Chapter 8 #2
saddle blankets together and tied them up with a lead rope and then
he filled a small sack with several handfuls of oats and stuffed it
into Etain’s saddlebag. He had his waist blade and spyglass on him,
and his short blade was sheathed and tied to Artur’s saddle, as was
his waterskin.
Roark stripped Leif of his waist belt and
blade and the small dagger he kept in his boot and handed them to
Alina, who strapped the belt and blade around her waist and tucked
the dagger into her boot. If all went well, they only had to make
his family home of Thorn Bush Keep half a day’s ride from here. If
not, well, they’d deal with things as they came.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Almost.” She went into the brooding pen and
gave Ash and Smokey each a hug and a kiss on the nose. “Be well,
boys,” she told them. Swiping a tear from her cheek, she closed the
gate behind her and led Etain out of the stables.
Roark shut the door behind them, whistled for
Artur, who was grazing on a patch of grass, and led him to the back
side of the stables, where Alina was waiting on Etain. He tied the
bedroll to Artur’s saddle, swung up into it, and turned the
stallion’s head north.
They rode hard and fast, staying off the road
and avoiding the villages and farmsteads as they made their way
northwest along the Long River, the woods growing thicker and the
paths narrower the closer they got to Thorn Bush Keep. They spoke
little during their flight, and only out of necessity when they
did, concentrating on where they were going and getting there as
quickly as possible without being seen or injured.
Although Roark had told Alina his family
would protect him if he helped her escape, it was more to get her
to accept his help than believing it to be true. That was before
he’d beaten Leif to a bloody pulp.
It’d been ten years since he’d lived with his
family, and he and his father had never been close. While he didn’t
think his father would turn him and Alina over to Roger or his men,
he wasn’t willing to bet their lives on it.
Dusk was falling when they made the keep’s
southern border and Roark led them deeper into the western woods.
Half a league in, they rode up to a small cottage nestled in a glen
and Roark pulled their horses up at the clearing’s edge, their
appearance heralded by the baying of hounds.
“What is this place?” Alina asked, sidling
Etain closer to Artur.
“The gamekeeper’s house,” he said as a man
stepped out of the front door, a huge, rough-coated coursing hound
at each hip and an arrow set to fly at the bow in his hands.
“Logan,” Roark called out. “It’s me, Roark.”
Logan lowered his bow and arrow, commanded
the dogs to stay, and stepped forward with a big grin on his face.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “If it isna himself.” He glanced around
out of habit, and seeing nothing or nobody else, waved them over.
“Come on down, lad,” he said and eyed Alina. “You too, lassie.”
Roark dismounted and went to Alina, not that
she needed his help, but he liked the feel of her slim waist in his
hands as he guided her to the ground. She leaned into him as he
took the reins of both horses into one hand and tucked her under
his shoulder with the other.
“Alina, this is Logan. Logan, this is
Princess Alina.”
“Princess?” Logan’s brows rose and he took in
her long tunic with Leif’s belt double looped around her waist with
the blade in its sheath. He took in her and Roark’s more than
disheveled appearances, the saddle blankets rolled up and tied off
on Artur’s saddle. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, laddie,” he
said to Roark. “But why are you here and not at the manor
house?”
“It’s a verra long story, my friend,” Roark
said. “One I look forward to telling you over a cup of ale or five.
First though, do you have any fodder for our horses and a place
they can’t be easily seen?”
***
“Well now,” Logan said as he stood from the
table after listening to Roark tell him the gist of how he and
Alina had come to be on his doorstep. “It’s a good thing I’ve a
stag dressed and ready for the manor house. I was gunna take it
over on the morrow, but think I’ll be taking it over tonight
instead.” A handsome, middle-aged man with curly brown hair, sharp
eyes, and the lean, well-muscled body of an outdoorsman, he touched
the side of his nose and grinned. “In case a certain, arrogant
laird or his men show up looking for you and your lady friend.”
“Thank you,” Roark said as Alina soaked the
juices of her second bowl of venison stew up with her third piece
of bread. “I’m sorry to put you in the middle of all this. You were
the only person I knew I could trust.”
“Other than your lady mother, of course. Who
I’ll be telling you’re here.”
“Of course.” Roark stood as Logan put on his
cloak and cap and went to the door.
“Flossie and Courser’ll let you know if
anyone’s coming besides me,” Logan said, giving the two hounds
Alina had been sharing pieces of bread with a hand motion that had
them both sitting at alert. He tipped his cap to Alina. “Throw the
bolt behind me,” he told Roark.
