While they tussled, Eve scrambled for the back door, intentionally knocking a pot of pottage onto the floor behind her.She turned once at the door, just in time to see the guard go sprawling in the slippery mess.
Then she tore away from the alehouse.She sprinted down the main road, getting some distance on her pursuer before ducking into the shelter of the trees.
Fortunately, the byre wasn’t far off.But one had to know the way.The king’s man from Perth would get lost in the dense woods before he ever found it.Or her.
It was familiar landscape to Eve, however, so she stopped a moment to catch her breath, leaning against the trunk of a pine.
Now that she had time to reflect, she realized how much she’d missed this.Narrow escapes.Subterfuge.Quick thinking.
It made her feel alive.
She couldn’t believe that wicked maid at the alehouse had turned her in at the first opportunity.Still Eve had managed to escape.She had to grin.Watching the fierce guard slide through the pottage like an otter on ice had been entertaining.
“Och, Eve,” she scolded.“Shame on ye.”
That wasn’t the way for a nun to behave.
Perhaps she wasn’t fit to be a nun.
Still, she wasn’t exactly an outlaw.No matter what the king’s guard thought.
She wanted to do good.It was just more fun doing good when her heart was beating fast.
When she reached her destination, her interaction with the exiled Rivenloch couple was hurried.With the king’s man tracking her, she didn’t dare linger.
She was impressed with what they’d done with the byre.Love had turned the hovel into a home.And Hew had turned Carenza into a glowing mother-to-be.
Eve experienced a wee twinge of envy over their contentment as a couple.Painful memories flashed through her mind.Adam’s kiss.His gaze.His smile.His touch.
But she didn’t let it show.She couldn’t let anything—even a royal guard on her trail—diminish their happiness.
She told them what had happened since they’d become fugitives.That King Malcolm had returned to Scotland.That there had been a brief siege by some of the lairds at Perth, but peace had been made.
She gave them the good news that they were forgiven by the clan and shocked them with the fact that the king had knighted the maidservant Merraid and then married her to Gellir.
She said they could go home safely now.
Hew, however, was a Rivenloch through and through.He wouldn’t accept anything that wasn’t properly executed.So he tasked Eve with getting their wedding document officially signed by the clan lairds of Rivenloch and Dunlop and sealed by the king.Only then, he said, would he feel safe to return.
She agreed, but warned him it might take time.
First, however, she had to make it back to the convent.
Fortunately, Carenza still had the nun’s habit Eve had loaned her.She’d kept it since the night they’d fled.So Eve exchanged her red velvet gown for the habit.
The royal guard might be able to outpace the lady fleeing in red.But he wouldn’t glance twice at the nun strolling back along the road.
Her return to the convent was happily uneventful.She was still beaming from her victorious exchange with Hew and Carenza and her successful escape from the royal guard.
She arrived to even more encouraging news.Her father’s annual stipend had arrived.
That meant she had enough coin to have Adam’s gambeson altered by the tailor in the village to fit her and to purchase a new bow and arrows.She could compete in the upcoming Rivenloch tournament at Darragh and win back the silver she’d lost.
“Whodid you say you were?”
King Malcolm leaned forward in his chair from the far side of the pavilion and narrowed his eyes at Adam.
Adam’s heart pounded.
