Page 59 of Heart of the Hunter (Band of Bastards #3)

A nora was sitting by the window in the hall sewing rag dolls for little Ani and Erik from scraps of fabric and ribbons provided by Lady Alyce. She planned to spend the afternoon with Galiena and the babies and wanted to finish the toys before she went.

“Milady,” a polite voice said from behind Anora. She turned to see Tommy staring up at her, his expression more serious than usual. He wrung his hands, and his large brown eyes were wide with worry.

“What is it, Tommy?” She set down the rag doll, trying to quell the surge of panic that was clogging her throat.

Hunter had ridden out the previous afternoon, after Hawk’s meeting with Baron Payne concluded, to sneak into Castle Whyte in the dead of night again and search for the stolen jewels. “Has something happened to Hunter?”

As he shook his head, a lock of dark hair fell in front of his eyes and he stuck out his lower lip, huffing a breath to blow the lock to the side of his face. “’E’s fine. At least, I think ’e’s fine. I don’ know nothin’ ’bout ’im.”

“Forgive me for interrupting, Tommy,” Anora said, taking mercy on the poor boy. “Please, what is it you came to tell me.”

“There’s a lady at the gate,” he said and pointed toward the back of the hall.

“At the front gate?” she asked as she pointed in the opposite direction toward the large front gate to Hawkspur Castle.

He shook his head again, and again the lock of hair fell in front of his eyes. This time he swiped at the hair with his hand. “The back gate.”

Anora was immediately suspicious. She did not have any acquaintance here who would not feel comfortable coming through the front gate and directly to the hall if they wished to speak to her. “Did she say her name?”

Tommy nodded. “She said to tell you she is Beatrice, maid to Lady Ruby.”

Anora felt the skin on her arms ripple with gooseflesh as she processed what the boy said.

Beatrice was the woman from Madam Ruby’s brothel who endured Baron Payne’s perverse attention.

If Madam Ruby had sent her to Hawkspur, perhaps that meant more of the stolen pendants and jewels had surfaced.

“What else did she say? Did she give you anything to give to me?”

“She looked scared. Said to tell you she ’ad a message from ’er lady, but she couldn’t wait too long for you. If she is gone when you get to the gate, she said you should go to Lady Ruby’s to find ’er.”

Anora looked around the hall, but the only other person there was the maid cleaning and stocking the buttery.

When Baron Payne and his men left Hawkspur the prior afternoon with a contingent of Hawk’s soldiers as escort, it was agreed she would stay within the confines of the castle and walled yard where the guards monitored anyone who entered through the gates. At least until Hunter’s return.

“Is there a guard at the back gate?” Anora asked Tommy.

“Aye. ’U the ’uge.”

It took a moment for Anora to understand. “Ah! Hugh the Huge?”

Tommy nodded, his brows pinching together in confusion. “’Tis what I said.”

“A huge guard is good,” Anora said, feeling better about the situation. “I will go now to see her.” She would not have to step outside the guarded gate for Beatrice to deliver her message from Madam Ruby.

“Oh, e’s not ’uge, milady. It’s a jest. They call ’im that cuz ’e’s not.”

Anora sighed at that discouraging bit of news but decided he would not be assigned as guard if he were not competent.

Tommy scurried along beside her. Her unusual height and his lack of height forced him to run every other step to keep up with her.

If the situation weren’t urgent, she would have slowed her pace, but she wanted to get to Beatrice before she decided to leave.

She was likely fearful of the baron or one of his men recognizing her, and unaware that they had already left Hawkspur.

The gate was nothing more than a narrow door in the wall that was secured with heavy bars at night, but it allowed easier access to those who brought food and supplies for the nearby kitchen.

“Where’s ’U?” Tommy muttered as they drew nearer to the narrow door. “’E’s supposed to be on this side of the door.”

Beatrice was standing just beyond the door, wringing her hands and looking very uncomfortable to be away from the brothel.

“Is ’U there?” Tommy called to her, running in front of Anora.

“Aye,” Beatrice answered, looking over her shoulder and pointing down the path. “He’s helping a woman with her baskets.” Turning back, she said to Anora, “Thank you for seeing me, milady.”

“I am not a lady, Beatrice. You may call me Anora.” The last time Beatrice had seen her, she was dressed in men’s clothing, but she doubted the astute woman was fooled by her disguise. “What news have you?”

Tommy was still standing in front of Anora, as though trying to protect her until Hugh returned to his post. He rocked side to side trying to see around Beatrice.

Beatrice looked nervously around the castle yard, then stepped back to the other side of the door, out of sight of any passersby. Anora stopped just shy of the gate threshold and put her hands on Tommy’s shoulders to keep him from bobbing like an eager ferret in front of her.

“Mad—” Beatrice pressed her lips together when she realized her near blunder. “ Lady Ruby wanted you to know that she has received more pendants.”

Anora released her hold on Tommy and took a step toward Beatrice. “Are you certain? Baron Payne has not been in Shrewsbury for some time.”

