Cordaella knew it was best to get it over with. "I broke Eddie's nose," she confessed.
Philip quickly added, "But Eddie hit her first, Father. I swear it. She didn't mean to hit him hard. He sort of fell on her hand-" Philip's voice broke and he hung his head ashamed.
Elisabeth said nothing, her face scarlet. Cordaella got to her feet, trying to hide the stains on her gown. "I am sorry. I know I shouldn't have lost my temper."
"He's just a boy," the Earl thundered. "Why can't you see that? You can't behave like this, a banshee from the Highlands. I won't stand for it."
"I know." She could feel all eyes on her and her throat closed, tightening around the apology. "I am sorry. I was wrong."
"Not only is your cousin younger, he is also your lord."
"Yes, Uncle." She fought her pride and yet once again her pride won. "But, sir, if he is my lord, why is he treated like a baby? He is nearly twelve, sir."
"Did you just question me?" Eton bent over but did not have to stoop far, Cordaella nearly reached his shoulder. She was already as tall as Philip and a good head taller than Elisabeth, although both were several years older than she. "Did you?" he persisted. Cordaella nodded, shrinking from what would come next. "Go to the solar." Eton's voice was cold. "I will be there momentarily."
The Irishman's eyes narrowed as he saw how the girl's face paled, her jaw working furiously. He thought she would protest again and for a long painful moment no one moved or scarcely seemed to breathe. Cordaella fought the urge to cry. "Yes, sir." Even if O'Brien did not, all the children knew what would happen next.
-----------
Cordaella left the solar with dry eyes. She had dug her nails into the wooden stool during the whipping rather than cry out loud. But now that she was free, she gathered her skirts into one hand and fled down the backstairs, climbing over the tall iron gate that separated the stable yard from the orchard. It was twilight and the sun had sunk low enough to leave the woods in long cool shadows. The ground was moist and as she walked, the smell of the earth rose up, warm and rich.
She walked quickly, covering the distance in fifteen minutes that might ordinarily have taken her twenty. She knotted her hands, her teeth grinding together to keep the tears away. Once in her life she might have wept. But she couldn't cry now, not when she was fifteen-nearing sixteen-and wise to the Earl's ways. There was no use holding a grudge against him. He never thought twice about administering a punishment, later expecting all to continue as it had.
Smoke swirled from the falconer's chimney, and she heard the barking of dogs. The falconer must be at home, either working with the birds or preparing a bit of supper. She was hungry herself, and now that she thought about it, cold.
It had been too long a day, one of those days that went on and on, broken only by anger and pain. Her dress, she looked down at the bodice, was stained with blood and the hem caked in dirt. She rubbed at the stains, but it was futile; the dress was ruined.
She leaned against the trunk of a birch tree, pressing her forehead against the white bark. Her arms went around the trunk and she held it to her-as if it were a mother or a father. She closed her eyes but couldn't picture the cottage anymore. It had become harder to remember her father's face, his voice. She knew she had once lived high beneath Ben Nevis, but everything had blurred, and the memories had begun to desert her.
Cold, it was cold here. Cordaella shivered and rubbed her arms briskly. She
turned to look for a place to sit in the clearing. Even now she was drawn to the woods, always returning to this place as if it held some special answer, some words for her. Her father had once told her that her mother had also been drawn to clearings, treasuring a favorite place in the Angus woods in Aberdeen. Anne, he had said, believed that clearings held magical powers and that mist in a clearing meant a quest was at hand.
A quest, Cordaella thought, drawing her legs up, wrapping her arms around her
knobby knees. She hated her knees. Hated her long skinny arms and legs. She needed a quest. Something big. Something grand. Something like Arthur, when he pulled the sword from the stone, she would have to accomplish something.
Blood.
Did she say it or see it? The blood on the snow. And it all came back to her, pictures rushing into her head. Culross with his matted fur. Her father with the knife in his belly, the blade slicing up towards his heart. She was sure that his death hadn't been an accident, not now, not after all she had seen in Peveril. Too many things were planned. Manipulated. Cordaella inherits. Cordaella is orphaned. She swallowed the sourness in her mouth, the first taste of hatred. She would find a way to get even.
A twig snapped behind her and she twirled around to peer into the twilight shadows of the wood. It was cooler already, a dampness in the night. The footsteps sounded again, heavy, deliberate. She slid down, hiding behind the fallen tree.
"Hello!" the voice called, the accent strange to her ear. She didn't answer him, her heart hammering. "My name is O'Brien. I am a guest of your uncle's-" Then the voice broke off, and laughed lowly. "But I don't suppose you care to hear that."
She wondered at the laughter in his voice, at the cool lilt in his voice, the words turning up and around as if each one rhymed. The knight. The Irishman. What was he doing here? She pulled herself in tighter, balling like a pillbug, attempting to become small and invisible. Maybe he'd go away.
"I didn't want to intrude on you, but I thought perhaps you might want a cloak. It is a cold night, a night with rain in the air, isn't it?" She thought his accent was like the night. The sound of his voice made her shiver again. "You can give it back to me later, tonight, after supper."
Slowly she rose from behind her tree fortress, ashamed that she was hiding, that she was found out. "Thank you," she whispered, not sure what to do next.
