SOMETHING UTTERLY UNEXPECTED
“I am well, Mother – truly I am.”
Rubina smiled into her mother's concerned face. She had as yet told no one what she'd seen. Camden, she trusted, would know best how to handle information of such an important strategic nature. She didn't wish to burden anyone else with it, or to let panic sear through those she loved. Her mother was concerned enough without adding to her concern.
“I know, my dear,” Lady Amabel said. “But you must be careful – you have a delicate constitution. I don't want you over-exerting yourself.”
Rubina bit her lip and nodded. “Yes, Mama.”
At that moment, someone appeared in the door of the bedchamber. They both looked up.
“Hello? Oh! Marguerite!” Rubina smiled at her friend enthusiastically. “What brings you here?”
“Well, Jessamine and the other ladies were playing at quoits in the arbor. We wished to know if you'll join us?” Marguerite said hopefully. “You know you have the best aim among us – it makes for more enjoyable competition.”
Rubina smiled. She suspected her friend thought it would be good for her to get outside and into friendly company. She also suspected she was right. She smiled up at her mother's concerned face.
“I'll be fine, Mama. I am sure Marguerite will keep an eye on me. Won't you, my dear?”
“Indeed! We intend to. We'll all be trying to best your score.”
Rubina grinned at her friend, who shot her a sharp-edged smile. She did look like she was looking forward to the competition.
“Well, then,” her mother said, looking from one to the other of them with a gentle smile. “By all means. Off you go. I shall see you at dinner, I trust?”
Rubina giggled. “Of course, Mama.”
She lifted her shawl from the dressing table stool, linked her arm with Marguerite's, and hurried down the stairs, feeling her spirits lift as they went into the fresh air.
“I have news,” Marguerite grinned.
“Oh?” Rubina asked, frowning. “What news is that?”
“Of Sean, of course!” Marguerite said with a grin that positively crackled with excitement. “He...well...he's courting me!”
Rubina frowned. “Oh?”
“Not that I am in earnest – not yet!” Rubina's friend added with an attempt at careless nonchalance. “I shouldn't be in earnest. Not really.”
“Well...” Rubina began, frowning, “you could trust that...”
A shrill yell of enjoyment cut across any further comment. “Rubina! Good! Just as Melodia's team is winning.”
Rubina smiled at her friend Jessamine, her long red hair loosed and flowing around her like a pale red flag. She had a quoit in her hand and was gesturing with it at the other team of ladies, led by a blonde-haired countrywoman of Marguerite.
“Well, then,” Rubina nodded. “Let's see if we can set the score.”
They all giggled. She found herself at the center of a group of scented, smiling ladies all dressed in velvet and silk and brocade, all watching the opposing team with interest. She heaved a sigh and focused on the post, readying for her turn.
“Alors!”
Marguerite, on the opposing team, grinned dolefully as her countrywoman threw a particularly tricky shot and missed. Rubina swallowed as Jessamine stepped back for her.
“Your turn.”
She took the cool metal quoit in her hand and let her arm move back in preparation for the throw. She held her breath. Then she let it fly.
The opposing team groaned as Rubina's quoit landed over the post, joining three others that had already encircled it. Rubina blinked in surprise. She had not known her own arm was as strong as that. Her team cheered excitedly and the others formed up behind the French girl who now looked resolute with determination.
She cast and the courtyard resounded with a clang of metal on metal as she, too, hit the post. Rubina bit her lip.
“Now from two paces further back,” Melodia called firmly. Rubina nodded, drawing a deep breath. She could see two knights who had come out with interest to watch the match and she noticed the Frenchwoman give them a sidelong glance, fanning herself lightly. She realized there was more than friendly rivalry between the two factions of ladies, here: Melodia wanted to impress. She swallowed hard.
“I'll move back,” Jessamine said from behind her shoulder. Rubina nodded and stepped back two paces, then drew back her arm.
The quoit flew. It missed the post, bounced in the cobbled yard and set off down the slope toward the gate. One of the knights stood hesitantly to go after it, but Rubina was already running.
