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He sat, trying not to think of the last time he’d waited for Clarissa. This was entirely different. Back then, her father had forcibly removed her from the tournament grounds. No one would keep her from him here.
No one but Clarissa herself.
Debating whether he should wait longer or go looking for her himself, Aidan was relieved to see Morgan walking toward him.
Without Clarissa.
Fear, the kind that gripped one’s throat and crawled downward, taking up a more permanent residence . . . the kind he felt while staring down an opponent, knowing the next moment could be his last . . . that kind of fear took hold of him as he watched Morgan approach.
She didn’t need to say it, because Aidan already knew.
Clarissa was not coming.
* * *
When Clarissa rode into Highgate Village, the first person she came across was a cobbler. Standing on the threshold of a small cruck house and flinging epithets at another man who had apparently just visited his shop, he was not the sort of person Clarissa wished to approach. But when he stopped cussing long enough for her to pass, greeting her with a surprisingly civil “my lady,” she decided to take a chance and ask for his guidance.
On his advice, Clarissa sought out the services of the reeve she now followed. He’d seemed an ideal candidate to help her—reeves were often the most respected of all the servants, chosen as their leader—and he’d eagerly accepted her simple gold ring as payment for an escort to Burness Abbey.
But as they rode on and on and on, she began to doubt him. Surely they would be there already if it truly lay just thirty miles north of Highgate End?
Aidan’s meeting must have ended by now, and no doubt he’d ridden off looking for her. Or maybe he’d be angry enough to gladly give her over to the nuns.
“Eh, this way, milady,” the reeve, if he truly were one, called back. They’d come to a fork in the well-worn road, one that looked awfully familiar.
“Master Jon,” she said, refusing to continue. “Have we not come to this pass before?”
Though she felt certain she’d been at this same juncture before, Clarissa knew her limitations. She could hardly find her way from the northern gates of Theffield to the southern ones. Even if Burness was due north of Highgate Castle, Clarissa would have gotten lost trying to find it herself.
Ignoring the surge of panic that threatened to take hold of her, she rode up to the reeve and gave him a sharp look.
“Uh, nay, my lady. We’ve not been here before.”
The hesitation in his voice told her otherwise.
“Jon,” she said in a tone that would not brook an argument, “what is your role, truly, at Highgate?” And before he could answer, she added, “More importantly, do you know where we are going?”
He looked at the two roads ahead, then at her. Digging something from the pouch that hung by his side, he rode toward her and thrust out his hand.
When he opened his fist, her ring lay in his palm.
“Take it,” he said, returning her payment. “We will go back—”
“No, we will not.” She would not take the ring. She would not go back. If she went back, she’d be forced to confront her turbulent feelings again, and that she could not do. “You will accompany me to—”
“I know not where Burness Abbey be, milady.”
She stared straight through him.
“But I had a horse,” he continued, “and—”
“And you planned to share the profit from my ring with the cobbler who sent me to you. The one who claimed you were the reeve?”
Guilty.
“I—”
Clarissa didn’t care. She was hot, and tired of riding in circles in the heat, but worst of all, she was scared. Even if the nuns accepted her without Father Simon’s intercession, she couldn’t fathom facing an entire lifetime without Aidan.
