Page 77 of Laird of Smoke
By the time they arrived at The Red Lion and let a lad lead their horses to the stable, Eve was only half-feigning the headache she claimed to have.
“Would ye see to the room?”she asked Adam, rubbing her temples.“My head is achin’ somethin’ fierce.”
“O’ course.Go on upstairs to the first chamber.I’ll pay the innkeeper and bring up the satchels.”
She drew her cloak around her and pulled her cowl up over her head.Entering the main room, she crossed directly to the stairs, passing invisibly through the benches of travelers hunched over their pottage.She rushed up the steps and closed herself behind the door.
Glancing at the generous bed draped in blue cotton, she felt a twinge of melancholy.The mattress probablywasgoose-down.But she’d never know, for she meant to sleep where all penitents belonged, on the floor.
Adam considered it a travesty for Aillenn to sleep on the ground when there was a perfectly good pallet—a goose-down pallet—a few yards away.
She’d claimed that being near the warm fire helped her headache.He wasn’t sure he believed that.
Perhaps her grief over the bairn was still too sharp for her to be consoled by the comfort of a warm bed.
He offered to sacrifice his comfort for her, to sleep beside her on the floor.But she shook her head.
Something else was wrong.Something was troubling her.Ever since the infant’s death, she’d distanced herself from Adam, hardly speaking, and then only in frosty tones.
Almost as if she thought it was his fault.
Trying to understand the workings of her complicated mind kept him awake, staring up at the brass medallion in the middle of the canopy, while he listened to her drawing in the calm breath of slumber.
When he finally surrendered and dozed off, it was into a heavy sleep.
So heavy he didn’t wake until dawn.
So heavy he never heard her leave.
When he saw the empty place by the hearth, he roused as if he’d been slapped awake.
Where was she?
He sprang up, running frantic fingers through his hair and blinking the sleep from his eyes.
Had she left him?
It was a mad thought.She didn’t belong to him, after all.Yet the feeling persisted.
Where had she gone?
He tried to calm himself as he dressed in haste.But his heart pounded as if he’d been called to battle.He shoved his arms through his surcoat and buckled his belt with shaking fingers.
Then, as he pulled on his boots, his eye caught on something slouched against the hearth.It was Aillenn’s satchel.
Relief hissed out of his lungs.He’d been a panicking fool.
She wouldn’t have left without her satchel.
Perhaps she’d only gone to the privy.
Or maybe she was downstairs, breaking her fast.
Catching his breath and trying to smooth his hair and his nerves into some semblance of order, he snatched open the door and resisted the urge to careen down the stairs.
Though he scoured the inn from top to bottom, upstairs and down, Aillenn was nowhere to be found.
The innkeeper knew nothing.And the lodgers gathered before the fire, who hadn’t seen the young lady, were only growing more curious and suspicious of him as he continued his relentless questioning.
