Sweeping an errant lock of hair from his forehead, she gave him a tender smile. “Get some sleep. We will have need of it. I will wake you when it is quiet.”
Roger nodded, too tired to argue. “I’ll sleep in there.” He pointed to the garret. “You take the bed.” He frowned uneasily. “Or maybe I should sleep at the foot of your bed. I don’t like how he looks at you.”
Rosalin wasn’t sure she did either, but the look on Roger’s face was so concerned and the instinct to protect her so sweet, her heart squeezed.
Yet it was her job to protect him. “I don’t think that will be necessary.” Cognizant of his pride, she added, “Though I thank you for the offer. But he will not hurt me like that.”
After what she’d learned today, she knew rape was the one thing she need not fear from Robbie Boyd.
Either her confidence had impressed him or Roger had reached a similar conclusion on his own. He looked at her pensively. “You like him, don’t you, Aunt Rosie-lin?”
She hoped her shock at his perceptiveness didn’t show. “I…” She bit her lip. “I don’t know what to think,” she finished honestly.
Roger frowned as if he, too, were undecided. “He is not what I expected. He doesn’t act like a brigand—at least not all the time. But Father hates to even hear his name mentioned. So I’m sure he must have done a lot of bad things.”
Rosalin thought for a moment, pondering all that Boyd had confided in her today. “I’m sure he must have, but lots of bad things have been done in the name of war by both sides. It’s hard to find someone all good or all bad. People are usually somewhere in between.”
Roger seemed troubled by what she’d said but nodded. Like most people, he wanted to see in black or white, not shades of gray. But Rosalin was beginning to see that Robbie Boyd was very gray indeed. Behind the ruthless shell lingered some of the man she remembered. Perhaps he was not the black-hearted, merciless brigand, but not the noble knight on the white steed either. Probably the same could be said of Cliff.
As she didn’t dare close her eyes, Rosalin kept herself occupied for the next few hours by preparing the strips of sheeting she and Roger had made before he went to bed. Working by the sliver of moonlight coming through the cracked shutter, she twisted them into plaits and tied the ends together. When she was done, she’d constructed a strong, forty-foot-long rope.
Fortunately, the wooden bed was sturdily built. Tying one end of the sheeting to the thick post, she let the other end drop out the window. They might have to drop the last few feet, but it should be long enough.
When the sounds from below had completely died down, and she was certain everyone was sleeping, she woke Roger.
Moving about the room like ghosts, they climbed atop the bed and carefully drew the shutters wide. Giving the rope a hard tug, Roger stepped onto the sill and looked down. His face paled, and his Adam’s apple bobbed, but he didn’t hesitate. They exchanged a look, and he started down. She held her breath, wanting to reach out and grab him. He must have sensed her turmoil. “Remember your promise,” he whispered.
She stilled. “You, too.”
And then he was gone. For five agonizing minutes she watched the rope strain against his weight. A few times the bed creaked and her heart dropped to the floor. But it held. It held! And finally—finally!—the rope went slack. He’d reached the bottom.
She peered down, unable to see him, but didn’t hesitate. Tugging the rope as he’d done to test its strength, she started to climb onto the sill. But before her foot touched the wood, disaster struck. The shutter hadn’t been open all the way, and she accidentally knocked it with her elbow, causing it to clatter against the outside wall—loudly.
She froze as the sound seemed to reverberate through the quiet night like a church bell. Maybe he wouldn’t hear…
Movement and the sound of the door rattling told her otherwise. Thank God she’d thought to latch it.
“Rosalin. Open the door.”
She looked outside and her heart lurched, almost as if it were trying to tell her to jump. To go after her nephew and do whatever she could to escape.
But she had to give Roger a chance. Quickly untying the rope, she let it drop and drew the shutters closed. Her hands were still on the latch when the door banged open.
Restless and on edge, Robbie hadn’t bothered to try to sleep. Instead he sat with his back propped against the door and attempted to concentrate on Kirkton’s fiery whisky rather than the woman firing his blood.
It wasn’t working. He was so attuned to her in the chamber behind him, his pulse jumped every time he heard a noise.
But this noise was different. It wasn’t footsteps or whispered voices or the sound of the bed creaking as she rolled around; it was a loud slam that was out of place in the middle of the night. So when she didn’t respond right away, he didn’t hesitate to snap the paltry latch with a hard slam of his shoulder against the door and burst inside.
A blast of cold air hit him. The window had been open. A fact seemingly confirmed by her current position, kneeling on the bed with her hands on the shutters. She turned to him with a startled gasp. He thought he detected a flash of panic in her eyes, but it might have been just surprise. “What are you doing in here?”
He closed the door behind him and strode toward her. “I might ask you the same thing.”
He was close enough to see the flush heat her skin and the pulse in her neck begin to quicken. She was nervous. But whether it was his presence in her chamber, the fact that he stood close enough to smell the mint of the rub she’d used to clean her teeth, or something else, he didn’t know. “Why were the shutters open?”
He was watching her closely, closely enough to see the flutter of that quickened pulse before she replied. “The room was warm, so I cracked one of the shutters. It must have blown open while I slept. I’m sorry to have woken you, but as you can see, there is no cause for your concern.”
A quick sweeping glance of the room seemed to confirm her words. The iron brazier was stocked with peat and burning in the far corner of the room, the small table set out with the items he’d asked Kirkton to procure for her next to it, candle on the nightstand, bed against the window…
