She drank the last of the milk to soothe her parched throat and set down the empty cup, pushing the tray from her. She looked about the room, but she could see nothing to be used in defense of herself. Not a heavy bowl, nor an iron poker for the fire; not an eating knife on the tray—nothing heavy, hard, or sharp in the whole of the room.
She stood up, not willing to be caught off her feet, but then another wave of dizziness overcame her and she sat again. Her nerves would be her ruin this day. She breathed in and out slowly through her nose.
The chamber door opened, and Iris heard Lady Caris shout “No!” in a strangled voice as Lord Vaughn Hargrave walked into the room with a curious smile on his face.
“Well, look who is here,” he said, his smile not warming the cold glint in his eyes.
Iris’s head began to swim, and each of the fifteen tiny flames turned into little explosions of light, sparkling on the air like the sun glinting off water. She could no longer see clearly, but she heard his muffled footsteps drawing closer on the thick carpet, and so she held out awarding hand.
“No,” she thought she managed to choke out, but the voice she heard sounded too far away, so perhaps it was Lady Hargrave who had spoken again.
And then everything was black and silent.
* * * *
If Padraig had been sensible, he realized, he would have waited until morning to depart from Darlyrede instead of setting off with Searrach just as the sun was dipping below the far-off, rolling foothills, washing all the color from the landscape and replacing it with a gray chill that clouded his breath. The air was still and growing tighter, colder, as if the solid blanket of clouds overhead was stretched taut with the snow it held.
But he could not stay there another night; nay, another hour. He couldn’t risk seeing Beryl’s face again. No—Iris’s face. The face of the woman he’d thought he loved. The face he’d thought he wanted to see every day for the rest of his life. She had hurt Padraig in a way that he hadn’t known it was possible forhim to be hurt.
And so now he headed north on the road that ran before Darlyrede as a failure, seeing the distant monoliths as dark, wide shadows on the moor around this side of the estate, a suspicious, perhaps unstable Scottish maid behind him. He thought of the stories he had heard today of his father’s escape from Darlyrede House, Kettering’s father’s gruesome end. Padraig looked around him, wondering what Tommy Boyd had suffered on this same road thirty years ago—and every day since, likely. Padraig himself was only a handful of years older than his father had been the night he’d fled, and the idea of it sobered Padraig. He’d pondered so many times since he’d learned of Darlyrede’s existence why Thomas Annesley had not fought for his home. But riding now through the cold, dark night without even a sliver of moon to light the way, after having had his life endangered these many weeks—Padraig was beginningto understand.
He tried to imagine how he would feel if it had been Beryl killed today in the wood.
Not Beryl, he reminded himself again.Iris.
If it had been Iris and not Lord Paget, dead and bleeding on the forest floor. And Hargrave and all his money and his power and his reputation waiting, ready to destroy Padraig before the king.
Thomas Annesley had been gravely injured that night years ago, more injured than Padraig now was. And yet he had managed to escape, to find his way eventually to Caedmaray and Jessie. Padraig thought longingly of the little cottage waiting for him on the island in the spring. He’d sell Hargrave’s horses in Thurso to pay for board and supplies to carry back when the boats started to run.
He could be happy there again.
Probably.
But with Searrach? a voice inside hishead asked him.
He didn’t know why he had agreed to take her with him. He didn’t want her physically and he didn’t trust her. But the familiar sound of her accent, the remembrance of the scars on her wrists…perhaps it was nothing more than the idea that she had asked to go, and in that moment of weakness, giving his permission had made him feel in control of his future. Perhaps he had thought to soothe the sting of Iris and Lucan’s betrayal by departing Darlyrede House with a woman Padraig knew Iris was jealous of. Whatever the reason for it at the time, Padraig now regretted thehasty decision.
He thought they had at last left Darlyrede lands as they neared the dark abyss of a stand of evergreen trees and the snow at last began to fall, fast and thick. They could not ride through a snowstorm in the dark—it was cruel to the horses, and Padraig wasn’t certain they wouldn’t lose their way if the already dim track became covered over. And so he turned his mount’s head toward the stand of fir, Searrach following unquestioningly behind him.
She was already dismounted by the time Padraig’s own feet found the ground, and after looping the reins of her horse around a tree branch, she began searching beneath the spreading boughs for kindling and dry branches—she had obviously camped on the road before. Neither of the travelers spoke as Padraig broke off a portion of the lowest branches of a wide fir, sweeping away the needles at the base of the tree down to dry ground and then stacking the fresh boughs to afford some protection from the frozen dirt. Soon, a small fire crackled at the edge of their little evergreen cave, and Padraig and Searrach sat side by side, sharing the wine in his satchel and the food in hers. The snow fell around them, over them, quieting the world and seeming to grant them a little bubble of peace.
“What’s your island called again?” she asked in a low voice, and the sound was so unexpected after the last hour of quiet that Padraig felt his heart stutter at the interruption.
“Caedmaray.” He used one of the little bones from the chicken they’d eaten to pickat his teeth.
“Caedmaray,” Searrach repeated.“Is it grand?”
Padraig tossed the bone into the fire. “Nay.”
“I’m sure it’s grand,” she said softly.
The realization that Padraig had made a mistake in allowing Searrach to accompany him grew ever larger in his alreadyburdened mind.
“There’ll be no crossing until the spring.” When she didn’t comment, he offered, “Whatis your town?”
“Town Blair,” she said, staring into the fire with wide eyes, and the reflection of the fire in their glassy depths gave him an uneasy feeling, as if Searrach’s mind burned and her eyes were windows to the raging furnace of her thoughts. “I know your brother. You could be his twin, but that your hair is lighter.”
Padraig stilled. “My brother?”
