Page 15

“Ye’re not?”

“Nay,” she said. “I am a hostage. Someone told me, once, that you were a hostage, also. You were able to escape and I want to escape, too. Won’t you help me?”

Titus hadn’t known that she was hostage. He always thought she was simply a ward, as she said. That was the story the duke and duchess had made known, but he wasn’t surprised to hear it wasn’t true.

“Then Lady Ayr doesna know ye’re here?” he asked.

“Nay.”

“Did ye run away?”

“Aye.”

“Does anyone know ye’re here?”

“The apothecary might.”

“Where I saw ye today?”

“Aye. I returned to ask him where the Ludus Caledonia was.”

Titus sighed faintly. “If the duchess sends men tae look for ye, they’ll go tae the shop, dunna ye think? The apothecary will tell them what he told ye and that will lead them here.”

Esme shook her head. “I never told anyone I was going to the apothecary’s shop,” she said. “I am sure they will not discover where I have gone. I will pay you for your assistance, I swear it, but please… please help me.”

Titus didn’t know what to make of any of it. There was another chair in the guard room and he pulled it up so that he could sit next to her. In truth, he was quite curious about her, and whether or not he wanted to be, he found himself swept up in the situation.

Unusual for a man who rarely showed regard for someone other than himself.

“I think ye’d better start from the beginning,” he said. “Ye say ye are a hostage of Ayr?”

Esme nodded solemnly. “Aye.”

“But why?”

She sighed faintly. “It is a complicated situation, as complicated as the situation between the Scottish and the English.”

“I understand the politics of such things. Tell me.”

She pondered his question a moment, perhaps thinking of the most concise way of telling him the situation that had consumed her entire life.

“There is much civil war in Navarre right now,” she said after a moment. “Castillo de Santacara is my family’s home. We have always supported the kings and queens of Navarre, only the queen has been dead these past years and her husband, who is not the rightful heir to the throne, has assumed power. My father sent word to the Scottish court for assistance to fight the usurper and it was the Duke of Ayr who answered. He told my father to send money, and one of his children as a hostage in good faith, and he would send him an army, only the army was never sent. I heard Lady Ayr tell her friends that it was because the duke was promised lands by the queen’s husband.”

Titus’ eyebrows lifted. It was indeed complicated and complex, as politics and wars often were.

“I see,” he said. “Then the duke betrayed yer father.”

“Aye, he did. The duke took his only child and his money.”

“Does the duke know ye’re the only child?”

She nodded sadly. “That is why he wants to marry me to Conan,” he said. “Then Conan will inherit Santacara, through me. He will also inherit the County of Mèlida – my father is the Conte de Mèlida.”

That was the Spanish equivalent of an earl. It was quite a mess, but Titus wasn’t surprised by any of it. Ambrose Stewart was an ambitious, greedy, and callous bastard, but he’d learned that from the rest of the Scottish Royal family, who were all cut from the same fabric. Even Titus’ own father was calculating and ambitious because in a den of jackals, one had to learn to survive… or one did not.

But it still didn’t excuse the betrayal. Titus thought that there had to be more to it than what she was telling him.

“What would make yer father send his young daughter tae a faraway land, tae people he dinna even know?” he said. “The man sent money and his only child?”