“But have ye nay desire to feel the wind on yer face, just for a while?”
“There’s enough wind already,” he said, but to her delight, when the road was straight for a long stretch, he invited her to match her mount against his own for a gallop, and the race lasted all the way to the crossroads. By the time they reached their goal, Erica’s bonnet had fallen off and her hair was falling over her shoulders in a molten mess of soft brown curls.
It was lovely, even if a bit dusty, with half her guards ranged around her for this particular jaunt, the rest staying with the coach and Trudy.
The company drew up to wait for the rest of the party to catch up. As they did, she saw Finn looking strangely down a path they were not taking. She edged her horse alongside his, though the mare skittered sideways a little as the stallion expressed a decided interest in her.
“Are ye well?” she asked, wishing she dared reach out to touch him, for she was not entirely sure he heard her, so little a reaction did he give to her being there.
“Aye,” he said finally, and when he looked at her, she noted just how much sadness lay in the depths of his eyes. “Me mither used to live no’ far from here. ’Twas why I was not quite so keen to be agreeable to undertaking this task. We must always be attached to those places where we grew up, no’ so? Our wee cottage is long gone, burnt to the ground as if it never even existed.”
As difficult for Erica to know she was just another task for him, maybe Finn’s inscrutable air of neutrality was not about her after all. The long silences of the last days, the distance he had kept from her. The words struck her like a blow, replaced by an elation that confused her, for why should she care what he thought of her? At the same time, the grief carried within those words carved her out and left her hollow inside. The stories she’d heard about his mother being burned came back to her, and she tried to imagine how such a place could only bring back the vilest of memories.
“I am truly very sorry,” she said finally, struggling to find the words when her emotions were so scattered. Finn only nodded and looked away.
Then she glanced up and saw for the first time her new home. The castle for which they’d been heading was only a short distance away, a massive stone edifice jutting up from the hills in such majesty she could not help but feel that whatever she did was under the eye of those within. Of course, the thought was ridiculous, the castle being more than an hour from where they stood, given the winding nature of the road they would have to follow.
Odd how the castle was so close to where Finn’s mother died. She wondered if these lands were under the castle’s control or not. And if so, how such a thing could have been allowed to happen.
The thought was an unsettling one. She wished she could ask, but Finn was already closed off to her. The rest of the party had just caught up, and it was time for her to leave her mare and ride the rest of the way in the coach.
Soon they were safely underway again. Trudy was glad to have Erica back in the coach and chattered with great excitement about what their new life would be like. Erica, though, could not summon the same emotion.
Rather, she felt quite the opposite. The closer they drew to her final destination, the more she could feel the walls of the castle, of her new life, beginning to close in on her.
