Chapter 2
There was a voice from outside the stables. ‘Your Ladyship?’
Inside the stall Rosamund finished digging the stone from her horse’s hoof. Only one groom had escaped the fever, and he was nowhere to be seen, so she’d taken care of readying Willow for the road by herself. She straightened up and squinted at the figure who had just addressed her.
Her escort loomed outside the door. Rosamund tried not to take offence. Captain Collins was a tall, broad-shouldered man; he might not have been looming on purpose. And while she wasn’t inclined to be charitable, it wouldn’t be sensible to be unfriendly to her only protection for the next few weeks. Rosamund was still baffled at Queen Eudosia’s apparent disregard for the diplomatic mission. One widowed noblewoman and a single guard? But speculation changed nothing. She had a task to complete.
‘Good morning, Captain Collins.’ She waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. ‘Was there something you needed?’
He looked over Willow’s tack, a faint crease between his brows. ‘Do you intend to bring a sword, Your Ladyship?’
She nodded and pulled back a piece of cloth on her saddle to reveal the scabbard concealed there. She also decided against providing him with an inventory of all her other weapons. Not least because he might ask to see those as well, and several of them would require her to root around in the back of her riding doublet.
The captain inclined his head. ‘I intend for us to leave within the hour. Is that convenient?’
‘Certainly, Captain. Shall I meet you at the main gate?’
He nodded, turned on his heel, and strode off.
Rosamund watched him go, thinking hard. She’d expected a captain to be older, but he looked thirty, if that. And she didn’t like the way he’d looked at her. Part suspicion, part resignation, and part something else she couldn’t quite place.
She’d felt the suspicion before. Hugo had died in an ambush in Abrenia, and Rosamund, an Abrenian by birth, had been left to administer his estate. Wasn’t that convenient? certain members of the court had whispered. And she visited him on the front lines only a week before his death . . .
Rosamund shook herself. There was no reason to suspect that the queen gave any credence to those ridiculous rumours. She was being silly. Captain Collins was a trained soldier. His uniform was well-kept, his hair neatly contained at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, and she’d watched his green eyes sweep the stables with professional detachment before settling on her. She couldn’t accuse him of anything other than professional alertness.
Willow froze as Caroline appeared in the stall. ‘Well,’ chirped Caroline, ‘he’s a beautiful blond grump, isn’t he?’
‘He has just been ordered to escort the sister-in-law of the king of a hostile nation to the capital of said nation,’ replied Rosamund, running her fingers under Willow’s noseband and ignoring the “beautiful” part. ‘There are a dizzying number of ways this could go wrong for him.’ She shook her head. ‘If he’s tense, I can’t blame him. I’m tense too, but there’s no sense dwelling on it. The sooner we leave, the better.’
Rosamund and her escort set off promptly at ten of the clock, she on Willow, he riding a heavyset bay called Scout. The road out of the city was —
Caroline stared at the carefully annotated pages, then at the struck-through paragraphs, and ground her teeth to keep from shouting. ‘Really? You think I should remove all the description?’
Henry looked up at the camera, giving the disconcerting impression that his deep green eyes were actually on hers. ‘No. But remember your audience. It may be a fantasy romance, but they’re really just there for the romance part. Paragraphs of route mapping are going to make them skim at best and put the book down at worst.’
He was probably right. Dress details were fine, but nine paragraphs on the scenery that Rosamund and Captain Collins (he did have a first name, it just hadn’t settled yet) were passing? Not so much. But Caroline had spent a good hour researching what kind of trees there would be and coming up with a plausible map for the journey, even if it did look like it had been drawn by a toddler with a broken crayon. Bad form or no, she wanted to show her work. ‘Fine. Any other notes?’
Henry shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to get too much into the weeds. It’ll need an extensive rewrite regardless.’
Not an encouraging statement. But given Caroline’s drafting process, also not an inaccurate one. She bade Henry farewell and had just started to prune her thicket of description when her laptop pinged.
George. Again. For the third time that hour — and it was Saturday.
