Excerpt of The Laird's Vow by Heather Grothaus

Prologue

January 31, 1427

Northumberland, England

Thomas Annesley was a dead man running.

He felt rather than saw the large slabs of rock thrusting out of the frozen ground as he stumbled past them, the black, winter night hiding scores of the treacherous obstacles that littered the land beyond the manicured gardens of Darlyrede House. Thomas staggered and gasped as his wounded shoulder caught the jagged edge of one such monolith, spinning him on his feet and throwing him backward onto another slanted boulder. Every reedy breath of frigid air sliced his parched, bruised throat.

Thomas looked up at the sliver of moon, its image blurred with tears held behind the frozen crust along his lashes. It was little light, but the trail of blood would make him easy prey for an expert hunter such as Hargrave. Thomas couldn’t go on much farther any matter—he’d pulled two arrows from his own flesh, and the cold had stolen most of the feeling in his extremities. Hargrave would find Thomas and kill him, or he would bleed to death. Either way, Thomas Annesley, third Baron Annesley, Lord of Darlyrede, recognized that his life was already over even as he fled through the wild winter night.

He was eighteen years old.

Thomas tried to push himself aright and heard a soft riffle of sound; his clothing had begun freezing to the rock. He was wet from his bare head to his boots with sweat and blood, as though he’d been so full of fear and death that when he’d fallen onto the stone he’d burst like a dropped wineskin.

Cordelia. Cordelia’s blood. Rivers of it, the stone floor flooded so that his boots splashed…the walls around him gummy and black…

The rocky scrape of hooves on frozen track elicited a pained whine from Thomas’s scorched throat and he cringed into the rock. He stopped breathing to listen in the crystal-cold night, and indeed the horse—horses?—were drawing nearer, and he heard the rumble of a masculine voice.

But it wasn’t his voice. It wasn’t Hargrave. It wasn’t any of Darlyrede’s men, Thomas was sure of it. Oh God, please…

Thomas lurched from the stone and staggered toward the sound, toward the narrow track of road that wound past Darlyrede House and that he hadn’t known he’d been so close to. But as Thomas pushed himself from stone to stone, the shadowy images of two mounted riders approaching became clearer.

He swayed to a stop in the middle of the track, flinging his left forearm in a pathetic arc.

Help…

He braced his hand on his thigh and let his head drop as the horses halted. Thomas willed his chest to expand, his lungs to fill with air. Dizzy…

“Great ghost, boy! What think you to be about on a night such as this, and frightening our—” a voice demanded near his ear and then strong hands around his arm pulled him upright and Thomas somehow found the breath to give a whistling scream before his vision went gray and a loud buzzing erupted in both his ears.

 “Who is it, Kettering?” a second voice called out from a distance.

“It’s a young man—he’s injured. I don’t believe I know him. Come, Blake, bring my horse.”

Thomas collapsed against the man who took his weight easily.

“There now, lad—you’re all but frozen. Fortunate we came along.” Thomas was jostled and then this saint, Kettering, eased him away to lean against a solid, warm, breathing wall of horseflesh. “We’re going to lift you onto the saddle. Here, bite down on this.” Thomas felt a thin wooden rod push between his lips to settle between his teeth. “Steady, now. Alright, Blake.”

Thomas would have cried out again at the pain in his chest and shoulder, but he had no breath left in him. He lay limp across the beast, tears building up once more in his eyes, his stomach pushing into his throat.

“Fortunate we came along, indeed,” the second man—Blake?—was saying, his voice seeming to echo queerly in the wide expanse of the night. “And good thing we’re so near Darlyrede House.”

“Just so,” Kettering said. “I’ll lead him. Blake, you follow behind with vigilance—the criminal who beset this poor lad may yet lie in wait for us. Darlyrede shall be our haven.”

Darlyrede.

The word rang rings around Thomas’s head as he felt the horse beneath him begin to rock and turn. They were delivering him back to Darlyrede, that abattoir, that place of death where Cordelia lay in the river of blood. Delivering him into the stained hands of Hargrave…

Thomas somehow pulled his right leg up and over the horse’s back, leaning heavily upon the beast’s neck. It took all the strength remaining in his legs to hold on.

“There he is,” Blake said. “Fear not, my boy; we shall have you in the care of Lord Hargrave’s house soon enough, and then we shall most certainly get to the bottom of who has done you so ill a turn.”

Thomas dragged his hand to his mouth, removing what he thought must be the carved wooden pin from the brim of Kettering’s hat. He took the deepest breath he was able, and then stabbed the wooden pin down into the horse’s side, and in an instant the horse was thundering northward into the darkness.

If Thomas Annesley must die, it would not be in that house of the damned.

“Damn it all!” Blake shouted as his own horse jerked free and bolted into the black, frigid night after its companion. “Kettering, look what your good deed has done to us.”

“Well, that was most unexpected,” Kettering lamented. “I wondered that the lad had enough life left in him to persevere unto Darlyrede; I never thought him capable of absconding with our horses. Forgive me.”

Blake stomped about the road for several more moments, cursing and peering into the night while his companion stared contemplatively down the road where the young man had disappeared.

 “Speaking of Darlyrede,” Kettering at last mused, “should I not think better of it, that lad bore a keen resemblance to young Lord Annesley himself.”

Blake came to stand near his friend. “That’s more than a bit unlikely. Isn’t Annesley to be wed on the morrow?”

“Indeed,” Kettering murmured. “To Lord Hargrave’s own Cordelia. You must be quite right, Blake. Whoever he is, he shan’t get far, I’ll warrant. He’s gravely injured.”

“Well.” Blake sighed again. “Let’s you and I get on to Darlyrede any matter. Someone of the house is bound to be yet awake with such a happy ceremony so soon to take place. Perhaps they’ll ask us to stay on.”

“Oh, Blake, look—here comes someone now. I’ll wager it’s a guard of the house in search of the lad. Ho, there,” Kettering called out, waving his arms toward the black shadowed rider. “There’s an injured man who’s only just stolen my horse and frightened away my companion’s. Perhaps you—”

Kettering’s words were cut off as the whine of an arrow ended in an abrupt thunk in the man’s chest.

Blake stared dumbfounded as Kettering looked down at the stub of arrow protruding from his cloak then crumpled onto the frozen road. He turned his horrified gaze to the steadily approaching rider, backing down the road, stumbling. He held out in both hands as the click and scrape of mechanism echoed across the cold expanse of frozen track.

“No! Don’t! Please!”

The twang of the crossbow sounded again.