Page 31

“Phillipa, we need to talk.”

Chapter Nineteen

If he was a lesser man, Haydn might have become offended last eve when his wife, for the second time in as many days, fell asleep prematurely. After their bath, after he’d dried her off quite thoroughly, something he’d never done to a woman before. Haydn decided he never wished to bathe alone again.

Which was, of course, at the very root of the problem with their marriage. Any fool could tell him, even if he were loath to admit it to himself, the past few days had altered their plans. What he couldn’t determine just yet, however, was how to proceed.

Finding his brother’s chamber, Haydn knocked. When Holt finally came to the door, he wasn’t surprised to find his brother disheveled.

“It’s not dawn already?”

“Do you see light streaming from the embrasures in your bedchamber?” Holt stepped aside as Haydn entered the room. Unsurprisingly, there was no maid there. Holt rarely slept with the women he bedded. “So your bedmate is gone?”

His brother moved to the basin by his bed. “How can you be sure she was here for an extended time?” Holt splashed his face.

Haydn declined to answer.

“Why precisely are you about before daybreak? So anxious to get back on the muddy road?”

In fact, he was not. “Nay, but we must leave at dawn. We will make our way back onto the Old North Road.”

Holt looked at him oddly. “Father dislikes it for the excessive amount of travellers. And the possibility of trouble that comes along with it.”

Avoiding major roads when they travelled was something their father had always advised, but with it came less places to stay that were not out of doors. “I would not have Phillipa sleep among the elements again.” When his brother gaped at him, Haydn added, “Besides, I can not imagine more trouble than we’ve already encountered not taking the old Roman road.”

“That was unfortunate,” Holt agreed. “But unusual enough an occurrence. I do not believe it will happen again.”

“Not so unusual that we’ve never been attacked before.”

“Unprovoked?”

Holt dried his face. “Tensions run high since Lochmaben.”

“Tensions have been running high since Stirling.”

Holt sat on the bed, a wall torch beside them still burning. Next to that, there was little light in this chamber. The fire was but a smolder now. “And they will continue to do so,” he predicted.

Hayden agreed, but that did not mean they needed a mark on their chests proclaiming their family a friend to their northern neighbors. Which was precisely what his cousin was doing even as they sat here, unknowing Edward had brought the hammer down on the Waryn family.

“So we take the Old North Road to Middleton Ridge and part there?”

Haydn squared his shoulders.

“Haydn?”

His brother was to escort Phillipa while he continued north. “We shall see.”

He tried to turn around, but Holt didn’t let him get that far. His brother grabbed his forearm. “Haydn?” he repeated.

He gave Holt the only answer he had. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. . . what precisely?”

“I don’t know what we will do at Middleton Ridge.” He regained control of his arm but did not turn back around. “Prepare to leave at daybreak.”

For a change, Holt didn’t say it. But he was surely thinking “do not treat me as a child,” something Haydn tried not to do. But he felt protective of his siblings. To him, Holt was still the little boy who tugged on his tunic, asking him to practice swordplay. Or the scamp who followed him and Hugh everywhere, well before he was old enough to carry anything but a blunted wooden sword.

Halfway to his own chamber, where he must reluctantly wake his wife, Haydn froze. The sound was faint at first, but as it grew louder, he could identify it clearly as footsteps. When the steward materialized, his shoulders dropped, relaxing.