Page 4 of The Earl

“I ride with you,” Roysa said, walking toward her with purpose in every step. “A squire will lead my horse.”

Cait hardly had the opportunity to move her foot from the stirrup before Roysa used it to hoist herself up, lifting her arm for Cait’s assistance, and slid onto the saddle behind her.

As she seemed to do each day, Cait gave silent thanks to the saints for having brought Roysa into Terric’s life. Her brother was extremely lucky to have such a wife, but she considered herself just as lucky. Roysa knew her well enough by now that she did not ask any further questions.

“Is all well?”

The question came from Roysa’s sister, Idalia, who’d ridden up alongside them. Idalia was married to Lance, another member of the order. Without them, Roysa and Terric would never have met. Although Cait didn’t know her as well as she did Roysa, she was grateful to her for that fact alone.

“Aye,” she answered.

“Nay,” Roysa answered at the same time.

Idalia looked back and forth between them and said nothing. Although she might press Roysa for details later, she must have seen something in Cait’s face that had silenced her. None of them spoke as they rode across the drawbridge, its moat deep beneath them, the clanking of horses’ hooves all around.

Grateful for the sisters’ companionship, and slightly calmer for it, Cait allowed herself another glance. His back was to them now. Even so, she could not look away from the long, muscular line of it. How many times had she lain awake at night imagining how he had changed? Or how he might react were they ever to meet again?

The timing could not be worse. They were in the midst of a rebellion. One missive away from war with the King of England and his many supporters. Her brothers, this once, had been right. Cait should have stayed at Bradon Moor. Stayed safe in Scotland.

Pleased her mother. Married Colin MacGregor.

She should have done many things, but instead Cait was here, riding toward an uncertain future, painfully aware how little her presence was needed.

I should not have come.

“It must be difficult,” Roysa whispered.

She nodded, allowing her to assume that seeing Conrad had brought back memories of that day. Which of course it had. Just not that memory.

Fourteen years earlier

“Terric mentionedhis sister had made the journey.”

Conrad bowed even though his station did not require it. There were so many sights and sounds competing for attention, from the clanging of practice swords around them to the flags of every color flapping in the wind atop the tents, that Cait pretended to be unaffected by the Englishman and his pretty manners. But it was just that, a pretense.

At ten and five and a Scottish noble, Cait had met many handsome men, potential suitors, at Bradon Moor, and none had dared to look at her quite so boldly as this Englishman. Maybe because they were too afraid of her father and brothers to approach her with confidence.

Indeed, Terric made his displeasure known immediately.

“He mentioned other things as well”—her brother cleared his throat, not so subtly chastising the earl’s son—“about the sister.”

Accustomed to her brother’s protectiveness, she ignored Terric’s clear warning.

“Oddly, he said nothing of you,” Cait lied, smiling. Indeed, it had been the opposite. The year before, her brother had returned from his first Tournament of the North full of tales of English knights and bloody melees. And he’d spoken of one young man in particular—an earl’s son who had come to his defense against the inevitable slurs his countrymen had made against the young Scot. Never mind that the purpose of the yearly tournament was to bring the two sides together.

She’d heard of Terric’s new English friend many times, in fact, and when her father had finally relented, allowing her to attend her first tourney, Conrad Saint-Clair, was one of many sights she’d looked forward to seeing in the south.

And see him she did. It would have been difficult for any girl to miss him. Unlike her brother, who looked very much his age, the earl’s son appeared as if he were already a man fully grown. Neither was she the only girl at the tourney to notice him.

“Then I will strive to ensure your memory of me proves stronger than your brother’s,” Conrad said, his voice thick and deep. The look he gave her then prompted her brother to later proclaim she could not be alone with the Englishman—and it prompted her to seek him out despite Terric’s decree.

It was that look that had told her, for the first time, that Conrad liked her.

And Cait very much liked him back.

Openingher eyes and cleaning memories of the past as her mount slowed to a stop, Cait forced herself not to recall what had happened next. How the sweetness of those first moments had soured so quickly.

When they reached the stables, Terric stalked toward them, already on foot. So he’d noticed. She’d thought he might. Terric could be strangely perceptive, after all, and he knew both her and Conrad well enough to have sensed the strangeness of the look they’d shared. He offered his hand to her.

“Cait,” he said.

“Brother,” she replied evenly. “You may wish to assist your wife in dismounting first.”

Roysa had already grasped Terric’s outstretched hand, but for the first time since they were married, he barely seemed to notice his wife. His glare was fixed on Cait.

“Your turn,” he growled.

Reluctantly, she took his hand, his firm grasp yet another indication that he intended to give her a talking-to.

“It seems we have much to discuss,” he said for only Cait to hear. Roysa, perhaps sensing the tension between them, had stepped away to speak with her sister.

“Indeed,” she agreed, although she had no intention for that conversation to happen just yet.

There was someone else she needed to speak with first. And Cait could wait for it no longer.