She ignored it.
The road out of the city was straight and well maintained, though the recent drought meant that the ground had baked hard. Given the risk of spraining the horses’ fetlocks, Rosamund and Captain Collins kept the animals to a walk until they entered the woods. Here the summer sunlight filtered through a canopy of oak and ash leaves, and they rode comfortably side-by-side for the next few hours. Neither of them had much to say.
Caroline frowned and took a sip of her tea. It had long since gone cold. Grimacing, she moved it from the desk to the windowsill and reached for her water instead, wondering how best to finesse this. Captain Collins was meant to be the strong, silent type, but she’d hoped she could at least rely on him for flirtatious banter. Maybe she should have sent Rosamund on the trip with Robin instead; he was a talker.
Still, she could work with this.
The scene around the captain froze as Caroline inserted herself into his world. ‘Good day, Captain Collins!’
He said nothing, wondering what she wanted. He hoped it would be less ambiguous than her previous request, which had been, ‘Could you maybe . . . smoulder a bit more?’ Caroline tended to pop up at very inconvenient moments, and nothing she said ever quite made sense.
‘Now would be an excellent time for an internal monologue from your point of view,’ Caroline said. ‘Perhaps with a grudging note that your travelling companion is pretty?’
Captain Collins, who wasn’t sure that he had a first name, frowned and continued to say nothing. First, because it was obvious that Lady Hawkhurst and Caroline had the same face, and the implications of that disturbed him. Second, because he had the feeling that arguing with the actual creator of his world might get him in worse trouble than arguing with his monarch.
‘All right,’ said Caroline, ‘maybe Lady Rosamund isn’t actually beautiful, but . . . something about her has caught your attention, surely? Her pretty red hair? Her intense blue eyes? Her adorable . . .’ Caroline gestured weakly at her own face.
‘Dimples?’ he offered.
‘I was going to say “freckles”,’ said Caroline, smiling like a shark, ‘but “dimples” will do nicely.’
His ears burned. He should have stuck with silence.
Captain Collins risked a longer glance at his travelling companion and tried not to frown. Queen Eudosia’s instructions had been simple, but not easy. And while her faith in his abilities was substantial, right now he feared it had been misplaced.
‘We need to make peace, Collins,’ the queen had told him, ‘and Lady Rosamund is the perfect envoy to show that we’re serious about it. Getting her to Quayforth with the declaration is the priority, and I will do everything in my power to make sure it happens. But with the fever I am severely short-handed. I hope that by travelling as a pair you will attract less attention, but walk wary. And there’s still the matter of Sir Hugo’s death. The lady might have information we do not, so while you are on the road with her, see if you can find out what she knows.’
Given the circumstances of Hawkhurst’s demise, Collins was anxious to discover what had gone wrong. But prying into whatever knowledge Hugo’s widow might have about his death was a delicate business, and he hardly knew where to begin. Perhaps the lady might open up when she grew used to his company. He could only hope.
Their first two days on the road were uneventful, for which Rosamund was grateful. The horses kept a steady pace along bone-dry roads, raising dust with every step, and the stillness of the air muted the jingle of bits and the creak of leather.
Captain Collins was an undemanding travel companion. His near silence initially made Rosamund worry that she had offended him in some way, but by the second day she decided that he just didn’t like talking. It was oddly soothing. When her children were at home — as they are now, alone, she thought with a pang of homesickness — noise and silence both could be a comfort. But when Edmund and Charlotte were away at school, attempts at quiet from the household staff served only to remind her of Hugo’s effortless, wordless presence, and how much she missed it. The captain offered her silence without strings, without pity, without judgement. Even if she sometimes wished for a little conversation, she’d missed that kind of peaceful companionship more than she’d realised.
The road was often busy, and since Captain Collins insisted they regularly dismount and walk to stretch their own legs and give the animals a break, Rosamund took the opportunity to distract herself from her anxious thoughts by making polite conversation with amenable fellow travellers.
Rosamund’s discussion with a pedlar froze mid-sentence.
