Reid said nothing. “I will...consider what ye said,” he muttered eventually. He glanced through the window where the sun was getting low. “It will be dark soon. Get some rest.”
With that, he turned and left, pulling the door shut behind him.
As soon as he’d gone, Abi sprang over to the door and pressed her ear against it, listening as Reid’s footsteps disappeared down the corridor.
At last! She reached inside her jacket and pulled out her cell phone. Heart hammering, she dialed 999 for the police and pressed it to her ear.
Nothing happened.
She checked the display and saw with a sinking heart, that an icon was flashing in the corner to indicate she had no signal. No, no, no!
She crossed to the window, held the phone against it and tried again. Still nothing. Frantic now, she jabbed at the keypad, trying to get it to do something, anything, and then paced around the room, holding the phone both high and low to try to pick up a signal. Nothing.
There was a knock on the door. Abi whirled, tucking the phone behind her back, just as the door opened and two lads shuffled in. They gave her an awkward bow.
“Lord Reid sent us to bring ye bathing water and clothing, my lady,” one of them muttered.
They looked to be in their mid-teens, gangly with youth and mightily embarrassed to be in a woman’s bedchamber. Abi surreptitiously tucked her cell phone into her back pocket and gave them both a smile. “Thank you, that’s very kind, but I don’t seem to have a bathroom.”
They pulled puzzled expressions and then one of them pointed to a small wooden tub in the corner. Abi looked from the tub to the youths and back again until their meaning dawned. That was the bath? They expected her to bathe in that?
Just go with it,she told herself.Just until you find a way out of here. She nodded and the two lads began filling up the tub with buckets of hot water they’d left in the corridor outside. Abi seated herself on the bed and watched.
Both the lads were dressed similarly to Reid. White linen shirts, pants of undyed wool, with a tartan plaid over the top, belted at the waist. Were they wannabe re-enactors? Were they learning the ropes from Reid?
“What are your names?” she asked.
“I’m Thomas, that’s Clyde,” one of them replied. He had messy black hair that kept falling over his eyes, and freckles all over his face.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Thomas and Clyde. I’m Abigail.”
“A pleasure, my lady,” Thomas said, nodding deferentially.
Abi watched as they filled the wooden tub with steaming water and then placed a pile of clothes on the bed.
“Have you been in Reid’s society long?”
“His society, my lady?”
“You know, this re-enactment thing he runs.”
Thomas glanced at Clyde and then back at her. “Um. We’ve been in service to Lord Reid for almost a year, my lady,” he replied.
“And we’ll serve him as warriors one day,” Clyde added. “And repay his faith in us.”
“How did you get involved with him?” she asked. Any information she could glean about her captor might help her escape.
“He plucked us off the street. Gave us a home, a warm bed, and two meals a day,” Clyde said. “Now we’re pages in his household and learning the way of the warrior.”
Pride thrummed in his voice. The two lads seemed remarkably loyal to Reid. He’d taken them in off the streets? That didn’t sound like the mindless thug he appeared to be. And, for that matter, what were two lads of their age doing living on the streets, anyway? Hadn’t social services done anything about it?
Abi pressed a hand to her forehead. It was all getting a little too much. “Right. Thank you for your help. I think I’d like to bathe now.”
The two lads gave her another sketchy bow then hastily left the room. She heard the key turning in the lock. Well, so much for not being a prisoner. What had happened to Reid’s promise that she could move about the castle?
It was getting dark outside so she pulled the thick drapes across the window and lit some of the candles with a taper from the fire. Golden light spilled through the room, along with the scent of flowers from something the lads had dropped into the bathwater. Under other circumstances, Abi would have appreciated the loveliness of the scene and would have taken her time luxuriating in the bath—even if it was no more than a wooden tub. With the candles and the scent, it was exactly how she liked to relax when she got home after a long shift at the hotel.
But she wasn’t at home. She was a prisoner in a strange place full of strange people and she was far too wound up to enjoy something as frivolous as a bath.
