Page 68 of The Knight's Pledge
Lucan strode across the floor and stepped over the bench to the empty spot at the trestle at Thomas’s side, directly across from Effie. He sat. Still, she did notraise her face.
But Winnie, seated to the right of her did. She stared directly at Lucan with a serene if serious expression.
Kit Katey was on Effie’s left, and she gave Lucan a small smile before lowering her eyes to her breakfast once more.
A steaming bowl of gray mush was set before him, but Lucan ignored it, keeping his gaze pinned on the blonde across from him, even as he picked up his spoon.
Lucan looked at the slight frame of Effie Annesley—no strap crossed her chest. Everyone else at in the hall had their personal possession nearthem at table.
She finally glanced up. “What?”
“The satchel?” Lucan quietly suggested.
Effie blinked. “What about it?” She didn’t seem at all bothered by his distress.
“You have it?”
She frowned. “No? Why would I have it?”
“You didn’t take it?”
“What do you mean? Why one earth would I”—she broke off. “Where’s the bag, Lucan?”
“Something amiss, Sir Lucan?” Gorman called out fromdown the table.
Lucan’s heart creaked to a halt, his blood continuing to rush in his ears. “It was gone from my room when I woke.”
In a flash Effie was up from her seat and had the old matron gripped from behind, her tray crashing to the floor, a knife pressing against the largest of the woman’s bloated chins. “Where is the bag?”
“Whatbag, mistress?”
“Don’t trifle with me,” Effie warned. “I will cut your throat in an instant. The bag that was in that man’s room last night. Just tell me where it is, and I shall let you go. We can forget itever happened.”
“I don’t know anything about a bag!” the old woman sobbed and shook. “I never went in the chamber after setting the brazier—I swear!”
“Your servant, then,” Effie hissed.
“Nay, mistress! Nay!” The woman squealed. “Were only me last night. I sent the rest home to save the wages!”
Thomas got up from the table and strode to where his daughter held the woman captive, reaching out to gently take hold of Effie’s wrist and pull the bladefrom her hand.
“Easy, lass,” he said. “Let her go—she speaks true. She followed us out of the common room last night and made her pallet inthe kitchen.”
The old woman spun out of Effie’s embrace as soon as she could and rushed from the common room with a hitching sob, leaving the mess of the tray on the floor.
If Effie’s skin had looked like polished ivory before, now it had lost all semblance of living color, like the frigid snow that had covered the land, blinding, blue-white, cold. Even her lips were drained of warm hue.
Lucan looked around at those gathered to either side of the trestle. “Did any of you see…?”
“No,” Gorman answered right away. “Winnie went up before her, but Effie retired when the rest of us did. The innskeep locked the door behind us.”
“Besides,” James Rose scoffed, “why would any of us care to take charge of the damned thing in such secret? We’veno need of it.”
Some members of the band were murmuring to each other, but Lucan noticed that Winnie herself had again fixed him witha solemn stare.
She knows, Lucan realized.She knows Effie spent thenight with me.
Effie was still standing over the mess in the floor, her father’s arm laid across her shoulders. “Are you certain you had it with you in the chamber last night?”
