For an hour she went about her work, then grew as restless as Jonah himself. It was time the Master was home again, and he tarried. What if, at the end of his rough journey through the cave, his horse had thrown him somewhere between this and Skipton? Life, as she knew it, had that apeish way of letting folk go safe through harsh odds, only to crack thin skulls against a moorland boulder as they rode quietly home.
Keenly as Rebecca listened for the tip-tap of hoofs up the road, Causleen heard it first. She wakened from a sleep befogged by peddling days, and memories of the harsh greeting she had found once at Logie—sleep threaded through and through by flame-red memories of Garsykes and its cavern.
Far down the road she heard the music of her man’s returning—clickety-clack, faint at first as the tread of elfin feet. Where had he been, risking his life in these disastrous days? And was he wounded by a stealthy blow aimed at him by some foul lout from Garsykes lurking in the heather?
Need to know how it fared with him drew her from her bed. She put the frayed cloak about her—the cloak that had been blue as hope once, but now was like a Jacob’s coat, painted by many kinds of weather—and went down the stair, and out to Logie’s gate.
She was in time to open it for Hardcastle, in time to see the light in his eyes as he got from the saddle, and told his horse to find his own way to stable.
“Where have you been?” she asked, fingering his sleeve.
“To Skipton-in-Craven,” said Hardcastle. “I had business there.”
She touched his sleeve no longer. “And left me here—alone, except for Rebecca and a farm-lad? At such a time—after all we’d shared, and with Garsykes near—You went on business?”
“I left a body-guard. Some of our Logie Men are in the woods—and two by Logie Brigg, to let none from Garsykes through—except Nita, if she’s a mind to come.”
She took a further step away. “You might have stayed, for all that—just to be near me, Dick.”