‘Shouldn’t you talk to Captain Collins rather than random strangers?’
Rosamund didn’t bother to look at Caroline. ‘Why?’
‘Banter is an important component of an enemies-to-lovers romance!’
Rosamund, her eyes still fixed on the road ahead, set her jaw and did not reply.
The Bevorian nobles in whose homes they stayed seemed very aware of who Rosamund was, which made her uncomfortable. She was used to a certain level of deference as the liege lady of her estate, but to receive the fawning attention of aristocrats who far exceeded her station was unsettling.
Not many people had previously paid attention to the foreign wife of a minor border lord, especially one who avoided court so assiduously. But despite the covert nature of her mission, her hosts were not stupid. A lady who lived in north-eastern Bevoria travelling up the country’s western side from the capital? With one of the Queen’s Guard in tow? That said diplomacy, for all that Rosamund politely deflected questions about her eventual destination.
Captain Collins, for his part, received precious little respect from their hosts, which was irritating. He was risking his life on this ridiculous mission to Abrenia too. Even if the lords didn’t know that, there was no need to be so dismissive.
‘Lady Rosamund.’ Lord Stanley’s words brought her back to the present. ‘How have you found the journey so far?’
They sat at a long, polished table laden with game, bread, and (Rosamund counted) eight kinds of pastries. Lord Stanley himself, resplendent in his estate’s yellow, obviously had a sweet tooth. Among his other vices.
‘It has exceeded all my expectations, my lord,’ Rosamund said, trying not to stare at the hairs sprouting from his red nose. ‘Though I imagine much of that has been due to Captain Collins.’
Collins started. He had remained silent for the entire meal, and no one had addressed him directly.
‘I am very grateful that Her Majesty could spare him,’ Rosamund continued. ‘I’m sure his regular unit is missing him.’
Lord Stanley, realising that he hadn’t spoken more than three words to one of the supposedly honoured guests in his house, turned to her travelling companion.
‘Captain Collins, have you found — ’
Rosamund returned her attention to her dinner.
Captain Collins, for his part, was unsurprised by how the aristocrats tried to ingratiate themselves with Lady Hawkhurst. What did surprise him was how discomfited she appeared by the whole experience. The nobles whose homes in which they stayed fell over themselves to offer hospitality, to entertain their guest, to engage her in court gossip. But Lady Hawkhurst, while gracious, held herself at a distance that he could not understand. These were her peers, and yet she seemed less comfortable around them than she was alone on the road with him.
Her treatment of him had been another surprise. Of course, he deferred to her under most circumstances, given their difference in rank and the queen’s orders to get the lady to Quayforth by any means necessary. But she shared, or at least respected, his preference for silence; she uncomplainingly assisted with the menial chores attendant to travel on horseback; she was, all told, an easy travel companion. Not at all what he had expected from a noblewoman. One of his few friends at court knew the lady and had assured Captain Collins that he would not find escorting her home too troublesome.
If only that had been their destination.
However, after two days on the road, Lady Hawkhurst’s apparent patience ran out, and whenever they found themselves in a crowd, she would converse with their fellow travellers. From this the captain discovered that she had two children, Edmund and Charlotte. But company dwindled as they neared the border, and Lady Hawkhurst began to cast about for subjects to engage his interest. He couldn’t tell if this meant she had relaxed around him or grown restless.
‘Is it usual that heads of households treat you as if you’re invisible, Captain Collins?’ she said on the third morning as they ambled through a small market town.
Collins looked over at her sharply, but he saw none of the slyness that usually preceded a verbal trap from a superior. He decided to be diplomatic. ‘Many lords prefer to preserve the distinctions of rank, Your Ladyship.’
She snorted. ‘Oh, I’m sure.’
‘You disapprove?’
‘I think it’s wise to seek perspective from anyone willing to give it.’ She glanced over at him, eyes thoughtful. ‘I suppose there is such a thing as overfamiliarity with the people over whom one has power.’ Then her mouth twisted. ‘For example, Lord Stanley’s villages house more than a few children who are the direct result of his overfamiliarity with his servants.’ She sniffed derisively, glancing back the way they came, and fell silent again.
