She didn’t flinch when his eyes fell to the lock and his hungry smile grew.
She held up her quill and reached for her poison-tipped knife. “Now, make up your mind. Do you want to lose an eye or get this missive to your sister?”
He let a moment pass and she prayed she wouldn’t have to put him down. For then she wouldn’t get paid.
“You must eat and sleep at Lismoor Castle,” Sommers continued, moving away from her. After a moment, he blinked at her and looked at her stilled hand. “What is it, Miss?”
“Nothing,” she managed and dipped again. Lismoor. It had belonged to Aleysia d’Argentan before the Scots had taken it from her. It was the last known place she could connect to William. But she had already paid handsomely to discover if William resided there. He did not. “Go on. You must sleep…”
He nodded. “At Lismoor Castle. Do you know it?”
She shook her head. “I knowofit.”
She inhaled a deep silent breath and forbade herself to think of him. The boy she’d known since she could walk. The boy she’d grown up loving. He’d been a man when he left her after their first night of kissing in the stable. Some said her father had seen them and beat William and threw him out of the castle, but why hadn’t he come back for her right away? She shook her head. He would have died with the rest of them at the hands of the Scots the next morning. Or maybe not, since he was a Scot, himself. And since he rode with them the last time she saw him.
She had told herself that perhaps his decision was the best for him. It had kept him alive and hehadwanted her to come with him when she saw him a few months after the massacre at Berwick.
She remembered his last words to her at St. Peter’s Abbey as if he’d spoken them yesterday. He’d spoken them after she had refused his offer to leave the safety of the abbey with him.
Julianna, I have loved you my whole life. I will never love anyone but you. Do not sentence me to such a lonely life.
How different would her life have been if she’d gone with him? She had been a coward. Afraid of the savages he—and even Miss d’Argentan—had called friends. Afraid, still—madly—of the consequence of his being a servant. How would they have lived? Eaten? Where would they have slept?
Instead of thinking of them lying in a bed together, she forced herself to think about how the Scots would have been outside her door. She’d been afraid, so she chose to wait for the man her father had promised her to. A “man of means” who never came once she lost lands and title.
When there were no other offers for her but one, she took it, and almost paid with her life for it.
William’s face had always remained, pushing its way to the front of her thoughts, to distract her, to make her doubt everything she wanted now, after two years of torture at the hands of a fiendish husband, and a year at the abbey. Freedom. A life of her own, answering to no one but herself and God.
But she wanted to see William one more time first. Just one more time.
She wanted to find Berengaria, too, and ask her why she left them.
Her patron finished his letter, including giving Julianna instructions on finding his sister. After he paid her a small pouch of coins, she gathered her things and left the tavern, still in a state of unease. Lismoor. She knew from her messenger friends that the earl was a Scot. MacPherson, she’d been told. She guessed he was the brute who had come to the abbey with Miss d’Argentan. Well, MacPherson had to know where William was.
She checked the small satchel hanging from a belt at her waist. She had enough coin to get to Rothbury. Even if William wasn’t there, to be paidhandsomelyand not have to pay for lodgings in the meantime would be glorious for a change. She could save plenty.
She headed for the stable and paid the groom before she gained her saddle and left. She looked back at the lad, thinking, once again, about William. He had been her groom at Berwick. Behind a spray of dark waves, his eyes were always on her, glittering like silver-blue jewels, tempting her to go to him. When she finally did, his kiss nearly swept her right off her feet and into his arms. She’d loved him. She’d wanted to tell him that night, but what good would it have done them? She was the Governor of Berwick’s daughter. He was a servant. She led a very different life than William.
But so much had changed for her.
She pushed him out of her thoughts for now and turned her horse left, toward Margery Sommers’ village.
The sun was going down. It was cold, but Julianna preferred traveling at night. It was harder for anyone who was out in the black of night to tell whether she was a he or not. She wore no skirts, but hose and a léine, doublet, boots and a dark green woolen mantle. Her hair was never loose while she traveled. If they didn’t know she was a woman, they usually left her alone.
She thought about how much her life had changed since the attack on her home over four years ago…until she married a monster. She had once been doted on, given everything she wanted. She’d lived in luxury, with servants at her beck and call. She’d been taught to read and write, and to play the lute, and how to embroider by the best teachers. Though she hated sewing. She didn’t like sitting in one place too long to sew anything of beauty or interest.
And then, in a moment, everything had changed. Everyone in her life was gone. At first, she pretended to be strong. Her father was dead. Her mother had died years earlier of an illness so Julianna had no one. Her home and her worth were gone. She had nothing left but a marriage proposal from the Governor of Alnwick, Phillip DeAvoy, a childhood friend whose family visited her parents at Berwick often, even before Julianna was born. Phillip was rich in land but poor in everything else. Soon into their marriage, he accused her of trying to seduce the men in the household. One night he struck her. After that, it became a common occurrence.
For two years, she became more a servant than a wife. At night, after Phillip’s worst, she would think of William, the one she’d loved her whole life. She drew strength from him. She’d even stopped caring if he rode with Scots.
She dreamed of his smile, heated, yet tender with affection for her. His quiet humility when Lord DeAvoy’s sons taunted him. William had given her the courage to run away. She ran to St. Peter’s. When Phillip came there looking for her, God, according to the abbess, smote him and Phillip was struck dead that very night.
Julianna knew better. She wasn’t about to say a word.
Her life had changed again, thanks to the abbess. She’d stayed at the abbey for almost a year and had been on her own for four months now.
She reached Margery Sommers’ home the next morning, after a few hours of light sleep under a tree. She delivered her letter, read it to Margery, and left.
