Mary made her decision. She would not—couldnot—let her son be taken from her again. The son who was already more English than he was Scot. She held Sir Adam’s gaze. “Will you help us?”
He hesitated. She didn’t blame him. She hated to ask so much of him when he’d already done so much, but with Edward’s men right behind him, she didn’t have a choice.
His moment of hesitation didn’t last long. “You are determined to do this?”
She nodded. Atholl wasn’t coming for them. It was up to her now.
He sighed in a way that told her he did not agree but recognized the futility of argument. “Then I will do what I can to delay them.” He turned to Janet. “You have a means of transport.”
Janet nodded. “I do.”
“Then you’d best gather David and be gone. They will be here any minute.”
Mary threw her arms around him. “Thank you,” she said, blinking up at him through watery eyes.
“I will do whatever I must to see you safe,” he said heavily. Mary’s heart swelled with gratitude. If only her husband would have done the same. “I owe Atholl my life.”
Though Sir Adam’s father had fallen on the battlefield at Dunbar, her husband’s heroics had enabled Sir Adam to escape. Once she’d been proud of her husband’s feats of bravery and battlefield prowess. But her pride hadn’t been enough for him. Admiring such a man from afar was very different from being married to one.
She donned the garments Janet had brought for her—which were indeed too big and hung on her like a sackcloth—and went to wake her son. If her sister noticed the wariness in the boy’s eyes when he looked at his mother, Janet didn’t say anything. It would take time, Mary told herself. But after three months, David still pulled away from her touch. Perhaps if he didn’t look so much like his father it wouldn’t hurt so much. But except for having her light hair, the lad was the image of her handsome husband.
Fortunately, David didn’t raise an objection to being woken in the middle of the night, covered in a scratchy wool cloak, and rushed out into the stormy night. Being raised in England as a virtual prisoner—albeit a favored one—had made him very good at keeping his thoughts to himself.Toogood. Her young son was an enigma to her.
Cailin swept her in a big bear hug when he saw her. She had to bite back a smile. Janet was right; with his round, jovial face and equally hearty belly, he did indeed make a good monk.
Exchanging the horse Janet had purchased for two in her own stables—she would ride with Davey, and Janet would ride with Cailin—they set off toward the eastern seaboard.
It was slow and treacherous going, the road muddy and slippery from all the rain. The rain was too heavy to keep a torch lit, so it was also difficult to see. But far worse was the constant fear, the taut, heightened senses and frazzled nerve endings set on edge, as they sat readied on constant alert for the sounds of pursuit.
Yet with every mile they rode, some of the fear slipped away.
She knew they must be close when Janet confirmed it. “We’re almost there. Thebirlinnis hidden in a cove just beyond the bridge.”
Mary couldn’t believe it. They were going to make it! She was going home.Scotland!
But as they crossed the wooden bridge over the River Tyne, she heard a sound in the distance that stopped her cold. It wasn’t the pounding of hooves behind her that she’d feared, but a clash of metal ahead of her.
Janet heard it, too. Their eyes met for a fraction of an instant before her sister flicked the reins and jumped forward with a strangled cry.
Mary shouted after her to stop, but Janet, with Cailin behind her, raced ahead. Mary tightened her hold around her son in front of her and surged after her, plunging into the darkness, the sounds of battle growing louder and louder.
“Janet, stop!” she shouted. Her sister was going to get herself killed. Somehow the English must have found the Islesmen, and their sister-in-law’s clansmen were fighting for their lives.
Fortunately, if Janet wasn’t thinking rationally, Cailin was. He forced their horse to slow, enabling Mary and David to catch up to them.
Janet was trying to wrest the reins from the older man. “Cailin, let me have those.” Mary was close enough to see the frantic wildness in her sister’s eyes. “I have to go. I have to see.”
“You’ll not help the men any by getting yourself killed,” Cailin said sternly—more sternly than Mary had ever heard him talk to her. “If you get in the way, they’ll think about defending you, not themselves.”
Janet’s eyes filled with tears. “But it’s my fault.”
“Nay,” Mary said fiercely. “It’s not your fault, it’s mine.” And it was. She never should have let it get to this. She should have fled months ago. But when it was clear Bruce’s cause was lost, she’d trusted her husband to come for them. Had he spared a thought for what would become of them, when he raced off to glory?
“Who is fighting, Mother?” David asked.
Mary looked into the solemn upturned face of her son. “The men who brought your aunt to us.”
“Does that mean we aren’t leaving?”
