SOMETHING IS AFOOT
You heard word?”
Rufus sat with Blanchard at the bench. It was dinner and he had just arrived at the castle. He broke bread, chewed and raised a brow at Blanchard.
“What word?”
“Word of the lady,” Blanchard said.
“No.”
Inside, Rufus was a patchwork of sadness, worry and elation. He was glad to be back, his nerves raw with the joyous possibility of seeing Amabel again. Yet he was also sad. She had lied to him. He did not think he would ever forget that. He had thought she felt as he did, and it was a lie. Not that he was going to blame her for that, he'd decided she felt that all on his own, without her ever making mention of that. It wasn't her fault he was wounded. However, it hurt.
I made a fool of myself. She didn't make a fool of me. I'm shameful.
How could he, a worldly, experienced man, let himself weave such tales for himself?
He was worried, too. He wanted to pretend he didn't care, but he had been expecting to see sign of her when they returned – at very least her white horse standing in the stall somewhere. However, he'd seen nothing. He turned to Blanchard, inquiring.
“What?”
His friend sighed. “She left the castle.”
“What?” Rufus felt the bannock fall out of his grasp onto his plate. He didn't move from where he sat. His blood had chilled in his veins – or so it seemed. His heart was hard and his heart beat stopped.
Blanchard frowned. “You didn't hear? All the men were saying. Her horse has gone and when they asked Will the chief groom, he said she'd gone.”
“No,” Rufus said again. “She can't have.”
Blanchard shrugged. “Who knows, eh?” His brow rose fractionally towards his hairline. The bandage was off now, the wound a raw, angry mark down his head, ending above his right ear.
“I'm telling you, she won't have gone,” Rufus said stubbornly. “She would have said.”
“Well,” Blanchard sighed. “You could find out.”
Rufus stiffened. “I would never have thought of that without your welcome advice,” he said cuttingly.
Blanchard whistled softly. “No need to stick knives in my skin, old friend,” he said. “Some bloke did that already. Ought to stick a sign on my head – it seems to be a favorite sport round here.”
Rufus grinned, even if a grim one. Trust Blanchard to be able to make him smile, even now.
“No need for that,” he said, jostling his friend's shoulder playfully. “I'll stop being so dreadful and take myself off.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find out more.”
Blanchard looked distressed and Rufus headed abruptly out. He didn't want anyone else telling him that what he was doing was stupid. He knew that part already. He had to at least assure himself the news was true.
She can't have gone. She would have let me know.
He chuckled. She would have no reason to let him know. He was not anything to do with her, not really.
“I'm a pillock.”
He sighed, recriminating himself all the way up the hallway as he pulled his cape around his shoulders, shivering in the sudden nightfall.
How could I have been so foolish. So blind? She would never truly hold any interest in a knight like me.
He headed through the dark corridor and up the stairs, stopping first on his floor to see if Seamus was about. When there was no reply from the man when he knocked at the door of his chamber, he headed on to the next level, to where he had taken Amabel that day when she had collapsed from the demands of the vision she'd had.
Don't remember that – don't think about it.
He clenched his jaw, blotting out the memories of her breasts, her lips, her kiss.
Up in the colonnade he turned right and right again. He found the chamber and stopped outside it. Knocked at the door.
“Hello?”
No answer.
He waited.
“Hello?” he tried again. This time, he thought he heard some movement on the other side, a faint whisper of motion as of someone standing from a chair or bed.
“Yes?”
The door had opened an inch and someone looked out through the gap. A thin-faced woman with wide brown eyes and brown curls just visible round the edges of the door, he recognized her as the maid who'd accompanied Amabel to the battle tent.
“Miss,” he said respectfully. “I'm here to ask after your mistress. She is well?”
“Yes,” the maid nodded. “She's most well.”
Rufus sighed. “Is she recovered from her exertions?” he reached a surreptitious hand to his head wound, which was healing much better, thanks to her own valuable tending.
“Yes, my lord.”
There was something hesitant, almost secretive, about the woman's responses and Rufus found himself wondering what it was.
“May I talk to her?” Rufus asked.
“My lord, alas,” the maid said. “No. I regret to tell you...she's gone.”
“Gone.” Rufus echoed the word, numbly. He couldn't believe it. It was true!
“She went out around four of the clock,” Glenna said. She was almost crying, Rufus noticed and he instinctively reached a hand to her shoulder to comfort her.
“What, Glenna?” he asked gently. “Please, tell me?”
“Oh, sir!” she sobbed. “She went out so late. I fear for her. She be trying to ride to Buccleigh – a morning's hard ride hence. She'll not make it before sunset.”
Rufus shook his head. “No, she won't.” He was already moving, his blood charged with the need to act, and fast.
“Where are you going?” Glenna called after him.
“I'm going to get her back.”
Before something happened.
He felt as if his heart had well and truly turned to ice when she said that. Of all the things! He knew Amabel. He had not taken her to be so completely ill thought out.
“How could she have done something so daft?” He shook his head, muttering to himself all the way down the hallway to the lower floor and his own bedchamber. “How could she take a risk like that? She must be insane!”
He was still muttering to himself when he reached the door. By then he had calmed down slightly and had realized that, if Amabel had done this, she must have fair reason. What though? Under what circumstance would she choose to risk the woods at night?
“If something here threatened her, by the devil I'll find who it was and I swear I'll wreak such...Seamus?” he called out, banging at the door.
“My lord?”
“Oh! Good. You're back. Can you let me in, please? And get packing. I'm going out.”
“At this hour?” The thin, handsome face of Seamus appeared round the edge of the door. His eyes were wide with surprise.
“No, in a fortnight hence, which is why I'm rousing you now to help me get ready,” he said dolefully. Seamus looked affronted and he sighed.
