Page 10 of Ties of Legacy

At least he was back close to full strength and could walk instead of having to crawl this time. He was able to follow silently beside her as she retraced his route of the night before. When she reached the place where the horse had caught him, she stopped and looked at the trampled and crushed detritus on the ground between the trees.

He stared at her, fascinated. She looked almost…relieved. Had she been worrying about him?

A bubble of hope filled him. Maybe if he explained his situation, she would believe him after all.

But she shrugged, her expression hardening, and the hopeful thought was quenched. She might have been glad he wasn’t dead, but if he revealed himself now, appearing perfectly healthy, she would think his illness the night before had been a trick. Any sympathy she had for him would disappear.

He needed to stick to his plan from the night hours. He would follow her for as long as it took. He didn’t have any other choice.

Chapter 5

Avery

Forgetting Elliot turned out to be easier said than done. More often than she wanted to admit, Avery found her mind wandering back to the young man as she wondered what had happened to him. His disappearance from the trees lent weight to the idea that his weakness had been feigned. And yet, he had been incredibly convincing, and she couldn’t quite shake the guilt of abandoning him among the trees. She would have feared he had been taken by predators except they weren’t exactly prevalent in Sovar. They had unnervingly large mice and enormous pumpkins, but they didn’t have wild animals that preyed on humans.

So Elliot had to be all right. Didn’t he?

It didn’t help that she couldn’t shake the unnerving sensation that someone was near. Ever since the attempted robbery, she kept catching movement out of the corner of her eye that turned out to be nothing, or thinking she heard something only to conclude she was imagining things. She had been the target of attempted thieves before, both with her parents and with her aunt and uncle—and even while traveling alone—but she had never been so badly affected. She could only conclude it was the lingering guilt that stopped her from shaking off the encounter.

Or at least that’s what she told herself until just before she arrived at the next hamlet on the road to Marleston. When she twitched at the flick of movement on the edges of her vision, she turned quickly enough to catch someone’s arm disappearing into the trees.

She stiffened. She hadn’t been imagining it! Someone was following her.

And if someone was following her now, that meant she probably hadn’t imagined the previous occasions either. Someone had been on her tail since her first night out of Henton, and that led to only one conclusion. Elliot.

She ground her teeth together. And to think she’d been feeling more and more guilty about abandoning him! The trickster had been faking it all along.

Her instinct was to chase straight after him, but she stopped herself. As angry as she felt, what would she accuse him of? He had returned the stolen goods and made no further attempt to approach her or raid her cart. It was possible he was just heading in the same direction and was scared enough of her threats to want to keep out of sight.

She snorted. Not likely. But he could easily claim as much. She sighed and forced herself to face forward again. If she wanted to deal with him properly, she needed to set a trap.

Avery had been looking forward to a night in a proper bed in the hamlet. It wasn’t big enough to have an inn, but she knew at least two families who would offer her hospitality. But she would have to refuse their offers.

Sure enough, after they had enthusiastically browsed her wares, they both offered her a bed for the night.

“I won’t take a bed this time,” she said to the couple with the larger barn. “But I’ll sleep with Nutmeg in your barn, if that’s all right?”

The couple both laughed.

“You get more attached to that horse every time we see you,” the wife said, making Avery smile. Nutmeg might not have been her motivation on this occasion, but it was true that the mare had become her closest companion.

She led the horse and cart into the cavernous barn and positioned the cart carefully before unhitching Nutmeg and rubbing her down. She secured her inside the closest stall and climbed up to the hay loft above.

Avery lay down on her stomach, where she could watch the door without being easily seen. She didn’t know how long it would take Elliot to appear, but she had no doubts he would come.

She nearly fell asleep twice before the slight creak of the barn door finally sounded. Elliot stood frozen half in the door and half out, moonlight illuminating his frame. As Avery had suspected, there was no sign of the illness that had incapacitated him on their last encounter.

After an extended moment of stillness, he seemed to conclude that if she was inside the barn, she was asleep, and his arrival had escaped notice. Slipping all the way inside, he hurried straight for Avery’s cart.

He was no longer looking around, his attention on the closest knot, so Avery pulled herself into a crouch. She stayed there, poised in position as she waited for the perfect moment.

As soon as he had undone the first knot and peeled back the canvas, she pounced. Dropping from above, she landed on his hunched back, cushioning her own fall as she sent him sprawling against the straw on the barn floor.

She pushed herself off him easily, trying not to notice that he was more muscled than she had suspected at their previous meetings. She had no business noticing the muscles of a thief.

Elliot groaned and rolled over, his eyes widening as he finally realized what had landed on him.

“Were you waiting for me?” he gasped. “You’re supposed to be asleep!”

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