Boundless (Age of Conquest #6) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,2
he merely sought to discover the state of her consciousness, she floundered.
“Make haste, Marguerite!”
She rose to her hands and knees. The last time she was here, Claude had spent most of his days in a chair. Now he was on a narrow bed, propped up by pillows.
Finally, he dies, she thought as she peered into the gaunt face of one who looked nearer his father’s age than his brother’s.
Her widowed mother had answered her sire’s summons six years ago, leaving her daughter behind so she could care for this brother who was expected to pass within a year. He had not, but soon now.
“Oui, I depart the world.” His eyes moistened. “As I wish to join my sister above, I shall please God by aiding her daughter.”
Recalling the pitiful grave that was more fitting for a hunting dog than beloved kin who had spent her final years on those who did her no honor, Marguerite said, “Above? No holy ground does she rest in—and likely no box holds her body.”
Claude eased his head back. “Though I protested that, I could do naught. But I must be well with it the same as you.”
“Well with my mother buried like a dog? With no word sent me of her passing?”
His half-hooded eyes unhooded. “Quiet! He will hear you.”
She thrust to her feet. “How am I to be well with that?”
He gripped her hand, and when she wrenched free, hurt spasmed across his face. “Much I have pondered God this past year, Marguerite. As if He ponders me, oft He appears in my dreams and eases the pain of losing one who loved the unlovable by assuring me my sister is with Him—and her beloved husband.”
Swept with memories of the big Scots who had carried his little girl on his shoulders and many years later held her hand one side and her mother’s the other as an unbreakable fever broke upon death, Marguerite caught back a sob.
“I hated that barbarian for taking her from us,” Claude bit. “I hated him for all the tears our mother wept and for which my father cursed her for making my sister believe a marriage of love possible.”
He sounded sincere, but the loss of urgency that she depart roused greater suspicion. However, when she stepped near, she saw he was not fully present.
“Uncle?”
He blinked. “Marguerite, daughter of Marguerite, run.”
“But if they—”
“I will go to the floor so they think you overpowered this weak excuse for a man. I do not believe they will pursue you any more vigorously than they shall for fear you will reach Malcolm, but more you will suffer if caught.”
She hesitated, then bent and kissed his perspiring brow. “The Lord be with you.”
“More, with you.”
Marguerite bundled up her skirts and climbed out the window. Standing amid withered herbs, she looked back and saw her uncle’s shoulders and head go from sight as he eased off the bed.
Then she ran.
They were the shepherd to her sheep—ever turning her from Scotland. If they could corner her, they would become the wolf to her sheep.
There being no means of securing a horse without drawing the attention of one who defended that border demesne, the only homeward progress Marguerite had made was during the first hour, and it was too little. On foot, skirts knotted up to free her legs, she struggled to stay ahead of pursuers who had numbered a dozen at the outset. Had she not turned opposite the direction they knew she would flee, they would have taken her to ground before now.
When they picked up her trail again as she moved south, only four of her grandfather’s men tracked her, the remainder likely continuing their search near the border. Now those who carried torches through the night had surely caught sight of her amid the trees. How else could they draw so near that their Norman-French accents were clear as they shouted words of which she could make no sense above the pound of her heart?
Lord, let me not have come this far only to fall, she prayed and, bending low, traded one cover for another.
She listened to their advance, and when the light of torches bent around the tree against which she pressed herself, hastened to the opposite side and drew from her hose the dagger her sire had insisted she conceal lest the one on her belt was taken.
But of what use against four warriors? fear asked of her.
Faced with defeat, do not make it easy for the enemy to seal