Page 10 of So Close To Heaven (Far From Home #11)

He glanced down sharply, giving her a sidelong glance as if to be sure she wasn’t mocking him. “Aye,” he said, stating what should have been known to her, clipped and cool. “With England.”

“I thought I read somewhere that in 1305 there was a—” she broke off abruptly and then started again. “Isn’t there a truce now?”

He stiffened. “Aye. Some say so.”

“And you?”

“I dinna make pacts with men who butcher bairns and murder thousands, trying to seize what doesnae belong to them.”

“So if you don’t follow the truce, are you part of some rebel army?”

His jaw twitched. “We’re nae rebels,” he said emphatically. “?Tis our land. We dinna rebel against it. We fight to keep it.”

“So you’re a patriot,” she said, with a strange note in her voice—as if she were weighing the word. “A freedom fighter.”

“Call it what ye like,” he muttered, bewildered by her questions, her seeming lack of understanding about... anything. Everything.

They rode for another stretch in silence, the wind threading softly through the trees, and she pulled the breacan more tightly around her.

“What were ye doin’ out there this afternoon?” he asked when several minutes had passed. “Near the clearing?”

The hesitation was visible. Her breath seemed to catch.

“I don’t know,” she said at last.

The scowl that had only seconds ago eased, returned. “Ye dinna ken?”

She shook her head faintly. “I mean... well, yes—I don’t know.

I have no idea how I got there. I was literally just out for a walk, hiking the Great Trossachs Path—Loch Katrine was only a couple of miles away,” she said.

“That’s why I asked if I could be taken back there.

I thought if I got back there, there’d be.

.. something. Help. People. A road.” She shook her head thoughtfully.

“I still have no idea how I got to where you—and the fight—were. You said it was forty miles away. I don’t understand how that happened or why Kendrick said it was—”

She stopped herself abruptly, but Alaric asked the question that had been bothering him, which he believed she’d just stopped herself from addressing. “Why did ye need to ask the year?” Alaric’s voice was low. “Why did Kendrick’s answer cause ye such distress?”

Ivy Mitchell sagged against him, her spine curving into his chest as if the fight had gone out of her. “I... I can’t explain it—or rather, you’d never believe me.”

“Ye willna even try?”

She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “I don’t even know where to start. I haven’t made sense of it myself.” She exhaled, slow and weary. Her mouth opened and closed but she said no more just then.

He studied the top of her head, the subtle tension still clinging to her frame. “Were ye struck in the head? Fevered? Or insensible for some long stretch—long enough that hearing the year would rattle ye so?”

Her slim shoulders lifted in a faint shrug. “I don’t know—no. No, that’s not possible. That’s... backwards.”

“Ye speak in riddles,” he said, not unkindly, though the edge in his voice betrayed his mounting frustration.

She was backwards, he decided. There was something off about Ivy Mitchell, something that scraped against sense.

It wasn’t only her strange arrival in the midst of a bloodied battlefield, or the garb she wore, or the way she laced her words with unfamiliar cadence—it was this fumbling, shifting refusal—or inability—to explain herself.

And Alaric, a man who trusted action over answers, found her vagueness unsettling in a way he couldn’t name.

Another few moments of silence passed between them before Ivy tilted her head and face up at him. “But is it really thirteen hundred and five?”

Again with the year, while she refused to answer his questions about it. His rising anger was tempered, however, by the sight of tears once again glistening in her eyes.

“Aye, it is. Same as it was earlier when ye asked Kendrick, when ye asked me,” he said, his tone harsh despite the tears.

She lowered her face and turned away from him. “Okay, I’m sorry,” she said, sounding weak and small now. “I won’t ask again.”

Supposing that he should feel like a brute for what she might deem his insensitivity, he nevertheless managed to cling to his annoyance, unable to rouse any sympathy.

Aye, she was beautiful. And aye, her condition counseled caution, but he wasn’t about to be swayed by either her inadequate words or her weeping.

“Keep yer secrets, Ivy Mitchell,” he muttered. “We’ll be parting ways soon enough.”

Whatever her reaction was or might have been would remain unknown to him, for at that moment, the sound of a swiftly approaching horse reached his ears.

The rest of the army was moving at a steady walk, their pace plodding after so many long hours, and what little noise they made was swallowed by the forest.

This new sound was different, urgent, a lone rider, moving fast. One of the scouts, undoubtedly. And scouts only rode like that when something was wrong.

Alaric straightened in the saddle, his body tensing. He felt Ivy shift, too, her spine stiffening as she pushed herself more upright against him.

“What is—?” she began.

“Laird!” came the shout, ringing across the slow-moving line of men.

He kneed the stallion and moved from the middle of the column toward the front.

A scout came riding through the trees from further east—Struan, one of the younger scouts, lean and quick, with a keen eye and a stronger sense of urgency than most. His mount was lathered and panting, flanks streaked with sweat, and he hauled the beast to a jarring stop just before them, chest heaving as he leaned low over the saddle horn.

“The priory,” he said. “Coire Sionna is empty, my lord. Half-burned. A shell.”

“Recently burned?” Alaric asked.

“Seems so, but nae just today,” said Struan. “Mayhap yesterday or the day before.”

