Chapter Seventeen
Father sent men out looking for Evan, no doubt believing it was best knowing where the danger lay than otherwise. Alan himself heard him give the order. The men were to check all the young master’s haunts. Not interfere with him, merely report back. For the young master’s safety, of course.
Alan did not know why Father continued trying to save face. All the servants knew what Evan was. Yet the grip of supposed-civility remained strong.
“I maun return to the stables,” he told his father. He could see Mother in the solar, weeping, the housekeeper trying to lend comfort.
His duty lay elsewhere.
He met Billy, who seemed to have taken up the post in his absence, at the stable door.
“The young master has gone missing,” he told the old man, and saw alarm flare in his rheumy eyes. “Ye ken wha’ that means. He may return here, try to finish wi’ Tempest.”
“’Twill no’ tak’ much. In my opinion, that horse will ne’er get up again.”
“The injuries are so severe as that?”
“’Tis no’ the injuries so much as the blow to his spirit.” Billy frowned. “The young mistress,” he jerked his head within, “does no’ agree. She swears she’ll get him up.”
The young mistress. Aye, so Alan supposed Annista was.
“Leave her to it, for now.”
“I can scarce do aught else. ’Tis no’ a young lady I would care to cross.”
Nay, indeed.
“Have ye had yer breakfast?” he asked the groom.
“Aye, long since.”
“Then see to your other chores, and leave her be, the while.”
Billy nodded, ducking back inside. An odd sort of silence fell.
Alan stood, arms crossed, back to the door, and wondered where his brother might be. Let his mind rove all the places. Like him, Evan had lived here all his life. Like him, he’d have found spots, hidey holes.
Did he have a woman somewhere? Doubtful, or they’d have heard of it. Doubtful also that he’d gone to the village. If he had done, the men would soon know.
Could he face off successfully against his brother, as he’d assured Annista, if Evan came storming back here? Doubtful also. Only, he could not let himself admit it.
He needed to protect the stallion inside. He needed to protect the woman inside. No matter what it cost him.
The certainty of that flowed through him. He might well have failed in the past, through avoidance. May have failed to protect poor Robena.
He could not fail again.
The sun rose high in a milky sky that promised rain later on. The men Father had sent out did not return. Women crept out from the house on various errands and stared at the stable. One of them might have been Annista’s little maid, but she quickly withdrew.
Eventually Alan tiptoed into the stable past Chieftain, who danced a little, picking up on the tension in the air, and on to peer over the half door of Tempest’s stall.
The big stallion was still down. Annista was also, in a pool of amber-colored skirts, her hand on the horse’s neck, her head bent over him.
Hearing the scrape of Alan’s boot, she looked up and he saw her face was streaked with dirt and tears.
Their gazes met and held for what seemed an eternity.
****
Annista expected to see Billy when she glanced up. The aged groom had been by several times, unable quite to keep away. She did not blame him. Herself, she was unable to leave her post.
When she saw Alan standing there, she underwent a swift change of feelings. Swiped at her cheeks. She did not want Alan to see she’d been weeping, lest he think she shed tears out of weakness. These were shed in anger.
It did not occur to her it might be Evan returned, till she glimpsed the size of him. The head of ruffled dark hair reassured her, if only momentarily.
“Is he coming?” she started up in alarm. “Evan?”
“Nay. He’s no’ been found yet.”
She subsided back onto her knees, which felt numb. How long had she been kneeling here? She didn’t know but had the absurd idea that if she rose and left, Tempest would give up and die.
“Come awa’ out o’ there for the time,” Alan suggested as if he heard her thoughts. “Naught will happen. There are others about.”
“Nay, I maun be here if—if he does return.”
“Ye think ye could hold him off?”
“I will.” She felt utterly convinced of it.
“Men are out looking for him. We’ll know it, if he’s found.”
“Aye.”
“Rest yoursel’ a while.”
Annista ignored that and narrowed her eyes at him. He had his arms—the shirt sleeves rolled above the elbow—resting atop the half door, and he gazed at her searchingly over them. With his hair mussed, he looked like any common workman or laborer.
A fine and handsome one.
Aye, so, her husband was a handsome man. One she might well begin to admire—were he not her husband.
She slanted a look up at him, remembering again how he’d seized Evan up in that chamber, hauled him out of the bed. Some unnamed emotion stirred within her.
