“Ye can marry me, and I will give ye freedom to ... to cook whatever you choose for dinner every night. And I would not complain if ye burned the bread.”
Jack was indeed her knight protector. “If you were ten years older, I would marry you, Jack Lowell, and we would travel and see the world. Did you know there are distant lands with trees as large as mountains and skies like warm sapphires? Marco Polo discovered such worlds—”
“Lord Roxburghe has seen distant lands, too,” Jack said.
Her dreamy thoughts collapsed like a house of sticks. “Yes, I imagine he has seen much.”
The boy suddenly grew quiet. He traced a gauge in the workbench at his hip. “Will Lord Roxburghe be back to the abbey soon, Miss Rose?”
“Why?” She nudged him playfully when he looked dejected. “Have you had enough of mucking Loki’s stall?”
Jack shrugged. “He gave me a coin, Miss Rose. In the stables the morning he left. He let me help saddle the horses and told me I was to watch his horse for him.”
“You never told me you saw Lord Roxburghe.”
Again, Jack shrugged. “He asked if you were a nun.”
He did? “Oh.”
“But I told him the church would no’ have you even if ye wanted to be like Sister Nessa.”
“Jack!”
“But that’s what you’re always sayin’, Miss Rose. Then Lord Roxburghe gave me a coin and said since ye were so wicked, I was to watch his horse and make sure ye don’t sell him afore he returns.”
“He said that?”
“Aye.” Jack nodded vigorously. “But I told him ye’d never sell what wasn’t yers ’less the person owed ye a debt. That you once threatened Geddes Graham with a sword because he stole a cart full of oats from the abbey.”
She inwardly groaned. “What did Lord Roxburghe say?”
“He laughed and said it was just like a woman to stab a man in the heart for any reason. What does that mean?”
“It means your affection for him should not be measured by the weight of his gifts, Jack. Your allegiance is yours alone to give and should never be traded for a meager coin.”
Jack lowered his chin, and Rose pursed her lips, chastising herself for being so insensitive. A coin was probably everything to a boy like Jack who had nothing—not even family. But the longer she looked at his face, the more he seemed to find interest in the deep gouges at his fingertips, and something else that bothered him. “A coin must seem like a lot,” she said, realizing now why he’d ventured into the stable to find her. Something must have happened. “What did you do with all that wealth?”
He studied the scuffed toe of one shoe. “I gave it to the old mountebank what comes past Farmer Herring’severy Tuesday. I wanted ye to have a bonnet, seein’ as how ye don’t have one. Then Rolf, he sees the coin and says I stole it.”
Rose slid the lamp nearer to his face. “Look at me, Jack.”
The boy refused. Rose tilted his chin toward her and forced his face into the light, shocked that she had not noted his swollen cheek. His eyes blurred with tears, not pity for himself but clearly shame that she should see the bruise. Fury on his behalf burned in her chest. “Someone struck you.”
“He accused me of thievin’ and we got in a tussle.” As Jack spoke the words, his defiance faded. “He told me he’ll be fetchin’ the sheriff for givin’ him a bluidy facer, and the magistrate will transport me away forever.”
She looked at the pale-skinned boy whose hazel eyes seemed to fill half his face, and who had given away his single coin to buy a bonnet for her. “No one is transporting you anywhere. Come ...” She tucked the puzzle box into her pocket. “You need a cooling rag for that bruise on your cheek.”
“But what are ye goin’ to do, Miss Rose?” He didn’t like to see her upset and he clearly worried he was the cause of her anger. “The mountebank be on his way to Chesters. We’ve no horse what can catch him now.”
Two days later, Rose set out of the abbey’s gates on the back of Roxburghe’s magnificent stallion. Indeed his lordship did know horseflesh. The horse had been restless to escape his paddock for days and, in the mood to oblige him, Rose had taken him out yesterday for a brief stint around the abbey. Today they would travel much farther.
She rode astride, wearing a pair of boy’s breeches and a woolen overcoat belted at the waist. She yanked hercocked hat lower over her brow and lifted her face to the sky. Despite her fierce mood, she could not deny the afternoon was beautiful. As a child, she had ridden the empty fields surrounding the abbey at night. With only the moonlight at her back, she’d imagined herself a painted Celtic warrior. Even in the bright sunlight and heat of the day, she felt a vague recollection of the child she’d been. Never afraid. Never alone. Yet restless like this horse—in part due to an imagination that kept constant companion with her want for adventure.
Soon she slowed the stallion to test his gait and high-stepped him in a circle. Leaning over to rub him affectionately, she held tight to the reins and studied his leg to reassure herself that he had healed. She had already ridden six miles from the abbey over dale and hill, through the woods and around fields planted with rye. The high-strung stud pulled restively at his bit, fighting his restraint.
“Take it easy, boy,” she said, catching the scent of campfire smoke. She straightened in the saddle and tented a hand over her eyes, locating the ribbon of gray smoke above the trees. “I see the smoke, too.”
The corner of her mouth crooked. She had specifically waited two days, when she knew the mountebank would be returning this way on his route back to Chesters. He never ventured far from the border.
