Isobel sat on the bench in her bedchamber, staring blindly out the window slit as Linnet packed her chest. Glancing down, she saw she was dressed in her traveling clothes. She had no memory of changing.
Now and then, Linnet asked a question about the packing. Isobel could not muster the strength to answer. When she saw Linnet carry her sword to the chest, though, she forced herself to speak.
“I shall have to give that up.” Her voice came out as a croak. “My new husband will not approve.”
Linnet glared at her over the top of the chest as she laid the sword inside it. Then she stalked over to Isobel.
“We shall wear our daggers.” Linnet flipped up the skirt of Isobel’s gown and strapped a dagger to her calf.
“But we’ll be traveling with twenty of de Roche’s men—”
“I stole an extra for each of us.” Linnet slapped a second dagger into Isobel’s hand. “Find a place to hide it on you.”
It was easier to slip the dagger through the fichu of her gown and fasten it to the belt underneath than to argue.
“You need not come with me,” Isobel said, though the thought of losing the girl, too, brought her to the brink of tears again. “You will want to stay with François.”
“We are both coming,” Linnet said. “Sir Robert said you will have need of us.”
Isobel took Linnet’s hand and squeezed it, unable to find words to tell her how grateful she was.
Linnet jerked her hand away, still furious with her for letting this happen. Isobel leaned her head back against the stone wall and let the tears slide down the sides of her face. She could not seem to stop weeping. Perhaps if she were not so very, very tired.
Linnet brought a cold, wet cloth for her face. As Isobel took slow, deep breaths through the cloth, she told herself that if she could survive eight years married to Hume, she could survive anything. Even this. She drew in one last deep breath and set the cloth aside.
“Thank you, Linnet.” She rose to her feet, dry-eyed at last. “I am ready.”
It was still raining, so they made their good-byes inside the keep. Somehow, she managed to make the expected nods and murmurs as she moved from group to group with de Roche.
She faltered only twice.
The first was when she saw Lady Catherine Fitz-Alan. Isobel could not help thinking Stephen would not be happy, either, in love with his brother’s wife. Though Lady Catherine had been kindness itself when they met, she offered no good wishes now. The blue eyes fixed on her, as if asking a burning question.
Isobel faltered again when she bade farewell to her brother and Robert. How she would miss them! All that kept her from breaking down was Robert’s promise to visit her soon.
“Do not tell de Roche, but I go in secret to Paris now,” Robert said in a low voice when de Roche turned to speak to someone else. “I shall come see you upon my return.”
She felt certain Robert knew what was between her and Stephen, though they never spoke of it. When he embraced her for the last time, she could not help whispering in his ear, “He did not come. He did not come.”
“You will be happy yet, Isobel, I know it.”
Despite Robert’s effort to hide his worry behind a smile, she saw it in his eyes as he waved good-bye to her.
They had two days’ ride before them, and de Roche was anxious to be gone. With a twin on either side of her, Isobel urged her horse forward with the rest of their party.
As they crossed the bailey yard, she turned for a last look at the storeroom along the wall where she spent so many happy hours practicing. Where she and Stephen first kissed.
A movement on top of the wall drew her eye upward. A dark, hooded figure stood against the gray sky, black cape flapping in the wind.
Stephen had come to see her off, after all.
Though she could not make out his face, she felt his eyes burning into her long after she rode out the gate.
God help her, she loved him. Her life was in ruins.
Chapter Twenty-six
Even with an escort of twenty men, the road to Rouen was dangerous. They rode hard, rarely stopping, except to camp a few hours overnight on the bank of the Seine. Isobel was past exhaustion by the time she saw the towers and church spires of Rouen on the horizon at dusk on the second day.
