Sixteen
ODD THAT SHEcould have forgotten how intimidating Tordenet Castle really was.
Not intimidating, Brie quickly corrected herself, as if denying the thought might untie the knot in her stomach.Impressivewas the word she’d wanted. That was it. An impressive castle.
And not odd at all that she would have forgotten the place. She’d been barely able to walk when her father had followed Malcolm MacDowylt from here, his wife and children trailing behind with the other camp followers. Brie hadn’t been back since. She wouldn’t be here now, if the monster living behind those gates hadn’t murdered her father.
Mathew, Hugo’s younger brother, whistled between his teeth. “This far away, and already you can see the gleam of her walls. Bollocks, but she’s one damned intimidating structure, is she no?”
Brie shot him a look, wishing his mouth were sewn shut. Little good it did her to correct her own thinking if those around her were determined to erode what little confidence she had left.
“With the sun setting on her that way, she looks like a tower of gold to me.” Hugo laughed, rubbing his hands together.
“Like you’ve ever seen gold,” Eleyne sniped from her perch on the wagon, her swollen foot propped on a bed of woolens in front of her, watching as everyone else prepared their campsite for the night.
“I’ve seen it, fair cousin, never you doubt. And I intend to have some of it for my very own after our visit to yon distant lovely towers.”
“But only if the wildling can do her part, aye?” Mathew looked from his brother to Brie and back again. “The men behind those gates willna part with silver, let alone with gold, for our music only. It’s the beauty of the dance what greases their palms.”
“The dance and the drink,” Hugo agreed.
“She’s no ready,” Eleyne grumbled. “And I can be of no use, no with my foot so swollen and my face all scratched to here and back again. Thanks to her.”
The knot in Brie’s stomach grew. “It’s no much of a challenge to wiggle one’s hips to the beat of a drum. I’m ready enough.”
She had to be. The minstrels held her responsible for scaring Eleyne the night she’d been discovered. Scaring her so badly when the idiot woman had seen Brie moving beneath the pile of woolens that she’d thrown herself from the back of the wagon to escape the ghostly fiend she imagined hiding there, injuring herself in the process.
Since Brie was responsible for their loss, to theirway of thinking, they expected her to take Eleyne’s place. It had taken her only a few moments of consideration to agree to their demand.
Not that she cared whether the minstrels made a single copper coin from their upcoming performance. Once she carried out her careful plan, the minstrels would be lucky to escape with their heads still attached to their shoulders.
Replacing the annoying Eleyne would get her through the gates of Tordenet and inside the great hall. It was the perfect opportunity to seek her revenge. The perfect opportunity to get close enough to Torquil MacDowylt to slice him open and bleed him dry.
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Seventeen
CHRISTIANA’S SCREAM VIBRATEDin the air, pounding against the ribs in Chase’s chest.
He dropped the peat piled high in his arms, drawing his sword as he ran across the open ground to burst through the doorway. Whoever had harmed Christiana would meet their end on the sharp edge of his blade.
“What happened?” he demanded, his voice inexplicably breathless.
“Nothing’s happened. She’s fine,” the old woman assured him without turning, her hands busily wrapping a fine, white strip of linen around Christiana’s foot. “She fought the pull of the potion but she sleeps now.”
The bandage wound up and around Christiana’s ankle in a thick, heavy-looking bundle, reminiscent of a cast.
“Is it broken?” Even as he asked, he doubted the wisdom of the question. It wasn’t like this old woman was a real doctor with access to an X-ray machine in the back room.
“No. Only badly bruised. As you should have known yer ownself.” She turned her gaze on him then. “You’ve too little faith, lad. And where’s my peat turves? Did I no tell you I need them to keep the fire going? I canna be expected to do everything myself, can I?”
The damned peat lay all over the ground outside where he’d dropped it when he’d heard the scream. “I’ll have them right in.”
By the time Chase returned to the house, Orabilis was nowhere to be seen. He stacked the peat on the floor beside the big fireplace before kneeling beside Christiana.
She appeared to sleep, her soft lips slightly parted, delicately moving as if she carried on a conversation in her dreams. Only the frown wrinkling her forehead confirmed that, even in her sleep, the pain of her injury still reached her.
He ran his thumb over the furrows in her brow, as if he could drive away her troubles.