Chapter 16
The Road Back
Riding away from Alina was like cutting out
his own heart with a dull, rusted spoon. Yet Roark was bound by his
word, and his love for her to do it. He’d helped get her free of
Roger and on her way home to her family, his atonement for having
helped bring her to Roger in the first place. He’d done what his
heart and his honor demanded. If Roger killed him for it, so be it.
His only regret would be never seeing her again. Never gazing into
her brilliant green eyes, never talking to her again. Never tasting
her sweet kiss or touching her warm, smooth skin. Never making love
with her.
He pulled his otter cloak closer around his
shoulders as a chill set into his bones, though it wasn’t a
particularly cold day. He glanced back toward the firth as the road
turned south, but the ship was already out of sight. Alina was out
of sight, but not his mind.
She would haunt him for the rest of his days
and nights. His own bittersweet ghost whose memory was already
dearer to him than life. If he was meant to die, then it would be
with her image in his mind, legs bare and hair blowing in the wind
as she raced her mare along the sea’s shore. Free.
“Don't look so hangdog,” Scott said over his
shoulder. “You’ll have plenty more to brood over than your princess
soon enough.”
Scott and Ross rode ahead of Roark with
Douglas and Todd behind him. As he’d predicted, Scott had already
paid Ned and his cohorts a copper each and sent them down the road,
where they’d likely drink and piss their three coppers’ worth of
ale away at the closest inn.
Roark had always gotten along with these four
men-at-arms. Better than Leif, who’d never hesitated to throw his
weight around. He’d sworn he wouldn’t try to run, and they’d taken
him at his word and let him ride unbound. Whether they tied him up
when they camped for the night remained to be seen. Either way,
he’d given his word and he intended to keep it.
“How’s the family taking Leif’s death?” he
asked.
“As you’d expect,” Scott answered. “His
mother is distraught, his aunt and uncle are angry, his sister is
using it as an excuse to be even more lazy and demanding, and his
father is…” Scott shook his head. “I’ve never seen the laird in
such a rage.”
Which was understandable, and Roark doubted
had abated in the time he and Alina had been on the run. Knowing
Roger and his penchant for holding grudges and seeking revenge, his
rage had grown white hot.
Roark edged Beasty up alongside Scott’s
horse. “What have you heard about my family?” he asked.
“Your father remains loyal to Roger,” Scott
told him. “Other than that, I haven’t heard.”
Which meant his brother would stand by Roger
too, and his mother was staying circumspect. Smart.
The road turned southeast and would be
turning more southerly tomorrow when it connected to the road
running along the coastal side of the Mounths. Roark had left Artur
on the far west side of the mountain range. He figured Artur’s hoof
had either healed by now, or he’d foundered. He chose to imagine
the stallion thriving and living free as king of the mountain
rather than having died a slow and painful death from sepsis.
His mind traveled from the mountain pass to
the cave. To his time there with Alina, cocooned in their own
little world, a world of love, laughter, and passion. A world he
couldn’t think of without his gut twisting into knots of yearning.
He shook his head and squared his shoulders. Better to think of
Alina onboard the Trade Wind, her face to the wind, tousling
her hair. He’d savor the memories of their time together in the
cave when he was alone.
He took in the grassy foothills dotted with
sheep and shaggy highland cows, the small fishing villages and
stone manor houses, and the roadside towns, yet all he saw in his
mind’s eye was Alina. Riding on the beach. Bent over her herbs, her
hands covered in soil, the look of surprise and recognition on her
face when he’d stepped out from behind Leif. Her look of betrayal
when she’d realized he was abducting her.
She may have forgiven him for his betrayal,
but Roger would never forgive him for switching his loyalties.
Roger thought they’d killed Leif, and Roark only had six or seven
days to figure out how to convince him otherwise. Which, knowing
Roger, would be difficult at best even with proof, and he had
none.
Day turned into night as his thoughts still
went round and round the same circle of events, and no solutions
presented themselves. At least making camp and seeing to Beasty and
Etain gave him something to do besides ride and fret. Unlike Ned
and his companions, Scott and his men shared their supper fairly,
and though they did tie him to a tree for the night, they cushioned
the rope around his wrists with strips of felt from Etain’s saddle
blanket, much as he had done for Alina on The Rover. Alina,
who would be sleeping in the hold of the Trade Wind, unbound
and uncuffed, and without Roark by her side.
He recalled the times she’d sworn she slept
better on the cold, hard ground or a stables floor with him than
she did in a soft, warm bed without him. He concentrated on sending
his thoughts across the land and over the sea to her. Thoughts of
calm, peace, and love.
