The extent of his failure was humiliating. While he was supposed to be on guard, she’d snuck a damned horse past him. “I’ll have to go on foot.”
“You won’t make it to the next village in your condition,” Margaret said.
He didn’t even make it out of the barn. Darkness rose like a fiery dragon’s mouth and swallowed him whole.
Janet didn’t stop looking over her shoulder, expecting Ewen to come storming down the road behind her like a demon from hell. Or perhaps, more accurately, aphantomfrom hell.
She remembered how he’d looked the first time she’d seen him. The dark leather armor dotted with rivets of steel, the strangely fashioned plaid wrapped around him, the blackened nasal helm and arsenal of weaponry strapped to his broad, well-muscled chest. Her heart squeezed. She’d been scared for good reason, it turned out. She should have turned and run the first moment she’d seen him.
But either he wasn’t coming after her or she was better at hiding her tracks than she thought. She remembered his tips: hard ground, water or rivers when possible, circle back, confuse and obfuscate. She kept to the road, blending and hiding her tracks as best she could. But she knew her best weapon was speed, so she didn’t take as much time hiding them as she could have.
Perhaps the misdirection had worked? Recalling what Ewen had done when first taking her from Rutherford, Janet did not retrace their steps east, but rather headed north toward Glasgow, hoping to lose her tracks in the large burgh before turning eastward onto the main road.
But unfortunately, Ewen had the advantage of knowing her destination. Even if she managed to elude him on the road, he would find her soon enough in Roxburgh. Unless she could think of a way of making contact with her source at the castle without returning to Rutherford.
Despite what she’d told Ewen, the idea of donning her habit again did not sit well with her. Having come to the barn in only a chemise—the fine under-gown Mary had thoughtfully provided still in the house—Janet had been forced to choose between the extravagant surcote meant to go over it or “Novice Eleanor’s” dark brown wool kirtle. Although she’d chosen the latter—a woman in such a fine gown traveling alone would be much more difficult to explain—she could not bear to put on the white scapular and veil. Instead, she’d wrapped the plaid around herself like a hooded cloak—the one Margaret had left, not Ewen’s—and did her best to avoid other travelers on the road.
At this time of year, in the cold, dark days approaching the Nativity, there weren’t many. Those that she did come across had any curiosity appeased by her claim of being a midwife, traveling to attend the birth of her sister’s first child in whatever village lay ahead.
A few times, she joined another traveling party for a while—including a farmer and his wife taking fowl to market in Glasgow and an old man traveling to Lanark to visit his son—seeking the safety and comfort of numbers. But when questions became too personal, she was forced to part company.
More often than not, she was alone with her thoughts, which as much as she tried to prevent them kept returning to Ewen. It wouldn’t always be this horrible, she told herself. But for the first time, she could understand the misery her sister had suffered in her first marriage. How it felt to love someone and not have the person return those feelings. How it felt to be betrayed by the man to whom you’d given your heart.
It was a long, difficult journey. More difficult than it should have been, especially compared to the one that had come before. In addition to not having the English chasing after her, the advantage of staying to the main road was that she avoided the hills that she and Ewen had been forced to traverse. The disadvantage, of course, was the chance of coming upon an English patrol.
For two long days, through Rutherglen, where she’d spent her first night, to Peebles, where she spent her second, Janet managed to avoid such danger. On the third, however, as she and a merchant and his wife with whom she’d been traveling since Innerleithen approached the outskirts of Melrose, where she’d first met Ewen, fate intervened once again. A dozen soldiers appeared on the road ahead of her.
Her blood ran cold. Every instinct urged her to flee, although she knew that was ridiculous. There was no reason for her to run. She hadn’t done anything wrong.
She forced air into her lungs in slow, even breaths. How many times had she done this before? Too many to count. With as much time as she’d spent on the roads as a courier, running into English soldiers was not uncommon. Why was she so nervous?
Taking a cue from the merchant and his wife, she pretended not to notice anything out of the ordinary and continued on the path ahead. If the couple noticed her slight hesitation, they did not remark upon it. However, the merchant, a man old enough to be her father, did let his gaze linger on her face a moment longer than usual. Had he seen her skin pale beneath the makeshift hood of her plaid? His gaze dropped to her hands. Realizing she was clenching the reins, she forced her fingers to loosen. But that, he’d definitely noticed.
As the distance closed between them, the merchant moved his cart over to the side of the path to let the soldiers pass. Janet followed the couple, taking advantage of the opportunity to angle her own mount behind theirs, where she hoped she wouldn’t be as visible.
The pounding of her heart in her ears grew louder as the powerful warhorses neared. The ground started to shake, she hoped hiding her own shaking.
The merchant raised his hand in greeting as the first horse rode by.
The pounding in her heart stilled.Keep going, she prayed.Don’t stop.
One…two…three…passed by. Her heart started again. It was going to be all right. But then the pounding stopped—not her heart, the hooves.
“Halt,” a hard English voice said. “You there. What is your name? What business do you have on the road?”
No reason to panic, she told herself.Nothing out of the ordinary.
“Walter Hende, my lord. I am a merchant on my way to Roxburgh, where my wife and I hope to open a shop.”
“What kind of shop?”
The merchant motioned to his cart. “A drapery, my lord. I’ve the finest woolen cloth in Edinburgh. Take a look if you like.”
Janet ventured a peek at the soldier. Her heart dropped. He wasn’t a soldier he was a knight, although she did not recognize the arms of six martlets separated by a thick gold bend. He was an imposing-looking man, and not just because of his heavy armor and mail. He was big—tall and broad-shouldered—with a hard, square jaw and dark, hooded eyes just visible beneath the steel helm.
He motioned to a younger man by his side, whom she assumed must be his squire. The lad jumped down and approached the cart. Lifting back the oiled leather cover, he nodded. “Aye, Sir Thomas. It’s filled with cloth.”
It was then that disaster struck. The squire glanced in her direction. Because of where he had come to stand by the cart, he had a clear vantage of her face.
