She’d only needed to study the shadows darkening the hall’s entry. There, where Hugh MacHugh paced in all his ruddy, rough-hewn glory. Great- eyed Anice hovered near the door, the adulation on her face undisguised now that she felt herself unobserved.
Gelis smiled. Her pulse quickened.
Leaving Valdar to his oats and his spoon, she turned away and hurried from the dais. She strode across the hall, secretly pleased when the Raven’s hard-faced, steel-toting stalwarts made way for her, each man stepping back respectfully at her approach, clearing a path through their midst.
Soon, success would be hers.
A woman in love — and she was sure the timid serving lass had hung her heart on Dare’s cook — would never refuse help to another woman suffering the same affliction.
Her own heart began to pound and her breath caught on the realization that she loved the Raven.
She shivered, a delicious swirl of warmth spilling through her. Truth was, she knew, she’d loved him ever since the morning she’d first glimpsed him in vision. She could still see him that way, striding so boldly toward her on Eilean Creag’s little shingled strand.
Making her blood heat and all the woman inside her quiver with desire.
She’d die if aught happened to him.
Remembering his kisses — and the horrible blackness she’d seen enfold him in her most recent vision — she hastened her step, almost colliding with a kitchen laddie weaving his way across the hall with a platter of sausages and fresh-baked bannocks.
Somewhere a shutter cracked in the wind and someone slammed it shut, the noise overloud in her ears. Fearing the onset of another vision, she pressed a hand to her breast, relieved when thebuzzingin her head proved no more than her own blood pounding in her temples.
Almost at the entry, she skirted several castle dogs squabbling over a bone. She deflected the interest of another when he trotted up to her, eager for ear rubs and back scratches. Then one of the iron-bracketed resin torches flared as she dashed past, the flames leaping upward, dancing wildly and sparking a plume of bright, hissing ash.
And finally she was there.
The hall’s great iron-studded doors loomed but a few paces before her. Hugh MacHugh still marched to and fro, his stride long and purposeful, the blade of his meat cleaver glinting in the torchlight.
But Anice was gone.
Disappointment swept her, but she tamped it down, hastening instead to insert herself in front of the cook, effectively blocking his path.
“My lady.” He stopped at once. “A fine morn to you.”
“Aye, and it would be if I knew where my husband has ridden off to.” She leaned forward, so close she could almost smell his nervousness. “I don’t suppose you can tell me?”
He shook his head. “Nae, I —”
She overrode him. “I already know . . . you canna say.” She drew herself up, said a silent prayer of thanks that she wasn’t some wee slip of a maid, easily blown away on the slightest puff of a breeze.
“But I do wish to have a word with Anice,” she added. “Where is she?”
Hugh MacHugh swallowed. “Anice?”
“Herself, and no other.” Gelis lifted her chin. “She was here just moments ago. I saw her standing there” — she pointed to where a little charcoal brazier hissed and glowed in a shadowy corner — “and watching you.”
Hugh MacHugh’s face reddened.
“I didn’t see her, my lady,” he said, shuffling his feet.
But his gaze flicked to the door.
“Ha! So she left the hall, did she?” Gelis darted around him, seizing the door latch. “Then I will just go after her. She couldn’t have gone far.”
To her surprise, the cook didn’t argue with her.
Instead, he drew a hand over his thinning red hair and blew out a breath.
“She went to gather broody hen eggs,” he admitted, his big hands working on the shaft of his meat cleaver.
