The Pirate's Duty (Regent's Revenge #3)(85)

Marion looked to the west, the direction from which Angus would return from Newcastle. He should be back any minute now from meeting his cousin and clansman Neil, who was to escort her to Scotland. She prayed all was set and that Angus’s kin was ready to depart. With her wedding to Froste to take place in six days, she wanted to be far away before there was even the slightest chance he’d be making his way here. And since he was set to arrive the night before the wedding, leaving tomorrow promised she’d not encounter him.

A sense of urgency enveloped her, and Marion forced herself to stroll across the bailey toward the gatehouse that led to the tunnel preceding the drawbridge. She couldn’t risk raising suspicion from the tower guards. At the gatehouse, she nodded to Albert, one of the knights who operated the drawbridge mechanism. He was young and rarely questioned her excursions to pick flowers or find herbs.

“Off to get some medicine?” he inquired.

“Yes,” she lied with a smile and a little pang of guilt. But this was survival, she reminded herself as she entered the tunnel. When she exited the heavy wooden door that led to freedom, she wasn’t surprised to find Peter and Andrew not yet up in the twin towers that flanked the entrance to the drawbridge. It was, after all, time for the changing of the guard.

They smiled at her as they put on their helmets and demi-gauntlets. They were an imposing presence to any who crossed the drawbridge and dared to approach the castle gate. Both men were tall and looked particularly daunting in their full armor, which Father insisted upon at all times. The men were certainly a fortress in their own right.

She nodded to them. “I’ll not be long. I want to gather some more flowers for the supper table.” Her voice didn’t even wobble with the lie.

Peter grinned at her, his kind brown eyes crinkling at the edges. “Will you pick me one of those pale winter flowers for my wife again, Marion?”

She returned his smile. “It took away her anger as I said it would, didn’t it?”

“It did,” he replied. “You always know just how to help with her.”

“I’ll get a pink one if I can find it. The colors are becoming scarcer as the weather cools.”

Andrew, the younger of the two knights, smiled, displaying a set of straight teeth. He held up his covered arm. “My cut is almost healed.”

Marion nodded. “I told you! Now maybe you’ll listen to me sooner next time you’re wounded in training.”

He gave a soft laugh. “I will. Should I put more of your paste on tonight?”

“Yes, keep using it. I’ll have to gather some more yarrow, if I can find any, and mix up another batch of the medicine for you.” And she’d have to do it before she escaped. “I better get going if I’m going to find those things.” She knew she should not have agreed to search for the flowers and offered to find the yarrow when she still had to speak to Angus and return to the castle in time for supper, but both men had been kind to her when many had not. It was her way of thanking them.

After Peter lowered the bridge and opened the door, she departed the castle grounds, considering her plan once more. Had she forgotten anything? She didn’t think so. She was simply going to walk straight out of her father’s castle and never come back. Tomorrow, she’d announce she was going out to collect more winter blooms, and then, instead, she would go down to the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea. She would slip off her cloak and leave it for a search party to find. Her breath caught deep in her chest at the simple yet dangerous plot. The last detail to see to was Angus.

She stared down the long dirt path that led to the sea and stilled, listening for hoofbeats. A slight vibration of the ground tingled her feet, and her heart sped in hopeful anticipation that it was Angus coming down the dirt road on his horse. When the crafty stable master appeared with a grin spread across his face, the worry that was squeezing her heart loosened. For the first time since he had ridden out that morning, she took a proper breath. He stopped his stallion alongside her and dismounted.

She tilted her head back to look up at him as he towered over her. An errant thought struck. “Angus, are all Scots as tall as you?”

“Nay, but ye ken Scots are bigger than all the wee Englishmen.” Suppressed laughter filled his deep voice. “So even the ones nae as tall as me are giants compared te the scrawny men here.”

“You’re teasing me,” she replied, even as she arched her eyebrows in uncertainty.

“A wee bit,” he agreed and tousled her hair. The laughter vanished from his eyes as he rubbed a hand over his square jaw and then stared down his bumpy nose at her, fixing what he called his “lecturing look” on her. “We’ve nae much time. Neil is in Newcastle just as he’s supposed te be, but there’s been a slight change.”

She frowned. “For the last month, every time I wanted to simply make haste and flee, you refused my suggestion, and now you say there’s a slight change?”

His ruddy complexion darkened. She’d pricked that MacLeod temper her mother had always said Angus’s clan was known for throughout the Isle of Skye, where they lived in the farthest reaches of Scotland. Marion could remember her mother chuckling and teasing Angus about how no one knew the MacLeod temperament better than their neighboring clan, the MacDonalds of Sleat, to which her mother had been born. The two clans had a history of feuding.