Alina washed their dirty bowls in the bucket,
the hounds at her side, and then she sat down on the blanket Roark
had laid out next to the hearth’s fire. She yawned and patted the
blanket beside her. “Tell me about Logan, and why you trust him
more than your own father.”
“Caught that, did you?” Roark asked as he sat
down beside her.
Alina nestled into Roark, and he wrapped an
arm around her shoulder and tucked her in close.
“Thorn Bush Keep is held through my mother’s
line,” he said. “She grew up here, as did Logan. My mother,
Brianna, was an only child, and Logan was the child of the
gamekeeper and his wife. As children, they were allowed to play and
explore the woods together, but when my mother came of age, she was
married off to my father, Ronan MacInnes, who, like me, is the
second son of a laird. Their marriage was, and is, a marriage of
politics and alliances between clans, much as mine to Gwyneth was
meant to be.”
“They were in love, your mother and
Logan?”
Roark kissed his perceptive little owl’s
forehead. “They are still, I believe, though neither one of them
has or would ever act against my mother’s marriage vows. As far as
I know.”
“So why?”
“Why does Logan stay?” Roark said with a wry
half-grin. “He stays to watch over her. To be her friend and
protector, as he was mine for a while.”
Alina tilted her head and looked into Roark’s
eyes. She traced a finger along the line of his clamped jaw to his
chin. “What did he protect you from?”
“My father,” Roark said on an exhale. “He
never beat me or anything like that. It was more that he had his
first-born son, his golden boy, Ryan, and so I was never much of a
consideration for him until I became of use to send to Roger and
all that brought with it.”
Alina laid her hand on Roark’s cheek. “I’m
sorry,” she said. “To not know a father’s love.” She dropped her
hand and held his gaze. “What about your mother?”
Roark smiled. “My mother’s love made up for
the lack of my father’s my whole life.”
“Are you much alike?”
“My sister, Rowena, and I both look like our
mother’s side of the family, red-haired and freckled. My brother,
Ryan, could be our father’s twin in looks and manner. Tall and lean
with brown hair, unblemished skin, and giant sticks up their
arses.”
Alina laughed.
“Logan says that looking into my eyes is like
looking into my mother’s, which is likely why he let a bothersome
lad follow him around day in and day out from the time I was eight
’til the day I left for North Shore Keep at ten and two.”
Alina twined her fingers through Roark’s and
laid her head on his chest. “I cannot imagine how it would feel to
be taken from your family at such a young age and made to live
amongst that pit of adders.”
“I learned how to survive it pretty quickly,”
he said, touched yet not surprised Alina, out of all his so-called
friends and family, understood and sympathized with him. “Luckily,
Logan had already taught me how to be patient on the hunt, how to
watch and study prey and predator, to make myself seem harmless or
threatening, depending on the situation. To know when to strike or
when to remain hidden, or even,” he gave her shoulder a nudge,
“when to flee.”
“Because of me,” she said. “To protect
me.”
“Ach, Ali girl,” he murmured into her hair.
“Don’t you know I’d give my life for yours, and gladly.”
“I do,” she whispered roughly.
The dog’s low woofs and a soft persistent
knocking roused Roark from the little cocoon he and Alina formed
before the fire.
“Logan?” he said through the closed door,
short sword in hand.
“Aye, lad, open the door.”
By the moon’s position, it was late into the
night, and by Logan’s bright eyes, he had much to tell. Roark
poured them all cups of ale while Logan, always a man of sense and
order, hung his cloak and cap on their pegs by the door. The three
of them sat at the table, the dogs at Alina’s feet, and Logan took
a long draught of ale and set his cup down.
“Donald and two of the laird’s men showed up
at the manor house not long after I did,” he told them.
“They wasted no time coming after us then,”
Roark said. He looked at Alina. “You can wager coin on Leif having
told them you and I set a trap for him.”
Logan shook his head. “It’s worse than that,
lad. Leif is dead.”
“What?” Roark and Alina said at the same
time. “How?”
“A scythe to the chest.”
“Damnation.” Roark shot up and paced from the
table to the hearth fire and back again. “He was alive when we left
him,” he said, trying to make sense of what could’ve happened. “He
was tied, gagged, and unconscious, but he was alive with a strong
pulse and steady heartbeat. We checked twice.” He held up two
fingers. “I wanted to slit the cur’s throat, but Alina stopped me.
She said it would only make things worse, that I, we, could be
hanged for murder. Ah, fuck.” He looked to Alina, whose eyes were
big and round in her pale face, and swallowed past the fist-size
stone in his throat. “They’ll think we did it. They’ll charge us
with Leif’s murder.” He opened his arms to Alina, and she flew into