They rode in silence for some time, Alex surveying their surroundings with interest. Though he’d been to Kenshire before, he had never travelled this far south toward its borders and the eastern coastline. At one point along a rare patch of flat terrain, he spied the North Sea.
“How far south are Kenshire’s borders?” he asked.
“Far enough that we’ll need to move faster to be there by nightfall.”
Later, when the sun rose high into the sky, he and Geoffrey finally stopped. They allowed their horses a rest and ate a quick repast Kenshire’s cook had prepared. Though he hadn’t met the woman, he’d heard enough about her to know she commanded the kitchen as competently as Lady Sara presided over Kenshire.
“So how do you come to travel with a woman disguised as a squire?”
Alex nearly spat out the ale he’d just drunk. “How does a reiver come to marry a countess?”
Geoffrey’s brows raised. “Fair enough. On his deathbed, her father requested my uncle’s protection from a distant relative, Sir Randolf Fitzwarren. As it turned out, the request was with good cause. The bastard attempted to slice Sara’s throat.”
“So you sent him to his maker for his efforts?” Alex had heard most of this tale, albeit not from Geoffrey’s lips.
“Aye.” He grinned. “But I nearly lost her in my thirst for revenge—”
“Against my brother.”
They looked at each other, not as enemies, but with a somberness that could come only from the losses both men had faced in their families’ five-year feud.
“Your entire clan, to be precise.”
“I don’t blame you.” None would. Even Toren, who’d tried to kill Geoffrey’s brother, Bryce, for taking their sister captive, had reluctantly agreed he would have done the same. “We agreed no more apologies, but I owe one despite it. Your parents—”
“Loved the borderlands.”
Alex sensed his companion didn’t want to discuss the loss, so he did not push him.
“As dangerous as it had become, it was the only home they’d ever known,” Geoffrey said. “The game played by our kings is a dangerous one, and I fear peace will be hard-fought for years to come,” Geoffrey said, taking a bite of bread.
“Even so, I am deeply sorry.” Geoffrey’s father had been a casualty of battle, and even though his mother had nearly decapitated one of their clansmen, she should not have been killed in that raid.
Geoffrey clearly wanted to change the topic. “I know where we look for your mother, but not why.”
“I’m told my good looks were inherited from her, and I can hardly remember if it’s true.” Though he smiled, it was forced, and Geoffrey was not fooled.
“Obviously it is not. You’re as ugly as your brothers.”
If he or his brothers had ever been accused of anything, it was for being unnaturally large and fair featured. So Geoffrey’s retort only made him laugh.
Geoffrey tried again. “You’re sure the merchant mentioned Elkview specifically?”
“He said she was in the village on market day and purchased a sampling of his wares. When he mentioned travelling across the border, she bragged of having three sons and a daughter in the Scottish borderlands.”
“Yet she didn’t give her name.”
“Nay, and the merchant, new to Elkview, never asked. He said she was richly appointed, a noblewoman. And that her hair was red-brown, which is the same color of—”
“Catrina’s,” Geoffrey finished.
Though Geoffrey received the news as skeptically as Toren and Reid had, Alex knew it was her. He couldn’t explain how, but he just knew. He’d seen Clara’s face when they’d spoken of his mother. . . he knew that she pitied him. But there was no reason for it. His mother was dead to him. She meant nothing. He just needed to understand what had happened.
“And the squire?”
“Is there anything else you need to know? You failed to also ask when I last relieved myself,” Alex said, attempting to lighten the mood.
“No need to ask,” the Englishman replied. “I saw you do so myself not long after we stopped.”
He laughed heartily. “If you’re not careful, reiver, I may not rue the day we were bound by our siblings’ marriage.”
“I was not a reiver by choice,” Geoffrey pointed out. He was still smiling, but his words were serious.
“My brothers and I didn’t want Bristol. We felt we had no choice.”
“The whims of gods and kings. We all do what we must to survive, and I regret nothing.”
That took him by surprise. “Nothing?”
Geoffrey took another swig of ale and stood. “None of the choices I’ve made, at least. Sara and I attempt to distance