He fell asleep thinking of her and he woke up
thinking of her. He thought of her all day as he rode, and all
night as he lay awake and eventually fell asleep and dreamt of her.
He was definitely thinking of her when he woke with his cock as
hard as forged iron and no sweet Alina to release him. His only
ease was knowing her ship would be out of the firth by now and on
its way across the North Sea.
Their third day of riding was much like the
first two, except they were heading almost due south now, and the
skies were threatening rain. The rain held off until dusk, and made
for a cold, wet, miserable night of fitful sleep spent huddled
under a canopy of trees that was as far from his and Alina’s cozy
cave as their little world had been from reality.
By morning they could start a fire, and they
all sat around it drying off and warming up while the beans they’d
soaked overnight cooked. By Roark’s reckoning, they were only three
to four days away from North Shore Keep. It was time to quit moping
and figure some things out.
“Are Munroe and Gwyneth still sneaking off
into the woods together?” he asked. “I’m not jealous,” he added
when no one answered. “Only curious. I care for Gwyneth about as
much as she cares for me. Which is not at all.” The men said
nothing, though the looks they exchanged spoke plenty. “What?” he
said. “Tell me.”
“They were,” Ross said. “Until Gwyneth caught
him sneaking off with Jenny.”
“Leif’s Jenny?”
“Aye,” Ross said. “They’ve been keeping
company almost since the day Leif was—”
“Killed,” Roark finished for him. He’d always
thought Jenny was mad for Leif, if not in love with him, so why
would she take to Munroe so quickly when the entire household knew
Munroe and Gwyneth were sweet on each other?
Gwyneth wasn’t someone you wanted as an
enemy, especially if you were a servant and she the daughter of the
laird. Unless… “Does Munroe know Jenny’s pregnant?”
All four men sat back.
“How’d you know?” Douglas, who was good
friends with Munroe, asked. “She didn’t tell Munroe until after
you’d run off with the princess.”
“Jenny’s pregnant with Leif’s child,” he told
them. “Alina heard her and her parents arguing about it in the
kitchens, right before she went to the stables and Leif tried to
rape her.”
The men exchanged another round of looks, and
Roark found it interesting not one of them had questioned his
accusations against Leif.
“Did Leif know?” Scott asked.
“He did,” Roark said. “That’s what the
argument was about. Leif had told Jenny he’d claim a boy bairn, but
if it was a girl, she was on her own.”
“Just like his ruttin’ uncle,” Scott
spat.
“That’s why Jenny went after that fool Munroe
so quick and sudden after Leif’s death,” Douglas exclaimed. “She
needed a father for her bairn.”
Roark let this sink in for a moment, then
asked, “Who found Leif’s body?”
“Craig did,” Scott answered.
“Jenny’s father,” Roark said, though they all
knew who he was. “Interesting.”
The men chewed on this for a bit.
“Can you tell me something?” Scott asked
Roark. “Will Alina keep her word? Will she keep her father from
wreaking vengeance on the North Shore?”
“Alina always keeps her word,” Roark assured
him.
Scott shook his head. “She didn’t keep her
word to stay and wait for her father to ransom her.”
“She meant to,” Roark told them, “and would
have, except we found out Roger had no intention of ransoming her,
or of ever letting her parents know what had become of her. He
meant for Murtaugh to sail her to the desert lands and sell her as
a slave, a pleasure woman, to whatever desert king would pay his
price in gold.”
“Why would Roger do that?” Ross asked.
“It would be his secret revenge against her
parents,” Roark explained. “Against her whole family, sending her
to suffer the same fate that had befallen her great-grandmother,
Oona the Swan.”
“Alina’s the great-granddaughter of Oona the
Swan?” all four men asked at once.
“Princess Alina is the daughter of Queen
Alyssa, who’s the daughter of Queen Sahar, who was the daughter of
Queen Oona. Which is why Laird Owen MacLeod took us in and gave us
shelter. She’s kin to him.”
“She does have the MacLeod eyes.” Todd spoke
for the first time.
Roark grinned. “You should hear her
sing.”
They finished their breakfast and were
breaking camp when the horses lifted their heads and pricked their
ears forward. Roger’s men drew their weapons while Roark grabbed a
heavy stick.
“Hello, the camp,” a man’s voice called from
the road. “It’s Niels and Grant, Laird Owen’s men. We come as
friends.”
Roger’s men looked to Roark, who relaxed his
stance as two men on horseback rode into the clearing.
“Is it Alina?” Roark asked as they
dismounted. “Is she all right?”
“The princess is fine as far as we know,”
Niels said, nodding to Roger’s men, whose stances had relaxed, if