Beatrice was vigorously nodding her head and backing away from Anora, but before the behavior fully registered in her brain as odd, someone reached from the side of the door and grabbed Tommy.

A man in a plain tunic, like that of a farmer, stepped back to be near Beatrice, pulling Tommy with him as he held a hand over the boy’s mouth and a knife to his throat.

Anora opened her mouth to scream, but stopped when she saw a thin line of red dots start to form on Tommy’s neck.

“Do not make a sound, and come forward now, my lovely, or I will slit the boy’s throat from ear to ear,” the man sneered in a low, harsh voice.

Despite being truly terrified that the man would kill Tommy anyway, Anora did as she was told, unwilling to let a child die because of her.

Her heart nearly broke when she looked at the brave boy standing tensely in the man’s grip, trying valiantly to shake his head no at her despite the hand clamped around his jaw.

As she passed through the gate door, she saw from the corner of her eye a form lying prone against the outside of the castle wall.

She glanced up and realized that the guards on the wall walk would not see Hugh unless they leaned out over the parapets, which meant his absence could go unnoticed for some time.

There were several men scattered along the path leading from the back gate to the narrow road that led down to the valley below the castle, but when two turned and started walking away from the castle toward the road, and the other walked directly toward them with an ugly sneer on his face, she knew they would be of no help.

When they met up with the first man, he draped Anora in a plain brown woolen cape of a farmer with the hood up to hide her hair and mumbled a threat to Tommy that if he didn’t want the lady to die, he was to stay quiet and cooperate.

Tommy walked silently at her side, a scowl on his face and his lips pressed together.

Anyone looking down from the castle wall now would see what appeared to be a few tenant farmers, a woman, and a boy on their way back home after making a delivery to the castle.

Until Hugh was found—Anora said a prayer that he would still be alive—there would be no reason to be suspect of the group.

She turned her head just enough to see Beatrice staring straight ahead, her face set in stony, uncaring expression.

Rage flared in her chest that she would take part in a ruse this cruel, but the hot surge of anger turned to pity when she saw the quiet tears flowing down Beatrice’s cheeks.

She was a victim in this just as much as Anora and Tommy were victims.

What this was, Anora was not yet certain, but she knew in her gut that Baron Payne was responsible for it.

She should have been more afraid, but she was too angry at the coward.

If Beatrice told him about her and Hunter coming to the brothel to ask questions about the pendants, then it was no longer a secret that Anora had the evidence that he was involved in the robbery from all those years ago that left her mother dead.

If she’d had any doubts, the fact that he abducted her seemed just as much an admission of guilt as saying the words aloud.

Before this ordeal was over, whether it ended with her alive or dead, she would finally know the truth about Edmund Payne and whether or not he killed her mother.

A horsedrawn cart was waiting for them on the road.

One of the men grabbed Tommy, holding the knife to his throat again as he ordered Anora and Beatrice to climb into the wagon.

The man then forced Tommy into the wagon, and followed behind him, seating himself between the boy and the women.

Waving the knife between the two women, he said, “I don’t want to hear a word from either of you, or I’ll kill the boy.

And if I think you are trying to signal each other,” he shrugged and said nonchalantly, “I’ll kill the boy for that, too. ”

One of the other men climbed onto the bench at the front of the cart and picked up the reins to guide the horse. The other two men walked ahead at the sides of the horse.

Anora’s heart ached for the terror that Tommy must be feeling.

She wished she could do something to assure him everything would be all right, but the guard was blocking him from seeing her, and she would be lying if she tried to tell him all would be well.

Her heart sank with each passing moment as they trundled farther away from Hawkspur, and their chances of rescue diminished.

Closing her eyes, she said a prayer to the heavens to beg that no more harm would come to Tommy, and to plead for someone at Hawkspur to realize soon that they were missing.

She still felt certain that once Hunter found out they were gone, he would stop at nothing to find her, despite the tense words they’d exchanged before he left.

Anora decided prayer alone would not be enough to escape this situation; she also needed to do her part to save them.

Her small eating dagger was attached to her belt beneath her tunic.

It wasn’t enough to harm a man, but it could prove a useful tool.

Looking around to see what else was at her disposal, she noticed a large hole in one of the floorboards of the cart where a tree knot had once been.

It was near enough to her that she could slide her feet to either side of the hole so that it was covered by the cape wrapped around her.

The voluminous cape was wrapped around her and hid her actions if she moved slowly.

She removed the dagger from her belt and used it to tear at the threads of the chemise under her tunic.

When she had a handful of little scraps of material, she started dropping them through the hole in the floorboards of the cart in the vain hope that Hunter might notice them on the road and be astute enough to realize they were a sign from her.

While she ripped at her chemise and continued to drop bits of it onto the road under the cart, she also resumed praying that Hunter would find them soon.

If Baron Payne was behind this—and she was certain he was—she feared everything was going to get much worse for her and for Tommy once they were delivered into his hands.