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“Good mornin’ Mrs. Hertha,” he smiled. “Ye look radiant this morning.”
Her mottled blush told him, that once again, he had gotten to her. “Oh, you really are a vile charmer,” she mock scolded him. “I’m not falling for that, y’hear.”
She handed him his bowl of porridge and as he drank, she began muttering to herself about this amount of partridge or that amount of fish. He got a bit curious, “What’s this now?”
“Eh?” she asked.
“Ye said thirty pounds of fish,” Caelan clarified. “What dae ye need that much fish for?”
“The Christmastide celebration,” she said while taking the bowl. “His Lordship always puts on a ball and that comes with food. We’re just seven days away and a lot of preparation comes with putting on something like this. We have to consider all the people that will come and there are always dignitaries. So, the food must be of the best quality and cooked perfectly.”
That night when all these people are going to be here, security is going to be concentrated in the house. That would be the best time for us—or me—to make my escape and run! This is perfect!
“And they leave it all on ye to dae all the cookin’?” he asked, while trying to not show his excitement on his face.
“Not all,” she sighed. “I have a lot of women with me but I have to oversee them all and that has me running all over the place. My feet are swollen by the end of the night.”
“Ye shouldnae have to dae that,” Caelan commiserated, while his mind was leaping ahead on the making plans for his escape. He finished his food and held out the bowl.
“Sadly, I do,” Mrs. Hertha sighed as she took it from him. “I might even be able to give you some spiced beef that night too.”
“I look forward to it,” he said with a nod.
With her gone, he reflected on what Hertha had just told him. He prayed Adelaine would come by so he could her press on her the need to find the tunnel. They had only a few days to put his escape in place. He took the papers and quill and began to write to his second-in-command, Artur.
He wrote about his imprisonment and told him to get his men ready. He didn’t think many would be left after the ill-fated battle at Solway Moss, but he wrote to gather whoever was left who was able to fight to meet him at—and that was where he stopped and left it blank. He just had to fill that in when Adelaine found the route and gave him directions.
Stuffing the written letter into the book and putting both behind him, he sat and waited. And waited some more. When it felt like his urgency was clawing up his throat, he began to pace, praying with every rotation over the hard-stone floor that she would come to see him. He knew that he would not see her before evening but he was not using reason, he was acting on passion. The time to act was approaching and there was much to do with the little they had left.
He paced, and paced and paced while the futile urge to grab those bars and pull was barraging his mind. When the doors scraped from above, he ran to the bars. Adelaine…Adelaine, please be Adelaine…
His blood boiled as anger raced through him, it was
not Adelaine but the tiresome Tybalt. He turned away, not deigning to give the boy any of his attention but the irritant got it anyway.
Tybalt banged on the bars and spat, “Listen here you mongrel dog, you will tell Lady Adelaine of your crime and stop trying to delay your inevitable fate. You have no right lying to a gentle-born woman when you come from filth.”
Caelan uttered a litany of Gaelic swear words under his breath and was tempted to reach out through those bars, grab the boy by his neck and squeeze. His fists clenched and released at his side, but he stopped and breathed through the urge. He turned and saw the boy, face red in what he undoubtedly believes was a righteous cause. If he wanted him to confess his ‘crime,’ so be it, but not with him there. Besides, it gave him the opportunity to speak with Adelaine.
“Very well,” he said with simple directness. “I’ll confess my crime but not with you here. I will speak to Lady Adelaine only, y’hear me?”
Tybalt’s gaze went cocky and his chin lifted in pride, and quipped. “Now, was that so hard for you? Why did you waste the Lady’s time for so many days?”
Caelan’s eyes were narrowed to deadly slits and his voice had gone flat, “Stop wasting me time, I’m now inclined to nae say a word if ye keep pestering me.”
“And what would you do?” Tybalt sneered. “You’re caged like an animal.”
“And yer longing for Lady Adelaine will ne’er amount to anything,” Caelan mocked. “Yer reaching for somethin’ out of yer league, boy.”
Tybalt’s face burned with anger and— if Caelan wanted to be cocky— embarrassment that his secret had been found out.
“Yer the help, she would never look twice at ye.”
The guard’s face was so red and mottled that Caelan briefly wondered if he had pushed the boy close to an apoplexy fit. But then he grabbed the bars and shoved his face close to Caelan. He could see the malice in the boy’s dark eyes. “Help I might be, but I am not a savage like you.” He pulled back and struck the gate so hard that tinny echoes bounced back from the walls. “I’ll go ask the Lady to see you.”
“Ye go do that,” he snorted and turned back to pacing.
He did not hear the upper gate scrape, so he assumed Tybalt has just left it open from when he had come in. He kept pacing but slower while counting his steps in his head. When he got to two hundred, twenty paces back and forth, he heard the stomp of boots and the hurried tap of slippers echoing down the staircase. Skipping over Tybalt, his eyes latched on Adelaine and he tamped down on his relieved smile.