It's better to break the tension awhile.
Being the lead thrower in this game was demanding. Not because of the complexity – it was a straightforward goal and the rules were simple – but the emotional pressure. Jessamine was Rubina's best friend beside Marguerite. Yet, much as she wanted her team to win, Rubina couldn't help but root for the French girl who was so eager to impress her heart's interest.
I just don't know what to do.
She wasn't thinking about the dangers, and so when the quoit ran out of the gate and rolled a little down the path toward the woods, she simply ran after it. It hit the bottom of the slope and stopped.
Rubina ran lightly down the path and bent to pick it up. Which was when the arrow whirred out of the woods and pinned her cloak to the grassy slope.
“Help!” she screamed aloud.
She tried to remove the arrow, but it was pinioned fast. She heard running feet and something, forceful and hard, struck her on the back of the head and the world was silent.
* * *
The steady rise and fall was what first seeped through to Rubina's mind. She first thought of a boat – like the barge she had been on once down the Forth, with her mother at her side. However the sounds were wrong. No water, no rowers, no slap of oars. She breathed in, and smelled leather and horses and, distantly, perspiration.
Not a boat, then.
Her head was aching. She was tired. So tired. Where was she?
Memory was elusive, slipping out of her grasp. Castles, quoits, and forest. She drew in a shaky breath, remembering fear. She opened her eyes.
Darkness filled her vision. It resolved, as she blinked hard, into coarse wool fabric, dyed rich brown. She was leaning against it and could smell the lanolin and feel the itchy warmth of it against her face. She sat up, moaning.
Words. A stream of them that meant nothing to Rubina poured over her. She opened her mouth to scream as a face came into focus. Long, gaunt and dark-haired, straggle-bearded and hard-eyed, the face was frightening.
The man reached over and covered her mouth with his hand, stifling her scream. She tried to fight him but he laughed and slapped her, and she heard him say something and then she was silent.
Cheek stinging, too scared to move, Rubina looked around and tried to make sense of what was happening to her. She was on horseback – the sway and rise of motion was that of a horse, walking slowly. She could smell horses and hear hoof beats. Whoever was sitting before her, riding the horse, was surrounded by perhaps five men. She could see one – the cruel one who'd hit her.
They were in the woods. The shade was dappled and they passed through patches of light and shade. She could smell leaf mold and see it, when she opened her eyes, there, far below the hoofs of her horse.
Her mind fed her memories, slowly. Her friends. The woods. Capture.
She had been captured.
Suddenly, it all made sense. The hostility, the danger, the inability to communicate. These men are English!
That was why she hadn't understood them. She had been expecting Scots, and her mind was unprepared for the rapid assault of an alien tongue. She closed her eyes, trying to recall some words of English that she knew – as the daughter of a duke, she had learned it as a child, in case she should ever be called on to marry as part of a treaty or agreement.
“Where am I?” she said, enunciating each word carefully, rusty from long years of dormancy.
The man sitting in front of her jerked upright in surprise.
“Hey, lads! She talks!”
Exclamations, mutters. A chuckle. Then, “Don't tell Castlereagh.”
She felt her blood cool. Why should they not tell Castlereagh, whoever he was? A thought hit her. What had they said in front of her?
They might have abducted her thinking she was some lass unable to speak their language, but, now that they knew she could understand their speech, what would they do to her?
“Please,” she entreated. “Let me go.”
“What's she saying, Bert?” someone yelled. “Can't understand her.”
“Hey, lass?” the bearded man said, pulling her hair so that he could see into her eyes. “Shut your mouth, hey? If Osmond knows you understand, he'll kill you.”
Rubina looked into that haggard, sharp face. He had no reason to be being kind to her – he looked as if he had little concept of kindness whatsoever. Why was he trying to preserve her? She sighed and nodded, deciding just to go along with him.
He let out a sigh. His eyes flattened from bleak interest to lust. She felt her stomach tighten painfully and looked away, rank terror flooding her veins. She was here with five of them. They could kill her and no one would ever know. She was helpless.
