Page 103 of The Champion

“Take her to her chambers.” Rowena led the way for Stryder. Her uncle followed a step behind them.

“I have already dispatched someone for Cornwall,” her uncle said quietly. “Though to be honest, I doubt if her family will respond.”

Rowena sighed at that as she held open the door for Stryder to carry Joanna into the room at the end of the hall. She rushed around him to turn down Joanna’s bed and stepped back for Stryder to place her upon it.

“Why won’t her family respond?” Stryder asked as he stepped away from the bed.

Rowena shrugged. “We don’t know. Elizabeth was a distant cousin who was sent to live with us a few years back. She had spent almost five years with me when we were girls and then her father summoned her home at ten-and-six to wed.”

“She was married?” Stryder watched Rowena cover Joanna up.

“Nay,” her uncle answered. “Her betrothed eloped with another and she didn’t return to us for several years.”

Rowena tucked the coverings around her. “She was so sad in the beginning. She would sit for hours, staring out the window, saying nothing to anyone. It was as if her spirit had been broken. Then one day, she decided to rejoin this world.”

Stryder stared at her with a fierce scowl. “Any idea what happened?”

“Nay, she would never speak of it. Nor of her family.”

Stryder sighed. “Like my brother...”

“Kit?” Rowena asked.

“Aye, he was much like that when I first took him in.”

Rowena remembered that herself. When she had first met him on the troubadour circuit, Kit had been withdrawn and depressed...

Rarely would he speak to anyone.

“Strange coincidence, isn’t it?”

Stryder didn’t answer her. His thoughts were whirling. Indeed, their behavior reminded him of some others he knew. Himself included. “Tell me. Did Elizabeth ever venture to Outremer?”

Rowena and her uncle exchanged a puzzled look.

“Not that I know of,” Rowena said. “Uncle?”

“I know not. Her father never spoke anything of her leaving his home until he sent her to live with us.”

Rowena tilted her head to look up at Stryder who considered that. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know. Foolishness most likely.” Stryder inclined his head toward Joanna. “Will she be all right?”

“Aye, she just needs to rest.” Rowena closed the curtains around the bed, then led them from the room.

By the time they reached the hallway again, everyone was rushing about, murmuring.

Most of all, they conjectured about where Stryder might have been when Elizabeth fell into the lake.

“After all,” one elder woman said to a friend as they headed toward the stairs. “I heard the girl bragging many a time that she would wed the Earl of Blackmoor. Mayhap she annoyed him one time too many.”

“Well, you know his father killed his mother...”

“And curiosity killed the cat,” Rowena said from behind them.

They turned to see her, Stryder and her uncle, then hastened off in embarrassment.

“I never!” Rowena snapped as the older women vanished.