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“No!” he roared. Not when was so close to home! He looked up through the trees and spotted the red roof of the keep and felt pain cut through him like a heated lance. So close! So bloody close! A few more steps and he would have found men to fight for him. Warriors to defend him and a safe haven from all this.
“No!” He bucked upward, fists raised to fight but he was knocked back to the ground with a boot pinning him to the ground and the point on an arrow pointing with deadly accuracy to the middle of his neck.
The man with his greasy hair swinging on either side of his face sneered, “Give up McLagen, ye cannea win. Fight ye can but ye will be wounded, run and ye will be wounded even more, or ye can submit and live somewhat peacefully. Choose!”
Caelan’s body was weak and though his mind wanted him to fight his muscles would not cooperate. The fight was gone from him and his options were plain; run and die; fight and die; or live. Live and be taken back to England. He wanted to live, even for as short a time as he could. Sadly, his eyes closed in surrender.
Chapter 31
How am I going to tell Islington that even if I do marry him, I might never love him? Is that even possible?
Adelaine was curled up in a seat in her room with a cup of cooling tea in her hands and her mind running over the dour thoughts. The room was dark despite it being day. Thick snow was falling from an iron-grey sky and the overcast sky felt threatening.
The fire was warm and belayed the darkness inside and the cold. She sipped the tea and considered again what to do with Islington; she might be facing years of a loveless marriage if they did wed.
Every idea she had had fallen short of the mark and soon she began to give up. Her eyes lit upon the drawers where the letter, or notes rather, that her father had written to some blackguard, rested. She placed her tea on the nearby table and went to take them out.
Upending the sack on her table, she plucked out one and read it. Like the first one, is spoke of some man that had displeased her father. That was not strange to her; many people infuriated her father. She picked one up and her blood turned to ice when she read it.
Are you sure, My Lord, that you need your son dead? Is he not your heir? Why would you leave your legacy to another that is not of your bloodline?
Peter! Her hands trembled when she dropped that letter and grabbed at others. She searched frantically, her fingers nearly ripping the papers apart as she yanked them open to read them over, searching diligently for any mention of her brother.
On the seventh and last one she found it. Her father had written about his son and how he had disgraced him by secretly marrying a Scottish woman named Jane O'Ralaigh and that he would rather his son die than have any Scottish spawn take his legacy.
Her body felt frozen, deathly frozen. She felt mired in disbelief. How could this be? Did her own father…? Adelaine dropped the letter and covered her face with hands. Why? How could this be? She knew her father and Peter had many disagreements over the years because Peter had not been one to bow to her father’s dictatorship. But even so, Peter was his son! His flesh and blood! Could anyone be so evil to kill their own child?
As the reality settled inside her, cold disbelief and fiery anger began to duel for control. Her father was worse than the monster she had taken him for. She began to count his sins. Lying to her was the first, capturing an innocent man was second, forging documents to force that innocent man’s execution was third and but now, ordering the murder of his son capped them all.
Is Father the devil incarnated? Who would do something like this? What man would murder his own—
Hippolytus! The book she had given Caelan to read! Theseus had prayed for the death own son. If Caelan knew about it, the whole situation, she had given him a story that mirrored true life without her even knowing it! Why hadn’t he said anything if he knew the full truth?
She had to find him! She had to go to Scotland! Shoving the letters into the sack she ran to get some clothes on. God! All this time she was living with the real murderer and did not know it! How blind could she be?
“My Lady!” Martha said from her doorway. “What on earth is happening here?”
Adelaine shot a furtive look over her shoulder, while she grabbed clothes out her trunk, “I have to go, Martha, I have to run! He did it! He is the murderer!”
Martha dropped by her side and grabbed at her furtive hands, “My Lady, what is the matter?”
Adelaine looked at her friend with her mouth slipping then when the floodgates burst open wide. She cried tears of pain, grief, loss, and betrayal. The emotions gripped her chest with crippling clutches that made each breath painful and her tears stung her eyes. If she had been standing, she would have collapsed.
Martha held her head right under her chin and stroked her head, “It will be all right, it will be all right.”
The platitudes were said with sincerity but Adelaine felt them to be hollow. How could anything be all right anymore? She pressed the heels of her hand on her stinging eyes. “I need to run, Martha. I’m not safe here anymore.”
“Why?” her maid asked.
Briefly, Adelaine considered telling her but refrained. Do or die, she was going to Scotland but she had to be crafty about it. It was a desperate move born from desperate motives and running away like this was proof of it but what else could she do?
She could never just get on her horse and ride out, no. She had to do something more sensible. There was an option to take the same tunnel route she had given Caelan. However, if she was caught, her alibi of not being the one who had enabled Calen to escape would vanish in thin air. So, what she was going to?
Pretend to go to Islington and then run.
“I don’t want you to get involved in.” She shook her head and stood, “All you need to tell my Father is that I went without you to Islington’s home.”
Dressing into a thick cotton maroon dress and with her fur-lined mantle and cloak over it, she combed her hair back and braided it tightly. She did not know her way to Scotland but she had to go there. With the coin she had, she was sure someone could carry her even if she did not ride there herself. Caelan had promised her refuge and she had been foolish enough to not take it.
