“If I were the king, I would assume that.”
Addax conceded the point. “Then we shall tell Lord de Velt what has transpired here, and then we’re off to Berwick,” he said. Then, he scratched his head wearily. “I do not think I have had a day’s rest since coming to England, Cole. Between The Marshal and your father, it has been quite eventful. Has it always been like this?”
Cole smiled weakly as he reached for his own clothing. “Pelinom and my father are usually quiet for the most part,” he said. “That is why I chose to serve William Marshal, why I have followed the man’s directives for the past ten years. I feel as if I am accomplishing something.”
“And what have you accomplished?”
Cole’s smile grew. “I shall be instrumental in helping prevent a Scottish invasion, for one,” he said. “In truth, the vast majority of my work for The Marshal has been in Scotland and on the borders. I speak Scots, without sounding like an Englishman, so I am perfect for the task. I have found it rewarding. Haven’t you?”
Addax nodded. “Indeed, I have,” he said. “Who knew that two skinny lads from a faraway land could find such adventure in England. And such friends.”
Cole slapped him affectionately on the shoulder. “Such friends, indeed,” he said. “Now, why don’t you seek out Lord Alastor and tell him that we are departing. I told him last night that we would be leaving before dawn, but it would be polite to bid him a farewell. I shall meet you in the stables when you are finished.”
Addax, fully dressed, headed out into the common room where their mail and protection were stored on frames. There hadn’t been enough room in their small chamber to keep everything with them, so Cole finished dressing and headed out into the common room himself, donning his mail and the black and red tunic bearing the great-fanged boar’s head of Ajax de Velt.
Even as Cole headed out into the icy morning, his thoughts were not on his journey ahead, but on the young lady sleeping safe and sound in the keep off to his left. He thought fondly of those pale green eyes and silky blonde hair he’d like to run his hands through someday. Someday when her brothers weren’t around. It was true that he could handle them, mostly, but it would be easier if he had his brothers, Julian and Cassian, with him. No one would tangle with the de Velt brothers, not even the overly confident Sheriff of Westmorland.
The thought brought a smile to his lips.
He’d return to The Keld, for certain. And he would bring reinforcements with him.
The faint light emitting from the stable caught his attention up ahead and he headed for it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Where are you going?”
Corisande froze midway through pulling a heavy robe over the shift and woolen dress she was wearing. It was a very cold morning, before sunrise, and there was frost on the windowsills so she was dressing warmly.
But a hissing voice had her pausing.
“Go back to sleep, Gratiana,” she whispered. “I have duties to attend to.”
Gratiana de Allington lifted her dark, messy head. “At this hour?”
Corisande waved at her, a gesture that suggested she lay back down. “We have visitors departing this morning, if you must know,” she said. “I also have an ill soldier and I wish to see how he fared through the night. Is there anything else you wish to know?”
Gratiana shook her head and lay back down. She was a curious girl, but that only went so far in the early hours of the morning. Thankful that she didn’t have to deal with more of Gratiana’s questions, Corisande pulled the fur-lined robe tight and headed from the dark, warm chamber.
The keep of Castle Keld was a big, cold block of ice on mornings like this. The stone it was built from literally turned to ice when the temperatures dipped, making the walls slick and the floors slippery. It was mostly dark in the stairwell except for a few intermittent torches and Corisande could see her breath hanging in the air as she carefully made her way down to the entry.
She was a woman on a mission.
She was fairly certain that she hadn’t slept all night, afraid she was going to miss the dawn and miss seeing Cole off. She had told the man that she would bring him food and she intended to do just that, although she knew deep down that it was really just an excuse to see him before he left. Certainly, they’d had visitors before. There had been many visitors over the years and she had never personally met any of them in the stable with a bag of food for the coming journey.
But Cole was different.
He wasn’t just any visitor.
Truth be told, she had lain awake all night thinking about the enormous knight with uniquely colored eyes. When she had first met him, she had thought he had a rather sinister appearance. He had a square jaw and sharply angled features. There was nothing soft about his face at all, and the way his eyebrows arched over those eyes was something almost reptilian. At least, that’s what she’d first thought. But the more she looked at him and the more she came to know him, the more she realized that all of those elements came together for a fantastically handsome man.
His size was truly something impressive. He was quite tall, but the sheer breadth of his shoulders and the circumference of his arms were things to be admired. She’d seen him use that strength against the Scotsman in her father’s solar, lifting the man as if he’d weighed no more than a child, and she found that strangely alluring when it should have been wholly intimidating.
Maybe that made her strange, but she didn’t really care.
She was coming to like what she saw of the frightening Cole de Velt.
They’d had two significant conversations yesterday and both of them had shown a gentle side to the knight who looked as if he did not even know the meaning of the word. He had been kind and compassionate with her, something so unexpected but something she had found endearing.
Something that, down deep, had healed something in her, something that had shattered in Auden’s wake.
In truth, when Auden had left her, she had put thoughts of men out of her mind. That incident had made her hate men in general for quite some time and she was only now just starting to overcome that. Men had no honor, in her opinion, and she was only now starting to look at men without the usual apathy until Cole had shown her a kindness that she had forgotten existed outside of her own family. Her brothers had always shown her an inordinate amount of kindness, and she loved them very much, but that was the only kindness she had trusted up until yesterday.
Cole was quickly causing her to change her mind.
Therefore, she was determined to see him again before he left. Maybe there was a part of her that didn’t believe he really would return to her as he said he would, so perhaps this would be her last glimpse of him. But then again, it was wrong of her to distrust the man before he’d given her a reason to.
She just didn’t know what to think.
All she knew was the way he made her feel.
The kitchens of Castle Keld were already working at full capacity at this time in the morning. The cook baked bread every morning, bread that would be eaten throughout the day, so the kitchens smelled like yeast with delicious aromas. Corisande collected a few smaller bread loaves along with cheese, small apples, and leftover meat pies from the night before.
All of it ended up in a canvas sack that was used to haul grain up from the vault. They had enormous stores down in the sublevels beneath the keep, and the servants used the sacks to bring the grain up to the kitchens. She walked around the kitchens twice, looking for anything else she could stuff in the sack before finally locating a stash of little round dough balls that had been basted in honey. Those had been on the menu the night before and there were just a few left, so she threw those into the sack.