“Wha’ will Earl Kallan do wi’ Evan if he finds him?” she asked. “Will he be able to rein him?”
Alan considered this. She could not see his eyes in the dim light, but she felt him thinking.
“Nay,” he admitted at last. “I doubt it. He never has, in the past.”
“Wha’ good, then? We shall need to be constantly on guard.” Even as she spoke the militant words, she stroked the stallion’s neck in gentle comfort.
“Tempest will heal, Annista. He’s a half-wild horse wi’ a lot o’ strength.”
“And if Evan comes back, still angry, to attack him once more?”
“If he’s angry wi’ anyone, ’twill be me.”
“Aye, so.” If Evan remembered what had happened up in the bedchamber. Did she want to see her husband and Evan MacKallan in an out-and-out battle?
Nay.
“Leave the horse,” Alan urged again. “He is strong, as I say.”
“He is, aye. And no doubt harder to cow than a gentle young woman far from her home for the first time. And yet, ye see how he’s been left. Even the strong ha’ a breaking point.”
Alan’s gaze fell to Tempest, acknowledging perhaps that aye, the horse lay broken. And that, if anything, would keep him from rising.
Alan heaved a sigh. “Ye will come awa’ when ye are ready.”
“I will.”
He removed himself from the half door and drifted away like a shadow. To stand guard or return to the house, Annista could not tell.
****
Annista remained at her post all that day, though at one point even Alan’s mother came out to urge her away. She left briefly, presumably to relieve herself and to gobble down a swift meal out in the stable proper, only to return after.
Alan brought her a stool and a blanket, but she ignored both and continued to sit in the straw beside her patient. She and Billy checked Tempest’s wounds often.
Evan was not found, nor did he return.
In the afternoon, Alan replaced himself at his post with two footmen, saddled Chieftain with his own hands, and went out looking. He scoured the woodland, all the off-trail places he and Chieftain knew and rode farther north to the boundary of their lands. Not so much as a glimpse of a red head.
At last hunger, concern for Annista, and the setting sun drove him home, hoping that mayhap in his absence, Evan had returned.
A chilling thought, that.
He pondered what might happen if Annista tried to stand off against Evan in the stable—which she would, to protect her charge—and quickened Chieftain’s pace. It could only end badly.
But all remained quiet when he reached home. The sun had near set, and lanterns threw soft light from the stable. The searchers Father sent out had returned with news only of a few sightings that had not proved fruitful.
Alan, Father, and Mother met in the great hall and huddled together, discussing what to do. The evening had turned chill, and the fire felt good but could not lift their growing desperation.
“Where could he be?” Mother fretted. “Might he have suffered an accident, that he has no’ returned?”
Alan looked at her. Did she dread such an outcome? Did she still favor her firstborn son? Even she must acknowledge what Evan had become.
Father stirred uneasily. “Had he suffered a fall, our men would surely ha’ found him.”
“Could he ha’ left the estate?”
“I suppose so. But to go where? And how far might he get on foot?” Father looked at Alan. “Ye checked all his haunts?”
Alan nodded.
“Then all we can do is keep close watch the night. Son, go and persuade your wife fro’ the stable. She canna spend the night there.”
Alan grimaced. “If she will no’ leave?”
“Carry her if ye must. By God, she is but a woman.”
She was not, Alan reflected. No more than Evan was but a man.
He walked out slowly across the dark yard. The footman stationed at the stable door—Seumas—gave him a nod as he went in.
Chieftain, well tired out by their activity, dozed in his box. The only light came from Tempest’s stall farther down. Both occupants of the box still languished in the straw—a sight that made Alan’s heart sink.
“Nay better?” he asked.
Annista’s head jerked up when he spoke. In the soft light, her face appeared pale and wan.
“Billy thinks if he does no’ get up by morning, he will no’ get up at all.”
Alan sighed. He could feel her heartache.
“Come awa’, then. There is naught more ye can do.”
“I will no’ leave him to die alone.”
She was thinking of her sister, Alan knew as if she’d stated it aloud. If he suffered guilt over Robena’s death, so did she, though what could she have done to prevent it?
He made a swift decision. “I will stay wi’ ye then.”
She gave him a long look. But she did not protest when he moved into the box and sat beside her in the straw.