Page 61 of The Knight's Pledge
“It has taken less than half the time to travel so far,” Gorman said at Effie’s side, the noon sun high and bright above, as if it was in a hurry to expend all its heat before the thick line of clouds creeping across the sky from the western horizon reached them. “At this pace, we shall reach the White Swan day after tomorrow.”
“Leaving the wagon at Roscraig was a good decision.” Her head was still spinning with the events of the past day, and she was glad to have Gorman’s easy conversation to anchorher, as usual.
“If I’ve learned anything about our knightly friend,” Thomas Annesley spoke from her right, “’tis that he is most efficient.”
Gorman laughed in response.
Effie couldn’t help but let her gaze fall upon the man riding before them in pair with Chumley. Lucan Montague was tall and dark in the saddle with his black horse, his black garb, his black hair. She could see the white clouds of his breath billowing up before him, dissipating in the sunshine. He had not spared her so much as a glance since they’d crossedover the Firth.
“Do you care to press on through the village, Lord Thomas?” Gorman asked.
Tommy chuckled. “I canna in good conscience answer to thattitle, me lad.”
“It’s the truth,” Gorman said easily.
“What sayyou, daughter?”
A warm emotion blossomed in Effie’s chest.Daughter. “If the clouds chasing us hold rain, I say we stop. We must be mindful of Winnie, and we have coin to spare now from the traders. The journey from London was filled with enough rain and ice to last me the remainder of my life.”
“Sir Lucan,” Tommy called out, and the dark-clad man looked over his shoulder, slowing hismount somewhat.
“Yes?”
“Would that you keep Effie company for a time,” her father said in his quaint, acquired brogue, adopted after so many decades on Caedmaray. “I’d have a word with MasterLittlebrook.”
Effie frowned but maneuvered her horse between Lucan and Chumley’s. Well, next to Lucan, for Chumley swung hisown mount away.
Two to the front,two covering, she remembered crossly.
They rode along in silence for several moments, their horses’ clopping falls on the dirt road muffling any bits of conversation she mighthave overheard.
“Why do you hate me?” Lucan asked abruptly, his tone one of curious puzzlement.
She knew her eyes were wide when she turned to him, and she was so completely surprised by his question that she didn’t take time to formulate a careful response.
“Because you represent everything that is wrong with Northumberland.”
“How?” he insisted. “I’ve not made that place my home in fifteen years. Unlikeyou.”
“It’s in your blood,” Effie insisted. “Youcan’t help it.”
“You’re of noble blood as well,” Lucan said. “What makes yours hallowed over mine?”
Effie frowned. “I’m actually doing something to takeback our land.”
His tone was incredulous.“And I’m not?”
“Your aid is incidental. No doubt if you hadn’t been forced on this journey, you wouldn’t raise a finger to help us. It’s different.”
“It’s bullshit,” he stated in a rather vulgar fashion, completely out of his stiff, proper character. “You hold some specific injury against me, and I’d like to know what it is. You owe me that much, at least.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It was I who realized where your father would be hiding, saving us a wild goose hunt all through Scotland. And even if youhadended up at Roscraig eventually, you would have never gotten past Mistress Harriet without me.”
Effie scoffed. “I think you’re forgetting what we’ve persevered the past fifteen years,” she said. “An old merchant’s wife guarding the door would have proven no obstacle.”
“I thinkyouunderestimate Harriet Cameron. The woman took beatings placing her at death’s door in order to protect Thomas Annesley upon his escape from Darlyrede, and then for years afterward to protect her son from his stepfather. You would have had to kill her, and I do doubt that would have placed you in a very good light with Thomas.”
