Alex drank down his ale, wishing to God that Shaggy served whiskey instead.
* * *
The bar across the door creaked as Glynis slid it back. Over the pounding in her ears, she heard one of the women on the bed behind her sigh. Her hands shook as she waited for the woman to call out to her.
There was a rustle of bedclothes, and she held her breath, waiting. Silence settled over the room again. Moving as quickly as she dared in the blackness, Glynis picked up the cloth bag she had left beside the door, lifted her cloak from the peg, and slipped out.
Panic surged through her limbs as a large hand covered her mouth.
CHAPTER 9
Don’t scream. It’s me.” Alex didn’t release his hand from Glynis’s mouth until she nodded.
“I asked ye to meet me outside the kitchens,” she whispered.
“Quiet. We can’t talk here.” He put his arm around her and swept her down the stairs before someone in one of the bedchambers heard them and came out to investigate.
When they reached the main floor, he continued down into the undercroft. With so many guests in the castle, they could find servants sleeping or still working in the kitchens, so he grabbed a lit torch off the wall and shoved her into a storeroom.
“What were ye thinking asking me to meet ye at this hour?” he said, as he rammed the torch into the sconce on the wall.
Alex had been on the galley sorting out the supplies he needed to take with him to Edinburgh when a young boy appeared and told him that a lady wanted him to meet her at midnight outside the kitchens. This was not the first time he’d had that sort of request. He was about to send the lad away, but something made him ask the lad to describe the lady first.
“I’m glad ye came,” Glynis said.
“Ye gave me no choice,” he said. “I couldn’t have ye wandering around a castle full of warriors—half of them drunk— looking for me in the dark.”
He took a deep breath. He had wanted to say good-bye to her—and to explain about what she’d seen when she walked in on him and Catherine—but he didn’t have a lot of time. He was meeting Duncan soon, and then they were all leaving.
“Why did ye want to see me?” he asked.
“When I talked with your friend Duncan this afternoon, he told me you’re going to Edinburgh.”
How had she gotten closemouthed Duncan to share their business with her?
“I want ye to take me with ye,” she said.
Alex could not have been more stunned if she’d sprouted fairy wings and flown over the pots and bags of grain in the storeroom. Just what was Glynis suggesting? His heart gave a big lurch as he considered the possibility that she might actually want to run off with him. Apparently, she liked what she saw of him earlier today.
But it seemed so unlikely that he had to ask. “Why?”
“I’ve decided to live with my mother’s family,” she said. “They are Lowlanders and live in Edinburgh.”
Alex waited for the relief he should feel upon learning that her request had nothing to do with him, but it didn’t come. A bad sign.
“Ye know verra well that I can’t just run off with ye across Scotland,” Alex said.
“Ye must,” she said, clenching her fists. “My da wants to marry me to Alain.”
Alex wanted to hit something. He didn’t have time for this, and her father hadn’t listened to him before, but he wanted to help her if he could. “Do ye know where your father is? I’ll speak with him.”
“Does my father strike ye as the sort of man who takes advice well?”
She had a point, but he said, “I can be verra persuasive.”
“So I’ve heard,” Glynis said with more than a touch of sarcasm. “But it will do no good. My father is too stubborn by half.”
As was his daughter. “Have ye considered a compromise? Is there no man ye are willing to wed?”