Captain Collins was not a talker by nature, and with practice, he had learned how to turn this to his advantage: if he didn’t say anything for long enough, people either assumed he was stupid or forgot he was there and so didn’t watch their words. But this would not work with Lady Hawkhurst. She was either too considerate of him or too watchful of her own words, and when she did speak, she always waited pointedly for him to reciprocate. If he wanted her to divulge confidences or suspicions worth reporting to the queen, he would have to say something back. Something substantial even.
‘I once had a leader who insisted on referring to everyone by their first names, to improve morale,’ he offered.
That got her attention. ‘Did it work?’
‘No, Your Ladyship, because he kept getting them wrong. I was “Landon” for my entire time there, and he kept asking me if my wife was well.’
Lady Rosamund unsuccessfully attempted to smother a smile. ‘I take it your name isn’t actually Landon?’
He couldn’t help but smile back. ‘No, Your Ladyship. It’s Leo. And I’ve never been married, either.’
Three hours after she’d emailed Henry the first paragraphs of her revised travel chapter, Caroline’s phone pinged.
HenrySo you finally picked a name for him then?
CarolineDid you doubt me?
The reply was near instantaneous.
HenryRemember when you wrote “English Breakfast at Tiffany’s”?
HenryAnd the love interest didn’t actually get named until the third draft?
CarolineHis name wasn’t that important anyway.
HenryNo, just his manly abs.
The words Envy isn’t pretty, Henry were on the tip of her tongue (and the tips of her fingers). But no, that was a little too close for comfort.
CarolineI know what the people want! :)
HenryIf you say so.
A few hours later the travellers walked beside the horses in the shade of the trees, looking for somewhere to stop for luncheon. It was almost midday, and Leo watched Lady Hawkhurst as she judged the position of the sun. She had recited the Litany for the Dead at midday every day of their journey so far. Considering Hawkhurst had been dead almost a year now, this was an unusual display of piety, but it seemed a harmless one.
That said, it had almost got him into trouble on the second day. Lady Hawkhurst had begun as usual, murmuring the words to herself, but her diction had been clear enough that he was able to hear.
‘We bring nothing into the world, and we carry nothing out,’ she said, staring straight ahead. ‘The Wisdoms give us life, and all our days are numbered. Deliver us from darkness, that we may rise to Light.’
‘Deliver us,’ Leo had echoed, distracted by his own thoughts on the dead man and momentarily forgetting himself. Lady Hawkhurst had started at his interruption, but when she looked over at him, Leo saw a glimmer of sympathy on her face, and she had carried on without comment.
He was wondering whether or not to join in properly today when there was a noise ahead.
Rosamund squinted overhead at the sun, trying to judge if it was close enough to midday to begin the litany. As Hugo’s widow, she would be expected to lead the recitation at his Feast of Remembrance, and she was in the middle of calculating the precise number of days left before that anniversary when Captain Collins tensed beside her.
What? she mouthed. His eyes flicked forward, then over her shoulder past her horse. Rosamund edged closer to Willow and reached under the saddlebags in a gesture she hoped appeared absent-minded — but her hand closed on the hilt of her concealed sword. It slipped out of the scabbard with barely a sound, and just in time.
A stocky man dressed in grey darted out from a thicket before her, sword upraised; at the same moment a second assailant yanked Willow’s reins out of Rosamund’s hand. The horse reared in fright and tried to bolt from the stranger. But Rosamund’s eyes were fixed on the man in the grey tunic. His sword bore down on her head like a club.
Amateur. Or is he just trying to scare me? No matter. She stepped in to parry and let the force of his blow slide her sword down his until the steel bit into his neck.
He didn’t have time to scream.
