Outlaw (Medieval Trilogy 3)

“You watched me!” she cried.

“Aye.”

Tossing her hair off her face, she advanced upon him. Lightning crackled in her eyes. “You have no right to do this,” she accused.

“I touched you not.”

“Only with your eyes.”

“No harm came to you.”

“Yet.” Dark hair spilled over her skin, and he felt a tug on his heart, a tug that he could not afford.

“As long as you are with me, Megan of Dwyrain, you are safe.” He sighed and looked into her eyes. “This I pledge you.”

She nearly laughed. “So now you’re the noble outlaw, are you?”

He reached forward and strong fingers curled over her tiny fist. “Make no mistake, woman, I am not noble. My intentions for you are far from pure. That you are married to Holt would not stop me from bedding you if I so wanted and you agreed.”

“Agreed?” she sputtered, her breath catching. “I would never—oh, for the love of Saint Peter! When my father catches you, he will skin you alive and then lay hot coals on your bare flesh.”

“And your husband, what will he do?”

She stopped suddenly and stared at him as if pondering a puzzle she had not yet considered. “He will come after you,” she said finally, her voice flat, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. ?

??And, I believe, Sir Kelvin or whoever you be, he will kill you.”

Cayley’s knees and back ached as she knelt on the cold stones of the chapel floor. Through the open window she heard the sound of the soldiers returning and the creak of wheels as guests left the castle.

Upon Megan’s disappearance, her father had collapsed and had to be carried to his chamber. Cayley had stayed at his bedside until the doctor had arrived, then Father Timothy had asked her to join him in prayer for her father’s health and her sister’s safe return. Cayley, who would rather have been riding with the soldiers searching for Megan, had spent the past few hours on her knees, whispering prayer after prayer.

Candles burned around the altar, their flickering flames reflecting on the portraits of Christ and the Virgin as the priest walked softly around the chapel, his prayer book open in one hand, a rosary clicking in his pockets.

Guests came and went, stopping long enough to cross themselves and whisper their own quick requests to God, but every time Cayley climbed to her feet, Father Timothy laid a patient hand upon her shoulder and searched her face with soulful eyes. “Let us not give up so easily, my child,” he’d said, and she’d resumed her position, wondering how much pain she had to endure. “God is listening.” Cayley wished He’d listen a little harder.

Cold, tired, and worried, Cayley wanted desperately for her father to awaken in good health. She also needed to know what had become of her sister and why neither Holt nor his soldiers had been able to find Megan and the scoundrel who had abducted her. Cayley had caught a glimpse of the man in black, his bearing resembling that of a devil, and a handsome one at that. Biting her lip, she said another quick prayer and chastised herself for her wanton thoughts, for the truth be known, she thought the stranger far more interesting than Sir Holt or her own beloved Gwayne of Cysgod, the man she’d sworn she would marry years before.

There was something about this ruffian that suggested he could make a woman’s legs go weak and her heart pound in a strange and heady cadence. Aye, the outlaw was Satan incarnate; Cayley crossed herself with renewed conviction and prayed.

“That’s better,” Father Timothy said, laying a hand upon her bent head. His fingers touched her hair and lingered a second too long against the back of her neck. “Surely God will answer your prayers now.”

She hoped so.

Nearly an hour later, the doctor announced that Ewan had awakened.

“Never again doubt the power of prayer,” Father Timothy said, thankfully relieving her of her prayer duty. On aching legs, she hurried up the stone stairs of the great hall, past guards who had been stationed throughout the keep and were ever vigilant for spies or thugs or strangers. “A bit late,” old Rue had said, silently motioning to the guards. “Why close the stable door once the horse has escaped?” But Holt had ordered the men to watch over everyone in the castle, and no one was looked upon without suspicion.

Passing so quickly by the rush lights that they flickered in her wake, Cayley slid through the door of her father’s chamber. Only a few candles burned near the bed. A fire was lit, but it had burned down earlier and now there were only red-gold embers glowing in the grate.

“News of your sister?” Ewan asked hopefully, his dim eyes sparking for a second.

“Nay, Father, the soldiers found her not.”

He sighed wearily. “Then we must pray for her safe return.”

“I have prayed all the long night,” Cayley said, sick of the tiresome supplications to a God who was deaf this night. Discovering mossy chunks of dry oak in a basket near the door, she tossed two dry logs onto the fire. Sparking hungrily, greedy flames crackled and hissed over the new fuel.

“Holt believes that there are those soldiers and servants who are unfaithful to me,” Ewan said as he adjusted the furs on his bed with his bony hands. “He claims that the outlaw who invaded our keep had spies within the castle, men who helped him steal your sister away.”