Lucan was well aware how Padraig felt about his sister, and he also knew that Iris had been shocked at his own admission this afternoon. Could the pair of them have reconciled and left together? Without so much as a word to Lucan?
If so, why would they agree to take Searrach with them?
And where was Iris’s packet of damning information?
Lucan caught sight of Rolf then, standing against the wall behind the lord’s table, his expression one of unabashed surprise. Rolf then looked to Lucan, the alarm on his face clear.
There was more to this tale than Hargrave was revealing, and Lucan had the urge to get up from the table and leave the hall in that moment. But he remained where he was as Hargrave was now giving the floor over to him with a gracious wave of his palm.
“Forgive me if I do not rise,” Lucan addressed the hall and gestured toward his injured foot, which set a ripple of good-natured, sympathetic chuckles through the guests. “Of course I will do whatever duty calls me to, to assist the Crown in its continued investigation.”
“Such loyalty,” Hargrave said, a hushed admiration in his tone, but there it was again, Lucan was sure—the danger. “Allow me to say on behalf of all, we have the utmost faith in your abilities.” He placed one palm over his heart and again raised his chalice. “To Sir Lucan!”
The crowd answered back, and Lucan acknowledged their honor with a nod of his head, although inside his guts were twisting.
The hall doors burst inward then, and the sounds of angry shouts bounced off the stone walls as a flood of leather-clad invaders swarmed into the room.
“Sit down! Sit down!” they shouted as some of the men rose.
A scream rang out, and Lucan saw a guest collapse to the bench, an arrow pinning the hem of his tunic to the seat.
“I said, sit down!” the red-bearded man shouted again with finality. Lucan recognized him: Gorman.
Around the perimeter of the room, the few Darlyrede men-at-arms lining the walls swiveled their weapons, as if unsure whom to make their target.
Incompetent, Lucan thought with bitterness. While the kings’-trained men linger, unaware, banned to their courtyard barracks.
“Don’t do it, mates,” Gorman warned the men ringing the room. “If you do, the deaths of at least a score of these good people are on your heads. Drop your weapons and none of them will be hurt.”
The men-at-arms hesitated.
“Do what he says,” Lucan commanded.
“No, do not do what he says,” Hargrave demanded, no trace of fear in his voice. “What in the bloody hell is the meaning of this? How dare you!”
Two of the brigands hung back to either side of the hall doorway as the last masked member of the band entered the room, his arrow knocked, his boots clicking ominously on the stones as he walked down the center aisle toward the lord’s dais. The bandits closed the door behind him and reached at once for the long beam to bar the entrance from the inside, as if they’d been inside the hall a hundred times and knew the exact protocol to secure the room. Lucan glanced to either side of the wide hall and saw the single-passage portals already guarded by the forest criminals; no one was getting in or out of the room in the immediate future.
The masked man stopped his advance midway down the aisle, positioning his lean form, the very focus of both the hall and its occupants, but all the while the eyeholes in the leather mask remained trained on the dais, on Hargrave, and on Lucan. The slender boots. The short cape.
This was the man who’d shot him in the wood.
“Where is Padraig Boyd?” the criminal demanded.
* * * *
Padraig halted before Iris’s door and looked quickly in both directions before rapping softly upon it. The door opened easily, and he slipped inside.
The chamber was quiet, dark and cool. Iris hadn’t been here in some time, if, indeed, she had come here at all after their words in the chapel. This caused Padraig’s brow to furrow; she wasn’t in the hall for the evening meal, but Lucan had been given an obvious place of honor at the right hand of his deadly benefactor.
She must be taking refuge in the lady’s chamber, he realized, and it gave him a modicum of relief as he lit the short candle on Iris’s small table. Both Lucan and Hargrave had their hands full at the moment with the thieves from the forest, and that suited Padraig just fine.
A scratching at the window distracted him from his thoughts, and Padraig remembered Iris’s pet. He went to the stone opening and released the latch, allowing a snowy Satin to pour himself through the gap and leap silently to the floor to twist himself about Padraig’s legs.
“I’m nae she,” he warned the creature. “But I wish she were here too, you ken.”
“Meow,” Satin offered plaintively.
“I’ve got naught for you,” Padraig muttered in reply, even as the cat padded quickly across the floor to the wall and began rubbing the top sides of its forehead against the wood panel. “Mad beast.”
“Meow.” The cat glided back and forth against the wall pointedly, his head rubbing against the seam where the panels were nailed close together. He stopped and sat on his haunches, his tail swishing impatiently. “Meow.”
Padraig’s frown turned curious and he advanced toward the wall, crouching down as the cat gained his feet once more to stretch his front paws up on the paneling, paddling silently against the wood. The seam there was wide—wider than the other close-fit panels—and Padraig could feel a cold breath of air emanating from within the wall.
“Meow.”
He looked down at Satin, who was once more sitting patiently, although he had fixed Padraig with a pointed look.
Padraig curled
