A WORRYING SITUATION
We made it!” Amabel called back. With her loose hair flowing in the breeze of the ride, her white cheeks suffused with warmth and her grin lighting her face, she was so breathtaking Rufus felt as if a spear pierced him. He smiled.
“Good! Where now?” he said. His voice was rough and he coughed, marveling at the effect she had on him.
I can't go near her without thinking of things I shouldn't be thinking of.
“Right!” Amabel called back, turning away. He was behind her and he admired her posture, straight and stiff, clearly used to riding. He sighed. She was so beautiful and had quite captured his heart.
I am in love with her. I can almost not believe she feels the same.
He couldn't help the feeling of wonder that suffused his chest, a bruised delight. Thoughts of her were so strong they were almost painful.
And I cannot stop looking at her.
His eyes were as besotted as the rest of him, lingering on her narrow waist, her wide hips. Her hair.
“Brogan!” he heard her call out. He let out a sigh of relief. Therefore, the boy had made it. He had dealt with their assailant swiftly, and then left Brogan in the path alone, heading off to find her.
“Brogan?”
He leaned forward, sending his horse behind her. He saw his new squire grinning up at his lady as if she was the sunrise in Paradise.
Now there's an unforeseen difficulty. He chuckled. He hadn't expected his poor squire would one day be as besotted with his woman as he himself.
She dropped her reins and slid out of the saddle easily, making him draw breath at her consummate grace.
She's as lovely riding as she is walking, as sitting in the palace at the dinner.
He had never seen a woman like her before. A true lady. As beautiful covered in stains in the sickroom as she was at a masque.
“Brogan?” she said. “What news?”
“Found out a lot, mistress,” he said cheerfully. “Yon fellow has a swing on him like you wouldn't have seen afore.” He grinned at Rufus, who raised a brow sardonically. “He finished the man,” he explained succinctly.
“And you had a good look at the corpse?” Rufus asked.
Amabel gave him a look of disgust and he grinned, shrugging.
“Someone has to,” he continued. “We need to find out who he is. What he's doing here. Blighter tried to kill us,” he added with a sudden stab of anger.
Amabel sighed. “He did. Though I reckon he was just a harmless vagabond.”
“He was, milady,” Brogan said, gaping at her in awe as if she had just foretold his future.
Just you wait until she does, youth. Rufus chuckled. Then let's see how surprised you look. He smiled. It seemed there wasn't end to her surprises. She surprised him with something new each day.
“So what else was there to learn?” Amabel was asking him thoughtfully.
“Not a lot,” the boy said with a grin and a lift of one shoulder, as if to suggest this was all expected. “He was carrying sixpence, though. And I found this.” He drew out a pewter object. Rufus took it. He stared.
“Is this what it looks like?” he said to Amabel. She went even paler, eyes stark in her white-skinned face.
“The clan sign of the duke,” she said. “He's of Clan McDonahue.”
Brogan stared at her. “By! So he is.”
Rufus almost dropped the brooch he held into the leaves in shock. He stared at it, the hawk's head somehow tainted now. He passed it wordlessly to Brogan.
“Keep it,” he said. “But put it somewhere safe. We'll need that,” he added.
“We must show my father,” Amabel agreed firmly.
“Yes,” Rufus nodded. “We must.”
“We must hurry,” Amabel said, voicing his own thoughts as he went hurriedly to his horse.
“Yes. We must. Brogan?”
“Yes, milord?”
“Put the brooch in my saddle pack. No, actually. Lady Amabel?”
“Yes, sir?” she looked at him, lips slightly apart. He felt his loins swell with wanting. He wished he could push his tongue into that gap, sample her tastiness. However, he couldn't. They had to hurry. Brogan was staring at him again. He sighed.
“I think you should have it,” he decided, letting out his breath in a long sigh.
“But, sir,” Amabel countered. “We'll go together...”
“No,” he said. He looked at his hands, feeling wretched. “I should stay away. Best if you meet your father alone. Don't want me along. Besides,” he added with a raised brow in the direction of Brogan, “he and I have things to do. We'll be better use to each other if we're in the town. We will,” he added, trying to convince himself more than her.
Amabel looked confused a moment and he wished again that he could hold her to him and wet her face with his lips. Nevertheless, he couldn't. Her expression lightened. “I think you're right,” she said tightly.
He heard the tension in her voice and wanted to weep. He was amazed that she seemed as reluctant as he was himself to separate now. Still, it made more sense for them to part here. He sighed.
“We'll get to the gate together. Then you can go in, and we'll go round to the traders' gateway. Round the back. We can be ironmongers or something, eh?” he asked the boy. He chuckled.
“We can be message riders more like, sir,” he said candidly. “We don't got anything to trade.”
Rufus rolled his eyes heavenward. “Oh, for...very well. If you say so, we are...”
“Not messengers.” Amabel spoke loudly. He stared at her.
“What..?” he asked softly.
“No message carriers,” she said firmly. “Choose another identity. I think I know what's happening here. And if I turn out to be right, the last thing you want to be known as is men with word from the capital. Trust me.”
Rufus felt his eyes widen in surprise, but he nodded. “Yes, milady.”
Amabel sighed. “I hope we find out more,” she added softly. “I might be wrong but...be careful?”
Rufus felt his heart ache. “I will,” he said softly. “You have my word.”
She smiled at him.
“Well, then,” she said. “Now we have some idea of what's chasing us, we'd better ride.” she grinned, a grin that fizzed with tension and made his spine shiver. “If we don't want whoever it is to catch us.”
