“’Tis binding law of the land, how we are wed” Glenna argued stubbornly.
“And I am still bound by my word to keep you safe.” He held out his hand. “Come Glenna, you will ride with me.”
She looked to Lyall, which annoyed Ramsey, having his orders questioned.
“Go,” his stepson said to her.
“You, also, Lyall,” Ramsey said coldly. “Pick one of the men with which to ride. Once I have secured Frasyr and disbursed his men, we will make for Rossi, where your mother is most likely pacing the solar floors bare.” Ramsey paused, noting the uncomfortable look on Lyall’s face, then he added pointedly, “Aye, lad. And Mairi is there. Your sister longs to speak with you.”
27
Inside the hall at Kinnesswood, Alastair Gordon grabbed a couple of ale tankards from a passing server and sat down next to Glenna at a table away from the others. She was petting a scrawny-looking gray cat that had followed her inside. He shoved one tankard at Elgin and took a long swig of the other. “For someone who has just been rescued from a locked tower you look fairly glum.”
“What?” Glenna asked distractedly, then smiled up at him. She touched his hand and El’s. “I’m glad you are here.”
“I, too,” Alastair said. “Now what is wrong?”
“Is that blood on your tunic?” she asked.
He looked down at his leather tunic. It was ripped and slashed, covered with soot and dirt, splattered and stained with blood and mud. He smiled.
“Aye,” Elgin said before he could answer. “Alastair, Lyall, and I used a ruse to pass through the gates. Here to sell mounts to Frasyr’s sergeant. But once inside, we overpowered the gate guards and the sergeant. Al fought like the greatest of knights. He managed the guards on the east and south walls by himself.” He paused. “Father would have been proud.”
Those words were invaluable to Alastair, as he rememberedthe scrawny lad he’d been when he father spent mornings teaching him to wield a sword or mace until his shoulders ached, his arms were numb, and his ears rang with the sound of metal clanging against metal. At El’s words, Alastair tried to not wear his pride too obviously and give himself away, but Glenna was never one to miss much.
He’d once had a dream, too, to be as his father had been, a knight, a man of substance and pledged to a king, with duties of a grand scale, to earn his spurs on the battlefield as had his father before him. But his promise to his father on his deathbed to care for Glenna and El made those dreams impossible. His fate had been decided and his duty was to his sister and brother. He shifted the tankard in his hand and looked at Glenna. “You have changed the subject, sister. Twice.”
She sighed heavily, so he slipped a comforting arm around her. Time had not passed well, and the days without her had not gone by easily or without guilt. To have her lean on his shoulder like she had for years made him feel whole again. For so long he’d had a purpose—seeing Glenna raised and safe—and when it was done and she had gone with Robertson, his life felt hollow, and each day echoed her absence. “Tell me, goose, what is bothering you.”
“Oh, Al….” She shook her head, staring into a full goblet of watered wine. “Everything …nothing…I don’t know.” Her voice trailed off. She glanced across the hall looking distant.
He exchanged a worried look with El, who was watching her and frowning.
“Yes, I do know!” Suddenly Glenna slammed her fist on the table top and the cat shrieked and leapt down, then moved to curl in and out of a server's legs, causing him to drop a platter before it scurried safely into the kitchens beyond.
Alastair turned back just as Glenna faced them both. “Lyall needs me. I trust him, and I believe in him. No one else does. Look!” She gestured angrily over in a corner of the hall whereBaron Montrose looked to be verbally hammering Robertson with words.
Alastair watched them for a moment. Robertson stood stoically, his profile immobile as stone and letting the baron’s angry words sluice off of him, while he acted as if he cared not a whit for what he had done. He showed no emotion, no reaction. But Alastair suspected he cared deeply, and all was an act for his stepfather, a way to shield the rage coming at him and what turmoil he felt inside. ‘Twas a man’s way to hide his shame and anger, a technique he’d used when faced with his own father’s wrath.
“He’s a good man,” she said.
“Aye. He saved my life,” Elgin said, then told her how close he’d come to death and how Lyall’s quick skill with the bow meant El was there with her again and not buried in the ground somewhere.
“He’s brave,” Glenna said knowingly. “And he doesn’t realize it.”
“He surely realizes what he’d done and how he feels about you. But I’m not certain that is a good thing,” he pointed out to her.
“How can loving someone be a bad thing?”
“I somehow doubt this love is good, Glenna, and none of that matters much because you have others to answer to.”
“My father?” she said. “Bah! A pox on him.”
“Glenna!” Elgin hissed. “He is the king. To speak such is treason!”
“What is he going to do, hang me? Believe me when I say he will wish to hang me the moment we meet face to face, so what I say and how often I curse him does not matter one whit to me.”
“You cannot change your circumstances, or your birthright,” Alastair told her.
