Enraptured by the Highlander

Please don’t come in, please don’t come in. Her eyes were clenched tight and her mind was whirling.

The door was pushed in and to further her dread, someone walked in. Whoever it was walked lightly but she could hear the thud of boots on the floor. The man started circling the room and she pressed herself tighter against the desk’s inner wall.

The thuds were coming closer and closer and she swore her heart stopped for a few moments while he came around. Through the space between the legs of her father’s chair, she could see the dark boots and trousers of a man.

He stopped, once, his hand resting on the table and then the knocked it twice. The soft taps sounded like thunderclaps to her ears. She also saw the strong light of a lamp. “Oh, I see what made that noise. Mr. Whittingham must have not set that book right.”

With a turn of his heel, he was walking away from her. She heard when he picked up the book, slid it onto the shelf and walked out. Only then did she breathe. It was difficult for her to unlock her limbs to crawl out of the desk’s kneehole and when she tried to stand, she found her legs to be rubbery. Her fright had robbed her of her strength so much so that even her arms were numb.

Then again, I had a death grip on the lamp and codex so it is plausible my hands are bloodless.

She held her head down and using the little light in the corridors made it to the stairwell, only to get interrupted again. A guard was coming along from god knew where and stopped her. “Lady Adelaine? What are you doing up this late?”

“I-I came to get some water from the kitchen as the jug in my room was empty and I had a tickle in my throat,” she said, praying the man would buy the lie and she could go back to her room free.

“Why didn’t you wake your maid?”

“I didn’t want to bother her,” Adelaine said, begging God and all his mercies to set her free.

“And you walked without a lamp?” he asked.

Oh, good lord. She was on the verge of making a deal with the devil from freedom.

Haven’t I been through enough for one night?

“I have one but the oil went out.” She brandished the lamp in his face. “I had not realized it had burned so low when I came down. I must be going now.”

“Wait,” he stopped her. “Please let me escort you upstairs. I wouldn’t want you to trip.”

That felt like a reasonable request and she did not think it would be too much of an issue to allow him to follow her up the dark stairs to her rooms. Besides, it would look very suspicious to turn the man down.

“I don’t see why not,” she said.

“It’s my pleasure, My Lady.”

He took the step ahead of her and she followed meekly behind him and his guiding light. He led her down the corridor and even held her door out for her. He saw just like she did, the dying fire in the grate. “May I restart the fire for you, My Lady?”

“No, no, I prefer it low,” she said, dropping the codex on her bed and hurriedly covering it with a pillow. “Thank you for your help—”

“Gerard, My Lady, Gerard Sinclair,” he added

“Thank you, Mister Sinclair,” she said while coming back to the door. “I do appreciate it, goodnight.”

Closing the door in his face, Adelaine barely had the strength to totter to back to her bed where the codex was and pull it out. She managed to relight the lamp and when it was up, she pulled the drawstring of the codex with trembling fingers.

“Please let this be it, please, let it be what I am searching for, the one thing that will get Caelan to freedom…”

The lamplight flickered brighter just as her hope did, and when she looked down at the pages beneath her, she sagged in her seat. The markings on the paper were faint, the once-dark ink now faded with time but she saw the outline of her home and the buildings near it.

What controlled her attention was the thick double line of a passage from the solarium to the keep and from the keep to the west wall. There was no such thing above ground so unless it was a wall or walkway that had not been built, it was the very same tun

nel Caelan spoke about. The west wall was built on an incline that led to a dry ravine. That raven led to the forest far off and headed to the hills beyond.

“He was right…” she whispered and trailed the lines with her forefinger, “my God, he was right.”

Leaning in closer she tried to pinpoint where the tunnel was connected from the keep to the west wall and narrowed her gaze. There was not much but following the attached line toward the west wall back to the keep she saw an X marked inside a circle. She could only assume that the attachment to the tunnel was below the guardroom and in the basement.

She closed the codex again and hid it in her trunk, went to stir up the fire and take off her dressing gown. She slid between the sheets and rested her head on a pillow. She hugged another one to her chest.