Chapter 12

Phillip paced along the edge of the lists, grateful he was still alive to do so. It had been a very long day that didn’t look as if it intended to end any time soon, no matter what the sky might be telling him.

He knew he shouldn’t have felt so uneasy with so many of his own men around him and all of Haemesburgh’s men safely tucked away in the garrison hall, but he was. He supposed his unease came less from the men inside the keep and more from who was outside the keep wanting in. He had walked the walls that afternoon, scanning the countryside and wondering who on his list of enemies he could credit for the annoyance of the day before. He wasn’t sure he was enough of a pain in the arse to have earned all that many enemies, but perhaps he was. His father and uncles would have been proud of him.

He stopped, sighed, then leaned back against the stone and stared unseeing at the muddy ground in front of him. His list of problems was quite short and the solutions to them simple enough. He needed to determine what to do with Imogen, find his grandfather’s sword that seemed to have gone missing, and reassure Heather’s squire, Hamish, that he never need put on skirts again.

He wasn’t sure any of that constituted an auspicious start to his days of being lord of Haemesburgh.

At least he’d had the good sense to bring his own stores with him, though the little twins had volunteered to take on the dangerous task of investigating the priest’s larder on the off chance they would need something else to eat. He suspected their constitutions would survive just about anything they might find, but he didn’t like to think about having to tell his uncle Nicholas that he’d had to bury his youngest lads. He had sent Connor off after his brothers, happy to give at least three of his company something constructive to do.

He looked toward the garrison hall to make certain there was no untoward activity there, but apparently Cederic had secured the lads without trouble. Haemesburgh’s defenders were not numerous and thankfully not very well trained. That would need to be remedied at his earliest convenience, though he was half tempted to simply send them all back to their homes and start over. He also had to admit there was a part of him that wondered just what in the hell he was thinking to come inside a keep that wasn’t his and simply take it over. He supposed others had done worse. At least he could claim his betrothal to Heather as right to the lord’s chair. Not even Sir Neill could claim that.

Or at least he hoped Neill couldn’t claim that. The saints preserve him if Heather had decided to exchange him for the captain of her father’s garrison.

He glanced again at the garrison hall, then walked away thoughtfully. The truth was, he couldn’t keep the entire garrison locked up there forever. He was going to have to have answers and hopefully have them before the sun set. He had the feeling waiting any longer would lead to things he didn’t care for, such as a battle within walls he very much wanted to call his own.

The first thing, he supposed, was to start from the most pressing problem and work his way on from there. He had to find out why neither Heather of Haemesburgh nor Imogen Maxwell were where they were supposed to be.

He wandered around the courtyard as carelessly as possible lest anyone think him as troubled as he felt. He didn’t hear any shrieking coming from the chapel, so perhaps the twins had left the priest’s ale alone for the moment. He started toward the stables only to find himself stopping in front of the smithy. He was surprised by two things: one, that there didn’t seem to be a blacksmith inside the hut doing any pounding; and two, that the place seemed to be occupied by the study of language. He paused just outside the doorway where he could listen to what was going on inside without being seen.

He would have to give Bartholomew a day of liberty more often, for the lad was certainly earning it presently. He leaned against the wall and listened for a bit longer, just to make sure he was hearing things aright. It was hard to believe that a gel who had been babbling nonsense for two days could have made such improvements already in her speech, but perhaps she was extraordinarily clever.

It only took half an hour before he was sorry he hadn’t confined himself to the garrison. Her French had improved, true, but she still occasionally muttered in a language that unsettled him. The targets of her ire seemed to be her siblings and something called damned method actors. If she occasionally gave vent to ruminations about shows of reality, well, who was he to blame her? The reality of his own straits was sobering. The saints only knew what hers entailed.

He eventually followed her as she left the smithy and made her way to the stables. He found himself a decent place to lean and watched her dig about in a stall, looking behind piles of hay and under saddles and tack. Trying this one last time was what she said as she did so. She muttered about other things as well, occasionally giving vent to what he could only assume was a curse in her language.

It was an unusual language indeed.

He was left considering things he hadn’t wanted to before. He had spent his share of time at other keeps during his youth, squiring for a pair of his uncles in turn, spending a year with his aunt Isabelle in France. He had seen and heard strange things from time to time, but ignored them. He’d been a serious lad with dreams of swords and glory with no time for things that didn’t fit into his plans. The oddities of his family had been brushed aside easily enough.

That had changed a little when he’d grown older and acquired what he’d thought to be a sufficient number of years to be admitted to the parleys of men. He had been included in most discussions of the happenings of the day. But there had been other meetings between his uncle Jackson, his uncles Montgomery and Nicholas, and his father, meetings he’d never been privy to. He’d rarely doubted his own worth, but he had to admit there had been times—

Well, that was foolishness. His father had been fair enough with him, and who was to say what his elder relatives discussed? They were welcome to their secrets.

He came back to himself to find that Imogen had given up her searching of the stall and was simply standing there in the straw. She looked impossibly tired. She had even ceased giving voice to what she’d been saying in that tongue he didn’t recognize.

He cursed silently. Very well, so he shouldn’t have recognized anything she’d been saying. But he did. He could have sworn she had blurted out a word or two that in his youth he’d heard his own auntie Persephone use now and again when she had thought no one was listening.

Who the bloody hell was that woman and why was she babbling things that made him uneasy?

He didn’t like where his thoughts were taking him. He didn’t like being forced to face all sorts of things he hadn’t wanted to look at, things he’d buried in his past, things he’d ignored for years but were now floating to the surface of what was left of his mind.

