He had never used another man’s family to exact retribution, finding the practice repulsive. But watching Colum and the men disappear over the rise, he found himself dwelling on his father’s second son. Jamie was a half brother Ruark had never met and knew not, except by the packet of letters he had found awaiting him one year when he had brought theBlack Dragoninto Workington for a refitting. The lad had been only nine at the timeand had introduced himself through the writings. For the first time since Ruark had left Scotland, a member of his family had attempted to communicate with him. Ruark had spent that evening reading the letters and every six months afterward for three years, he had sailed into Workington just for those letters.
Their father’s death four months ago might have delivered Ruark the Roxburghe earldom, but Jamie’s imprisonment had brought Ruark home.
That and the fact that Ruark and the warden were hardly strangers.
Lord Hereford was a former British naval captain who had retired a year ago to his borderland estate to take up the mantle of English warden. He and Ruark had a long history that included Ruark’s father murdered and now his half brother arrested for cattle lifting, a hanging offense according to law. Ruark had only just been informed of his half brother’s arrest when he landed in Workington a week ago. Hereford held the boy’s life for ransom in an attempt to do more than impoverish the Kerr estate.
In Ruark’s thinking, a man who would use a boy’s life to entrap Ruark was a man who did not value his own life. Ruark would find Hereford’s Achilles’ heel if it was the last thing he ever did. Vengeance controlled him.
Indeed Ruark rarely left anything to fate.
“They’re gone, Miss Rose. They’re all gone now.”
Jack had run back from the hill overlooking the river and now stood at the cart as Rose held the pony’s reins.
Thank heavens. She skimmed the open fields between her and the abbey. Sheer luck had caused her to see the riders in the distance or she would have been caught in the open when they crossed the bridge.
She and Jack had taken the old drover trail out of town,which shortened the distance to the abbey from town by two miles. But while the trail took her to the backside of the abbey, almost directly to the stables, it also exposed her for a hundred yards to the riverbank.
This was former reiver territory, after all. Exercising caution was always wise in a world where power was its own law, and Lord Roxburghe was more powerful than most. One did not earn the name Black Dragon without cause. “Are you sure it was Lord Roxburghe and his men?”
“Aye, mum,” Jack said, excitedly. “They carried a standard all splashed in blood with a fire-breathing monster flappin’ in the wind like the tail of a dragon. Is it true he be a pirate, Miss Rose? I heard he’s sunktwentyships but that the king won’t hang him because he’s made the crown rich.”
“ ’Tis a crimson standard, Jack.” Her eyes caught a flash of lightning. “Get back on the cart. We don’t need to worry about being seen now.”
Bright hazel eyes aglow, the boy hopped nimbly into the cart and Rose clicked her tongue. The pony jerked forward.
“Coooee. The Black Dragon.” Squinting his eyes, Jack eagerly sought another glimpse of the riverbank, which was in full view as the cart emerged from the woods. “Were we hiding because ye think his lordship would have trussed us like a boar to a spit and tossed us in the river? Ye have yer dirk. Ye wouldna have let anything happen.”
“Nay, I would not have,” she said, attempting to put his twelve-year-old imagination to rest before he gave himself nightmares. No doubt his mind lingered on the more gruesome details of capture, and though he liked to think himself as Rose’s protector, he was still only a boy, recovering from his mam’s death last year.
Jack had taken to Rose like a shadow since she’ddefended him from local riffraff some months ago. He followed her everywhere now. She was grateful that Friar Tucker allowed him to stay in the kitchens at the abbey or he’d be sleeping on the ground outside her second-story window.
“Did you get the books ye wanted from Mrs. Simpson?” he asked.
“Yes, I did. And you aren’t to tell anyone,” she reminded him again, having dragged the oath of secrecy from him before venturing into town. “My visits to Mrs. Simpson are our secret.”
He bobbed his blond head in reassurance, the perfect co-conspirator. Jack loved secrets. Last week he had helped her clandestinely bake a strawberry pie for Sister Nessa’s birthday, which had required sneaking into the henhouse and stealing two eggs.
Wind gusts lifted her hair. They both looked up at the sky. “Ye best be hurryin’, Miss Rose,” he encouraged.
She’d wrapped her books in her plaid scarf, but the thin fabric would not protect the leather-bound tomes from rain. She was relieved when they’d finally crossed the open space and entered the woods surrounding the abbey, until the first crack of lightning sounded. A moment later Jack hopped out of the cart. As was their routine, she would take the horse to the stable while Jack slipped through a narrow opening in the stone wall and unlocked the garden gate.
The stable looming ahead of her, she leaped out of the cart and led the pony into the interior out of the storm. The heavy stone walls and thatched roof muffled the thunder, and she was at once met with the pungent smell of straw and aged leather. Her eyes shifted to the stall where Friar Tucker kept the Abbey’s prize horse, an aged bay mare. The stall was empty. She still couldn’t believe he wouldbe away until the end of the month. He’d said not to worry, but that was like telling the sky not to rain. He rarely left the abbey for more than a few days at a time. Now he would be gone three weeks.
After she unhooked the lead and chains, she housed the pony in the stall beside the plow horse, then scooped grain from the bin and fed both horses. Only after she returned to the cart and removed her books did she realize both oil lanthorns hanging from posts at each end of the stable had been lit. For some reason she had failed to notice this detail when she first entered.
Alarmed, Rose tightened her arms on the books and straightened. She peered up and down the narrow aisle, listening, but heard no one present. It was then she saw another horse, housed in the far stall. Not just any horse either.
The magnificent Irish hunter was a beauty, at least seventeen hands tall, with long legs and a full chest. Though its coat was dusty, she imagined it would shine a glossy red when brushed. Suddenly she had a vague recollection that this stallion looked familiar. Heart pounding, she stepped back and bumped a wooden trestle.
A leather bridle and saddle draped the rack. She traced her finger along the etching of a dragon. A chill coursed down her spine.
Impossible!
Jack had seen Roxburghe and his men cross the bridge.
Rose spun on her heel, swirling straw with her movement, and slammed headlong into a wall.
