The black-clad horseman barreled down toward Sorcha. Screaming, she dug her heels into St. Donkey’s sides. St. Donkey, bless her, did her best to flee, but even if she’d never suffered malnourishment and ill treatment, she had short legs, a droopy belly, and was ill equipped to escape the unwavering pursuit of a healthy young horse. Sorcha’s wide-brimmed hat flapped in the wind. The attacker caught Sorcha before they’d galloped ten yards, lifting her out of the saddle and onto the horse before him.
Furious that Haverford’s prediction had come true so soon, she screamed again, a scream laden with frustration and temper. Her cloak tangled around her waist. Flinging herself at the long-armed, ugly villain who gripped her, she had the satisfaction of seeing his expression change from a leer to astonishment. She smacked him under the chin with her head. She heard his teeth clink together.
He spit blood. His blue eyes turned redrimmed. His face contorted with rage and he made a fist.
The horse galloped. They were headed for a corner, a dropoff, a tumble of rocks.
For the first time she realized—he was going to knock her out. Kill her. This time she screamed in fear.
She twisted in a desperate bid to free herself—and beneath her, the horse balked and reared. She found herself airborne, her cloak wrapped over her head. She curled into a ball, braced for the agonizing impact of her bones on brutal rock. She landed, hard, on a patch of grass.
It took a minute to catch her breath. Another to realize she was alive and well. Another long, torturous minute she spent fighting with her cloak, trying to escape the dark folds so she could see which way to run. She jumped when something snuffled at her.
St. Donkey.
“I’m hurrying!” she yelled at the beast. Throwing aside her cloak, she came to her feet.
In the distance, she heard the thunder of galloping hooves, felt the pounding beneath the ground. Her eyes were blurred with tears of pain and shock, but she looked for a safe place. She glimpsed two strange riderless horses running loose.
She stopped. She tried to understand what had happened.
In the distance, on the rocks, the limp form of her attacker lay smashed.
Was he dead?
His head was cocked at an odd angle.
He was dead.
A man stood over the top of him. It looked like Arnou. Arnou…it couldn’t be. Impossible. She’d left him behind at the convent. Besides, this Arnou was different. He looked tall, strong, stern, cruel. A wise woman would be as frightened of this man as Sorcha was of her assailant.
“Arnou.” Her faint voice couldn’t reach across the distance. That irritated her. If this was Arnou, she had nothing to fear of him. She hollered, “Arnou!”
He turned to face her, then turned away. In that quick glimpse she recognized the dark hair, the chiseled features of the man she’d met at Monnmouth. But he didn’t wear the rag that covered half his face. From her vantage point, it appeared he had both eyes.
She blinked.
Lifting his arms, he tied the rag around his face, and when he faced her again, his menacing demeanor disappeared as if it had never existed at all.
“What happened?” she shouted. She found herself running toward him. “Did you kill him?”
St. Donkey trotted after her, then stopped to graze.
“What?” Astonishment etched Arnou’s face. “I didn’t kill anybody. I came riding over the hill and saw you struggling with him. You shoved him and jumped free of the horse. He swayed back and forth, couldn’t get control, and his horse bucked him off.”
She stopped running. “Are you saying I killed him?”
“No, miss. I’m saying you saved yourself, because it sure looked as if he was going to kill you.” He bobbled his head as if he were amazed and in awe.
“I think he was.” As the realization sank in, her knees wobbled.
“But you saved yourself,” Arnou repeated.
“That’s right.”
“You’re a really good adventurer.”
“I never knew I could do anything like this.”
“You’re a heroine.”
“Yes, I think I am.” His words battered at the wall of her fear, and replaced it with a guilty sort of pride. “We should find him a priest.”
“It’s too late for a priest. Besides, he’s not a good man.” Arnou put a gentle hand on her arm and turned her away from the sight of the broken body.
“Do you suppose he was the one who set the fire at the convent?” Her head buzzed with the possibilities—or possibly because of the fall.
“I suppose he is. Him or the guy who hired him.” He gave her a little shove. “Go on. I want to see if the blackguard has anything in his pockets that would tell us about him or why he was after you. Why don’t you go and catch the horses—there are three, his one and my two—and I’ll let you know what I discover.”
“All right.” She could do that. She’d be glad to do that. Capturing the horses would keep her busy and her mind away from the awful results of her flight.
As she wandered away, Arnou called, “You took care of yourself.”
Sorcha nodded.
“Mother Brigette would be proud of you.”
Mother Brigette would be proud of her. She was proud of herself. She’d met her first challenge—and that challenge had been an attempt on her life—and she’d triumphed.
And now she had a job to do.
Sorcha caught the first horse easily. An unsaddled mare, it stood patiently waiting at the top of the hill and when she took its reins, it followed her like a lamb.