"Take the cloak, would you?"
She accepted it silently, pulling it on over her shoulders, fastening the ties at the front. "I was cold," she admitted. "But I didn't want to go back." She sat back down on the tree, uncomfortable and at a loss for proper etiquette. What did one say to a famous knight?
"Would you like an escort back?"
"Thank you, but no. I don't want to go yet." She was silent a minute, thinking, and then her mouth turned, her lips curving in a wry smile. "You see, my lord, I have what Mrs. Penny calls, too much pride. Right now I am telling myself I'll never go back. But I know that's not possible. I will go back...eventually."
"Wishing you could run away?" he asked, sitting down beside her.
She didn't immediately answer him, instead apologizing for the afternoon fight. "I am sorry for the scene I caused earlier. How humiliating it all is-" She quivered, remembering. "It is a hard place, sometimes. I haven't quite figured it all out." She stared down in the darkness, barely able to make out his boots. His boots were large, just like his legs. He must be very tall. "If you will forgive me for saying so, but you don't seem like a great soldier."
His laughter was quiet, like the summers in Glen Nevis. "I don't consider myself a great soldier."
"I didn't mean that you weren't great-" She broke off again. "Oh dear, nothing today is quite right. What I meant to say is that you are awfully kind. Very polite. One never pictures great soldiers being gentle. I think that's what I mean to say."
He laughed outright, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "You can't be English, not with that tongue of yours. I warrant you come from the North."
"Aye. From the Highlands, not far from Glen Nevis." She stared at her hands for a moment before asking, "How is it that an Irishman is knighted in London? You must have done something great."
"I saved Bolingbroke's son, the young Thomas of Clarence." O'Brien said dispassionately. He might have been talking about food or the weather. "His Majesty was grateful."
The night fell deeper, the woods dark, inky. She thought that he seemed to belong here, fitting right in with the darkness and the forest. His accent was soft, and she pictured the breeze rustling meadow grass, warm, sweet. She wished he would go on talking forever. "I would have knighted you, too. It must have been difficult, how you saved him."
"It was war. War means hardship."
"I don't think I'd like that very much, though I always wanted to be a soldier, even though I'd been told otherwise." She turned her cheek to look at his face. She could only see shadows and a line where his nose and brow met. "I think it must be hard killing people."
"It is."
"How do you do it?"
"Kill people?" he asked, "Or not think about it later?"
"Oh." She turned back to rest her chin on her knees. "My father was killed. I think about that a lot. I wonder how they could have done it-stabbed him-and then left him like that. I was there, but what could I do? I was little yet, and I didn't know much about healing."
"Once somebody is hurt, there isn't much anyone can do. Not after a knife wound. You mustn't blame yourself." He looked down on her. "Is that why you came here? You had nowhere else to go?"
She nodded. "But I don't like it here. Except for Philip. He is good. The others-" she said with a shrug, her silence revealing more than words ever could. "Anyway, this is where I am now."
"So you aren't going to run away?"
"Where would I go?" She knew the truth. A young girl belonged to her guardian. She supposed she was lucky she had a guardian.
He leaned over to pick up a twig, twirling it absently between his fingers. "How are you a relation to Eton? He isn't from across the border, is he?"
"No. His first wife, Charlotte, and my mother were from Aberdeen. Daughters of the late Duke Macleod."
"John Macleod?"
"Yes. There were three daughters. Charlotte was the eldest. My mother was the middle sister. Mary was the youngest. I think of them, those three sisters, and I think of my grandfather and my uncle, the one they called Dunbar the Red." She hesitated before continuing, "and then I think of my father. And they're all gone." She lifted her face to the wind, the cold stinging her cheeks. "But I can't let them go. Not yet. Not until things are right."
"Then you might find the world a very hard place."
"But of course I will. I am a Scot."
"Yes, and not so different from the Irish." He broke the branch between his fingers, the dry wood snapping.
She looked up high, past the treetops to the sliver of moon. "Do you know what the strangest part about living here is? It is being a girl. In the mountains I never thought about being a girl. I didn't even know I was one. I was just me, Cordaella. But here I am something different...like a different breed of animal. And it's not just me. I see Lady Mary treated the same way, although she is older and a real woman. But Elisabeth! She, I think, has it even worse than me. She doesn't seem to matter, at least not to anyone here. It is almost as if she didn't exist." Cordaella shivered. "And because Elisabeth matters so little, she blames me. I wish she had inherited the Macleod estates. Perhaps she would be the one guarded, protected."
"Is that why you weren't at the banquet this afternoon?"
"My uncle-" and she laughed, sounding lonelier than she would ever know, "-thinks I might draw an attack, provocation for jealousy. He seems to think everyone covets the inheritance. That I would have false suitors." She shook her head, her teeth now chattering. "Perhaps we should go back. It is late. Supper can't be long now."
He took her arm, assisting her over a stump and through the tangle of undergrowth. Color fanned her cheeks and she kept her head down, trying it ignore the warmth of his hand on her arm, of his upper hand at the small of her back as they hurried through the dark musk fragrance of the woods to the distant lights of Peveril. She heard the wind pick up, the trees singing. This is where magic happened. And she would somehow help her father, avenge his death. Like the trees and the night, she was strong.