Then she turned away and began climbing.
Chapter 10
Deryn had not slept well. He’d found himself thinking about Madeleine most of the night and images of her would not let him sleep. Yesterday had been wholly unexpected. Craig and Darla’s surprise visit had gone far better than he’d dared to hope. Darla and Madeleine had hit it off immediately, as had Rory, Lily and Sean. Deryn himself had enjoyed himself immensely. In fact, he’d not enjoyed himself so much since Lizzie—
He did not follow that thought, instead forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand. The three ewes and newborn lambs that he’d shut in the barn last night were doing well. The lambs were already gamboling around, eager to be let out, and the ewes were snuffling in the straw, looking for food.
His mind wandered to Maddy again. After the meal, something had changed. Deryn had no idea what it was, but she’d seemed distant, distracted, and that closeness that had developed between them over the last several days had evaporated. Deryn missed it.
“Ah, Lizzie lass,” he breathed. “What am I doing? I could greatly do with yer counsel right now.”
That all too familiar pang twisted his stomach again and he took a deep breath through his nostrils. He would go out scouting again today. If the Good Lord was smiling on them,perhaps Rodric MacKay had given up looking for Madeleine and Rory, and he would be able to take them to Fortrose as planned.
Satisfied that the animals were well, Deryn left the barn and returned to the house. As he opened the door, he expected Rory to come running to meet him as he did most mornings, so he was a little surprised and disappointed when he didn’t.
“Madeleine? Rory?” he called as he closed the door and hung his cloak on a peg. There was no answer. Perhaps they were still abed.
He crossed to the bedroom curtain and called softly. “Madeleine? Are ye awake?”
Again, no answer. A prickle of unease whispered down Deryn’s spine. He pushed the curtain aside a crack and peered inside. The room was empty. The bed had been neatly made but all of Madeleine and Rory’s belongings were gone, except for the dress he’d given her which was neatly folded at the foot of the bed.
His thoughts flew to Rodric MacKay. Had he found them? Carried them off back to Torryn Keep? But he discarded that idea immediately. He saw no sign of a scuffle and Madeleine would most definitely have put up a fight. And besides, he’d not been so engrossed in his work in the barn that he would have missed armed men invading his house and carrying off his guests.
No, this was something else. The way everything was so neatly stowed, as though this had been planned in advance, could lead to only one conclusion: Madeleine had left of her own accord and taken Rory with her.
He leaned against the doorframe as he took this in. The empty room seemed to taunt him with their absence and the house felt unnaturally still, unnaturally quiet without Rory’s chatter and Madeleine’s humming.
Where would she have gone? She wouldn’t have returned to MacKay, he knew that, so where? She’d been out of sorts after the meal yesterday, but she’d refused to tell him why. Had she already been planning her escape then? Wherever she was going, she clearly didn’t want Deryn to know about it. The realization stung. He’d thought they were growing close, had thought she was starting to trust him.
Seems he’d been wrong.
He rubbed at the stubble on his chin, trying to ease the disappointment that ran through him. Then something sticking out from under the blanket on the bed caught his eye. A small metal oblong with a glass front.
Frowning, he stooped and picked it up, examining it curiously. He’d never seen anything like it. The oblong was thin and smooth, with three buttons down the side. He pushed one of the buttons and nearly dropped the thing in shock as the glass suddenly lit up as bright as day. There were tiny images in the glass, icons in bright colors. As he brushed his hand over one of them, a picture sprang up inside the glass.
It was Madeleine and Rory, and it was so lifelike that Deryn could almost believe he was looking through a window. It showed the two of them waving out of some sort of cart, but one unlike any cart Deryn had ever seen. It was made entirely of metal with four thick wheels made of an unknown substance. There were no horses to pull it either and as far as he could tell, it was designed to move of its own accord.
