The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles Page 0,36
voice, the words turning up and around as if each one rhymed. The knight. The Irishman. What was he doing here? She pulled herself in tighter, balling like a pillbug, attempting to become small and invisible. Maybe he’d go away.
“I didn’t want to intrude on you, but I thought perhaps you might want a cloak. It is a cold night, a night with rain in the air, isn’t it?” She thought his accent was like the night. The sound of his voice made her shiver again. “You can give it back to me later, tonight, after supper.”
Slowly she rose from behind her tree fortress, ashamed that she was hiding, that she was found out. “Thank you,” she whispered, not sure what to do next.
“Take the cloak, would you?”
She accepted it silently, pulling it on over her shoulders, fastening the ties at the front. “I was cold,” she admitted. “But I didn’t want to go back.” She sat back down on the tree, uncomfortable and at a loss for proper etiquette. What did one say to a famous knight?
“Would you like an escort back?”
“Thank you, but no. I don’t want to go yet.” She was silent a minute, thinking, and then her mouth turned, her lips curving in a wry smile. “You see, my lord, I have what Mrs. Penny calls, too much pride. Right now I am telling myself I’ll never go back. But I know that’s not possible. I will go back…eventually.”
“Wishing you could run away?” he asked, sitting down beside her.
She didn’t immediately answer him, instead apologizing for the afternoon fight. “I am sorry for the scene I caused earlier. How humiliating it all is—” She quivered, remembering. “It is a hard place, sometimes. I haven’t quite figured it all out.” She stared down in the darkness, barely able to make out his boots. His boots were large, just like his legs. He must be very tall. “If you will forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem like a great soldier.”
His laughter was quiet, like the summers in Glen Nevis. “I don’t consider myself a great soldier.”
“I didn’t mean that you weren’t great—” She broke off again. “Oh dear, nothing today is quite right. What I meant to say is that you are awfully kind. Very polite. One never pictures great soldiers being gentle. I think that’s what I mean to say.”
He laughed outright, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “You can’t be English, not with that tongue of yours. I warrant you come from the North.”
“Aye. From the Highlands, not far from Glen Nevis.” She stared at her hands for a moment before asking, “How is it that an Irishman is knighted in London? You must have done something great.”
“I saved Bolingbroke’s son, the young Thomas of Clarence.” O’Brien said dispassionately. He might have been talking about food or the weather. “His Majesty was grateful.”
The night fell deeper, the woods dark, inky. She thought that he seemed to belong here, fitting right in with the darkness and the forest. His accent was soft, and she pictured the breeze rustling meadow grass, warm, sweet. She wished he would go on talking forever. “I would have knighted you, too. It must have been difficult, how you saved him.”
“It was war. War means hardship.”
“I don’t think I’d like that very much, though I always wanted to be a soldier, even though I’d been told otherwise.” She turned her cheek to look at his face. She could only see shadows and a line where his nose and brow met. “I think it must be hard killing people.”
“It is.”
“How do you do it?”
“Kill people?” he asked, “Or not think about it later?”
“Oh.” She turned back to rest her chin on her knees. “My father was killed. I think about that a lot. I wonder how they could have done it—stabbed him—and then left him like that. I was there, but what could I do? I was little yet, and I didn’t know much about healing.”
“Once somebody is hurt, there isn’t much anyone can do. Not after a knife wound. You mustn’t blame yourself.” He looked down on her. “Is that why you came here? You had nowhere else to go?”
She nodded. “But I don’t like it here. Except for Philip. He is good. The others—” she said with a shrug, her silence revealing more than words ever could. “Anyway, this is where I am now.”
“So you aren’t going to run away?”
“Where would I go?” She knew the truth. A young