Chapter 4 #4
shut the door behind her and slid the outside bolt with a thud. She
laid back, her legs dangling off the edge and giving her back a
good stretch. At least this prison had a soft bed, unlike the pile
of pelts on the ship. But unlike the ship, this room wouldn’t have
Roark’s steadying presence lying next to her through the night.
She stared up at the red canopy, recalling
what had been said in the laird’s private chambers. If Roger and
Leif knew she spoke their Green Isles tongue, they’d hidden it
well. Roark had tugged on her tunic to keep her from giving her
understanding of their language away. Why would he have done that
if not to help her keep her secret? She grinned, remembering how
he’d teased her about “why” being her favorite word.
He’d also warned her they wouldn’t be able to
speak together often or freely here, not without raising Roger’s
suspicions. Something neither of them wanted to do. Roark, to keep
peace in the household, and Alina to keep from being locked up for
the next fortnight, or longer. The way she figured it, if The
Rover wasn’t setting sail for a fortnight and it took three to
six days to reach Sea Ridge, depending on the winds, and another
several days for her father to amass her ransom and then another
four to six days to sail back here, that was closer to a moon of
imprisonment for her. She sighed and folded her legs onto the bed,
curling into a ball and stretching her back in the opposite
direction. Either way, a fortnight or a moon, she was determined to
not give Roger a reason to keep her locked up in this room day and
night.
The bolt to the door scraped open and Peg
came in carrying a bundle she handed Alina. “Here’s a clean long
tunic, an apron, and a pair of woolen stockings,” she said. “It can
be plenty cold here though it be spring.”
“Thank you,” Alina said, not mentioning
compared to Sea Ridge, where there was still snow on the mountains,
or the icy winds whipping across the deck of The Rover, it
felt almost balmy here.
“Supper will be in a bit,” Peg said as Jenny
carried in a pitcher of water, a washing cloth, and a bar of soap.
“Clean up and one of us’ll come for you then.”
***
Roark sat at his usual seat to the right of
Donald and Leif, who sat at Roger’s right at the high table, with
Lynette and Gwyneth and Myrna, Donald’s wife, sitting to Roger’s
left. Alina was seated at one of the low tables with Peg, Jenny,
and Craig, Peg’s husband, and the other house servants. A second
low table held the laird’s six men at arms and their wives and
children, while the stable hands ate at tables in the kitchen along
with the cook staff.
As a princess, even one being held prisoner,
Alina should have been sitting at the high table. Certain Roger had
seated her with the servants as an insult as much as to hide her
identity, Roark was even more certain she was more comfortable
there than she would be sitting anywhere near Lynette, Gwyneth, or
Myrna, a sour-faced woman whose grudge against Alina’s family was
second only to Roger’s.
She’d been a young wife with an infant son
when Jerrik banished them from Sea Ridge, and had lost her son to
the same sickness that’d taken her mother-in-law and Roger and
Lynette’s younger son. She’d miscarried several babies after that,
leaving her, if not her husband, childless. Donald had at least six
blond-haired, grey-eyed by-blows he acknowledged living in the
villages surrounding North Shore Keep, though he only helped
support the mothers of his four sons and did nothing for the
mothers of his daughters. Or his wife. Theirs was as unhappy a
marriage as Roark had ever seen, for which Myrna blamed Alina’s
parents.
The kitchen servants brought out trays of
fresh baked ryes and aged cheeses and roast mutton with the last of
the winter roots and the first of the spring greens, welcome food
after four days of ship fare. Tucking into his meal, Roark was glad
to see Alina eating heartily and speaking with Peg and Nessa,
Gwyneth’s maidservant, a sweet-natured girl who generally bore
Gwyneth’s temperamental ways with a resigned complaisance.
“Brother,” Gwyneth said loudly to Leif in the
Northern tongue. “Tell us how you were able to capture the
princess.”
Roger clicked his teeth at his daughter, who
either forgot or didn’t care Alina’s true identity was supposed to
remain secret, while the servants who understood the Northern
language perked up.
“It was easy as it turned out,” Leif answered
in kind, making sure Alina would understand what he said. “I made
friends with her twin brother and got us invited to the spring
festival where Roark flirted with her and smooth-talked her into
taking him to a secluded area. We followed and waited until they
were so wrapped up in their lovemaking that we walked right up and
nabbed her.”
“Lovemaking?” Gwyneth asked, her blue eyes
wide. “The princess and Roark?”
“Aye, sister. If we hadn’t taken her when we
did, your betrothed would’ve been swiving her, no doubt.”
Gwyneth stared down her nose at Alina. “Did
you not know he was betrothed? To me?”
Roark furrowed his brows. Gwyneth couldn’t
have cared less about him as a man, or her betrothed. In fact, he’d
bet coin she was sweet on Munroe, the youngest of Roger’s
men-at-arms, and he on her.
“Well?” Gwyneth demanded.
“I, ah, I did know,” Alina said, her cheeks
flushing pink.
“Yet you thought it fine to make love to
him?”
Alina glanced helplessly at Roark, who could
do nothing but sit there with his jaw clamped tight.
“I was, we were both, quite drunk, my lady,”
Alina lied. She shrugged unconvincingly and Roark bit down on a
grin. She really was a terrible liar.
Gwyneth’s high-pitched laugh clawed its way
up Roark’s spine. “I would hope so,” she said, apparently buying
the lie. “A woman would have to be drunk to make love to such a
freckle-faced ginger willingly.” She looked at Roark and made a
disgusted shiver. “Ugh.”
As used to Gwyneth’s vitriol as Roark was, he
wasn’t used to seeing its effect on Alina, who sat back as if she’d
been slapped. She looked to Roark, her expression full of the same
sympathy she’d shown him during their talks about his betrothal to
the harpy while aboard the ship. He looked away quickly and
plastered a well-practiced mask of indifference on his face. “To
each his own,” he said.
“You want to swive the bitch?” Gwyneth
screeched in their language, and every person in the room jerked
their heads up. “Be my guest. Maybe the Northern whore can teach
you a few tricks to liven up our marriage bed.”
“Enough.” Roger slammed his fist down on the
table. “There will be no swiving of or with my hostage,” he said in
the Green Isles tongue. He glared from one end of the room to the
other. “By anyone. As a virgin she’s worth her weight in gold where
she’s going. Do I make myself clear?”
Where she was going? “You mean back to
her home?” Roark said.
“Of course,” Roger answered. He was, Roark
was beginning to understand, an accomplished liar.