Page 34 of The Scottish Bride
“I thought you dead, and I was heartbroken. I thought I caused your death.”
“You had naught to do with what happened to me that night.”
“But I did. You came to Lochmaben to find me.”
“Did I?” His eyes narrowed. She saw that his irises were ice blue, dark-lashed, startling and beautiful. How had she not recognized him earlier? But in the mail coif, in surcoat and chain mail, in shadows, he looked different. And she had been distracted, fleeing Dalrinnie.
“Liam,” Sir Finley called. Sir William held up a hand to quiet him.
“You said you were looking for the lady of Dalrinnie that night,” she went on.
“I was.”
“You said you had a message for me. But you called yourself Wat of Selkirk. And now you are William Seton—” She gasped as a memory flashed, surfaced.
Seton—the name of the lord of Dalrinnie before her husband took it. She had forgotten that entirely until now. She knew little about the previous family, and yet—he had come to Dalrinnie. Was he one of those Setons? And she had seen him in a dream that came about, at least in part. A ripple went through her, an awareness of something more afoot.
“Whoever you are,” she continued, “you were looking for me. Lady Thomasina, you said. That is me. So aye, it is because of me that Sir Malise went after you.”
“Listen to me. I will explain, but not here. We must go. Now what?” He tipped his head, those eyes seeing beyond her silence, her thoughts. “There is something more.”
He had a way of echoing her very thoughts. But he was right, they had to move ahead. She would have to save her questions. “I am just glad you are well, Sir Harper.”
“So am I.” He led her back to the others. “The lady will ride with me now,” he said. As he mounted his horse and reached down for her, Gilchrist boosted her up to sit sideways behind him.
“Wait. I can ride astride,” she said. “Without the proper saddle, riding pillion is more comfortable.” She swung a leg nimbly over the horse’s back, tucked her skirts and spread her plaid cloak. Then she grasped Sir William’s wide leather belt.
They took the wide cobbled road heading south and eastward. After a while, Tamsin hugged her arms around William Seton’s waist and leaned against him. She felt secure there. Grateful that luck and the angels were with her in the form of three knights willing to help, and a lovely hound who reminded her of gentle Oonagh.
Now she realized why Sir William had looked so familiar. He was the harper. Yet Sir Gilchrist looked oddly familiar too, though she could not place him. Perhaps it was a resemblance to his brother, the one dark, the other fair. For now, with the earlier sense of threat fading, she felt only relief.
Glancing at William Seton’s profile, she saw him frown, somber and thoughtful. Was he annoyed by the obligation and delay of helping her? Or did something else, private and deep, trouble him?
As a Seton, what was his connection to Dalrinnie? And more importantly, what was the king’s message that he had carried weeks ago, as the harper? He had not said.
And which was true—king’s knight, harper, outlaw—or all of those?
Well, he was not a very good harper, she recalled, and there must be more to his story than he had let on so far. How odd that he had come to Dalrinnie just as Malise Comyn had arrived with the king’s demands. Did William Seton bear the same message?
She could not sort it all out. Resting her forehead on his cloaked back, weary, fraught, she closed her eyes.
“Lady.” He looked back. “We are six leagues away from Holyoak, where my kinsmen and I must stop. Can you ride that far?” The morning light made his blue eyes striking when she craned to meet his gaze. Her heart surged.
“I am fine,” she said.
She watched him further, curious. Though he seemed only a few years older than her, perhaps thirty, concern had hardened his handsome features, etching fine lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. His jaw was covered in a scruff of dark beard, but the full curve of his lips gave a hint of tenderness. He had dropped back the chain mail coif to reveal thick, glossy waves of brown hair streaked with gold. Earlier, had she seen him withoutthe coif, seen those ice-blue eyes under dark brows, she would have known the harper straightaway.
Despite the perpetual scowl he had today, she thought, he had a singular and tough beauty. Riding through gray mist, he seemed the soul of strength and humility, a warrior-angel. She wanted, needed, to trust him, yet inching toward it, held back.
“Thank you,” she said. “I do not wish to be any trouble.”
“You are no trouble. Clearly you wanted to leave Dalrinnie.”
She hesitated. “Sir Malise asked something of me that I would not do.”
“Did he,” he drawled. “I will speak to him about it if you like.”
She nearly laughed. “I will leave that to you.”