“Sorry, Seamus,” he said, reaching for his thick outer cloak. It was springtime but still cold out in the evenings. “I'm overwrought. Very.”
“I can see,” Seamus said, a saddle pack in his hands. He was already reaching onto the table, packing things he thought his master might need for the journey. A razor. A knife. A handkerchief. Cash.
“Thanks,” he said when Seamus passed the bag wordlessly across. “You got something clean I can wear in there?” he added with a sheepish look.
Seamus shook his head. “There's a fresh tunic here,” he said, opening a trunk and wordlessly passing it to Rufus. It was the brown wool one and Rufus regretted taking it – it was the best tunic he owned and it had so many memories of her woven into the strands by now. Nevertheless, he shrugged, packing it hastily.
“I'll be back on the morrow,” he promised, changing his boots to his tall, suede leather riding boots as he headed through the door. “If anyone comes with business for me, keep the papers on the desk.”
“I shall, milord.”
“Very good. Thank you, Seamus. And, Seamus?”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Keep an eye on the maid, Glenna? If there is news of my lady, I want to know on return.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Heart thudding in his chest, cloak swirling as he turned down the winding stairwell, still desperate to reach her before any harm did first, Rufus ran.
In the stables, he shouted to the stable boy on duty, a skinny youth who was half asleep, yawning, at his position by the second stall.
“Saddle a horse. A hunting horse. I need to go fast.”
“Yes, my lord.”
In a moment or two the boy was dexterously halfway through, though he chafed impatiently at the time it seemed to take. At any moment, aught could befall Amabel. It was already getting dark.
“Come on,” he hissed. “Hurry. No time to waste.”
“Here, my lord.” The boy gave him a concerned look, as if needing a hunting stallion, fast, at six of the clock at night, was a strange predilection.
“Thank you,” he called. He tossed a coin down to the boy and only realized as he shot off through the gate and down to the town that he may likely have given him a whole silver piece.
He sighed. At least one family would be happy this night. It could keep them in victuals for months!
He hoped he would be feeling happiness – or relief, at the very least – before dawn.
He had to find her.
It was darkening fast now and he was grateful he had chosen a hunting horse as he sped off, shooting through the nearly deserted streets and out again, heading to the countryside and, up ahead, the forest.
I need to get there soon.
Before it was too late.
In the forest, he had to make guesses. The place was unfamiliar to him and he regretted not having the sense to bring a guide with him. He knew where Buccleigh was – or roughly. It was north and west of Edinburgh. He just had to follow the northern and eastern tracks until he reached somewhere he wanted to get to. Like a main road.
From there it would be easy.
“I can't see where I'm going,” he said aloud. His horse snorted and stamped, footsteps oddly hollow in the chapel-like silence of the trees.
“I know,” he said, patting his horse's neck. “It's scary now.”
He shivered despite himself. The woods were no place for anyone alone. He could curse Amabel for impulsiveness as much as he wished. He had been as foolish as he said she was, heading off here unaccompanied on a minute's thought.
At least she knows where she is! I could get lost in here and never emerge again.
He sighed. It was almost light enough to see the tracks and he decided to rely on his horse's instinct. The horse probably knew the forest tracks better than any human. The fact that he was a hunting horse made it almost sure he'd ridden in these woodlands more times than anyone else did.
“Not too long now, eh?” he asked the horse as they took a right-hand turn, heading west on a route he guessed to be right.
The horse said nothing. Rufus held onto the reins as tightly as he could without spooking the horse, concentrating on his memories of Amabel and blotting out the rising terror that something had happened to her.
I remember her lips on mine, their yielding as I part them with my tongue.
The thought was arousing and, had he not been in the trees, on a borrowed horse, on a frosty night it would have doubtless had effect.
As it was, his loins burned and his breath caught in his lungs, heart thudding.
“Right,” he said to the horse. “We should go left here, shouldn't we?” he asked. “Or on straight.”
He thought about it. Left would likely take them too far north. The one to the right took them back the direction they'd come in. It was the straight path.
“I do hope that's right,” he said to himself aloud. It was close to being totally dark and he had to pray his horse knew where the path went, or could see it, for, from his own eyesight, it had vanished completely.
He heard a rustle in the bushes. He tensed.
Somewhere, a bird chatted sleepily with a friend and he relaxed. It was just a robin or some other forest creature! He was being jumpy.
I can't help it, though...place gives me the shivers it does.
He knew all too well that such places were the homes of desperate men. He would at very least lose his money and any weaponry he carried. Certainly, also his horse. Probably cloak and boots too.
And in this weather, without horse, cloak and boots, lost in the forest alone, I may as well be dead.
He shuddered. If he was in danger, he didn't want to think about how dangerous it was for Amabel.
“How could she?”
He tried to work up a righteous anger against her, swearing under his breath until he felt he was truly hopping mad. That at least warmed his blood and made it marginally easier to keep going. To keep trusting that the way ahead was right, that his horse knew it, and that the noises in the trees were birds, finding sleepy roosts.
He stared around him. The darkness was absolute and something rustled.
Up ahead, there was a lightening of the sky that suggested that somewhere to the front of both of them the trees were starting to thin out.
“Look,” he told his horse, patting his neck reassuringly. “I think the forest is thinning out.” He smiled. “Soon we'll be out,” he reassured the both of them.
His horse snorted. He heard something creak in the bushes and frowned.
“Hello?”
Nothing. Not a sound. Must have been a branch, he decided.
He carried on along the road. Heard the crack, crack to his left-hand side renewing itself.
“Who's there?” he shouted loudly. His horse snorted, affronted.
Then he heard the murmur of words and someone screaming.
The sound loosed all his worry, making it into furious action. He drew his sword.
Roaring like a wild man, like a desperate man, he plunged into the trees.
To find whoever it was that screamed and save them.