don’t ask before I know whether I’m speaking to a friend or an enemy.’
‘And I don’t answer before I know the same.’ Her voice had a wobble she had not intended.
‘Are you a woman with enemies?’
‘Three kings claim this land. We have more enemies than friends.’
‘Aye,’ he said, nodding, a frown carving lines in his face. He flexed his hand as if it itched to reach for his sword. ‘Who are yours?’
Her eyes clashed with his. She should have asked him first. Where was his loyalty? To the de Baliol pretender, recently dethroned? To David the Bruce, still held for ransom by the Inglis Edward? Perhaps he had lied about his blood and was Edward’s man himself.
Next to her, the young girl sighed. ‘This is Mistress Clare and I’m Euphemia and I have nae enemies.’
‘Euphemia!’ Was she batting her lashes? Yes, she was. ‘Do you want us to be killed?’
‘He wouldn’t do that. A knight is sworn to protect ladies, aren’t you?’ She fluttered her eyelashes at him again, then turned to Clare. ‘Don’t treat him as an unfriend.’
‘If I do, it’s because I have a brain in my head.’
If she kicked the horse into a gallop, could she outrun the man? Not with Angus and Euphemia in tow and Wee One on her wrist.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘He looks like a dangerous ruffian, not a knight. He carries no markings and he’s wearing dirty armour with rust spots!’ The man, if he knew the maxims of chivalry, cared little for them.
Euphemia shrugged and turned to the man. ‘You’re not dangerous and dirty, are you?’
Something darkened his face before a smile waved it away. ‘Well, that may depend on how you mean the words, but I’d say Mistress Clare has a gift for judging character.’
He said it with no sense of outrage. No knight would allow his honour to be so challenged. Certainly Alain, epitome of French chivalry, would never let such a slight pass.
‘On whose lands do I ride, Mistress Euphemia?’ he asked.
‘Not Mistress. Just Euphemia,’ Clare said, refusing to elaborate. Disgrace enough that her father had shamed her dead mother by taking up with the widow Murine. Worse that he’d treated another man’s by-blow as his daughter. ‘And you’re on Carr lands.’
‘Held of who?’
‘Douglas,’ she answered. There, that declared their loyalties, but if she hadn’t told him, the girl would have.
She thought his shoulders relaxed, but she must have been mistaken. ‘It’s difficult not to be on Douglas lands in the Middle March, isn’t it?’ His slow nod revealed nothing of his thoughts. ‘Are you loyal to the Bruce?’
‘You ask that when the heart of a Bruce adorns Lord Douglas’s shield?’ In her surprise, her tongue forgot its courtly inflection. ‘Are ye daft?’
‘Nae, but Carr men have been known to lapse in loyalty to an absent king.’
King David the Bruce had been England’s captive for half her life, it seemed. In his absence, a Douglas and a Steward ruled Scotland in his name. ‘Does that make you an enemy of Douglas and Carr, Gavin Fitzjohn?’
‘Not as long as they are no enemy of mine.’
His eyes met hers and they took each other’s measure in silence. On the Border, an allegiance could be as strong as the relentless wind. And as variable.
‘See, Clare? He’s no enemy and we should all go home. I, for one, am chilled to the skin and ready to sit by the fire.’ Euphemia kicked her horse into a trot and the stranger fell in behind her.
Clare handed Wee One to Angus, then hurried to catch up, letting the squire and the hound follow.
She brought her horse beside Euphemia and the stranger dropped further back, complimenting young Angus on his mount.
‘You’re leading him straight home!’
Euphemia shrugged. ‘Why are you so worried? There’s one of him and three of us.’
‘And he’s the only one carrying a sword.’
A few men still manned the tower, but if he was scouting for raiders, they were leading him straight to what he wanted. Still, she would feel safer, she decided, home in the castle, where he would be outnumbered by her men-at-arms.
At the silence, the stranger moved closer. ‘Angus tells me your falcon killed three today that were twice her size. That’s a bird with courage.’
‘Well that you say so.’ Euphemia smiled. ‘Wee One is Clare’s favourite.’
‘Then it seems your sister is as good a judge of bird flesh as she is of men.’
She glanced at him without turning her head, still puzzling him out. He’d displayed none of the courtly respect a knight should, yet he controlled his destrier with a warrior’s ease, confident of his strength.
He caught her studying him and she snapped her gaze away, gritting her teeth at his laugh. ‘It’s too late to flatter me, Fitzjohn.’
‘Oh, Mistress Clare,’ he began, his voice still edged with humour, ‘no man who was any judge of character would try flattery on you.’
‘But a true and noble knight would always speak sweetly to a lady,’ she countered. Alain always did. ‘That must mean you are not a true knight.’
‘Or that you are not a true lady.’
She stiffened. What gave her away? ‘I am certainly a truer lady than you are a noble knight.’
He cocked his head. ‘Perhaps, Mistress Clare, it may be too early to come to that conclusion.’
She gulped against his gentle rebuke. A lady would never have made such a statement. In this wild land, it was hard to cling to the courtly graces she had learned as a child in France.
In sight of the tower, she was relieved of the need to answer, and waved to the guard standing on the wall to open the gate. ‘Who’s with you, mistress?’
The man beside her called out without waiting for her answer. ‘A hungry, tired man looking for a warm bed and a hot meal.’
The guard waited for her sign. She nodded. ‘Open the gate.’
They rode into the barmkin and she handed the sack of game to the falconer, closing her ears to his complaints. She started to dismount, expecting young Angus to help her off her horse, but instead, she faced the stranger.
He appeared before she saw him move, fast as a falcon diving for its prey.
He reached to help her down. She hesitated. Somehow, his hand offered an invitation to touch more than fingers.
Without
