Page 5

Chapter 3

She was here.

Cait was here, on his land.

If King John himself had greeted him at the gatehouse, Conrad would have been less surprised. Less unsure. He’d convinced himself Cait was part of his past, that he would likely never see her again, and yet, here she was, being helped down from her mount by the very brother who’d demanded answers from him just moments before.

“Why do you and Cait look at each other so?” Terric had said.

As if he had any answers to give.

Conrad watched, mesmerized, as Cait handed her reins to a stableboy and began walking toward him. In the short time it had taken them to enter the castle walls, darkness had begun to fall, the light of day quickly waning. Attempting to distinguish her features anyway, he didn’t move.

“If Conrad will not properly welcome you to Licheford,” Guy said alongside him, slapping him on the shoulder jovially, “allow me to do so in his stead.”

Reluctantly, he looked away from Cait, toward his other guests. Lance and Idalia and Terric.

“Who would have suspected a mercenary might have better manners than an earl?” Guy quipped. “Come, warm yourselves. We’ve been waiting patiently for you. All except for our friend here”—he clapped him on the shoulder again. “No one would call him patient.”

Conrad forced a laugh, allowing his friends to lure him into the castle, but before he entered the keep, he glanced over his shoulder one last time. He hoped to catch her eye, but she was gone.

At least, he did not see her among the others.

“Conrad?”

It was Guy, no doubt trying to goad him into being a host to his own guests. His friend had a slightly puzzled look.

“For a mercenary, you do quite well,” he said, although he could hardly focus on anything but Cait. For weeks, he could think of nothing but receiving word from these very men—their brothers—but now, word from the north was only one of his concerns.

“Come inside,” he said, stepping over the threshold. The entranceway opened directly into the great hall, a rarity for a castle of this size, but they’d already climbed a set of stone stairs outside. Conrad had hardly noticed them.

His steward greeted the guests as Sabine rushed forward to embrace Idalia. Everyone began speaking at once, and for a moment Conrad thought he could perhaps slip away and find her, but a hand grabbed his arm.

“Shall we have that talk?” Terric asked, his voice brooking no refusal.

Conrad had hoped to speak to Cait before being cornered by her brother, but there was no help for it. Leaving the group in Wyot’s capable hands, he shrugged off his friend’s hand and led him down the long corridor to the south solar. Larger than the other solar abovestairs and, unusually, located on the ground floor, it was the chamber in which Conrad spent most of the day.

A smaller version of the great hall, similar in shape and structure, the chamber received some light in the daytime courtesy of small windows, but not nearly as much as the lord’s solar. The one Conrad still couldn’t bring himself to use.

“Guy and Lance will be along.”

Terric glared at him. “Aye, likely they will.”

“We’ve much to discuss.”

Terric crossed his arms. “Including the reason my sister risked her life by coming to England now after refusing to do so since . . . then. Since the tourney.”

“She gave you no explanation?” Conrad asked.

In answer, Terric merely raised his brow, waiting for him to speak.

“I am as surprised as you to see her,” he said honestly, though he stumbled on the word surprised. A rarity for him. He spoke three languages, wrote in four, and never had difficulty summoning the right word. His parents had raised him as the sole heir to Licheford, but the best tutors in all of England could not prepare a man for a situation like this one.

“As surprised as the rest of us to find my sister looking at you as if you were a spirit raised from the dead?”

“She came with Rory,” he guessed. It was the only explanation for why Terric was here and not at Dromsley, especially given that Cait Kennaugh would have needed someone to escort her across the border. He would not have left his estate with anyone else at such a time.

“Aye,” Terric confirmed.