“And the man she loved,” Patrick interrupted to add.
“The man who saved your daughter and the man she loved,” Dani repeated, hoping against hope she was getting through to the Faerie. “You’re just going to abandon him when he needs your help the most?”
Elesyria clasped her hands together on the table in front of her. “And what if I haven’t the power? What if I fail?”
“Then at least you will have tried.”
Elesyria remained very still, her eyes locked on the hands she clasped together as if she expected them to fly away.
“What would you have of me?”
“You and I must carry the silver to Torquil. We’ll be the perfect Trojan horse. We’ll waltz in there and distract them with the silver while you Magic them so we can grab Malcolm and make our escape.”
“Why you?” Patrick asked.
“Because chances are good Dermid already told this Torquil about me. We’ll use that. They’ll never suspect a frightened new wife and her companion of being a danger to them. At least they won’t until it’s too late. And by then, well, it’ll be too late.”
Patrick’s fingers tapped out a tattoo on the table while Dani waited for his response to her idea. When the noise abruptly stopped, she knew he’d made his decision.
“If the Elf is up to it, it could work,” he admitted at last.
Of course it could. It had to. It was their only hope.
Twenty-eight
WHAT HAD EVERmade her think she actually enjoyed riding horses?
Dani slid off her mount and gratefully handed the reins over to one of the guardsmen Patrick had sent along to accompany them to Tordenet Castle.
Every muscle in her body ached. And after the last few days on the road, she was pretty sure she’d discovered some new muscles she’d never even known existed.
Rauf, cradling a load of stones, kneeled to set about building their fire pit for the night. Dani circled the perimeter of their campsite, gathering sticks and dried grass for kindling before joining him.
“My thanks, my lady.” Rauf nodded his head without turning his eyes from his work.
Dani had been opposed to having him join them in the beginning, but she’d been quickly overruled. As Patrick had pointed out, since there was no way he was allowing his younger brother to return to the dangers of Tordenet Castle, Rauf was the logical one to send. He not only knew the way, he also knew the people they would encounter.
More than once Dani had considered the suspicion that Rauf might be more danger than help, but in the past few nights around the campfire as they had their meals, she’d begun to view him differently. Only one of many surprises she’d already encountered on their journey.
“There is no substitute for getting to know someone,” she muttered to herself as she made her way back around the edges of their site gathering more wood.
“Begging yer pardon, my lady?” One of the guards halted his steps as she crossed his path.
“Nothing, Eymer. I was just talking to myself.”
“My Jeanne does that as well,” the lanky young blond answered with a grin, continuing on past with the bedrolls they’d carried on their horses.
Of the three guards whom Patrick had sent along to accompany her and Elesyria on their journey, Eymer was her favorite. Though she’d met the man briefly at Castle MacGahan on a few occasions when he’d come to the kitchen to speak to his wife, she hadn’t realized until the two older guards, Guy and Hamund, had teased him that he and Jeanne were newlyweds.
She carried her second armload of wood back and dropped it beside the fire where Elesyria was already nestling a large pot into the flames.
“Soup or porridge?”
It had been one or the other every night. Though whether it was hunger or the Faerie’s cooking skill, she’d been surprised each time by how good it tasted.
“Porridge,” Elesyria answered with a tired smile. “I haven’t the energy to prepare a proper soup this night. Will you watch over this for me while I see to the blood ransom?”
“Of course I will.”
