“On second thoughts”—she halted to stroke the mare’s neck—“I think, Giles, she’ll carry you. Tell Sir Jasper that the women, too, are leal, though they’re compelled to stay at home.”
Giles wasted little time in thanks. Business-like, even in this matter of running his neck into a halter, he sprang to the mare’s back. He would be sore before the day was out, because the saddle was wringing wet by this time; but he was used to casual hardships.
Lady Royd watched the bailiff ride quickly down the road, heard the last hoof-beats die away. “You are odd, you folk up here,” she said, with a warmer note in her tired voice. “You did not give up your mare lightly, Nance—and to Giles, of all men. Who stole his horse, think you?”
Nance answered without knowing she had framed the thought. “Rupert is missing, too,” she said, with an odd, wayward smile. “I told you he had pluck.”
Yet, after they had gone indoors, after she had changed her riding-gear, Nance sat in the guest-chamber upstairs, and could think only of Will Underwood. Her dreams of him had been so pleasant, so loyal; she was not prepared to trample on them. She saw him giving her a lead on many a bygone hunting-day—saw the eager face, and heard his low, persuasive voice.
Nance was steadfast, even to disproven trust. She caught hold of Sir Jasper’s challenge yesterday, when men had doubted Will. He would join them on the southward march. Surely he would, knowing how well she liked him. And the kerchief he had asked for—it must wait, until he came in his own time to claim it.
CHAPTER VI
THE PRINCE COMES SOUTH
Rupert stood in the little wood that bordered the Langton road, waiting for Sir Jasper’s company of horse to pass. It would have been chilling work for hardier folk. The rain soaked him to the skin; the wind stabbed from behind, as the sly northeaster does. He had no prospect of joining his friends as yet; his one hope was to follow them, like a culprit fearing detection, until they and he had ridden so far from Windyhough that they could not turn him back to eat his heart out among the women.