What if she wasn’t mad? What if she was as sane as the town chaplain? If this was all real and she traveled through time—no. He simply couldn’t fathom it.
He led her up the stone stairway to the second landing.
“Who taught you to read?” she asked.
“Edward had me instructed privately.”
“Edward the king?”
He nodded.
“Elia told me he raised you after the death of your parents.”
“Murdered,” he corrected. “They were murdered by the Lancasters.”
“Yes, of course. Murdered,” she amended, shivering in her spot. “Was he a good foster father?”
“Aye. He was.”
“Is Richard very much like him?”
His scowl returned. “Richard is nothing like him. I assure you, Miss Locksley—”
“Kestrel.”
“If your story is true and you are a historian from the future, nothing you have read about Richard can compare to who he truly is. If you ever have the ill-fortune of meeting him, stay away from him.”
He heard one of the guards outside shouting. “What is it?” he called to another running in the hall.
“Tis a letter! A letter from the king!”
*
Charles Lancaster tossedthe letter onto his desk, followed by his glasses. He rubbed his bloodshot blue eyes. There were no leads on his missing daughter. She was gone, snatched away in the middle of the day without a trace.
Charles considered himself a civilized man but if he got her back, he was going to kill everyone involved.
What if he was the reason she was taken?
He looked at the framed photo of her on his desk and wiped his eyes. His beautiful girl. They were going to meet for dinner. Her friends called him long before their date. She was gone. She’d gone into a building and disappeared into an office. But there was no office. No fourth floor. Her friends had to have been mistaken. That’s what the police said.
But Kes’ father feared something much bigger was at work.
Chapter Eight
“You do thisevery day?” Kes asked Claire, the laundress, while Claire turned clothes with a wooden wash bat in a giant barrel.
The news of the king’s return in a week turned Nicholas’ mood worse than before. He’d shown her to the library and left her there. She hadn’t seen him again for the rest of the night.
“Aye, every day.”
“For everyone here?” Kes asked, incensed while Claire rubbed the soiled garment with lye soap and continued turning.
“Aye.”
Either the earl or the king was going to have to do something about this or the help was going to walk out. “I want to help you,” Kes said and reached for the bat. Besides, she needed something to do with her hands. She was going crazy with the need to text! She had so much to say and so many to tell.
Claire stared at her and looked to Elia standing at Kes’ rear. When Elia nodded, Claire handed over the stick.