She wasn't entirely sure she did either. But the gates were open, and it would soon be dark. But what concerned her more was the man at her back who had carried her up a staircase and packed her candle without asking why.
That could become a problem of a different kind.
CHAPTER FOUR
"We're takin' the forest roads."
He said it to Torvald as they cleared the gate, quiet and final. His men shifted without question, two ahead, two behind, the formation settling into place like something they'd done so many times it had stopped requiring thought.
Matilda said nothing.
She was sitting very straight in the saddle in front of him, her blue cloak pulled tight, her eyes on the dark between the trees. She hadn't asked why the forest roads. He suspected she already knew.
Good. It would make things simpler.
The castle disappeared behind them as the tree line closed in, the torchlight swallowed, the sounds of the courtyard replacedby the soft thud of hooves on packed earth and the distant sound of something moving high in the canopy.
His men were quiet. The horses were steady. The night held.
He kept his eyes on the path ahead and his attention everywhere else.
"Ye arrived early," she said.
He'd been wondering when she'd get there. "Aye."
"Me faither wasnae expectin' ye until dawn."
"Nay. He wasnae."
She waited.
He could feel her waiting, patient and deliberate.
"I dinnae like arrivin' when I'm expected," he said.
"Why?"
"Because if someone kens when ye're comin', they can plan fer it."
She was quiet for a moment, turning that over. "So ye planned to arrive early. Before anyone expected ye."
"Aye."
"And ye came through the gates just as the attack began."
"Just after." A beat. "I'd have preferred just before."
"They were already in the garden," she said. It wasn't an accusation. Just fact, laid out plainly, the way she seemed to prefer things. "If ye'd been any later, it might have been bad."
"I wasnae."
She exhaled, very quietly. "Nay. Ye werenae."
The path narrowed and he guided the horse through without slowing.
Branches closed on either side, and she didn't flinch or tighten, just moved with it, which told him something.
She was comfortable on horseback. She was comfortable in the dark, or at least practiced at appearing so. She was, he was beginning to understand, considerably more composed than most people would be right after having their castle attacked and their life upended.