tender greens of

spring sprouted and the stone fruits in the orchard budded and

ripened.

Tomorrow, the carpenters would move the glass

panes on the roof of the greenhouse to welcome the spring sun, and

Alina would plant seeds for broccoli, cabbage, and spinach in the

raised beds she’d been tending all winter. Once the seedlings were

hardy enough and the last frost had come and gone, they would be

transplanted into the outdoor gardens.

Her father had designed the three removable

panels to take seasonal advantage of the sun, along with a

permanent glass window in the three walls without a door, an

expense that had paid off by affording them an early and extra

harvest of vegetables, and a constant store of fresh and dried

herbs for which cooks and healers traveled from a hundred leagues

away to buy and trade. Alina loved trading herbs and knowledge with

them, and had learned of many exotic herbs and their uses, several

of which now grew in her greenhouse.

The glass panes reminded Alina of the man on

The Rover. “I saw a man on a ship with a looking glass today

when I was riding,” she said.

“A looking glass?” Her father, who loved

inventions of all kinds, set down his fork. “I’ve only ever heard

of one. Did he seem able to see from a distance?”

“He did.” She recalled his reaction to her

stopping and staring at him.

“How far?”

“His ship, The Rover, was the closest

to shore, so maybe fifty fathoms.”

Her father’s blue eyes lit with excitement.

“I’ll have to seek out this man and his looking glass.”

“No need,” Anders said from his seat to their

father’s right. “I met the owner of The Rover today at the

trade market and invited him to sup with us tomorrow noon.”

Alina’s twin, Anders was tall, blond, and

blue-eyed like their father, with a smile and a body that made

girls swoon, and a personality as outgoing as his smile. In

contrast, Alina was of medium height and build with brown hair and

green eyes like her mother, though without her mother’s sweet and

open disposition. She was, as her mother often said, born an old

soul, a bit of a loner who preferred the natural world of sky, sea,

earth, and animals to most people. She would never have invited

someone she’d only met today to sup with her family tomorrow. Even

someone as interesting as the man on The Rover promised to

be.

“What’s his name?” she asked Anders.

“Leif.”

“That’s a Northman’s name,” her father said.

“Doesn’t The Rover sail out of the Green Isles?”

Anders nodded. “It does.”

“What does he look like?” Alina asked.

The head of every person at the high table

swung in her direction. She seldom asked about any of the hundreds

of sailors who came to Sea Ridge to trade, and then she’d only ask

about the goods they were trading rather than the men themselves.

At ten and nine years of age, she was old enough to have wed and

then some.

It wasn’t that she was indifferent to a good,

intelligent, handsome man: it was that she’d never met one who’d

caught or held her attention in a way that made her want to marry.

Her mother had met her father when she was only eight years old and

had proposed marriage to him then and there. Until Alina met such a

man, she was content remaining single and unwed.

“Why do you ask?” Anders said.

“Oooh, Alina liikes Leeif,” her younger

brother, Aaron, sang.

“Leave Ali alone,” her youngest brother,

Aleksi, said, shoving Aaron.

“Boys,” their mother scolded.

“I’m interested in the man’s looking glass,”

Alina answered Anders and ignored Aaron. “I was wondering if this

Leif is who I saw on the ship with it, is all.” She gave Aleksi a

quick wink.

“Tall, blond, blue eyes, short beard,” Anders

told her.

“Then he’s not the man I saw on the ship,”

she said, disappointed, though she couldn’t have said why. Other

than the strange pulse of recognition she’d felt when she’d

discovered him watching her.

“Is he bringing the looking glass with him

tomorrow?” her father asked.

“I’ll send word in the morning to make sure

he does,” Anders assured him.