Page 83 of Laird of Flint
“He won’t. Because ye’ll be careful.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Ye don’t have to. Just stay quiet. And don’t do mad things like tryin’ to kill a Rivenloch warrior.”
The opium. Ithadbeen intentional. And if Carenza hadn’t walked in when she did…
“The laird doesn’t want him to go back to Kildunan.”
“O’ course he doesn’t. Not when he’s got his daughter waitin’ on the prospective bridegoom, hand and foot.”
“But he can’t stay here,” the physician complained. “He’s too meddlesome. I can’t work this way.”
“He can’t go back to the monastery.”
“What! Why?”
“Father James is suspicious.”
“Father James? Why?”
“Why do ye think? He’s wonderin’ why there’s a Rivenloch warrior stayin’ at his monastery.”
“Laymen stay at monasteries all the time.”
“Maybe in the infirmary. Not in the monks’ cells.”
“Maybe he’s joinin’ the order.”
There was a dubious sigh. The same sigh Carenza had made at the absurd thought of Sir Hew donning a monk’s robes.
“No one would believe that.”
“I can’t go on like this,” Peris complained. “’Tis too dangerous.”
“And ye think killin’ a man in cold blood isn’t? God’s eyes, have ye no thought for your soul?”
“My soul is already damned from this nasty business.”
The other man grumbled something under his breath that sounded like a curse. “Listen to me. I swear to ye, ’twill be done by Lent. If ye can just compose yourself for a few more months and keep from killin’ anyone…”
“Compose myself? How am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe drink one o’ those concoctions ye tried to give the warrior. Just lay low, and ’twill be right in the end.”
There was a long silence before Peris replied with a despondent sigh. “Fine.”
“Because we dare not do anythin’ to rouse Father James’s suspicions.”
“I said ‘fine’,” Peris snapped.
“Good. Ye’ll see. Everythin’willbe fine. And in the end, if ye don’t want a share o’ the spoils, ye can stay here at Dunlop if ye like, with none the wiser.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want a share o’ the spoils.”
What they said after that, she didn’t hear. They made their way along the passageway and up the stairs.
How long she’d been holding her breath, she couldn’t say. But once she could hear them no longer, she let it out on a shaky exhale.