He laughed.
Better to risk death and try to escape.
She let her eyes slip from his gaze. He chuckled again, unpleasant and ironic and rode on.
“Come on, lads! Let's get moving. You know Castlereagh doesn't sit long.”
“Aye! Got a fire under his backside, so he has.”
“Hush,” one of the men hissed. “You know how he is if you insult him.”
“Yes. Let's go.”
They increased the pace and rode on, heading into deeper woodlands. Rubina could tell from the pattern of shadow and the coolness of the woods, the scent of loam sharper in the air as the day cooled slowly, that it was evening. How long had she been unconscious? How long had she been missing?
Long enough for someone to be looking?
She had to risk it.
Waiting until the pace was infinitesimally slower, she wrenched her weight sideways, letting go of the grip she had on the man in front's cloak. She loosened her grasp on the saddle and fell sideways, twisting, heading for the bracken and the leaves and the forest floor.
“Hey!”
“Halt!”
“Stop! She's gone!”
She hit the leaf-mold with a thud, coughed and spat out the loam-tasting mud. She sat up. Her leg was aching and her right foot numbed from how it had been hanging down the horse's side, foot heavy and insensate from poor circulation. She stood and ran.
“Stop her!”
She was about to disappear into the trees when someone grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back toward the horses. Her heart sank.
The man chuckled. “She's a fighter, eh?”
“We should let her go. We've lost enough time.”
Rubina made herself look at them. Saw how disappointed they all looked at the dark-haired man's suggestion and felt her stomach turn. She knew what they had intended when they captured her.
Have I thwarted their intent by speaking English?
She had to hope.
“Please, let me go?” she said. “I promise, I'll say nothing of your presence here.”
Silence. Then one of the men on the edge of the rough-cast circle about her frowned intensely.
“Hey, Fred. What's she saying?”
“Dunno. Whack her again, will you, Rodney? Stop her jabbering at us in foreign.”
“It ain't foreign, Jake, you dolt. It's English. Don't you see? She can speak English.”
“Oh.”
They all looked at each other.
“Damn,” a tall man at her side said expressively. “Well, that puts a different edge on things, don't it? Eh, fellows?”
“No, it don't,” the bearded man, whose name seemed to be Albert, said fiercely. “We'll do as we should always have done. Take her to the boss.”
They all grumbled eloquently.
“Why should he get all the spoils, eh?”
“C'mon, Bert, be a fellow. Let's have her. He won't know.”
Her skin crawled and her hands clenched into fists. She looked about for a way to escape. This was a nightmare.
“She speaks,” Albert contradicted. “She can tell him. C'mon.”
They all grumbled, but she could see them nodding at each other. Her breath came out in a long sigh.
“Please? Where are you taking me?” she appealed to the tall, dark-haired man who'd stopped them from harming her – at least for the moment. He gave her that slit-eyed glare that had lust at its heart. She shivered again and looked at the ground below.
“Shut it, lass,” he said. “Less you say, the better. Specially to him.”
She nodded. She let the man take her shoulder and drag her back to the horses. To her surprise, he was not cruel as he bound her wrists and then lifted her up onto the saddle. He bound her to it.
“Don't try anything clever,” he muttered. “Or we'll kill you.”
Rubina closed her eyes. Let this end, she entreated. Please. Just let this end.
She had no idea where they were taking her or what Castlereagh would do with her. All she wanted right now was for this to end, for the nightmare to be over and to go back to the castle and safety and normality.
She felt the horse step sideways as Bert mounted in front of her. She held her breath and tried not to bump against him but, as they set off again, more slowly this time – good for avoiding him, bad for expending time – into the forests.
As the rise and fall of the horse's hoofs continued, Rubina was surprised to feel herself slowly slipping in and out of consciousness again. The forest was blue-dark now, the first birds chorus starting as the shade lengthened and the day stretched over toward evening. It was cold, she shivered, someone chuckled, and the pace slowed.
“Dammit! I can't see,” someone yelled. “Slow down.”
They headed, step by step, into the shadow.