He saw she was smiling, that smile that said she was as drunk on the danger as he himself. He felt his heart beat faster, senses quickening. He felt, he thought, as a hunting hound must feel, the moment the hunt starts. Alert, eager. Waiting for something.
Amabel swung up on the stirrup and turned her horse. Together, they all rode east. Heading for her father's ancestral hall and information.
As they rode, Rufus found his nerves fraying with concerns. What would happen when they reached her family's hall? She would be taken in, united with her father. Then what? Would he rebuke her, send her off to marry this man who, for all they knew, would have them killed out here in the woods? Would he be angry with her for her time alone with Rufus? Would he forbid them to ever meet up?
If she rides through that archway, she might not return.
He closed his eyes. He didn't want to think of that. They had known each other two weeks, or thereabouts, but already it felt to him as if the sun would cease to shine, were she taken.
“Come on, fool,” he whispered to himself. He was angry. How could he let himself be like this? He had to surrender her to her family's care. Anything else was secondary.
“Sir?” Brogan asked. Rufus clenched his fingers on the reins, a stab of irritation passing through him.
“Nothing, Brogan,” he said hoarsely. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Oh.” Brogan sounded surprised, as if the concept was utterly foreign. Then he sighed. Rufus felt him relax where he sat behind him, holding onto the saddle with both hands. “Well, that's fine, then. At least one of us is thinkin', sir. I'm just clingin' on for dear life here. Trying not tae fall.”
Rufus didn't want to be amused but he couldn't help laughing. “Hang on tight, then,” he said with a laugh. “We're going uphill awhile.”
“Wonderful,” Brogan countered glumly. “Just what I like. Me bollocks already feel like as they're sawn in half. A bit more jarring and I'll be laid out in agony, sir. So's you ken.”
Rufus laughed again. “Brogan?” he said.
“What, sir?”
“Remind me not to tell you about my plans. I see you'll always have something to complain of.”
“Always, sir,” Brogan agreed. “Allus complainin', so I am. Me granddad used to say me tongue could wind all the clocks in Edinburgh. Never seen one meself...not close to, like. So how that's s'posed to work, I've no idea. Ever seen one, sir?”
“What?”
“A clock, sir. Those things as tell the time.” Brogan said succinctly.
Rufus snorted. “Those things. Seen one once,” he said. “Though that was far away, in Constantinople.”
“Where's that?”
“Across the sea,” Brogan explained. “Past Rome. Past France. Out to the shores of the Ottoman lands.”
He heard the boy draw in a long breath. “By! That's far, I reckon.” Rufus smiled, pleased that he had managed to temporarily surprise him. He might hold his silence long enough for him to think. It seemed to work, for the youth stayed quiet for quite some time.
“You went to France?” Amabel. Rufus blinked. He hadn't realized she had moved alongside.
“I did, once,” Rufus agreed softly. “For the knightly tuition. They have the grand hospitals of all the orders there. I was there with our grand master.”
“Oh?” Amabel was looking at him with those bright blue eyes on him. He felt his heart lift as he saw her evident interest.
Biting back his desire to embellish, he told her the facts only. “I joined the order as a lad of fourteen,” he explained. “Reckoned I'd had enough of my father by then. Ran away and acted as a squire to a fellow called Sir Angus Blainford. Stayed with him in France awhile. Then went to Rome. Then after being admitted to the order, headed to the Holy Land. Stayed there a while.”
“You have seen Jerusalem.”
“I've been in Jerusalem,” he agreed. “Hot. Dry. Indescribably sacred.”
Amabel was staring at him with big eyes. “Oh, how wonderful,” she whispered. “I would love to travel far one day. What a remarkable life you've had.”
He chuckled. “Don't seem all that remarkable to me.” He smiled. “I suppose that's 'cos I saw all the wild misjudgments and errors I made along the way. You'd have laughed.”
“No,” she smiled. “Try me.”
He chuckled. “Trust me. You will laugh at my tales of knightship. And my misadventures.”
“Tell me one?” Amabel asked inquisitively.
He laughed. Told her the story of how he'd been in a city at the time that it was attacked and, as he ran for his sword, he'd got his feet caught in his scabbard that fell down, having been badly fastened. He'd tripped and sprawled, and almost risked the ultimate indignity of his trews coming down.
“So there I was,” he chuckled. “Scabbard on my feet, pants falling off, flat on my belly.” He was breathless with laughter and Amabel was giggling helplessly. “I was gripping my sword and shouting out all sorts of nonsense. I don't know why. Hoping to threaten people, I reckon. Though if anyone had found me then, the worst I could have done was make them laugh so hard they ran out of breath and died coughing.”
They were all helpless with giggles, he most of all, recalling the scene, when they came to the rise of a summit.
“Gate's in those trees,” Amabel confirmed informatively as he looked with a question. Her voice was tight and it sounded as if she spoke around a lump that had formed, quite suddenly, in her throat. Rufus nodded, swallowing and feeling a similar lump had formed in his.
“We'll go as far as the gate, then,” he said hoarsely.
He looked at her and she looked back. Her eyes, he noticed with some amazement, were misty with tears.
“I'll see you soon,” he murmured.
She swallowed hard and nodded. “I'll see you soon.” Her voice was tight with tears.
He smiled and blinked rapidly. She smiled back, nodding breathlessly.
Together they rode out of the clearing. There they stopped. He and Brogan went right, and she went straight ahead. As they rode, Rufus watched over his shoulder, letting the slip of a figure on the horse get smaller and smaller in his vision until they together, figure and horse, trotting, disappeared from sight.