Rosamund turned to see what had happened to Captain Collins, but she barely caught a glimpse of him fighting a third man when the second bandit, a bearded man in a brown cloak, dropped Willow’s reins and tackled her from behind. They hit the gravel hard, and Rosamund rolled onto her back, trying to scramble out of reach while keeping her assailant in view, but he knocked her sword out of her hand and pinned her to the ground.
He was too strong. His hands were around her throat, she couldn’t breathe, there were spots before her eyes, she was going to —
Abruptly the pressure eased and Rosamund gasped, pushing herself away from her attacker, hands protesting as they scraped across the stones. Her vision returned to reveal Captain Collins seizing the man by the scruff of the neck. He slammed the bandit into the nearest tree; the man bounced head-first off the trunk and landed in a sprawl on the ground. Brown Cloak stumbled to his hands and knees, turned tail, and bolted.
Rosamund coughed and tried to stand, but her throat ached, and a wave of dizziness washed over her. She pushed herself to her knees and cast around desperately. Where was her sword?
A choked cry of pain arrested her thoughts. Rosamund whirled to see a fourth bandit in bright green pull a dagger from the captain’s calf. Collins fell towards her but twisted onto his back to drag Green Tunic after him. They hit the ground with a thud, grappling.
Rosamund reached for the green-handled knife hidden in her boot, drawing a pained breath; when the bandit glanced up at her, she saw her chance. ‘Leo, stay down!’
The knife flew straight and struck true, lodging in the fourth bandit’s throat. He clutched at his neck, choking, and Captain Collins was up on one knee in a flash. He rolled the man onto his back and pulled out the knife.
Rosamund closed her eyes at the sound of metal on bone, willing herself not to be sick.
The captain staggered to his feet, wincing.
‘Where’s the other one?’ he demanded.
Rosamund opened her eyes again, uncertain. ‘I don’t know.’
He scowled, retrieved his sword, and propped himself against a tree to assess his injuries.
Rosamund pushed herself to her feet, feeling her neck. Swallowing felt like her throat was full of dry bread, and it hurt to turn her head. Captain Collins still had her knife, so she recovered her sword and went to catch Willow, who had fled some distance away. The mare was well-trained enough not to abandon them entirely, and while she was sweating and rolling her eyes, she was also, Wisdoms be praised, unharmed. Rosamund coaxed Willow over to the captain and hurried off again to retrieve Scout. By the time she had returned with the gelding, Captain Collins had managed to bind a piece of cloth around his bleeding left leg. He grunted in pain when he mounted up but otherwise maintained his quintessential silence.
Rosamund winced in sympathy. Her head pounded, her body ached, and breathing was uncomfortable at best, but at least she wasn’t bleeding. Collins had saved her life and, by doing so, opened himself up to attack from behind. His injury probably wasn’t life-threatening if treated promptly, but she couldn’t help being impressed by his stoicism.
However, regardless of how much pain he was in, they needed to leave. Now. Three dead bodies lay in the road, but the bearded man in the brown cloak had disappeared without a trace. Rosamund mounted, all thoughts of food forgotten, and she and Captain Collins set off at a canter. The trees flashed past, and Rosamund’s neck throbbed as they laboured to put as much distance between themselves and the site of the ambush as possible before Brown Cloak returned with friends.
‘On first-name terms with Captain Collins now, are we?’ Caroline looked smug. ‘Well, I suppose you did just save his life.’
Rosamund didn’t even have it in her to glare. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to swallow. Captain Collins was injured. And he still had her knife.
‘And now you have to find a safe place to stay and patch up his injuries!’ Caroline crowed. ‘Which will give you plenty of time to have a Meaningful Conversation!’
Rosamund grimaced at the capital letters in the author’s voice. ‘Oh. Goody.’ She sighed. ‘Is,’ she whispered, then coughed again, ‘is the hidden knife going to be an issue? I didn’t deliberately keep it from him, you know. He asked if I was bringing a sword, and I was, so I said yes.’
‘Failing to mention it rather makes it look like you don’t trust him,’ said Caroline, and Rosamund was not comforted to hear that she sounded pleased about that too.