Page 13 of Highland Spy

The room was cold despite the fire crackling in the hearth. It’d been lit recently, when the riders had been spotted, but hadn’t yet warmed the space.

He settled her in the bed and pulled the coverlet over her. Shadows danced across the areas beneath her cheeks and eyes where the firelight didn’t touch.

Fabric rustled in the doorway. Connor looked up to find Sylvi watching him with more anxiety than she’d ever admit to.

“She’s too thin,” he said.

Sylvi crossed her arms. “I tried to get her to eat, but she was too attentive to the other one.”

He rose and crossed the room. “Let’s discuss this in private.”

She followed without comment, her feet moving silently over the hard floor like she’d been taught.

He wasn’t surprised. There wasn’t a lesson in battle she hadn’t mastered.

He waited to speak until they were behind the closed door of the solar. The musty, lingering scent of the books once held within was familiar, and a low fire crackled in the hearth. Shelves lined the back wall, gaping with emptiness.

“What were ye thinking, pushing them so hard?” he asked for the second time.

Sylvi’s eyes flashed. “I told you, I made the decision. Liv vomitted her way through England and Scotland and every damn place between.” Her gaze slipped from his in a rare show of uncertainty. “I thought if I didn’t get her here in time, she’d die.”

Connor shook his head. “I’ve no’ seen noblewomen travel as fast as ye pushed them. Delilah and I only just arrived yesterday.”

“It was Ariana,” she said with a lowered voice. “The one you carried upstairs. She insisted she was fine. She pushed Liv to go on and helped when she was sick. I think she held the same fears I did.”

The skinny scrap of a woman he’d carried upstairs hardly seemed strong enough to have survived the trip herself, let alone have pushed to travel faster.

Sylvi widened her stance. “Why the hell did we do this now? It’s nigh the middle of winter.” An edge of her former baseborn accent slipped into her words, the roughness she’d worked so hard to smooth.

Connor lifted a brow and she lowered the challenge of her glare. A muscle worked in her jaw.

She was upset and had every right to be. He’d been unhappy with the timing himself, but had acted on the king’s orders. King James didn’t consider things like weather or how long the women took to train. He only cared that his orders were followed and those names Connor was given were eliminated in less than four months.

As it was, Connor only had three remaining.

“Traveling in this season doesn’t make sense.” She muttered it under her breath like a petulant child.

“There are more missions,” he said. Two slips of paper sat on his desk.

Sylvi gave an exasperated hiss. “There are always more missions.”

He wouldn’t look at the papers right now. He wouldn’t turn and see the two stark pieces of white parchment laid against the dark desk.

Overall, he’d had five names in his three years of service to the king. But always one at a time.

There’d never been two together before.

She drew a deep breath and let the air hiss out the way women do when they’re displeased. In a house full of lasses, it was a sound he knew all too well.

The rigidity of her shoulders slackened. “I don’t like this.”

He didn’t either.

“Go see to Liv, aye?”

She nodded.

“Let the poor girl sleep in the kitchen tonight for extra warmth.” He clapped a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “Ye did well in getting them safely to Kindrochit.”