“He’d bleed out,” she said, “and they’d stillhang you for his murder.”
“How can you be so calm?”All he wanted to dowas take his rage out on Leif.To make him pay with his pound offlesh.
Alina met and held his gaze, and Roark couldsee the wildness still in her eyes.“I’ll fall into a weepingpuddle later,” she said.“Right now, time’s wasting.”
Alina saddled Etain as Roark rolled twosaddle blankets together and tied them up with a lead rope and thenhe filled a small sack with several handfuls of oats and stuffed itinto Etain’s saddlebag.He had his waist blade and spyglass on him,and his short blade was sheathed and tied to Artur’s saddle, as washis waterskin.
Roark stripped Leif of his waist belt andblade and the small dagger he kept in his boot and handed them toAlina, who strapped the belt and blade around her waist and tuckedthe dagger into her boot.If all went well, they only had to makehis family home of Thorn Bush Keep half a day’s ride from here.Ifnot, well, they’d deal with things as they came.
“Ready?”he asked.
“Almost.”She went into the brooding pen andgave Ash and Smokey each a hug and a kiss on the nose.“Be well,boys,” she told them.Swiping a tear from her cheek, she closed thegate behind her and led Etain out of the stables.
Roark shut the door behind them, whistled forArtur, who was grazing on a patch of grass, and led him to the backside of the stables, where Alina was waiting on Etain.He tied thebedroll to Artur’s saddle, swung up into it, and turned thestallion’s head north.
They rode hard and fast, staying off the roadand avoiding the villages and farmsteads as they made their waynorthwest along the Long River, the woods growing thicker and thepaths narrower the closer they got to Thorn Bush Keep.They spokelittle during their flight, and only out of necessity when theydid, concentrating on where they were going and getting there asquickly as possible without being seen or injured.
Although Roark had told Alina his familywould protect him if he helped her escape, it was more to get herto accept his help than believing it to be true.That was beforehe’d beaten Leif to a bloody pulp.
It’d been ten years since he’d lived with hisfamily, and he and his father had never been close.While he didn’tthink his father would turn him and Alina over to Roger or his men,he wasn’t willing to bet their lives on it.
Dusk was falling when they made the keep’ssouthern border and Roark led them deeper into the western woods.Half a league in, they rode up to a small cottage nestled in a glenand Roark pulled their horses up at the clearing’s edge, theirappearance heralded by the baying of hounds.
“What is this place?”Alina asked, sidlingEtain closer to Artur.
“The gamekeeper’s house,” he said as a manstepped out of the front door, a huge, rough-coated coursing houndat each hip and an arrow set to fly at the bow in his hands.“Logan,” Roark called out.“It’s me, Roark.”
Logan lowered his bow and arrow, commandedthe dogs to stay, and stepped forward with a big grin on his face.“I’ll be damned,” he said.“If it isna himself.”He glanced aroundout of habit, and seeing nothing or nobody else, waved them over.“Come on down, lad,” he said and eyed Alina.“You too, lassie.”
Roark dismounted and went to Alina, not thatshe needed his help, but he liked the feel of her slim waist in hishands as he guided her to the ground.She leaned into him as hetook the reins of both horses into one hand and tucked her underhis shoulder with the other.
“Alina, this is Logan.Logan, this isPrincess Alina.”
“Princess?”Logan’s brows rose and he took inher long tunic with Leif’s belt double looped around her waist withthe blade in its sheath.He took in her and Roark’s more thandisheveled appearances, the saddle blankets rolled up and tied offon Artur’s saddle.“Not that I’m not glad to see you, laddie,” hesaid to Roark.“But why are you here and not at the manorhouse?”
“It’s a verra long story, my friend,” Roarksaid.“One I look forward to telling you over a cup of ale or five.First though, do you have any fodder for our horses and a placethey can’t be easily seen?”
***
“Well now,” Logan said as he stood from thetable after listening to Roark tell him the gist of how he andAlina had come to be on his doorstep.“It’s a good thing I’ve astag dressed and ready for the manor house.I was gunna take itover on the morrow, but think I’ll be taking it over tonightinstead.”A handsome, middle-aged man with curly brown hair, sharpeyes, and the lean, well-muscled body of an outdoorsman, he touchedthe side of his nose and grinned.“In case a certain, arrogantlaird or his men show up looking for you and your lady friend.”
“Thank you,” Roark said as Alina soaked thejuices of her second bowl of venison stew up with her third pieceof bread.“I’m sorry to put you in the middle of all this.You werethe only person I knew I could trust.”
“Other than your lady mother, of course.WhoI’ll be telling you’re here.”
“Of course.”Roark stood as Logan put on hiscloak and cap and went to the door.
“Flossie and Courser’ll let you know ifanyone’s coming besides me,” Logan said, giving the two houndsAlina had been sharing pieces of bread with a hand motion that hadthem both sitting at alert.He tipped his cap to Alina.“Throw thebolt behind me,” he told Roark.
Alina washed their dirty bowls in the bucket,the hounds at her side, and then she sat down on the blanket Roarkhad laid out next to the hearth’s fire.She yawned and patted theblanket beside her.“Tell me about Logan, and why you trust himmore than your own father.”
“Caught that, did you?”Roark asked as he satdown beside her.
Alina nestled into Roark, and he wrapped anarm around her shoulder and tucked her in close.
“Thorn Bush Keep is held through my mother’sline,” he said.“She grew up here, as did Logan.My mother,Brianna, was an only child, and Logan was the child of thegamekeeper and his wife.As children, they were allowed to play andexplore the woods together, but when my mother came of age, she wasmarried off to my father, Ronan MacInnes, who, like me, is thesecond son of a laird.Their marriage was, and is, a marriage ofpolitics and alliances between clans, much as mine to Gwyneth wasmeant to be.”
“They were in love, your mother andLogan?”