“English?” Mathar questioned, having come to Alaric’s side.

Struan shook his head. “Canna say. Too dark to ken.”

Alaric nodded and instructed Mathar, “We’ll take the cavalry to the priory. Advise the foot soldiers to be vigilant. Keep them along the eastern edge of the wood, off the main road until we’ve swept the ground proper.”

Mathar gave a grim nod.

“Send half a dozen scouts ahead to circle wide and make certain we’re nae riding into a trap. I want eyes on the hillocks and the rise behind the ruins. If there’s English lurking nearby, I’d have them found before they ken we’re here.”

“Aye, laird,” Mathar obliged.

“And if they find signs of English—fresh prints, dung, campsites—I want word swift. We’ll nae linger near smoke-stained stone if it draws carrion.” He would not abide near the burnt priory if it risked drawing danger to his men.

Mathar gave another curt nod and turned sharply, already barking orders down the line.

Alaric nudged the stallion into motion, guiding it through the darkening trees with one hand while he braced the other securely around Ivy.

He didn’t dare a full gallop, not with the woman in his arms. But the pace was hard enough that the trees blurred on either side in their rush.

Still, he did something he’d never done before, allowing several riders to outpace him.

He was always the first into battle. The first into the breach.

The first into the unknown. But not tonight, not with her pressed to him, warm and vulnerable and entirely unfit for war.

He kept to the center of the column, eyes sharp, pulse steady, every muscle poised to react.

A thousand choices lay ahead if danger surfaced—and none of them left room for hesitation.

Unbidden, his thoughts turned dark. What if there were some English still nearby? What if they’d torched the place only to return in the night, seeking to finish what they’d begun? Or to use what remained as either their camp or as a launching place?

He cast a glance downward at the small shape in his arms. Despite her round belly, she leaned over the pommel, allowing him to lean into her back, their urgency surely felt by his steed. He considered that she had no armor, no weapon, no notion of survival, he might guess.

What would he do if steel rang through the trees again?

If arrows flew or the night erupted with English war cries?

He couldn’t fight with her in his arms. Couldn’t leave her either.

He would have to make a choice—and quickly.

Dismount, hide her? Find shelter amid stone or shadow?

Hope she kept still. Hope she survived the decision.

His jaw clenched as the trees thinned, and the scent of scorched wood began to taint the wind.

The priory came into view all at once—stone bathed in silver moonlight, the outline of its once-proud walls jagged and blackened, like broken teeth in a ruined mouth.

Alaric reined in with those who’d stopped ahead of him.

The skeletal remains of the chapel loomed ahead, its roof gone, the bell tower toppled.

Half the compound lay in charred ruin, the other half cloaked in silence.

No candlelight. No sign of nuns, or life.

Just a softly lifting smoke, winding through the shattered rafters like a ghost reluctant to leave.

Alaric drew the stallion to a halt, his eyes narrowing as he studied the smoldering timbers. The fire hadn’t burned hot or recent enough to send up flames, but the warmth still clung to the stones, and thin threads of smoke rose from blackened beams and all the other collapsed wood areas.

It wasn’t fresh, he decided soon enough, it just hadn’t happened today.

A day past, perhaps two, long enough ago for survivors to have fled.

But just to be sure, he turned toward the man at his side, Calum.

“Take a few men and look inside for bodies. Or survivors,” he thought to add, but that hope seemed futile.

In truth, he didn’t know yet if the fire had been intentional or even malicious.

He only supposed it was, assuming that if not, he might have found nuns and the priory’s lay persons lingering—tending the wounded, salvaging what they could, clinging to the remnants of their sanctuary.

But there was nothing. No voices in prayer, no rustle of habits, no soft footfalls in the ash, only silence.

Even the crackle of a fire had quieted by now.

His eyes raked the yard and fields and dark forest edges around the priory. He discerned no movement, no riders, no threat. But he didn’t always trust the quiet.

Behind them, hooves thudded softly as Mathar and the rest of the riders approached. But Alaric kept his gaze ahead, on the ruined priory, the scorched altar visible through the crumbled door.

The world felt cold.

And then a misting rain began to fall.

“Casualties?” Mathar inquired.

Alaric shook his head, peripherally aware of Ivy clasping his hand over her waist now. “Nae yet. The lads are searching.”

“Then where are the sisters?”

Alaric’s gaze swept the scorched yard again. “Gone before the fire, if they had any sense. Or... taken.”

Mathar spat into the mud. “Burning nuns now, are they?”

“They’ve burned worse,” Alaric said flatly. “Churches. Crofts. Children.”

Mathar gave a grim nod. “Aye. Nae longer content to fight men with swords, so they make war on the blessed and meek.”

A silence followed, broken only by the soft hiss of rain striking charred stone.

“They dinna go quiet,” Mathar said at length. “Mistress Barbara would nae have.”

No, she wouldn’t have, Alaric silently agreed. His father’s aunt was as ferocious as he understood Longshanks to be.

They sat and stared for several moments in silence, until Ivy broke it, her voice faint.

“Were you expecting to drop me off here?”

“Aye.”

“And now?”

Alaric didn’t answer, save to curse quietly under his breath.