Rollo grimaced at the smell of stale wine. “I think mayhap . . . it’s both?”
He laid her down gently, staring for a moment in dumbfounded silence. She was a small, fine-boned thing, with pert little features and hair that flowed long and loose down her back. The moon had risen and illuminated her face with an unearthly light, making her seem like some sort of wayward fairy princess.
Rollo spied something on her, and he carefully took her bare arm in his hand. Her skin was warm and smooth, and he couldn’t help but run his thumb over the delicate bones of her hand, her fingers longer and more graceful than he’d have expected.
He turned her arm to see what had stuck to her and peeled a strange card from the thin skin of her forearm. It pictured a man, walking blithely along, the sun at his back and a bloom in his hand. The man in the drawing gazed up at the sky, heedless of the cliff from which he was about to step. Beneath the image was written, The Fool.
Rollo quickly pocketed the peculiar thing, his skin prickling to gooseflesh.
The distant rumble of talk floated over the water from the direction of Traitor’s Gate, calling him back to himself. “Hurry,” he said to Ormonde. “In the cask. Now.”
“What of her?” Ormonde pointed to the girl with a mix of bemusement and panic.
“I’ll give her my cloak.” Rollo slipped his arms from the blanket of dark wool, eyeing her strange and colorful skirt. “Something to cover the clothes she wears.”
“But they’ll recognize you. You can’t risk so much for some drunken wench.”
“What would you have me do? Drop her in the moat?” He settled the strange woman on his lap, leaning her against his neck as if she nuzzled him. “The guard’s eyes will be on the lass, not me.”
Ormonde stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Rollo glared back, and his friend simply shrugged, climbing awkwardly into the barrel.
“Make it fast.” Rollo angled away from the guard’s side of the boat, draping the woman’s hair over his face. The smell of lavender filled his senses, and an unsettling feeling seized him, something visceral, both foreign and yet somehow dimly remembered. He swallowed hard, reminding himself where he was. “We approach the gate.”
His hired man began whistling with affected boredom as they rowed closer, and Rollo thought he had well earned his keep.
Just as he’d predicted, the guard had eyes only for their drunken passenger. The man shot Rollo a rakish and congratulatory wink, nodding them through the Traitor’s Gate and out to the Thames.
But Rollo gazed sightlessly in the distance, breathing the scent of lavender and thinking he’d wager anything that this lass was more than a mere wench.
Chapter 3
She gradually came to, her body swaying back and forth. The cheery chirrup of birdsong twittered around her. The rustle of greenery under . . . hooves?
Horseback riding?
Where am I?
Events of the previous evening played rapid- fire in her brain as she tried to place when and where. Tapas with Aunt Livia. Sangria.
Ugh . . . sangria.
Felicity peeled her eyes open. They were gritty, courtesy of all that alcohol. Her tongue, tacky and thick in her mouth.
She took in the countryside. A patchwork of green farm-land and the darker green fringe of dense trees stretched into the distance, lush and fragrant all around.
She tried to make sense of it. She was on a horse. There were two horses.
She glanced at the man riding the horse next to hers. Frizzy red hair. An elaborate goatee and moustache pointed about his mouth. He was oblivious to her. Concern furrowing his brow, he seemed focused only on the path ahead.
She’d never been one for elaborate facial hair.
Wait. How drunk had she been?
Where had she been? But she knew—she’d been in her apartment. In the Mission. In San Francisco.
And now she was on a horse.
She’d had sangria, but not that much sangria. She’d been in her apartment, wishing on a star for her true love. Or rather, on a deck of Tarot cards and Livvie’s trusted candle.