“Yes, yes. I do concur. With your blessed mother and father gone, it would not do to have you overseeing her care. She likely would have been educated to dust by now, her beauty wasted. Perhaps one day you’ll find that it better suits you both to have her married.”
“Perhaps,” Lucan said.
“Well then, fellows,” Lord Hood said, and although his words were lightly spoken, Padraig had the idea that Lord Hood sensed Lucan’s discomfort with the topic of conversation. “I must be off to find my poor mount. If you’ve no objection, I’d ride alongside your party today. There is little chance of me taking any prize save a fine breeze, but it does an old man good to be associated with the victors of the day, and I’m willing to wager the pair of you have more cause than most to champion. At any rate, you’ll be more interesting. I’ll find you.” Lord Hood waddled off in the direction of the marshal and the temporary corral, waving to this person and that as he went.
Padraig continued to stare at Lucan as he raised the cup to his lips. “What?” the knight said irritably and then sipped.
“You didna tell me you grew up near Darlyrede,” Padraig accused.
“Didn’t I?”
“Or that you had a sister.”
Lucan shrugged. “It was not relevant.”
“Did you know my father?”
“No.” Lucan sighed as if put-out. “My parents did.”
“Jesus, Lucan! That’s nae relevant? Where did you live?”
“Castle Dare.”
“And? Where’s that?” Padraig demanded. He’d never known the loquacious man to be so short of speech. “How far from Darlyrede?”
Lucan was silent for a long pair of moments, then he gestured with his mug toward a far-off field in the distance, across the river, where the white dots of sheep could be seen like dandelion fluff.
“That outcrop of rock,” Lucan said, “is where the hold stood. It was destroyed by fire, many years ago.”
Padraig felt the earth move a little beneath his boots—Lucan Montague’s family lands had been within sight of Darlyrede House. “And now Hargrave’s sheep graze there.” He spoke the revelation aloud, but it was more to himself than to Lucan.
Lucan nodded solemnly.
“If your father was the lord, that land belongs to you.”
“I suppose it still does, yes. But something you will perhaps have opportunity to learn, Master Boyd, is that although one might be of noble birth, one cannot retain a holding with no keep, nor sufficient coin to build one.”
Padraig narrowed his eyes. “Hargrave retains control of your family lands and yet you raze all of Scotland to persecute my father? To kidnap him away from his home to deliver him to London to be hanged?”
“I did not kidnap him. He came willingly.” Lucan turned his head to look directly at Padraig. “The crimes I told you he was accused of—one of them was setting the blaze that killed my parents and destroyed Castle Dare. On the night Euphemia Hargrave disappeared.”
Padraig felt as though he’d been kicked in the gut. “You think my father—you think Tommy Boyd is capable of that? You think he murdered your family? This isna about your duty to your king at all, is it?” he accused. “All yer pretty speeches about justice—it’s all shite. This is personal. Why’d ye really bring me here?”
“Padraig—”
“Doona ‘Padraig’ me. I’m nae some simple Scot ye can hold up before ye while ye work yer own plan for revenge—whether ’tis again me da or Hargrave. I came here in good faith.”
“And I have every intention of aiding you, as I said I would,” Lucan insisted, lowering his voice in answer to Padraig’s raised one.
“By settin’ me in the midst of a plot to kill me?” Padraig demanded, unable to order his thoughts now that they’d been thrown into chaos by this new information. “I’m supposed to blindly trust you, and yet you doona tell me that you have a grudge against my own father?”
“I’ll tell you whatever it is you feel you must know,” Lucan said, turning his back to the crowd of nobility who grew increasingly interested in the altercation. “Just not here.”
Padraig stared at the man. Until that morning, he would have considered the knight his friend. But now he was seeing Lucan Montague in a different light.
His attention was taken from Lucan, however, by the approach of a rider—a woman sitting sidesaddle, her skirts spread over the rump of the horse like a princess.
Beryl. Beryl in a crimson-colored gown and a black cape.
She reined her mount to a halt near them, a fine palfrey, and her presence upon it cast a regal halo about the pair. The mare tossed her gray head and blew out her nose as if in disapproval of Padraig.
Did every living thing in Northumberland think him unworthy?
“Beryl,” Lucan said. “Good day.”
“Good day, gentlemen,” she said stiffly, but her gaze did not quite meet Padraig’s.
“I must retrieve Agrios,” Lucan said, and then left them.
Padraig could feel frustration flaring up in him like coals before a bellows, but he was prevented from saying anything further by a trumpet sounding near Hargrave. The hunt master was making an announcement, but Padraig couldn’t concentrate on what the man was saying.
A page approached with a courser for Padraig. He took the reins and hoisted himself in the saddle. Once he was seated, Beryl walked her horse to stand next to his.
“Give the hounds a good lead,” she said benignly, as if they were picking up an earlier conversation. “They’ll need to tire out the game before anyone gets a chance at—”
“Where were you last night?” Padraig interrupted. “You told me you’d return to my chambers. But only an hour later, you were naewhere to be found in yours. Neither at midnight.”
Beryl met his eyes at last. “I beg your pardon?”
“What is it with you and Montague? I trap either of you with an uncomfortable question and you drape courtesy before you like a shield,” Padraig accused, trying not to feel too triumphant at her obvious unease.
“I was pressed
