A rider on his horse. Her heart leaped. Nicholas?
Please, let it be Nicholas.
Chapter Seventeen
Rauf could notbelieve his eyes. Lismoor in the hands of the English! Cain would ride in and kill them all if he knew. Aleysia would likely do worse. The first Lady of Lismoor had traps all over the forest. Some were still set, waiting in the trees to be cut loose.
He thought about luring some of the English soldiers patrolling the battlements into the woods. He wasn’t sure he could time the traps correctly. But killing wasn’t the main purpose. He needed a way to get inside and find any who remained.
From the tree line, he set his eyes on a guardsman on the wall. He lifted his bow and nocked his arrow. He didn’t miss. The guardsman doubled over and fell off the wall. Rauf sprinted toward the western hill, where a tunnel had been erected years before by a village set on saving its lady from the Scots.
He waited while the guards saddled up and left the outer gate. Less than half went out but it was now or never to get inside.
He found the tunnel entrance and crossed himself as the wind whipped his hair in front of his face. He heard a sound on the wind. Faint enough to make him doubt the good of his ears.
Crying. A babe crying. Elias! He turned right and took off, following the sound to a dark, narrow path. Elias’ wails grew a little louder as the path opened and a shaft of light poured through the canopy and a sheet of thin ice on the forest floor. He kept going, fighting overgrown bramble and bushes that tried to stop him on the path. Finally, he turned a bend, toward a small opening barely visible beyond the bramble.
He stepped through and immediately spotted Agnes pacing in the patches of snow on the grass, trying to comfort Elias. Rauf’s heart rejoiced at seeing them. He had feared the worst. But Julianna was not with them. What happened to her to make her leave the babe? Was she already forcibly taken by the Viscount of Bamburgh? Was he too late?
“Rauf?” Agnes sounded as happy to see him as he was to see her.
She ran to him and squashed Elias between them. “Oh, Rauf! I thought I would never see you again! Or anyone else,” she cried, pressed against his cloak. “I was sure we would die here. How did you find us?”
“The weepin’,” he said, smiling at Elias, thankful for the first time for the strength of the lad’s lungs.
But right now, they needed him to keep silent. “Shh,” he whispered to Elias and pulled out his sword. “The noisy dragon sleeps beyond the hills. ’Tis called England. Let us not wake it.”
Thankfully, the lad stopped crying and set his glittering eyes on the hills.
“Agnes,” Rauf said, turning to them. “Where is Julianna?”
Agnes told him everything that had happened with the viscount and the bargain Julianna had struck with him to release her and the babe. “I think she knew him.”
Rauf wondered how she would.
“He came here for something—”
“Her,” Rauf said.
Agnes dipped her brows and looked even more forlorn than just before she saw him.
“Her husband,” he continued, “who she thought dead and buried is alive and responsible fer all this. He sent Bamburgh here fer her.”
Rauf thought he saw a hint of a smile on Agnes’ lips when she opened them to speak. “For her. Still, he let her bargain for our lives. He could have refused, laughed in her face, for what could she have done against him? Though he did see the two men who appeared dead by her hand. He could have killed us easily, for their men killed almost everyone else. But he did not refuse. He gave in. Elias and I escaped through the tunnel but we could not go back to the castle, and the village—” She began to cry. “—many are dead on the road. I did not want Elias to see so I gathered what food I could carry and came here. Aleysia took me here once with Mattie. ’Tis difficult to find. I did not know where else to go. I did not know if you were alive.”
He stroked her head when she rested it on his shoulder and did his best to comfort her. Holding her and the babe, letting them feel warm and safe before they moved on. He wouldn’t fail them as he had everyone else. Lismoor’s dead pierced his stout, leathery heart. His men were not prepared for war. They had grown soft fighting nothing for years. As their commander, it was his fault.
Not this time. He fought through over two dozen men trying to breach Lismoor’s walls and came out alive. He’d fought wars alongside the fearsome commander, Cainnech MacPherson. He was going to get them the hell out of here, and then he was coming back with the MacPhersons to kill them all.
Where should he take them? The safest place he knew was Carlisle. To Torin MacPherson, Nicholas’ older brother. Elias would be safe there, as would Agnes. The journey would take a few days by horse, of which he needed two more, possibly longer with a babe, but what other choice was there? He would not leave them here and he would not take them to Alnwick to find Julianna. Aye, he’d take them to Carlisle and then he and Torin would return to find Nicholas and rescue Julianna from Bamburgh, DeAvoy, and both their armies if they had to.
“Come. We will go to the village fer some food. By now, everyone who needs buryin’ should be buried. We will leave Rothbury at nightfall.”
“Oh, Rauf,” she cried, pulling Elias closer to her. “I am afraid to leave the glade.”
“My dear, I’m here now. I willna let anyone hurt ye or Nicholas’ son.”
She smiled and melted his heart a little. She’d taken him quite by surprise a day after he returned. He’d seen her around the castle when Aleysia was here, and then when Mattie was lady. But not many women had ever appealed to him before. They could never look past his scarred face. They immediately saw a mean, dangerous warrior.