Catching the other horses wasn’t quite so effortless. One of them, a fine gelding, was saddled and nervous, prancing in an excess of nerves. It took Sorcha several tries before she managed to catch the reins, and a long, soft-voiced discussion of the gelding’s beauty and good nature before the horse allowed her to take it to grass and tether it there.
The last horse, her attacker’s, was raw and wild, a horse broken too soon, still rebelling against the restraints. She caught him at once, but he reared and fought, and it took all her skill and concentration to bring him down and gentle him. When at last she’d coaxed him into a tether, she found Arnou standing, hands on hips, watching her. “You didn’t help me,” she said.
“You didn’t need it.” That foolish grin he wore so convincingly spread across his face. “You’re as good with horses as you are with boats.”
Like a splash of icy water from the Irish Sea, she remembered that he had let her dive into the ocean to bring in the boat he wanted, and the familiar sense of exasperation settled in. This was Arnou. He was satisfied to let someone else, particularly Sorcha, perform the labor to make his life better.
She pressed her aching palms together. “How did you find me?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I wanted to go home, that’s all.”
“How did you get two horses?” Horses worth a lot of money.
“I traded the boat for them.”
Hm. She wouldn’t have thought that boat would be the worth of two horses. “That must have been a fine boat.”
“It was!” he said enthusiastically.
She studied him. He was dirty again, but he didn’t smell. Instead, he was splashed with mud from the road. A sturdy truncheon, about a foot long, hung from his leather belt and he looked capable of using it. In fact, out here Arnou seemed large and reliable. She’d thought about traveling with him for safety; now it appeared she could. “How did you recognize me?”
A frown knit his brow. “Why wouldn’t I recognize you? You look like yourself.”
Logical answers that made her want to shriek imprecations at him. “Have you noticed how I’m dressed?”
“Like a boy, but you still look like yourself. I suppose you’re dressed that way for travel, heh?”
“That’s right, and you mustn’t tell anyone that I’m a girl.”
“All right.” Going to the still-fractious horse that the attacker had ridden, he laid gentle hands on him. The young horse jerked and shied, but Arnou petted him, spoke to him, until he calmed.
Sorcha wouldn’t have thought that a sailor would have so much experience with horses.
“You have an awfully high voice for a lad,” Arnou said.
“Oh.” Arnou had a good point. Perhaps her speech was the reason Haverford had penetrated her disguise so quickly. “I can make it deeper.”
“That would be a good idea.”
“Did you…did you find anything on that man that explains why he attacked me?”
“He had money.” Arnou lifted a laden purse off his belt. “Lots of money.”
Shocked by Arnou’s callus action, she asked, “You took his money?”
“He’s not going to use it where he’s going.” Arnou sounded logical and looked indignant.
“No.” Abruptly she turned away. “So he was paid.”
“I suppose, but I don’t know why anyone would try to kill you. You’re so pretty and nice!”
Should she tell Arnou the truth?
No. This most recent threat proved the truth of Grandmamma’s ironclad adage—royalty trusts no one.
“If we hurry, we should be able to find shelter before nightfall.” He walked around her pony, then around the stranger’s young horse. He looked them over with an assessing eye. “And if we sell these two beasties, we’ll have enough money to finance our journey.”
“Sell St. Donkey? I can’t do that!” Did Arnou mean he would travel with her? Her heart lifted at the thought of having him at her side. This hearty man would discourage attacks from robbers and assassins, and the road wouldn’t be nearly so lonely.
But…oh, dear. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her to let him ride into danger with no warning. Even Mother Brigette would agree, she had to tell him the truth. “I’m a princess,” she blurted.
Grinning, he nodded.
“Someone wants to kill me.”
He nodded again, his face falling.
“They’re hunting me right now.”
Once more he nodded, his lower lip sticking out.
“That man”—she gestured toward the broken body—“was undoubtedly the vanguard of something much worse, and if you go with me, you’ll be in danger.” She waited for him to say something, to somehow indicate his horror at her situation, and his.
Instead he said, “I knew you weren’t a nun.”
“Is that all you have to say?” He hadn’t understood a word she said!
“What else?” He scratched his ear.
“Doesn’t the peril on the road worry you?”
“As long as the men who chase you carry these kinds of purses”—he lifted the laden pouch—“I’m well paid for traveling with you. And as long as you knock them out like you did today, I’m safe enough.”
She didn’t know what impressed her more—his foolishness or his greed.
Going to the gelding, he removed the saddle, then placed it on the mare and cinched it tight. “Tomorrow we’ll be in Glenmoore, a fair-sized market town. I can trade the horses—”
“You can trade them? Are you better at trading than you are at fighting?”
He hesitated, then shrugged sheepishly. “I’m pretty good at all kinds of things.”
“That what I thought.” If she had to sell St. Donkey, she intended to make sure Donkey’s new owner would love her properly. “I’ll do the trading.”
“You’ll do the trading,” he repeated. “I’ll just trail along.”