I pulled back. It were a finite promise, but I knew she meant it. “Bring my father back,” I told her. “I very much want to meet him.”
She smiled at this. “I cannot wait for that bright day, my girl.” She pressed her hand to my cheek. “Now, David will escort you to Bristol. There should be a ship within a day or two—by the end of the week at the very least—headed for Ireland. You can both buy passage and send word to me when you are met by Theobald Butler—he is far more loyal to me than he is to John, and he will protect you.” She handed me a letter. “This will explain everything to him.” She gave me two more papers, both with ribbons and seals flapping off. “These are your pardon and your creation,” she said.
Holding them against myself, I drew a breath. “Tell me that this is the right thing to do, Eleanor,” I whispered to her.
She raised her chin. “It is the only thing to do if you want to protect those you love,” she told me.
I sighed.
“Ladies,” Winchester said, coming to the open door and bowing to us.
“Winchester,” I said, smiling. “Thank you. For everything you’ve done for me.”
He didn’t smile. “You’re welcome. Of course.”
“Walk her down to the courtyard, won’t you?” Eleanor asked Winchester. “We still have some packing to do. Margaret—stop simpering.”
Margaret flushed and turned back to her task.
“Where will you go next?” I asked her.
“Toward Cornwall,” she said. “Perhaps up toward Devizes Castle first, and then down to Cornwall. That way we can travel all along the south coast.” Her mouth tilted up. “And I’ll have an excuse to stop in Bristol and ensure that you’re off all right.”
“Good-bye, Eleanor,” I told her.
She nodded once, her mouth pressed tight shut. She waved me off and turned away, and Winchester offered me his arm.
He were silent down the hall, down the stair, down another long hall. We were about to make the courtyard, when I asked, “What is it, Winchester?”
He shook his head. “It is not my place, my lady.”
“You’ve been an excellent friend to me, Winchester. Please.”
“This is wrong,” he said soft. “Locksley thinks you’re dead. You’re lying to him—you’re asking me to lie to him.” He shook his head. “More than that. You’re torturing the man. A man who has seen too much torture in his life by half.”
“She’s not wrong,” I whispered to him. “You know he wouldn’t think of the danger. You know what he would risk for me. And I won’t ask him to do it.”
“That doesn’t make this right,” he told me.
We walked into the courtyard. It were clouded and dark, the sky heavy with rain like unshed tears.
“I can’t make you choose differently,” he said. “But I wish you would.”
I shook my head. I mounted my horse, and David bowed to Winchester, who just looked at me with stone in his eyes.
David mounted, and I spurred my horse, looking to the roads. One went north, to Nottingham, to Rob, to the light and his love and the feel of his heartbeat melting into mine. He would choose the north road, if it were him. He would move heaven and earth to return to me.
The other went west to Bristol. I stared at the north road, but I took the one west.
I wouldn’t fix a broken thing only to see it shatter before my eyes a moment later.
I weren’t close to good health yet, and we could only ride so far and so fast; it would take us three days or more to reach Bristol. We stopped at an inn that night, and David told them we were man and wife. He slept on the floor while I lay awake on the bed, staring out the window, thinking of Rob. It felt like leaving England and putting that much space between us were saying good-bye to Rob, to all the love I’d ever had for him, and I had only three days and however long it took to get a ship to figure a way to do it.
The next morning, we saddled the horses, and the stable boy brought out a third horse with him. “Boy,” David said, pointing. “That’s not our horse.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Allan said, coming out from the inn with a wide stretch and a yawn. “It’s mine.”
“Christ Almighty.” David sighed. “I thought we got rid of you.”
“You don’t wish that for a moment,” Allan said, mounting his horse. “Besides, did you really think to go to Ireland without one of her favorite native sons?”
“Clearly a foolish hope,” David muttered, mounting as well.
I swung up onto the horse, feeling my body ache as my muscles settled into place. “Play nice, boys.”
“I am devoted to your every request, lady thief,” Allan told me. “I cannot speak for the errant.”