“Should she escape custody, you won’t have to marry her.”
“I know. Watch her just the same. She has an incredible knack for getting herself into trouble.”
Callie felt Lord Sin’s gaze on her as she made her way with Jamie toward the castle. At the door, she stopped to look back and found Simon a few feet behind her.
Oh cursed toads, Sin must have sent the knight to watch over them.
No matter. It merely made it more challenging. It by no means made it impossible. In her youth, she had often thwarted her intuitive nurse to slip out of the castle so she could swim naked in the pond. If she could fluster Elda, who was part fey, with her abilities to read Callie’s mind, she could easily bypass a mere Englishman.
As Simon approached, she noted the black raven on his green surcoat. By the cut and cloth of the stylish piece and pride of the knight, she surmised he was a man of some standing and wealth. No doubt a great nobleman. “What are you lord of?” she asked politely.
He opened the door for her. “Only myself, milady. I am a landless knight.”
“Friend to Lord Sin?”
He hedged a bit as she walked past him. “I suppose I’m as close as he gets to a friend.”
“Meaning?”
“He only has enemies and those who would curry his favor to reach the king’s ear.” He shut the door behind her and Jamie and led her through the bright hallway that was splashed with color from the stained-glass windows, toward the stairs.
“Can I play with your sword?” Jamie asked.
Simon’s eyes were gentle and kind as he ruffled her brother’s red curls. “When you’re bigger.”
Jamie stuck his tongue out and Simon laughed at the imp. “You know, they say every time a boy sticks his tongue out, it sends a message to the night ogres where the boy sleeps.”
“It does not.” Jamie looked quickly to her. “Does it?”
She shrugged. “I know nothing of these night ogres.”
Jamie ran up ahead of them, but kept his tongue in his mouth.
“Into which category do you fall?” she asked Simon, returning to their conversation. “Do you curry his favor or are you an enemy?”
“I fit into a third category that seems exclusive to myself, my brother, and the king.” He paused and pierced her with a sincere stare. “I owe Sin my life and quite probably my sanity as well. He did things for me no child should ever have to do. I thank God every night for that man’s loyalty to me at a time when any other boy would have been protecting himself and cowering in a corner somewhere.”
“For that you would travel to Scotland to die with him?”
The sincerity in his eyes was scorching. “You have no idea.”
A chill went up her spine at his words. Whatever had happened to them, it must have been horrible indeed.
Simon glanced to where Jamie was waiting for them at the top of the stairs, near her door.
He lowered his voice to keep Jamie from overhearing him. “I was scarce your brother’s age when Sin laid his body over mine to keep me safe. He almost lost his own life that day because of it. The night my mother was killed, it was Sin who hid me from her murderer’s wrath. From the wall where I was hidden, I could hear the beating he took rather than reveal my location. There are times at night when I can still hear and see the blows he received defending my brother not just that night, but for all the years Sin lived at Ravenswood.
“Sin kept me safe until my own father could come for me. And the last image I have of him as a child is with a hand wrapped around his throat by a man who swore Sin would be sorry for helping me. I shudder to think what was done to him over it. But knowing Harold as I do, I am quite certain he made good on that promise.”
She shivered at what he was describing. But it went a long way in explaining the man she knew Sin to be in the little time she had known him.
Once they reached the top of the stairs, Callie gathered Jamie to her and opened the door to her room. Lord Sin was a fascination for her, but that was all he would ever be. She couldn’t give him anything more than that.
Not while she had an escape to plan.
Sin spent hours trying to dissuade Henry from his madness. The man would not be ceded.
Damn.
