Page 63 of The Knight's Pledge
“A white gown,” Lucan said dazedly.
“Actually, it was pale blue.” She paused. “But it likely looked whitein the night.”
“You had no cloak,” he accused. “I assumed you were of Castle Dare because you had no cloak. And”—he broke off.
Effie didn’t want to tell him where her cloak had gone. He likely wouldn’t believe her, and it didn’t matter now, anyway. It had been the foolish gesture of a wealthy young girl who’d had no idea how close she would come to freezing to death that night.
“The Hargraves had been to Castle Dare that evening,” he said. “They’d dined with my parents. A special occasion my father had planned.”
“God damn it, Lucan—I know,” Effie said. “That the Hargraves were both away was what allowed me to escape. It was their rule that one of them should always be in residence, and they almost never broke it.”
“What happened to you?” Lucan asked after some time. “After the fire—where did you go?”
“The wood,” she answered easily. “I had nowhere else to go, so I ran blindly. I stumbled into a snare and was trapped. I would have frozen to death by morning if Old Robin hadn’t found me.”
“Are you at last to tell me whoOld Robin is?”
“The old lord of Locktrey.”
“Locktrey?” Lucan frowned. “That tiny place was abandoned decades ago. There wasn’t even a village. Only an old Saxon ruin. What little land it claimed was—”
“Absorbed into Darlyrede lands,” Effie finished for him. “There wasn’t a village, true. Just the ancient wooden keep, and the spring. Old Robin and his few servants. Adolphus Paget wanted the water. Hargrave gave it to him as agiftin return for the specimens Paget supplied.” She paused a moment, remembering the gruff old hermit. How kindly he had grown toward her, how instrumental in her life.
“He died ten years ago, this spring,” Effie said at last. “He was wary of me at first, having come from Darlyrede, but once he realized I was never going back there, he taught me to shoot, and to track. How to rob a man on horseback without ever spilling blood, although there was plenty of blood spilled. By the time he died, we had started building up the family in the Warren—refining our purpose. Clarifying our mission. Rescuing those who needed it, taking in those who had managed to escape. Gorman was one of the last ones to arrive before Old Robin died. I’m glad they knew each other.”
“And so you truly are the leader of the band,” Lucan said.
Effie nodded. “Robin left them in my care.”
“Because you’d proven yourself?”
“Not really,” Effie admitted. “I was capable, certainly. He saw to that. But it was because I was born to a noble family. Old Robin never gave up hope that, one day, I would be able to win back Northumberland for good.”
“So, let me see if I understand,” Lucan said contemplatively. “You loathe me for things I did and said to a person largely a stranger to me, on what was arguably the worst night of my life?”
“You could have stopped it.”
“I was ten and six, Effie,” he barked. “I’d just lost my fatherandmother,andmy home. I suddenly had a little girl to look after. I’ll not apologize for having a wonderful home with loving parents prior to the fire. I’m not responsible for your bad childhood. And between the two of us, you’re the only one with Hargrave blood running in your veins. So perhaps you might consider that all your good deeds are done either out of guilt or to stave off the tendencies ofyour own kin.”
Effie felt as though Lucan had reached out and slapped her again, and so this time she wanted to strike back. “Perhaps you might consider then that your family was killed in a fire on the very night both Vaughn and Caris dined at Castle Dare, at your parents’ request, I might add. That fire wasn’t an accident, Lucan, and you might also ask why it is that Vaughn Hargrave wanted your father dead.”
“That’s impossible to prove. I’ve already tried,” he said through tight lips, as if the idea pained him. “I don’t know why. Perhaps he wanted the land.”
“For what?” Effie demanded. “Darlyrede lands border the same river. The keep is gone. Sheep graze on the land to keep it from running to woodland.”
“What are you suggesting, then?”
“I’m notsuggestinganything,” Effie snapped. “You’ve spent so many years investigating everything and everyone with any connection at all to Darlyrede and yet you claim to have no idea the evil that’s gone on under your very nose—likely because you don’t want to see it!”
She jerked her horse’s head around too swiftly, she knew, but she couldn’t stand to be with him another moment. All those old memories, which had largely drifted down, down into the depths of the ocean of her past, had risen with a furious, bubbling vividness, and hearing him speak of his sainted parents and her own dirty bloodline had made her feel angry and ashamed and more than a little uncertain that her own emotions towardhim were valid.
Of course they were valid, she told herself as she rode past her father and Gorman, not caring that their heads whipped around to watch her as she retreated to the back of the caravan. She hadn’t been able to build the family and sustain the Warren because she was a naïve fool.
Effie turned her mount at the rear of the party and pulled forward on the outside of Gilboe. She looked straight ahead. “You’re up, Dana.”
She knew Dana and Gilboe exchanged wide-eyed glances, but Effie ignored it as Dana rode ahead in an increasedcloud of dust.
Two to the front, two covering.
