Page 61 of Ruthless, But for Her

CHAPTER 36

Ashton

“He reached for me. I didn’t take his hand.”

She swallowed, hard. The corners of her mouth pinched and her chin raised as she did it. It wasn’t quite a frown but more a look of concern... of dismay.

Cassia moved toward him, and Ashton stood, expecting a new conversation—one that would see him escorting her back to Grantchester after all.

“Why?” she asked simply. She’d shied from him when they first met, with good reason, but Cassia didn’t do so now. If he reached out, Ashton could touch her.

He didn’t dare.

That was a question he wouldn’t answer, even though Ashton could do so, easily.

His silence was another wound. Ashton could see it clearly in the drop of her shoulders, the disappointment in her eyes.

Below them, the yard was already awake. The sounds of a cart, a dog, and someone swearing at a horse filled the air.

She could not sleep on the road. They were little prepared for it, and even if they were, Cassia could not begin her journey south, stuffing linens with grass and leaves to cushion her head after sleeping on Magge’s feathered pillows. There were few places between the Wild Boar and Grantchester that were safe, especially given their circumstances.

The shutter remained open a hand’s width. Light came through it in a narrow bar, illuminating the pallet he’d slept poorly on the night before.

While she waited for an answer that wouldn’t come, he considered Brinkburn.

The priory sat in a loop of the Coquet, in a bend so deep, a man could ride the ridge above it and never know it was there. The canons kept sheep, more than they could shear, and they sold the clip forward to whoever came with silver and asked nothing about where the wool went afterward. Margot had been buying from them since before Ashton could count.

They would take a wool merchant’s widow and the man she’d hired to see her home without looking hard at Cassia.

Alnwick lay half a day’s ride east of it.

He considered that, but decided on the priory anyway. It was the only bed between here and Grantchester he trusted.

“Will you spread another tale?” she asked finally. “The one of Roland reaching for me and slipping? Will anyone believe the truth now that his men have begun to spread a different story?”

Ashton understood her desire, before returning home, to protect him and his brothers. And he appreciated the gesture. But her understanding, or lack of it, concerning Border politics was something Ashton couldn’t fully explain, though he would try.

“Roland Heron was a deputy warden under the authority of the East March Warden for the English crown. His men returned to Alnwick with the story of his murder at the hands of the Black Sails crew consisting of a deposed Norse jarl and three Border reivers who’ve been despised at best, hunted at worst, by both crowns for many years.

“Silas de Grey is as horrid a man as they come. He was given the East March six years past. Before him, the wardens took their cut and looked away, the way wardens have always done. He didn’t want a cut. He wanted the road and all of its profits, not simply a portion.

“We ran cattle and wool and whatever else moved by night, Berwick down to Newcastle. Donal Maxwell taught us the ground when we were boys. De Grey hanged eleven of Maxwell’s men at Alnwick in his first year and left them up through the winter.

“He put men on every ford and every track inside two years. He took the land from us. So we took to the water.”

Ashton let that sit.

The wine from the night before was still on the table between them.

“This will be the excuse he needs to sail into Mere’s End with permission from Angus McGarron, Warden of the Scottish East March. It would be an exception to the Laws of the Marches, sealed and witnessed and entirely proper.”

At her horrified expression, Ashton quickly added, “He won’t get it.”

He’d promised to answer what she asked. And so he would.

“McGarron has held the Scottish East March eleven years. In all that time, he has never once written to the English side about Mere’s End. He takes a tenth of what comes off our decks and calls it a toll. We call it nothing at all.”

The corners of Ashton’s mouth began to lift before he caught himself.