“I dinnae ken,” she said, doing her best to manage a Scottish accent, finding it easier than she expected.
“She lost her memory,” Eddard said, jumping in to save her. “She washed up on the shore this morning. I knew it was her at once.”
“Of course it is,” James said with a warm smile that made guilt drip straight into Jessica’s heart. He was so trusting and she was lying to his face. A man of God. Would she go to hell for this? “Take her to the Laird and Lady at once. I have no doubt they will rejoice. The bells will peal to celebrate your return, my girl. May God be praised. I will recall Philip from his cell in the low country.”
“I should douse the fire,” Eddard said.
“Leave me to do that. There is no time to waste. The boat is in the boathouse. Brother Richard will take you down to it. Hallelujah!”
Jessica let Eddard lead her outside. With the door closed behind them he turned and grinned at her. “We did it!”
He threw his arms around her and she felt the warmth of his body burn into her much quicker and deeper than the ale had done. She let him hold her. “We did it,” she echoed back to him.
He pulled back and looked like he was about to kiss her. She closed her eyes automatically but then his touch was gone. When she looked he was heading for the gatehouse, not looking back at her.
She tried not to be disappointed. She tried to be angry that he had assumed he might kiss her at all. The anger wouldn’t come. Instead, the question that bounced around her head as they were escorted to the boat was, did he like what he saw?
Chapter Seven
While the monk untied the ropes holding the boat in place, Eddard looked across at Jessica. She was looking at him with a strange expression on her face. He couldn’t place it.
Was it hatred? Disgust? Anger? Her lips were pursed together like she was concentrating on something. Had he really been so close to kissing those lips? What had come over him?
It wasn’t like he could blame the abbot’s ale. He had handled a half a barrel of the stuff before. Last year at the harvest festival they’d celebrated the first decent crop in years with the monks, all of them in it together as the famine slowly came to an end.
That was the last good time he could remember. It was mere days later that the missive came. Ronald was raising the tithe on grinding, conveniently in time for the glut of wheat they had. By the time he’d taken his cut, they were worse off than during the famine.
His fists clenched by his sides. He wanted to wrap his hands around the steward’s neck, choke the life out of him. He wanted to do it for the people of the clan, not just for his own base instincts. Get rid of the steward and their lives would be immeasurably better off.
Jessica looked away. She was watching the monk’s deft hands working the ropes. He examined her closely. Why had he wanted to kiss her? If he was going to talk about base instincts, why not start with that?
There was something about her that was bugging him. If only he could work it out. Maybe he’d have been better off as a monk. Perhaps they were right. Women were a distraction.
He suppressed a smile as the last of the ropes came undone. She was a distraction. She was going to distract the Laird and Lady long enough for him to get into the treasury and get what was his.
The family coffers had been confiscated when he’d been exiled, taken into the safekeeping of the Laird and Lady. He knew what that meant. Ronald would claim them as his own. He could only hope the fiend hadn’t spent them all yet.
“God be with you,” the monk muttered to him before turning and heading out of the boathouse, leaving him alone with Jessica.
“Can you row?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “I can give it a go.”
“Never mind. You sit at that end and dinnae rock it, understand? The waters are deep here.”
He held out a hand and she took it, using him to balance against as she climbed into the boat. He clambered in and took the oars, using the end to push them out of the boathouse. The current took them at once as they drifted slowly out from the shore.
“We need to work our way around to the west,” Eddard said, pushing the oars into the water, enjoying the strain on his muscles. It felt like they were coming to life. He’d always loved rowing but hadn’t been in a boat for years, not since Ronald’s guard on the water tripled in size.
They were lucky for the first ten minutes. He saw no one else. He’d even begun to think they might make it to the far shore without any trouble. Was that too much to hope for?
He looked at Jessica while they made their way slowly across to the mainland. She was trying not to look back at him, glancing his way and then moving to look out at the distant mountains instead. He said nothing. It didn’t really matter what she was thinking. What mattered was her upholding her end of the bargain.
The more he looked at her, the more he could convince himself she was Morag. Her hair was the same color as Rachel’s and just as unwieldy. She had the same button nose but those eyes held the killer blow. He could happily drown in those eyes.
“What is this key?”
“Huh?” She looked at him as if waking up. “What did you say?”
