Page 36 of Tattered Huntress
Translation: you can try but you won’t succeed. I exhaled. Good. I had nothing against the sorcerer but I wanted to be the next person to find part of the key. Hell, Iwouldbe the nextperson to find it.
I felt Hugo’s eyes on me and glanced at him. He looked amused; no doubt my thoughts were written all over my face. I tried to school my expression into something blander before I remembered that his opinion meant nothing to me. I didn’t care what he thought; I was supposed to be ignoring him.
I leaned back in my chair, stretched my legs out underneath the table and inadvertently kicked him. ‘Are you playing footsie with me?’ he asked archly.
Wanker. ‘Actually,’ I sniffed, ‘I was attempting to break your leg to take you out of the running.’
Humphrey’s mouth fell open. A tiny smile played around Hugo’s lips. ‘You’ll have to try harder next time.’
I folded my arms. ‘Challenge accepted.’
Hugo laughed, then got to his feet, nodded and wandered off to join his Primes. I forced myself not to watch him go.
The screen displaying Sir Nigel’s face flickered and turned black. He’d given us our marching orders and presumably had nothing more to tell us.
I checked my watch; it was just after 9am. There was plenty of time to meet Jamila, borrow her brother’s bike then get up to Smoo Cave before nightfall. Unless Boonder did have the skills to unlock the sealed rune, there was no need to rush.
I eyed him as he dabbed at his mouth with a napkin then strode out of the breakfast room. ‘Do you know him?’ I asked Humphrey. ‘Boonder?’
He beamed at me. ‘I do. He’s a good fellow.’
Humphrey seemed to think that everyone was a good fellow; there didn’t appear to be anyone he disliked. ‘Is he a powerful sorcerer? Can he unlock the Smoo Cave rune himself?’
‘I doubt it,’ he said, after thinking about it for a moment. ‘Boonder has excellent skills but Sir Nigel wouldn’t have employed another sorcerer if he thought that Boonder couldopen the rune on his own. Sir Nigel’s primary concern is the competition aspect of the hunt.’
Humphrey might like everyone he met but that didn’t mean he wasn’t canny. ‘You’re not just a pretty face,’ I told him.
He grinned. Eleanor nudged me with her elbow. ‘Speaking of pretty faces,’ she said, ‘what’s the deal with you and Hugo? There was definitely some flirting going on there.’
‘What? No, there was not!’ I shook my head vigorously.
‘That was definitely flirting,’ Humphrey agreed. ‘Are you secretly courting?’
‘No!’
‘Hugs is a good fellow.’
No, he wasn’t.
‘You could do worse.’
Not much worse. I reminded myself about what the housekeeper at Neidpath Castle had told me about the ‘bone zone’ at Hugo’s ancestral home. ‘There is nothing going on apart from mutual dislike,’ I said firmly,
Humphrey and Eleanor exchanged looks. ‘If you say so, Daisy.’
‘I do.’ I sniffed. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to retrieve my brownies, check out of this hotel and get to Scotland.’
Humphrey offered a mock salute. ‘We’ll see you there.’ His brow creased. ‘Probably. I have some friends close to Durness that we might visit on route. I’ve not seen them for months.’ He smiled at Eleanor. ‘They’d love to meet you.’
‘That sounds wonderful,’ she said. ‘We should visit Ullapool, too. There’s a lovely café there.’
I left them to it. Cafés and long-lost friends were all very nice but I wanted to find some treasure – before anybody elsegot to it.
Although I’d riddena motorcycle before – I’d even used one for deliveries in Edinburgh on a few occasions when time had been an issue – I’d never ridden one any distance. I wasn’t entirely stupid; I took a lot of breaks and made sure that I walked around and stretched my legs every time. Even so, by the time I finally arrived at the little carpark on the outskirts of Durness, my arse felt like it was on fire.
I climbed stiffly off the seat and tried to massage myself. The oversized leathers that belonged to Jamila’s brother, and which she had kindly lent me, didn’t make it easy. In the end, I plonked myself down on the verge and stripped them off until I was sitting in my underwear in full public view. My tender bottom required more attention than any sense of misplaced shame, which by this point was non-existent anyway.
I was not the first treasure hunter to arrive; the car park was already packed. I recognised most of the vehicles. I wasn’t surprised to see that Humphrey and Eleanor were missing. I was particularly pleased to spot Boonder grumpily setting up a tent on the grassy field at the other side of the car park. Judging by his wet hair, he’d already tried and failed to break the underwater rune.
