As for what might come afterward for Julianna, Roger felt his own body grow tense that she would be made to suffer any more than what their journey had already cost her.
Exhaustion.
Hunger.
Countless tears.
A physical attack, the vivid memory of her piercing scream haunting him still—
“Is it far yet? Where you’re taking me?”
Roger heaved a sigh, the tremor of fear in her voice cutting into him like a knife. “No, a few leagues more. We’ll arrive at the castle before dusk.”
“What is to become of me after I speak to your king?”
Now he felt a lurch in his stomach, apprehension gripping him.
What could he say to her that wouldn’t bring on another fit of tears? Yet he wouldn’t allow himself to reassure her when he had no idea what fate King Robert might have in store for her.
“I dinna know, lass. He is a fair man, an honorable man…but he bears a deep bitterness for the seven years of his wife’s imprisonment in England. I canna say how he will respond tae this thwarted attempt tae bring her home.”
There, it had been said at last, a tic working along Roger’s jaw that he had been so brutally honest with her, but what else could he do? Lie and tell her that all would be well? Julianna was a helpless pawn now in a dangerous chess game played by kings. Without thinking, he wound his arm more protectively around her only to hear her gasp.
Yet he didn’t ease his hold upon her, though she tried to jerk forward in the saddle as if she didn’t want him to touch her…didn’t want any man to touch her. Why would she after those men had unleashed their lust upon her?
Roger clenched his teeth and kicked their mount into a gallop as if to justify why he held Julianna so tightly, her body stiff and unyielding against him.
He had walked their lathered horse for two leagues or better, but now he wanted nothing more than to swiftly reach Dumbarton Castle to deliver his unhappy news to King Robert and be done with it.
Aye, done with wondering upon whom the king’s wrath would fall…though Roger’s every instinct told him that it would be Julianna.
* * *
“My delegation slain?”
Julianna felt her knees quake at the barely restrained anger in King Robert’s voice, the man as commanding a presence as Roger though in a different manner altogether.
As stocky and muscular as Roger was tall and strapping, the two men faced each other only a few feet apart while she stood in the background…wishing she could simply disappear through the floor.
The unseasonably sunny weather that had followed them all the way from Cumberland had become a thunderstorm with drenching rain by the time they reached Dumbarton Castle, Julianna shivering, too, as she stood in a growing puddle at her feet.
Her gown dripping wet. Her hair plastered to her head. Her leather slippers sodden and muddy. Her teeth chattering and her body shivering though Roger had wrapped a borrowed breacan around her from a formidable-looking warrior they had passed on their way to the antechamber…clearly, someone Roger knew.
The deference shown to him from the moment they had ridden into the bailey had been plain to see, and they had been ushered quickly into the castle as soon as he had said he must speak with the king.
Julianna had never set foot in so imposing a place, all tall ceilings and stone floors, which had only added to her trepidation.
Now with King Robert’s expression grown more ominous, the light brown color of his hair and eyes a stark contrast to his face reddened with fury, she could not help but fear the worst as Roger continued to grimly relay the news.
“All of them dead?” King Robert cut in again. “MacPherson, Robertson, Grant—”
“Aye, my lord king, and the warriors that rode with us as well,” came Roger’s response. “A surprise attack not long after we made camp for the night. I would have met the same fate if I hadna been dragged into the woods after my breacan was caught in a stirrup.”
To Julianna’s ears, he sounded almost apologetic that he hadn’t been slaughtered along with his warriors and the rest of the delegation, all the while King Robert listening intently with his square jaw clenched tight.
The rider of the frightened horse probably knocked from the saddle at the start of the melee.
Roger’s breacan tight as a noose around his neck until somehow, he wrenched himself free.
