Prologue
November 1427
Scottish Highlands
He would go back for Harriet soon.
Thomas Annesley’s huffing breaths swirled around his head in a thick, humid cloud, picking up the white moonlight and crafting his exhalation into a foggy hood. He took great, lunging strides up the rocky path, careful to avoid the seams of slick, cold mud between the sharp, wet slabs of stone, and was thankful for the moonlight that lit his track. Thankful, too, that the rain had finally stopped, but the bright glow bore none of the sun’s heartening warmth, and he was soaked through his borrowed woolen shawl to his skin. It seemed so much colder here than at Tower Roscraig, just across the Forth from Edinburgh; as if the velvety Highland peat all around him hid a core of ice. He sought to distract himself from the deep ache in his bones by concentrating on the foreign terrain beneath his boots and by holding young Harriet Payne’s sweet, rounded face in his mind’s eye.
He would go back for Harriet soon; back to she who had saved his life by hiding him in her da’s barn. She who had nursed his arrow wounds and the terrible injury inflicted by Vaughn Hargrave’s arquebus. Harriet, who had only just crossed that budding threshold of womanhood and who had comforted Thomas in his anguish and his loss of Cordelia. Cordelia, and…
Thomas struggled along the slope of that frozen Highland mountain, imagining as he went the day he would return for Harriet on a horse not stolen, and take her and the child he suspected she carried away from that mean bit of farm to safety at Tower Roscraig on the Forth. He owed her his life, and his sanity, and he vowed to repay Harriet Payne’s kindness by ensuring she spent the rest of her days in that strong, stone fortress that had belonged to his Scots mother’s family.
Although elsewhere he might be called Baron Annesley, Lord of Darlyrede, Thomas wondered that he would ever return to England, let alone the great estate of his father. Darlyrede House had been soaked in so much blood, and not only Cordelia’s, Thomas had learned on the fateful night Hargrave had tried to kill him. Thomas had been made a fugitive by that grand hold, by that night; a man wanted for the murder of the very woman who was to have been his wife.
The rushing of blood in his ears grew louder as the memories of that dank cellar thundered over him, and Thomas staggered to a halt, bracing his hand against the ruffled bark of a young birch as he caught his breath. He realized then it wasn’t just his frenzied blood he heard; the sound of crashing water radiated through the trees.
The falls. They must be just over the shoulder of the mountain.
He straightened and turned on the path, pausing to peer across the long valley he’d just circled. Though earlier in the day the hills and vales had run with autumn’s saffron and rust, made more barren by the unusually dry summer, now the treetops standing sentry around the bowl of scrubby land wore moonlight caps, their dripping skirts hidden in darkest shadow. Iain Douglas had directed him well, warning him to give wide berth to the dangerous Town Blair on the edge of Loch Acras.
Starving Lake…
Thomas shivered in his heavy, sodden clothes.
He shook the eerie feeling from his shoulders with a frown. After a fortnight of foot travel, he would reach the clansmen of his mother before dawn. He would show the Carson elders his father’s dagger, kept safe at Tower Roscraig for so many years and ready now upon his calf, remind them of Iain Douglas’s place of honor at Tower Roscraig, and then plead his kinship as just cause for requesting the town’s fiercest warriors to help defend against the assault Thomas knew was coming. Vaughn Hargrave may have destroyed Thomas’s life at Darlyrede, shattered the future he’d had always taken for granted, but Thomas had the hope of a new life to fight for; Hargrave would never take the Tower.
The Tower belonged to Harriet, and Thomas would return for her.
He turned to the wood again and strode on, the sound of the water swelling larger through the trees as he continued down the western slope of the mountain. He weaved through the trunks, navigating by ear toward the cascading heart of the roaring river, all other typical night sounds made mute. He didn’t bother with stealth now, for even his crashing footfalls through the dense blanket of forest floor could not surpass the great wall of thundering water to reach even his own ears.
Follow the river downstream to the falls; there you shall find a footbridge. Once across, you are safely on Carson land...
His right boot slipped into a badger hole covered over with wet leaves, and Thomas only just managed to free his foot before his slide down the steep bank. He caught himself against the peeling trunk of another birch with a soundlessoof, and then the moonlight revealed his sanctuary in the loud silence of the water.
The bridge appeared shamefully old and disused for such an essential channel, planked with only whole, once-young tree trunks. There was no railing, but a thick rope woven from vines stretched alongside the jagged-edged downstream side, tethered on either bank around sturdy ashes. The bridge was lit as brightly as at midday, the moonlight reflecting off the churning white foam exploding from the vertical granite slabs of the riverbed above it. The cylindrical treads of the bridge glistened with water and moss, belying the signs of long drought in the high valleys he’d passed through. Thomas vowed he could detect the faint odor of fish and the sea, and remembered that it was the time of the salmon running in from the wide, wild ocean.
His mouth watered at the thought of such fresh bounty; he’d not had a proper meal in days, surviving on the last shriveled crumbs of the provisions packed for him at Roscraig.
Thomas half-slid, half-leaped down the remaining curve of bank toward the footbridge, his pack flopping limply against the small of his back. As he stepped onto the first softened trunks, he realized the bridge was far longer than it had first appeared, and not nearly wide enough to suit him, considering the chaos of the water and the sheer drop it spanned over the sudden ravine. Thirty feet down it must be at the midpoint, and at least that far across, although the bridge was perhaps only six feet wide.
Six very slick feet. And the trunks were not lashed tightly together, leaving gaps that appeared to be just as wide as the very thickness of a grown man in several spots.
Do you nae good to bring a mount to such a place. The bridge isna meant for the crossing of those astride, my lord.
“It would seem as if the bridge wasn’t meant for crossing at all, Iain,” Thomas muttered aloud, his words lost beneath the weight of sound of the roaring falls. Already, his eardrums felt sore from the pressure.
The reverberations of the water against the rock rumbled beneath the soles of his boots, but the bridge held steady. He stepped carefully, testing each tread for the crumbly feel of rot, and pressing down firmly into the slick slime until he felt the bite of the softened wood. Stepping over the first gap caused hot beads of sweat to spring forth in the stubble covering his face. Then the planks shuddered, bucked, and the entire bridge swayed over the river. Thomas’s stomach felt as if it fell into the pouch of his shawl as he froze in place, his gaze fixed on the sparkling fog of water misting over the trunks, his arms held to either side to steady himself, swiping blindly for the rope with his left hand.
He was halfway across; if the bridge failed, he was dead.
“Doona dare another step, lad,” a deep voice called.
Thomas flinched and raised his eyes to find that the rickety span wasn’t failing as he’d feared, but only occupied by other travelers. The north end of the bridge was now blocked by as many as eight rough-looking men, several of them bearing woven baskets on their shoulders. One switch-thin young man, gaunt and owl-eyed, juggled a bundle of long-handled, patched nets. The smell of fish now filled the ravine.
All of them save the owl-eyed man glared at Thomas, the distrust clear in their shadowed faces as the front man watched him expectantly, his posture tense.
Thomas willed himself to lower his hands slowly, then gripped them into sweaty fists as he stood over the highest point of the ravine. “We are well met,” he said, shouting to project his voice over the roar of the falls. “I mean to gain the Carson town before dawn. My kin reside there. Perhaps you are one of them.”
