Padraig threw back his head and barked with laughter before grinning down at her and whispering conspiratorially, “Tothe kitchens!”
* * * *
In a quarter hour Padraig was leading Beryl down the slippery slope of the hill toward the narrow brook valley where he’d first held a sword in his hand. She’d tried to maintain what he was sure was a decorous distance from him, but the rain had made the ground soggy, and the dead grass gave through easily to mud beneath their feet, causing Beryl to grab for him out of instinct the first time her slippers slid through the wet, tangled mass. Padraig transferred the basket and oiled skin to his other hand and took firm hold of her slight biceps while Satin slinked slowly behind them.
The brook was high and swift with the late autumn rains, and Padraig spread the oilskin on a raised mound overlooking a melodic trill of water near a pair of boulders while Beryl laid the meal. The breeze played with the tendrils of hair that escaped from the dark twist around her head, like a crown or a halo, Padraig thought, and the hazy sunlight cast an ethereal glow about her face. The cat crept onto the oilskin as Beryl laid out the cheese and meat, although he only sniffed disdainfully at the crumb she pinched off for him before trotting on toward therushing brook.
Padraig watched her delicate, precise movements with somethingakin to wonder.
“How’d you come to learn all this?” he asked without much forethought. The balmy weather, the sunshine, the company of the beautiful woman had all combined to make him rather relaxed and perhaps a bit more reckless than he should have been.
“All what, Master Boyd?” she asked airily.
“All the things you’re teachin’ me.”
She looked up at him then. “They’re generally taught to everyone raised ina noble home.”
“You were raisedin one, then.”
“Well,” she stammered, “yes. Of course. I…I spent quite a bit of time at the abbey, though. They are known as bastions of education, after all.”
Padraig’s eyes narrowed. She hadn’t told him anything really.
“What about your home?” she parried, pulling a loaf of bread in half and handing him a piece. “Caedmaray.”
He liked the sound of iton her tongue.
“It’s certainly nae Darlyrede,” Padraig allowed. “Nae lords nor soldiers. Just the sea and the sky.” He chuckled. “And the sheep.”
“It sounds quite primitive,”Beryl allowed.
“Beautiful,” Padraig countered. “Wild.”
“How did Sir Lucan find you?”
Padraig chewed and looked down the valley toward the trees that only just hid the bend of the river. “He found my father. In Thurso, on the mainland. A man from our island—he’d borne Tommy a grudge since he came to Caedmaray. Last fall, they were on the mainland together getting supplies, and Dragan had heard rumor of a man wanted by the English king. He thought it might be my da, and so he left word with the sheriff. Lucan was waiting on Tommy at Thurso when the boat went overin the spring.”
“And Thomas simply…left with Sir Lucan?”
Padraig nodded. “Aye. He’s an old man, Beryl. Likely he was tired of running.”
“He’s certainly put up quite a chase since his capture for an old man who has tired of running,” she quipped.
Padraig could only chuckle, for he knewshe was right.
“Where were you?” she pressed. “Whenhe was taken?”
“Home,” Padraig said, and he wondered if Beryl could hear the regret in his voice. “One of our ewes fell ill, heavy with lambs, and I needed to stay with her.” He tried to avoid the memory of the sheep’s clouding eyes, her last hot breaths and whining sounds as she lay dying. Tried to block the images of his blade, taking the small creatures from its mother’s dying body. It had been an omen of things to come, only he hadn’t knownit at the time.
Thankfully, Beryl’s voice interrupted his macabre reminiscing. “How did you know what happened then? To your father?”
“Lucan came back to Caedmaray himself. In April.”
“You spent the entire winter not knowing where your father was?”
“Aye.”
They were quiet for several moments, and Beryl didn’t press him, but for some reason, he wanted her to know.
