“Duw,” Aled whispered. “Oh, Duw, it’s Ceris.”
And he was galloping back down the slope before Geraint had quite had the chance to comprehend what he had said.
“Ceris?” Marged sat up to peer downward. “Ceris?”
“She must have found out too,” he said, “and came to warn us.” He could not go back down there with Aled. He had Marged’s safety to consider.
But it was all over in a matter of seconds. Aled was back down on the road, Ceris was swept up while his horse was still in full gallop, and they were back on the slope. At the same moment two figures appeared at the far side of the road, one of them bent to pick up one of the guns, and there was a shot. The horse came galloping on, Aled and Ceris still on its back, apparently unhurt.
Marged had a death grip on his robe and on the clothes beneath it, Geraint realized.
“They are safe,” she said.
Aled came speeding up the slope. Ceris’s face was buried against his chest. “Get out of here,” he yelled. “What are you waiting for?”
After a few yards of galloping side by side, they took separate directions.
Chapter 21
MATTHEW Harley had taken longer than he expected to get back to the constable, Laver. He had been unable to find the Earl of Wyvern and had wasted precious time searching for him. No one seemed to know where he had gone. But luck was with Harley in the form of one of the other constables, who had stayed at Tegfan in case he was needed for some emergency. And of course Laver would make sure that Ceris did not leave her father’s house without having her movements shadowed.
Ceris! Harley had to quell a pang of guilt. But if she stayed at home as she ought, then no harm would have been done and she would have won his trust.
But would he have been worthy of hers?
He took the other constable with him, and they found Laver in the village. Ceris was there, going from one house to another, it seemed. She had gone to the house behind the smithy first.
Harley felt that his heart must be somewhere in the area of his boots. And then he saw her for himself, hurrying from the harness maker’s house. She went straight down the street, not stopping again. Her pace quickened. She was running by the time she left Glynderi behind.
It was not difficult to follow her. She alternately ran and walked fast. She did not once look back. A few times, when clouds obscured moon and stars, it was difficult to see her, but she made no attempt at evasion. She led them on a straight, if hilly, path to the road and a gate a few miles away.
They were too late. That was obvious as soon as they came over a rise and could see the road below them. The gate and the house were down and men were fleeing in every direction. Some even passed close enough that they might have been apprehended if Harley and the constables had not already decided to pit their meager forces only against Rebecca herself or one of the daughters in their distinctive women’s garb.
Either the job had been completed and the men had dispersed in the natural course of things, or they had somehow been warned that someone was coming—someone who might pose a threat. Perhaps there had been spies in the hills. Certainly it could not have been Ceris. She was not far enough ahead. Even as Harley looked he could see her rush onto the road and look wildly about her. She must have seen everyone fleeing, just as he had. It seemed almost as if she was searching for one man in particular.
The blacksmith?
And then he tensed, and he could feel the constables on either side of him tighten their grip on their guns. There was a horseman on his way down, a horseman with flowing dark locks, wearing dark women’s robes. There was a moment when perhaps—there was a slim chance—one of the constables might have got off a shot at the rider. But it was gone almost before it was there. He scooped up Ceris and turned back uphill and came within definite range of the guns. But Ceris might be hit.
Harley spread his hands to the sides, fingers wide and rigid. “No!” he said curtly at the same moment as there was a shot. But not from beside him. There were two men on the far side of the road, one with a gun pointing after the fleeing horseman—and Ceris. Harley felt as if the bottom had fallen out of his stomach. But neither she nor Rebecca’s daughter appeared to have been hit.
And then he saw what he might have seen before if he had not been so intent on what was happening down on the road. There was another horseman on the slope some distance away, motionless, also looking down. There were actually two riders on the same horse. One of them was clad in white flowing robes and had long blond ringlets.
Rebecca herself. Harley felt the breath hiss into his lungs and was instantly aware of the constable beside him raising his gun to his shoulder and taking aim. But the other rider and Ceris were almost up to her and were going to come abreast of her on the near side.
“No!” he said again with quiet urgency.
A hero’s prize was his for the taking moments later when both horsemen came galloping his way before veering off to continue uphill. But again the dark-clad horseman rode between Rebecca and any shot one of the constables might have had at her—him. And Ceris was pressed so close to the daughter’s body that there was no getting a shot at him. Yet had they stepped into the open and demanded that the riders stop and surrender, they would as like as not have been ridden down.
And so heroism passed him by and he knew bitter defeat.
It became more bitter when the dark rider turned upward and Harley found that Ceris’s head was turned to one side and that her eyes were open. For a fraction of a second that stretched into eternity they looked full into each other’s eyes.
Betrayer and betrayed. Though which way around it was, he did not quite know.
Marged clung wordlessly to Rebecca. She had never been on a galloping horse. Seated sideways without the benefit of a saddle beneath her, and with uneven hill country beneath the horse’s hooves and darkness all around, she could only sit very still and put her trust in the horsemanship of the man to whom she clung.
Were they being pursued? Or were they riding into an ambush? What on earth had Ceris been doing down on the road? What would have happened if she or Aled had been hit by that one bullet that had been fired? What if Rebecca had been caught? What if he were still caught? Her arms tightened involuntarily.