The first thing that presented itself to him in all its uncomfortable glory was the courtship of his aunt Amanda and her husband, Jackson Kilchurn IV. It had been, from all accounts, a tumultuous affair, fraught with difficulties and adventures. His uncle had gone to London to gather gold to buy Amanda’s hand, which might not have been anything noteworthy except that Amanda had believed he was gone forever and entered a nunnery. Only Jake’s quick tongue and bags of gold had soothed not only the king but Phillip’s grandfather Rhys enough to purchase time with his love in front of a priest.

Phillip was beginning to wonder if there was more to that tale than he’d been led to believe. He had spent his share of time at Ravensthorpe, after all, haunting the keep and the surrounding environs with Rose and Jackson. He had stumbled upon his uncle Jake about his labors of being the keep’s lord with its attendant necessity of indulging in the heartfelt curse now and again.

Curses that sounded remarkably like the curses Imogen had been using.

Imogen left the stall suddenly, startling him. He stepped back into the shadows only to almost give vent to a less-than-manly squeak when he realized he wasn’t alone. He didn’t feel any steel against his throat, though, so he felt safe waiting until Imogen and her small entourage of Rose and Bartholomew had left the stables before he turned to see whom he had backed into.

It was, somewhat unsurprisingly, Jackson Kilchurn V.

Phillip shifted. He didn’t do that sort of thing as a rule, but he was presently uncomfortable past what he could reasonably be expected to endure. He looked at Jackson and simply couldn’t bring himself to give voice to his thoughts. It occurred to him—and he had to spare a brief wish that those sorts of things would stop occurring to him—that not only had he heard his uncle Montgomery’s wife, Persephone, use those curses Imogen had been using, he’d heard Jackson’s sire do the same.

By the saints, was he surrounded by lunatics?

He took a bracing breath. “How long have you been there?”

Jackson didn’t shift. “Long enough.”

Phillip didn’t like the look in his cousin’s eye. “She seems distraught. Imogen, I mean.”

“I knew who you meant.”

Phillip imagined Jackson did, damn him for never looking as if anything could unsettle him. He cleared his throat. “Imogen’s tongue is strange.”

“Her French is almost unintelligible,” Jackson corrected. “As is her English. If that’s what it can be called.”

Phillip looked at him. “And yet she seems to know what she’s saying in that strange tongue of hers.”

“She could be mad.”

“She could be,” Phillip agreed. “But the thing is, I’ve heard the words she’s saying in other places, spoken by other souls. Persephone, for one.” He paused. “Uncle Montgomery’s wife, Persephone.”

“Thank you, Phillip, for making the connection for me.”

Phillip would have glared at him, but he was too damned unnerved to. “What do you think?”

Jackson looked at him in disbelief. Phillip would have smiled, but, again, he could barely breathe normally.

“What do I think?” Jackson asked in a furious whisper. “What in the hell do you think I think?”

Phillip had thought himself jaded past the point of being surprised, but surprisingly enough, he wasn’t. “Well, I honestly wouldn’t presume to guess.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Phillip would have thrown up his hands but he feared they might tremble overmuch. “I don’t like where my thoughts are taking me.”

“And where would that be?”

Phillip looked at his cousin evenly. “To Ravensthorpe, Jackson, to have a pointed conversation with your sire about a few of things he mutters under his breath.”

“I’ll come along.”

Phillip imagined he would. He hardly dared voice his thoughts, but he supposed he didn’t need to. Jackson had, after all, grown to manhood as Jake Kilchurn’s son. He stared off into the shadows of the stables and wondered where Imogen had learned to speak as she did. He wondered how it was she had come to be in Haemesburgh where no one knew her. He wondered about those odd numbers on the back of her cloak that was like no cloak he had ever seen.

He wondered why Jackson had so many things he refused to speak of.

He looked at his cousin. “Do you think thoughts you shouldn’t?”

“Every day,” Jackson said grimly, “though the price for doing so is steep. Most of the time, cousin, I simply try not to. My life is too full of irony and it tends to have sharp teeth when it rears its ugly head.” He pushed away from the door. “I’ll go see how the madness is progressing. I’m not sure the keep is entirely safe.”

Phillip was beginning to suspect that the keep was the least of his worries.

There was a mystery before him named Imogen, a mystery he knew he was going to have to solve sooner rather than later, a mystery he honestly didn’t want to investigate. It would have been so much easier to have had Heather back on the walls, flinging disgusting things at him. Only it hadn’t been Heather doing it, it had been her squire, Hamish. Hamish, who likely knew many things he wouldn’t want to divulge.

And all the while there was a woman who was currently standing in the middle of the courtyard, looking so lost that Phillip hardly knew what to do to offer her comfort, and he was far more skilled in the chivalric arts than either of his brothers.

He considered all the things he could do over the next fortnight and held them up against what he should do over the same span of days. It would have been so simple to wish Imogen good fortune and send her on her way whilst he continued on with his plan to build an empire in the north.

Simple, but not exactly the chivalrous thing to do.

He sighed and dragged his hand through his hair. His honor demanded that he aid her however he could. If that meant helping her home before he attended to his own affairs, so be it. He watched her for another moment or two before he walked out into the courtyard and stopped next to her.

She looked at him bleakly, but said nothing.

“Let’s find supper,” he said quietly. “We’ll sort getting you home on the morrow, if that suits.”

She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at him. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” He offered her his arm, then escorted her to the great hall where it seemed someone from his ranks had been busy preparing a meal. He saw Imogen seated, started to leave her there, then decided that something to eat would serve him as well. And he did his damndest to ignore her hands that trembled just a bit as she took a cup from one of the twins.

He would help her get home, because it was what he needed to do. Unfortunately, he had the feeling that if he wanted help with that, he was definitely going to have to have a pointed talk with one of the elder statesmen in his family.

He just didn’t want to know what that talk would reveal.